I am 1,798 builds into the 2.0 beta and holy moly today's update feels like it's just straight-up V3 now.
If you've been following me or the game since launch, you'll notice I like to work on some secret parts of the game and drop them out of nowhere — and today somehow came together with many of those items finishing all in the same week.
A true ending, an endless post-Tower era, a ground-up Class Abilities rework, a dedicated game mode system with two new modes, battle engine upgrades applied from the upcoming DLC, online leagues, a web-based and in-game Wiki with oodles of tools, a brand new website, an iPad version (submitted to the App Store) and a free Steam demo — plus a long tail of quality-of-life, balance, and bug-fix work.
Oh, and MULTIPLAYER.
This week was something special. Let's get into it.
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NEW FEATURES
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Endgame & New Ways to Play
The Severance Ritual (true ending): after defeating Floor 100, guilds that completed the Codex & Ritual whisper chain can perform the Severance Ritual. Choose well and the realm enters an Age of Hope — a permanent legacy of greater renown, higher morale, and fewer dark events.
Era of Champions: once the Tower is conquered, rivals push harder for the Crown Cup, an era banner tracks the reigning champion and dynasties, and new Hall of Fame honors await the first era cup and three-in-a-row dynasties.
Game Modes: choose a Game Mode on the New Game screen alongside difficulty — the two combine into your run, with a live summary showing exactly what you're starting:
Academy Only: recruit no one from the outside. Your champions are grown entirely through the Academy, which begins already built with a full week-one prospect pool. External hiring, trades, and free-agent recruiting are closed off, and scouting focuses purely on youth prospects. Bloodline kin who'd normally join the open market are routed into the Academy to carry the next generation.
Crown Cup League: the Tower is sealed — its fall is now legend — and the league becomes the whole game, an endless run for league glory with no time limit. A new intro letter from Ser Aldric sets the premise, your tier climb is certified through the league instead of the Tower, and rival guilds compete harder.
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Combat & Heroes
This week sees the continuation of the massive Classes, Synergies, and Skills overhaul that I started releasing two weeks ago. The below is essentially a mini blog inside this blog, so grab some coffee.
Classes: the foundation
Your guild draws from 42 classes, each with its own identity, combat role, and rarity.
Roles — Tank, Melee, Ranged, and Healer. A balanced party covers all four; a specialized one leans hard into a plan.
Rarity — from everyday classes up to rare and legendary ones. Rarer classes are harder to find and bring stronger kits — the legendary Aegis Warden sits at the very top (more on them below).
Class is the bedrock of who an adventurer is. But two heroes of the same class are no longer interchangeable — because of what comes next.
Class Abilities: every hero's signature move
This is the heart of the update. Every adventurer awakens two abilities — one Passive and one Active — rolled from their class's pool when they join you. Across the 42 classes there are 336 possible abilities to awaken.
Passives are always on, and they're specific:
A Knight might awaken Iron Will (−10% damage taken, always) or the rarer Guardian's Vow (intercepts blows meant for allies, cutting their damage by 12%).
A Fire Mage might get Living Flame (+20% fire damage) or Cinder Heart (+8% crit on everything).
A Priest might awaken Aegis of Faith — the whole party takes 6% less damage just by having them along.
Actives are ultimates — powerful effects that charge over time and fire when ready, and the rarer the roll, the bigger the swing:
That's the same class, four wildly different heroes. It's most vivid on damage: one Fire Mage's ultimate is Ring of Cinders (120% to all enemies); another awakens The Burning Sky (280%). Same class — more than double the payoff.
Under the Hood — the roll
Each slot is weighted by rarity: common 100 · uncommon 40 · rare 14 · epic 5 · legendary 2. The class default is the likeliest result, so plenty of heroes share a common kit — which is exactly why a rare or epic awakening is a find. On average, ~29% of an average hero's rolls land above common, and ~8% hit rare-or-better. Potential tilts the odds hard: an S-tier prospect carries a 2.5× multiplier on the rarer tiers, pushing them to ~50% above-common and ~14% rare-or-better. Scouting for potential is now, in part, hunting for a rare ability.
