Your Progress Survives Server Restarts

• Nothing is lost when a server goes down. Until now, a restart could roll your character back by up to five minutes. Your progress was only written to the database on a timer or when you logged out cleanly, so a restart in between threw away whatever you had done since - items picked up or crafted, experience earned, quest steps completed, gear equipped, and even where you were standing.
• Every online character is now saved as part of shutting down. The server waits for the database to confirm each save instead of firing it off and closing anyway, and it retries once if a save does not land.
• Verified live. On the production server, a character that had been playing for nearly four minutes was restarted mid-session and came back exactly where it left off, rather than reverting. Saves finish in a fraction of a second, so restarts are no slower than before.

Fixes

• Starter armor wears the right material. Patched Leather gear - Boots, Bracers, Leggings and Vest - was rendering the coarse hemp material on your character, while the Hemp set was wearing patched leather. The swap affected male and female characters alike and has been corrected across the whole set.
• Dropped gear matches what you equip. Linen Wraps and Hemp Bracers were showing each other's material while lying on the ground, so the item you saw before picking it up did not match the one you put on. Both now match. The magic Tier 0 sets - Roughspun Wool, Fine Linen and Cotton - were already correct, and heavy armor was never affected.
• Power-levelling is properly blocked. Experience sharing now measures the level gap between party members instead of only comparing each member to the monster. That old rule left a gap: pick a monster somewhere between the two players' levels and a level 1 riding along with a level 11 still banked a real share of every kill.
• How the new rule reads. Ten or more levels apart and the lower-level member earns nothing; nine levels apart earns a tenth of their share; two levels or fewer carries no penalty at all. The higher-level player's own reward is untouched, as are solo kills, quest turn-ins and item drop chances. Playing with friends near your own level feels exactly as it did.

Behind the Scenes

• Groundwork for a login queue and monster design tooling. A full server will eventually mean "wait a moment" rather than "try again later", and the seat you wait for will genuinely be held for you. None of it is switched on yet, so nothing changes in-game this build.