Dig past depth 20 into four biomes with Warden bosses. Earn five automation helpers, pick a Dig Omen each New Dig, and play in a fully redrawn hold. Big balance pass, 100+ fixes.

This is our biggest update so far. It holds everything we have built since v0.1.8. The v0.1.9 patch never went out on its own, so all of it is in here too. Full notes below.

A busy hold at depth 18 in the new art.

⛏️ Endgame Overhaul

📜 If You Already Have a Save

• 💾 Your save carries over. Nothing is taken away from you.
• 📜 The Founder's Charter. Every existing save gets every helper right away: the Foreman, the Overseer, the Quartermaster (with Auto-Redeploy), the Smeltmaster and the Depth Charter, plus the Foreman's Ledger. A toast marks the occasion when you load, and the Charter's card opens the first time you open the Automation panel.
• 🥉 Old challenge completions become Bronze medals. Any challenge you finished before this update counts as Bronze, and the matching helper upgrade is applied when you load.
• 🔕 Your automation keeps behaving the way it did. On older saves, the Foreman's Thrift and the Quartermaster's Pathfinder upgrades start switched off. Turn them on in each helper's card whenever you like.
• 🔓 Screens you already reached stay open. Some menu screens now unlock as you play (see the Guild Hall below). The rules look at what your save has already done, so a save past its first New Dig has every screen from the start.
• 📰 What's New. A one-time screen on your first load sums up the update.

⚙️ Earned Automation: The Helper Ladder

• 🔒 Automation is now earned. Helpers join your hold as you play. Each locked card shows a checklist of exactly what that helper is waiting for, with a row per requirement and a done/total count.
• 📒 The Foreman hires, buys upgrades and handles purchase priority. His checklist: complete a New Dig, own 30 Dwarf Miners at once and 30 Dwarf Workers at once, have 2 runestones socketed at once, complete 4 quests and reach depth 10. A toast tells you when everything but the New Dig is done.
• 📋 The Overseer handles auto-assign and walks the rooms with her clipboard. She joins after the Foreman once you have built 6 rooms and either assigned 60 workers by hand or own 150 dwarves (miners and workers together), whichever comes first.
• 🎒 The Quartermaster collects returning expeditions for you after your first New Dig and 50 collected expeditions. From your second New Dig, and after one Deep or harder expedition, he also learns Auto-Redeploy and sends crews straight back out, with a worker reserve setting.
• 🔥 The Smeltmaster is a bronze golem at the Converter who runs your conversion list on his own. He joins after your second New Dig and 40 conversions.
• 🏮 The Depth Charter descends the moment you can afford it, with an optional stop-at-depth setting. It arrives after your third New Dig once you have reached depth 18.
• 📖 The Foreman's Ledger comes with your third helper and unlocks automation profiles, Pause All and the automation status line.
• ⬆️ Helper upgrades. Each helper can learn two upgrades from challenge medals (Bronze teaches Tier 2, Silver teaches Tier 3):
  • Foreman: Thrift (skips a purchase that would delay your next descent) and Builder's Eye (builds the cheapest affordable room for you).
  • Overseer: Standing Orders (new rooms get a worker right away) and Rebalance (moves workers between the Surveyor's Office, Lumber Mill and Smelter toward whatever your next descent needs).
  • Smeltmaster: Quick Crucible (converts every 2.5 seconds instead of 5) and Reserve Guard (never spends below what your next descent needs).
  • Quartermaster: Pathfinder (redeploys to your deepest unlocked destination) and Fast Carts (expeditions take 15% less time).
  • Depth Charter: Momentum (+10% production for 2 minutes after every descent) and Deep Survey (descents cost 10% less blueprints and timber).

• 💾 Helper settings survive New Digs and ascension once you own the helper. No more re-toggling after every reset.
  
• 🧑‍🏭 New faces in the hold. The Foreman at the campfire (with his ledger once you earn the Foreman's Ledger), a clipboard Overseer on patrol, a bronze golem beside the Converter, a rucksack Quartermaster and a lamp-keeper at the cart track.
  
• 🎓 Tutorial ending changed. The tutorial no longer hands automation over for free. Its last card points you at the Foreman's checklist, and your first New Dig gets its own popup that does the same.
  

🔮 Dig Omens and the Next Dig Screen

• 🃏 Dig Omens. After every New Dig (and every ascension) the elders read the stones. Pick 1 of 3 omens, or No Omen. Each omen is a trade: something better, something worse, for that one dig. You get one free re-read per offer, and the offer is saved, so it stays the same if you reload.
• 🗺️ 14 omens, unlocked as you reach deeper depths: the Rich Vein, the Scholar's Lamp, a Greenwood Year, the Silver Seam, Heavy Hands, the Quiet Hold, Brittle Stone, the Troll Moon, the Dragon's Hoard, the Closed Passes, the Ancestors Watch, the Open Road, Runic Surge and the Guild Fair.
• 🧭 The Next Dig screen. One screen after each New Dig for your omen and an optional challenge, with each challenge's rules and next reward shown inline. It fills the window and shows a "More below" cue when the challenges are further down. Press Start digging (or Escape) to go. You can turn off the challenge prompt with the "Don't ask" box or in Settings > Gameplay/Stats.
• 🚫 A few pairs don't mix. The Open Road can't be combined with any challenge. Heavy Hands, the Quiet Hold and the Dragon's Hoard can't be combined with Hands Off, and Brittle Stone can't be combined with Crumbling Mine. Excluded options are greyed out with a reason.
• 📍 Omen line on the HUD. Shows your omen and, during a challenge, the next medal depth. Click it for details. The Bonuses tab in Records lists omen, biome and Momentum effects per resource.