Ultimates and cooldowns
Ultimates aren't spammable — they charge over weeks while a hero rests and trains between deployments, fire once when ready, then reset. Charge times scale with power: a quick active recharges in ~3 weeks; the big nukes and party-savers (The Burning Sky, Salvation, Indomitable) sit at 10–12 weeks. A charged hero is a loaded weapon — the decision is which fight you spend them on.
Under the Hood — charging
Cooldowns tick down while a hero is resting, idle, or training, and freeze while they're deployed. Send a charged hero out, and their ultimate fires at the resolution of that fight — then the clock resets and starts again.
The Aegis Warden
The legendary Aegis Warden is built different. Their base passive alone — Unyielding Presence — grants the entire party +20% damage reduction and shores up morale. Their whole ability pool is protective. And on top of their rolled abilities, they always carry Aegis of the Absolute: a guaranteed second ultimate that makes the entire party invincible for one battle — no injuries, no deaths, in quests, raids, and the tower.
It has two costs: a 12-week cooldown, and the Warden is left exhausted (a multi-week injury) afterward. Time it for a brutal tower floor or a do-or-die raid and it wins runs single-handedly.
Class Synergies: build the right mix
https://gargadusa.com/classes/synergy-web/
Individual abilities are only half the party. Field the right combination of classes and the whole group gets a party-wide multiplier that stacks on top of everyone's abilities. There are 43 synergies in all (currently).
Sacred Vanguard — a holy frontline (Knights, Paladins, the Aegis Warden): +5% / +8% / +11% party power at 3 / 4 / 5 of its classes.
Nature's Bond — druids, shamans, and wardens: +4% / +5% / +7% at 3 / 4 / 5.
Spirit Bond — beast masters, druids, shamans, wardens, and rangers channel the wilds together: +5% / +8% / +11% at just 2 / 3 / 4.
Most synergies trigger at 2+ of the right classes; the big role-diverse ones (like Sacred Vanguard) need 3+. The full catalog lives in Sage's Wisdom → Advanced Mechanics → Class Synergies (press H). The takeaway: your party is now more than the sum of its parts, and tuning that mix is real power left on the table if you ignore it.
Skill Reawakening: don't like a roll? Re-roll it.
Awakened abilities are powerful, but you're not stuck with a bad roll. Skill Reawakening lets you re-roll a single ability slot — and it's a keep-or-take decision: you see the new ability before you commit, and the re-roll always offers a genuinely different option, so you can never burn a charge on the same ability you already had.
Reawaken charges are precious, earned two ways:
Tome of Awakening — a rare drop (~8%) from successful raids. Spend one to grant a hero a charge.
The Mastery Path — a hero proves themselves under a mentor of your choosing: complete a certain number of quests and raids with that mentor leading the party, and the protégé earns a charge through sheer shared experience.
The Mastery Path is unlocked by a new building, The Wellspring, which also raises how many heroes can walk the path at once — 1 at Tier 1, up to 3 at Tier 3.
The Battle System: abilities matter everywhere now
https://gargadusa.com/classes/
The big promise: your heroes' abilities count in every kind of fight — quests, raids, the Tower, the Crown Cup, and rival challenges. No more abilities that only mattered on paper.
I've been working hard on a new battle engine for the next DLC and it's pretty great. In turn, I've taken a few bedrock elements of that engine and brought them to GT1 and now you'll see a much more robust, accurate, and logical battle sim.
How it actually resolves (the part that used to be a black box): your party's effective power is built from base stats plus every passive, plus any charged ultimate that fires, plus active synergies and captain bonuses. That number is weighed against the quest or floor's difficulty to decide the outcome. Offensive abilities push that number up; defensive ones cut your party's injury and death chances directly — capped so no single ability trivializes content (injury and defense each cap at 30% reduction, death saves at 50%). It's a real system you can build around, not a coin flip.
