Bonjour affineurs,

I'm excited to announce that the new solo competitive dungeon - HALLWAYS OF THE INFINITE - is now open for business.

It is an "endless mode" trial that you can access in the Plane of Heroes (in The Old Mouth trading hub just head north-east and go down the stairs). This competitive dungeon is available for everyone, though it does not scale to player levels or equipment (unlike the Monadic Descent dungeon). You try to go as far north as you can, while the floor falls away behind you in the void that Mahargekdar has constructed in this otherworldly Plane deep in the terroir of Cantal.

The Plane of Heroes also gets a big glow-up - it appears that Mahargekdar has been busy with the decor and layout. Also, you may notice that the people in the Old Mouth now talk about player runs and various happenings in the Plane, giving a sense of the "news" from down there, much to Mahargekdar's liking I am sure.

I also spent a lot of time on improving and fixing the co-op experience, especially in worlds that have a lot of turns racked up, where a host or guest could freeze for several seconds. Most of those freezes should be much shorter now but please tell me how it runs and I'll try to fix anything that isn't quite right still.

As always, thanks to everyone for the bug reports (lots fixed in here as well, see below) and suggestions, and for being part of this project.

Thanks for reading and happy dungeon crawling,

Tim

The Hallways of the Infinite

• The Hallways of the Infinite is a new endless trial at the north end of the Plane of Heroes. Your companions come with you (no co-op though for this as it's a solo dungeon)
• Enemies get stronger with each Hallway and they don't scale to your level. XP per kill stops rising after Hallway 5 (so it's not a grind fest for leveling up)
• You can't die here, even in Permadeath and Hardcore. If your health reaches 0 or you fall into the void, you go back to the Plane with everything you carried.
• There are eleven hall types, and each has its own shape and rule. For example, you slide on ice in the Frost Hall, and salt crust falls after you step on it in the Salt Hall.
• At the end of each Hallway, you choose the next one. Each choice shows the hall, its foes, any Trial (an extra rule, such as "Every bridge is one tile wide.") and its whey and manna fountains.
• To open a foe's card (its health, damage, armour and powers), hover over that foe or select it.
• Each Hallway splits into two lanes, or three from Hallway 5. When you reach the far side, the other lanes fall into the void.
• A Warden guards Hallways 5, 15, 25 and so on, and a Great Warden guards Hallways 10, 20, 30 and so on. The way ahead stays shut until that guard is gone.
• You can shove foes into the void for XP. Champions, Wardens and Great Wardens can catch the edge, and a foe's card shows if it can. Some champions can shove you in too.
• The floor behind you starts to fall 25 turns after you enter a Hallway. If you stand on a falling row, your run ends.
• Foes leave no loot, and you can't forage. You can chop trees and mine rock and crystal for their usual materials.
• Rewards are cosmetic: titles, five outfits and four mounts. You can't get them anywhere else, and other players can't see your outfit yet (but I'm working on it!)
• A defeated Great Warden has one chance to give an outfit piece and another to give a mount. Each chance rises at that Hallway number until you get that reward. You get a title the first time you reach Hallway 5, 10, 15 and later Hallways
• All your characters share these rewards. At the entrance to the Hallways, each character can claim mounts and titles. The outfit you choose there shows on all your characters, for now at least
• This week's Hallways is the same for everyone until Monday 00:00 UTC. So you can run it repeatedly and learn from each run, as opposed to the normal mode where it's different each time. So, it's kind of a weekly challenge. The leaderboard has boards that record scores for each mode
• There are six new achievements in the game's Achievements window. They aren't on Steam as I ran out of official Steam slots (you can only do 100, at least from what I can see currently)

The Plane of Heroes and the Old Mouth

• The Plane of Heroes has a new layout with a larger statue of Mahargekdar at the centre. It has a lot more carpet and stuff - it's more befitting a raid area that a god-like entity has constructed, sort of thing
• People in the Old Mouth and on the Plane talk about recent runs in the Monadic Descent and the Hallways, yours and other players
• The Town Crier, the Herald of Mahargekdar and the Keeper of Deeds call out news as it happens, including a top-ten place on an all-time leaderboard etc. If you retry within 10 minutes and get no deeper, they don't call that run, so it won't spam too much
• IF you get sick of the news updates in the hub you can turn it all off, or even to stop sharing your own runs, you can just do it in the settings
• New signposts in the Old Mouth and on the Plane say what lies in each direction. Probably should have done this ages ago
• The Postmaster has his own blue outfit so you can tell him and the Exchange Broker apart. (tthfry)
• Dungeon mushrooms no longer appear in the Old Mouth (__hariel__)
• Gear from another player's game now shows in your language in the Community Chest. (bancheis)

