5.4.4

Highlights

• Roll for the opening: a new parchment combat introduction brings encounter artwork, a little context, and four animated initiative dice.
• The Boglands remember: four moral encounters lead to Madame Avva’s tarot reading, an optional redraw, and a blessing for the adventure.
• A better night’s rest: Guild Hall room bookings open Tavern-Oku, a six-guest lodging puzzle with a Rested bonus for the road ahead.
• Cleaner encounters: blue interaction screens, metal buttons, clearer dialogue, contained rewards, and more artwork to inspect.
• Mind the Dawn Stones: polished galleries, instructions, framing, and saved retry flow.

Availability

5.4.4 (22) is available to our existing internal iOS TestFlight testers. iPad smoke testing has passed; further iPhone, controller, and longer-session testing is welcome. This update does not include a new Apple TV build. The four Boglands encounters and tarot reading are included, but the rest of that adventure remains a development preview.

Who moves first?

Ordinary encounters and Arena now begin with a parchment COMBAT page. Read the encounter, inspect the illustration, then choose Roll Initiative. The Company and enemies each roll two D6. The winning side adds the difference between the totals to each combatant’s base Initiative. Ties give neither side a bonus and do not trigger a reroll.

The adjusted individual turn order stays fixed throughout the battle. Begin Combat is a separate action, giving you time to read the result. Native and classic dice are supported, combatant help explains Initiative, and saved openings retain their rolls. The scripted prologue and older battles already in progress keep their existing behavior.

Four Reflections in the Boglands

Four moral encounters record the Company’s choices before Madame Avva lays out the cards. Her animated reading reveals those reflections and Fate, with the choice to accept the result or use one final redraw. The settled blessing belongs to that adventure.

Cards can be enlarged, speech is more clearly attributed, and choices have more room to breathe. The boat gate keeps the reading from being bypassed. These encounters are playable additions to the Boglands preview, not a claim that the entire adventure is finished.

Make yourselves at home

Free Company rest remains available. Spend 10 gold on rooms to begin Tavern-Oku: six guests, six illustrated rooms, and four authored cases. Place guests, swap rooms, Undo a move, and consult separate Requests and Rules & Legend views. An unfinished booking can be saved and resumed.

Settlement recovers eligible captured guests and arms a non-stacking Rested bonus of 10% earned adventure XP for the next expedition. Repeat visits should not charge twice or award the bonus again. The small question-mark case selector is a development/Practice shortcut, not a campaign difficulty control.

A clearer view of the adventure

Encounter and standard challenge screens now share blue backgrounds, metal buttons, gold heading rules, and consistent frames. Narrative, approaches, dice, and rewards have distinct places; long text stays within its column and short passages are centered vertically. Reward amounts appear once, while the story keeps its Company Ledger context.

Bonus-item rolls use a larger centered temporary popup, and a settled challenge D20 stays visible behind it. Artifact rewards have their own contained panel. Artwork inspection, portrait crops, enemy scale after combat, item icons, Moonbones formatting and clipping, and the compact RELICS / SKILLS label have received attention. Town and exploration overlays retain their parchment styling.

Dawn Stones also gains polished parchment presentation, artwork galleries, readable instructions, and saved answer/retry flow. We will leave the answers for you to discover.

Rewards and existing Companies

Newly failed challenges no longer grant positive rewards. Their actual penalties remain, successful rewards are unchanged, and already-paid historical receipts are preserved. Existing saves, the six direct-file films, captions, and audio carry forward.

What to test

Try initiative with Giant Spiders, Warden/Sentinels, the White Dragon, and Arena. Leave and return before rolling, after rolling, and during battle. Watch for repeated rolls, skipped turns, duplicate rewards, or status effects ticking twice.

Play the four Boglands encounters and Avva’s reading; try accepting or redrawing and reopening the cards. Book rooms, swap guests, Undo, and resume an unfinished stay. Check Dawn Stones navigation and artwork zoom without posting puzzle solutions.

On landscape phones and tablets, look for clipping, overlapping text, incomplete borders, small targets, or extra button presses. Continue an existing Company, background and resume, and check movies, sound, captions, and Skip/Back. Please include your device, OS, build, location, party, difficulty, and steps to reproduce. A screenshot or short recording helps. Thank you for keeping an eye on Oddwater’s stranger corners.