A few things worth knowing:
You can see your moves land. Quest reports now show which signature ability fired — a badge right on the hero's row, so you finally watch your investment pay off.
The Tower respects your kit. Each floor is its own fight, and ultimates charge between attempts — so a saved nuke (or a ready Aegis) can carry a wall you couldn't brute-force. Pick your moment.
Every build has a place — even in the arena. The Crown Cup now honors defensive and healing abilities, not just raw damage. A tanky, well-supported party can grind out a win it couldn't have before (mitigation caps at 30%, healing boosts at 50%).
Your rivals are real opponents. Rival guilds awaken abilities too, and those abilities now feed their results in their own quests and raids — so scouting an enemy's kit tells you their true strength before you ever trade blows.
Outcomes are sealed. When you send a party out on a quest, raid, or tower run, the result is locked the moment they leave — reloading won't fish you a luckier roll. The way to win a fight you're losing is to come back stronger, not to retry the dice.
Putting it all together
Here's the loop, start to finish:
Scout an S-tier Fire Mage prospect — high potential means real odds at a rare awakening.
They roll Living Flame (+20% fire damage) and the epic The Burning Sky (280% to all enemies).
Build around them — slot them into a party that triggers a synergy for another +8%, with a Priest's Aegis of Faith softening incoming hits.
Charge their ultimate over ~10 weeks while they train.
Deploy them onto a brutal tower floor at full charge — The Burning Sky detonates for 280%, the floor falls, and the report shows exactly which move broke it.
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Okay, back to the broader patch.
The Academy
Academy Career Track: aim a trainee at a target graduation class. Cross-role targets convert over multiple semesters (resisted by natural affinity), with a live odds panel and a final roll that keeps some variance.
New training curricula: two paths join Scholar's Path — Fighter's Path (physical and combat stats +40%) and Mender's Path (vitality stats +40% for tanks and healers) — each a gentler, focused nudge toward a career.
Leadership Instructor specialization: teaches charisma, leadership, and the social bonds that hold a guild together — so bards, knights, paladins, commanders and the like now train the social stat block at last.
The Living World
Living World: rivals now have storylines (leadership crises, fire sales that flood the trading block with discounted contracts, patron windfalls). Adventurers who leave you remember it — old faces resurface with fond letters or bitter taunts, and grudge guilds are likelier to be drawn as your wildcard rival. Fallen heroes can leave kin who arrive years later.
Dedicated Training Parties: drill a squad for stats and loyalty on the Parties tab without spending a combat slot; Training Yard grants +1 training-party slot per tier (max 3).
Multiplayer & Sharing
Multiplayer (Beta): create or join an online league — shared market, free-agent pool, and Crown Cup League, with weeks advancing once every guildmaster is ready. Up to 32 guilds, configurable turn timer and victory conditions, browse public leagues or join by code, and league-wide difficulty for fair standings. (NOTE: This is definitely an early beta freature — rough edges expected.)
Ranked leagues: found a competitive-integrity league from the main menu or in-game lobby, restricting play to verified accounts and unmodded saves, with clear, plain-language reasons when a member is turned away.
Turn-ready notifications: get alerted when your league turn comes up even if you've stepped away to the main menu or another save. When the app or tab is in the background, a real OS notification fires on web and desktop the moment your league starts, advances a week, or concludes.
Ghost Guilds & Season Chronicle: export your guild as a code and import a friend's as a fully-simulated rival in the Crown League — no networking required. One click in the year-end celebration saves a shareable image of your year.
Platforms & Resources
In-game Wiki & Site Hub: a full localized Wiki (Systems, Buildings, Factions, Stats, Traits, Zodiac, Materials, Crafting, Ambitions, Rivals, Tower Bestiary) with an interactive Party Simulator, plus a unified franchise site header and Timeline page.
iPad version completed and submitted for App Store review.
Free demo now live on Steam.