HUD and interface

• Edit HUD has a new Compact preset. Most panels shrink to three quarters their size, and your buffs show as icons (enwehr)
• A new Minimap click setting has three choices: Look, Walk and Off. Off passes the click to the world under the map. (madness5520, bobinhedgeorge)
• In Edit HUD, you can now fade the background of the minimap and the companion panels. (madness5520)
• Interface size now has 50% and 60% steps, except on Steam Deck. The maps shrink with it (enwehr)
• With the Standard font and an Interface size below 100%, titles, labels and buttons no longer all show at the same size. At the Large text size, labels and buttons grow one step. (tthfry).
• The hint strip now lines up with the log and the boxes on the HUD's top row are all one height. (tthfry)
• The Edit HUD padlock no longer shows over other windows. When a window opens, Edit HUD closes and saves your changes, except a move or resize you are still dragging. (pineapplethief4584)
• The Nearby actions menu closes when another window opens over it. (tthfry)
• Escape on a chest's label no longer deletes the label. (jojoknob)
• An Exalted standing bar shows full. (jojoknob)
• Minimap Tracking lists each creature by its bestiary name. (tthfry)

Co-op

• When a guest joins a late-game world, the host's freeze is now much shorter. (hyperx69, bobinhedgeorge)
• After a guest joins, the people in far towns can take several minutes to appear. The people in your party's towns come first.
• Regular autosaves no longer freeze the host and guest for several seconds. (hyperx69, bobinhedgeorge, takumayote)
• A guest in a city no longer makes the game re-send the whole world every few seconds. (hyperx69, bobinhedgeorge)
• "Save party" no longer freezes anyone for several seconds. It takes longer on some connections.
• When a guest picks Introduce, Share some food, an ingredient kit or boat repair, it now also works in the host's game.
• When someone breaks off a courtship with a guest, it now also ends in the host's game.
• Guests see their own quest progress lines again.
• When a party fells a massive tree, every player now sees it fall.
• A guest's step past a notice board can no longer hand in that guest's parcels.
• A guest on a slow connection now sees kill and XP lines.

Companions, creatures and raids

• Soldiers no longer stand on your pets' tiles. (bancheis)
• You can now befriend any wild hen. (.socran)
• The beast handler's Pack Mule companion is now the Farm Mule. (.socran)
• Creatures drawn by noise now reach the noise. Before, many got stuck on trees or had no way across water. (madness5520)
• Night raiders no longer appear on ground closed off by your walls, if those walls are within 96 tiles of your home. (zvnxtt)
• If a raid has no land route to your home, it turns back and the game says so.
• War-drum raids now come from any side, in different group sizes. Before, they all came from the north.
• Raiders no longer vanish when you walk away. They stay until dawn.
• Hired hands who are unpaid or refuse to work now still go to bed. (Queen Memory)
• Workers on gathering jobs report "can't find any" at most once a day. (thesquirrel_74982)

Combat

• A cleave, chain or bounce that kills several creatures of one kind now shows every kill and XP line. You always got the XP and loot. (madness5520)
• When your trap or defence kills a creature, you now get full loot and on-kill perks. The log says when a trap kills.
• When a berserk foe kills another foe, you get XP, loot and on-kill perks.
• If you play a vampire, the 2 blood that a ranged hit costs now shows, and Help explains it. (thewanderingpoet)
• Tend, Relay and Gather now work when you stand in a doorway. (.socran)
• Your pets and soldiers now fight a ghost in a doorway, and the ghost can hit from there.

