The Long Road

Patch 08-03

Yesterday every hero in your party was somehow your own descendant. Today one of them is, and the other two are strangers who came for the road.

  • One heir per run. Exactly one hero carries your line now; the other two are freeborn strangers. This isn't just fiction — three siblings were diluting the very genes you were breeding for. Field a hero matching your heir's race and class and the line runs strong through them. On a founder run, you tap who starts the line — you don't choose your parents, but you do choose who founds a line.
  • A stranger can join the line. A freeborn hero born with a rare look can pass it to your heir at the seal — "the stranger's gold eyes entered the line." New blood is finally a thing that happens.
  • The smith can strike a masterwork. 7% of reforges re-temper the whole piece to roughly a rarity rank up in stats — an epic that hits like a legendary. The everyday roll costs a little more to pay for it, and rerolling a masterwork can undo it. The smith warns you. Walk away.
  • The Arena was rebuilt. Pick both corners, then watch the Face-Off: the two teams square up and their stats slam in side by side — so when you lose an 8-second fight, you can finally see why before the first blow. Rivalries get a running record (these two: 4–2), and REMATCH is three taps with your formation and speed carried over.
  • The Dungeons got a door — a cave mouth in the rock where something stirs depending on the mode you picked. The garish color-wash picker is gone.
  • Dungeon difficulty was rebuilt from scratch. The old curves climbed so fast that a stronger team barely reached further. Now +1% team strength buys about +1 wave — your legacy grinding finally shows up on the wave counter. Strong teams go much deeper (think ~100 waves, not ~10).
  • The storm opens with the Break. Round 45 starts with the sky opening and the column running for camp through the act's one downpour.
  • Fixed: the end-run score had been quietly under-reading for eleven days (a perfect run scored rank A instead of SS), the camp dilemma was firing in 9 of 10 runs instead of 2, and the cookie girl no longer restarts her entrance every time you glance at your inventory.