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QUALITY OF LIFE
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Recruiting, scouting & the Academy
Rival capability intel (Combat/Operations/Tower) is now gated by your Scouting Post — T2 estimates, T3 reveals exact.
The "Headhunted" recruit filter and a roster-picker "Deployable only" filter make finding the right hire faster.
Academy summary shows per-trainee countdowns to mid-semester checkpoint and semester end.
The Academy now warns you when prospects are training with no instructor for their role, and flags low-tier instructors whose teaching slows growth — harm that used to happen silently.
Released graduates count as neutral (not a rejection), so develop-and-sell no longer drags Academy reputation.
A persistent Mercenary Reputation badge now sits in the Guild Hall while the brand is active, showing the −20 recruiting penalty and a live countdown to when it lifts.
Parties, combat & the Tower
Party cards show a color-coded synergy-count badge; commander auto-fill is synergy-aware.
Tower readiness now measures your strongest deployable party instead of your whole-roster average, so a capable team no longer reads as "Not Ready" because of benchwarmers.
Pinned Tower Preparation / Begin Descent buttons keep the key actions in reach.
The Crown Cup registration screen now makes clear that party slots are suggestions, not hard requirements — stack damage, double healers, or go tankless.
Gear & crafting
Gear names now localize (procedural, crafted, and set names, with grammatical agreement) — existing gear too.
Empty gear slots are now labeled distinctly as "Accessory 1" and "Accessory 2" in feed warnings and the Craft panel.
The "Improvable only" gear filter updates immediately; click the green loadout slot to equip directly.
The Reforge action is now wired into the Armory, letting you downgrade a piece one quality tier to restore its full durability (requires a Salvage Station and a hired Blacksmith or Armorer).
Workshop auto-refine gains a per-recipe block toggle and an "auto via" label; Quartermaster auto-fulfill gains a "Max tier" setting so A/S-tier gear isn't auto-consumed.
New crafting recipes: Cooks "Prepare Seafood" from shellfish; Alchemists "Extract Medicinal" from medicinal crops.
Economy & factions
Treasurer Trade Desk: auto-accept clearly-favorable material deals within a gold budget and auto-decline clearly-unfavorable ones (adventurer/poaching offers are never auto-handled).
The Crown Requisition Shop is always visible now, with a hint on how to earn tokens, instead of vanishing entirely at a zero balance.
Faction commission cards name the commissioning faction; an oath-broken badge appears on the Factions tab; the royal armory section stays visible when filtering the vendor by Gear/Consumables.
A clickable Treasurer link on the Treasury ledger jumps straight to the source.
Quest Board, feed & navigation
Quest Board: pin priority quests to the top.
Guild Block supports multiple named shortlists beyond Favorites and hides banished rivals by default (with a restore toggle).
Report-panel shortcuts now jump to the right place: the scout row goes to Recruit → Scouting, and party-training rows open the Party training sub-tab.
Feed entries deep-link to dossiers and guild profiles.
Guidance, summaries & desktop
Sage's Wisdom adds "How Combat Works & Battle Logs"; a first-quest nudge points new commanders to the debrief; Week Summary invites a click to the Tactical Debrief.
Sage's Wisdom now opens cleanly on top of the Dossier when you click a class link, and Escape closes them in the expected order.
Class Field Guide adds Recommended Gear; the Training Log badge counts only unread entries.
Online League waiting-room banner after Ready (who's in, who you're waiting on, an advance flash, and a commander-cover countdown), plus a "league not found" message.
Skip Celebrations (Quick Advance) no longer drops the post-week warning chain — auto-renewal, clause-danger, and contract-expiration alerts still reach you.
Week Summary now shows an adventurer's current name if you renamed them after the week was tallied.
On desktop, Ctrl/Cmd with the +, −, and 0 keys now zoom in, out, and reset — previously you could zoom out but not back in.
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BALANCE
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Loot & traits
Higher-rarity loot rolls extra stats from the slot's thematic pool (sell values unchanged).