Items and cheese

• Spoiled Milk and Gilded Idols of the same worth now stack. (soulman, bancheis)
• The Stormbow has a bow icon. (enwehr)
• A ready recipe cheese can go back in your Cheese Cave or on a dungeon ageing rack. It comes back as the same cheese, older, and stronger if it stayed long enough. (.socran)
• Materials that say to sell them now sit under To Sell with the SELL ui element. (jojoknob)
• A Wanted request can ask for cultures, ales and teas, but not rare goods or better. (madness5520)
• The Cheese Vat shows what each milk and culture adds to quality. (bancheis)
• Grain's card and gHelp say that some herders and cheese merchants sell grain (steelbender34)
• The log now lists what a container held before it says what went in your pack (tthfry)
• The loot filter now works on caches and barrels outside dungeons. An item that it rejects stays beside the container. (tthfry)
• A Waywheel used from the pack closes the pack. (tthfry)
• If you use another Cinder Bolt Yogurt scoop with a bolt in hand you aim the bolt again and keep the scoop (tthfry)
• The card for Grand Affineur's Ward says that it also covers companions beside you. (tthfry)

Building and ships

• A house you build on open ground near a town now stays as yours The town no longer takes the house's storage or moves a family in. A family already there moves out if it has somewhere to go, and your bonds stay. (Goose)
• Inside a house you built in a town, you can now place a Storeroom, a Well and some other buildings. (valdrrak, xaintrix)
• To change a Tree Farm's or a Carpet's material, press [ ] or LB and RB. The card shows the price for the material you pick. (thesquirrel_74982)
• Furniture in a ship's hold shows its own picture and name. (thesquirrel_74982)
• When you follow a route, you now walk past your cows and other milk animals. To milk one, walk into it or click it. (jojoknob)
• The Harvest Area, Plant Field, orchard and stockpile boxes now follow the pointer over unseen ground. The preview counts only ground you have seen (bancheis)

World map and travel

• The world map now fills in much faster in a late game world, and it no longer flickers. Sea you have sailed no longer shows in lake colour. (madness5520, tthfry)
• The Sector Journal now opens at once in a late-game world (tthfry)
• The Biomes filter shows a faint shade over uncharted regions, with an "Uncharted lands" row in the legend. (thesquirrel_74982, tthfry)
• If you give a Travel order during a walk it now replaces that walk. Shift+X also resumes a stopped trip while you walk to a clicked tile. (tthfry)
• You can Stop tracking a waypoint on the map's list and on its pin. (tthfry)
• An automatic walk now stops when a mythic beast comes on screen. A mythic beast's map mark says where and when it can appear. Rumours no longer mention one one that your world doesn't have (notcaleb6070, madness5520)
• A voyage's lines follow the "Show travel steps in the log" setting. (madness5520)

Graphics

• In 2.5D and first person, lava lies flat in the same pixels as 2D, and it glows at night, as it well should (milotor)
• In 2.5D and first person, falling leaves, blown sand and heat strands no longer move with you (palpablebrush26)
• In 2.5D, far snow and wet ground no longer end in a line that jumps when you zoom. They also stay off lakes and lava. (palpablebrush26)
• Plants in a roofed room no longer get winter snow. (thesquirrel_74982)

Other fixes

• A merchant camp's stall no longer stands empty by day (datsheeptho)
• Dungeon doors no longer start with low health. Before, a rock you hit on one floor damaged a door on the next. (inkykrillie)
• You can no longer mine the Undermaw's central crystal, and any piece you already mined is restored. (ravenor.)
• When you use dungeon stairs, your character no longer shows in the wrong place for a moment. (trespiratesque, .socran)
• All Character Voices play at the same loudness. (madness5520)
• The scroll-wheel zoom keeps working after an ending. (sleepysva)
• If you step back from the choice of endings, the log and Quest Log say how to open it again. (.rarehuman)
• The Notice Board's ? and ! badges have a dark edge, and its notes say "golden" for the badge colour. (tthfry)
• The Thymerock quest step says "in or near Thymerock". (sleepysva)
• Fortress colonies no longer fail to save after meat rots. Saving also repairs a colony that already has this fault (sleepysva)

Known issues

• A co-op guest's bonds aren't saved yet. "Settle your account" isn't offered to a guest after the party breaks out of a lock-up
• Some folks reported that the host and guest see the guest in different places in some towns. I can't reproduce this yet but working on it
• With Detailed characters off (Settings, Gameplay, Character and HUD), long sessions don't get all of 0.36.0's smoother play yet. I'm not sure how many people have Detailed characters off though - there's not really a reason for it I don't think, so I might remove it at some point
• With Show full item cards on, a few cards can still be cut off at 1024x640 with large text