Deep-floor Tower loot quality ceilings are raised so the Tower keeps dropping better gear all the way down.
Party-pooled trait bonuses now pay their full advertised value per holder (Treasure Hunter, Lucky Find, Scavenger, and Collector were under-delivering).
Abilities & combat
Many signature abilities now contribute their true damage (multi-hit, life-drain, marked, sacrifice, chain, extra-turn) — and previously-inert effects (pets, summons, totems, revives, shields, anthems, regen, freeze/slow/armor-shred/vulnerability) now factor into fights.
Smite, Judgment, Galvanic Lash and other elemental signature actives are now credited by their full effective damage instead of a sliver, bringing them in line with other damage abilities.
Active abilities no longer charge for free while an adventurer is parked on a contract, dispatch, garrison, or event — closing an exploit that let powerful ultimates like Aegis be stockpiled at no cost.
Rivals with damage passives are modestly stronger.
Tower
Tower pacing: the mid-climb (floors 20–90) is steeper so it stays contested instead of plateauing, with a tougher ramp into the Capricorn wall at floor 100.
Tower damage types: a versatile fighter who hits both a floor's weakness and its resistance now gets the full effectiveness bonus rather than netting to zero — only hitting a resistance with no matching weakness incurs the penalty.
Economy, factions & risk
The open market pushes back on bulk dumping (warehouse-scale liquidation gets softer prices and saturation; normal quest-loot batches stay penalty-free).
The dead Underworld upgrades (permanent rival intel, top-rival renown sabotage) are now active.
The Herbalist's advertised medical-cost savings are now fixed and actually applied, stacking with the Infirmary under a combined cap.
The Merchant Consortium's "Trade Empire" tithe is now genuinely collected from quest gold, as its oath always implied.
Deliberate lowball trades are always rejected (with a "Will Reject" preview).
High-risk gatherers (Salvagers, Essence Harvesters) can now suffer injuries and even death on the job — their risk level is no longer just decorative.
Progression & quests
Training Yard and Academy instructor slots now stack.
The Diplomatic Summit quest appears whenever you have an unresolved nemesis.
The Floor-30 Surface Dungeon Crisis enforces one-faction commitment.
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BUG FIXES
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Exploits & integrity
Closed a Guild Block clone exploit (signing a rival could duplicate them); affected saves are healed with unique roster IDs.
League creation now always runs Standard mode, so a host can no longer start their own game in Academy-Only or Crown Cup League while everyone else plays Standard.
Competitive-league integrity is hardened: a forged tower-victory message can no longer win a league on its own, score totals are now computed authoritatively by the server rather than trusted from the client, and order floods are capped.
Ctrl/Cmd+C no longer triggers the recruit hire/enroll hotkeys.
Crashes, performance & saves
Fixed a per-week lag spike on large saves and restored fast quicksave/manual saves.
Continue Game now loads your latest save instead of a stale pre-NG+ run.
Combat & adventurers
Tower: an adventurer who fell in an early phase of a won multi-phase boss chain is now correctly counted as dead across every phase.
Trade-acquired adventurers keep their full career-stat history.
Localization
Fixed sub-tab and other menu labels staying in the previous language after a mid-session language switch.
Russian localization: the Great Sage and several system messages now address the player with the polite, genderless "вы" instead of the informal, male-assuming "ты"; the Tower reclamation lore now renders properly translated; and the transliteration of Gargadusa on the Tower banner/victory feeds is corrected.
Systems & display
Dedicated training parties stay visible and cancellable while training, and training-party assignment now shows on the Training tabs.
Recipe discovery via quests/tower works again (retroactively unlocking already-earned blueprints).
Forged Documents text corrected; nicknames display consistently; the Granary seasonal-harvest description is corrected (+25% Autumn gathering); Commander commentary no longer prints raw code; an aged-rival portrait no longer reverts to placeholder.
Demo
The demo correctly stops at the Year-1 wall, and the web demo has moved to its own /demo/ address.