The Next Dig screen: pick an omen, take on a challenge if you like.

🏅 Challenge Medals and Elite Achievements

• 🥇 Bronze, Silver and Gold. Each of the 5 challenges now has three goal depths. Reach one during the dig and the medal is yours on the spot. Higher medals include the lower ones. The challenge still pays its Ancestral Knowledge bonus at your next New Dig.
• 🗓️ Challenges are chosen on the Next Dig screen only. The Challenges panel explains the rules and still lets you cancel the one you are in.
• 🧰 Medals teach your helpers. Bronze and Silver unlock the helper upgrades above. A medal earned before you own that helper is kept and applies when the helper joins.
• 🚩 Gold banners. Each Gold medal hangs a banner from the cave ceiling in your hold. Bronze and Silver get a small pennant.
• ✋ The Golem's Hand. A Gold medal in Crumbling Mine earns this relic, which strikes cave-in walls 5 times a second. It rests during Hands Off.
• 🙌 Hands Off can't trap you anymore. It now starts you with 5 free Dwarf Miners, and if your crew is ever wiped out with no ore to rehire, one miner comes back. With no runic damage you can't descend into a cave-in depth and no random walls appear, and a wall you are stuck behind crumbles on its own over 5 minutes. Cancelling Hands Off takes the free miners back.
• ⏳ Entropy keeps counting while you're away. Its 2% drop every minute is now saved with the run and also applies to offline time and Time Warp.
• 🚧 No Embargo during Crumbling Mine. Embargo Protection can't be bought while Crumbling Mine is active, and the Trade Post tells you why. An Embargo bought before the challenge starts ends when it does.
• 🏆 21 new elite achievements. Gold in each challenge and in all five, defeat each Warden, reach depths 30, 40 and 60, finish a dig under every omen, reach depth 20 within 10 hours of play on a new save, complete 5 quests without descending, beat a dragon with nobody in the Runic Barracks, mine 1 quintillion ore, complete 25 and 50 New Digs, and upgrade every helper to Tier 3. They are for bragging rights only and add no stat bonus.
• 🔁 Ascending now ends an active challenge.

🌋 Endless Depths

• 🗻 Four biomes past depth 20. The Emberdeep (20s), the Drowned Halls (30s), the Crystal Choir (40s) and the Hollow Dark (50s), each with its own look, ambient effects and one rule twist. From depth 60 they repeat as the Emberdeep II and onward.
  • 🔥 Forge Heat: mithril +50%, blueprints +25%, timber -15%.
  • 🌊 Floodwater: Trade Points +50%, expeditions 25% faster, timber +25%, blueprints -15%.
  • 💎 Resonance: cave-ins 25% more often and Crystal Veins 3x as common, but walls have 25% less health and wall clicks hit 3x as hard.
  • 🌑 The Dark Hungers: trolls and dragons come 40% more often, and raid rewards are doubled.

• 👹 Wardens. Halfway through each biome (depths 25, 35, 45 and 55, and again each time the biomes repeat) a Warden rises: the Cinderwyrm, the Drowned King, the Choir Golem and the Hollow Wyrm. They fight like a dragon raid: a Warden takes a Dwarf Miner every 25 seconds and leaves after 10. Defeat one for 30 minutes of production, Shadowsteel and Rune Shards, and the first time, a trophy relic (Cinder Heart, Tide Pearl, Choir Shard, Umbral Eye). The later Wardens are much tougher than the first, and all of them grow tougher each time the biomes repeat.
  
• ⚔️ Warden fights are fair. A Warden's health is capped relative to your Runic Warriors' damage, so with a Runic crew sized for the depth the fight can always be won before it leaves, and more damage always means a shorter fight. A crew far too small for the depth no longer gets an easy Warden.
  
• 📈 Deep Pressure. Past depth 20, each depth adds 15% production, and the bonuses multiply together.
  
• 🪜 Endless depths are reachable now. Depth 20 costs the same as before, but each depth after it grows far more gently: ore about x2.9 per depth instead of x5.5, blueprints and timber about x1.6 instead of x8.75, and cave-in walls about x2.3 instead of x4. A wall past depth 20 never holds longer than 2 to 10 minutes at your warriors' damage, as long as your Runic Barracks is staffed for the depth. Skipping the Runic Barracks no longer turns deep walls into a few clicks.
  
• 🎁 New depth milestones at depth 60 (30 Rune Shards, 18 Shadowsteel and a relic) and depth 70 (30 Rune Shards, 20 Shadowsteel).
  
• 🏁 New victory text and a hint that the mine goes on past depth 20.
  
• 🔢 Huge numbers stay readable. From 1e15 up, numbers switch to scientific notation in every language, so deep costs fit the sidebar.
  

The Cinderwyrm, Warden of the Emberdeep, rises beside the vein at depth 25.

⚖️ Balance: Automation and Endgame

We want to be upfront: these two balance sections contain real nerfs alongside several buffs. The shadowsteel and relic economies were far too easy to farm, one long-standing bug was quietly inflating a lot of runs, and automation that used to be free on new saves is now earned. We checked many of these changes with simulated playthroughs before shipping.

• 🔒 Automation is earned on new saves (nerf for new players). Auto-buying, auto-assign, auto-convert, auto-collect, Auto-Redeploy, auto-descend, Pause All and profiles used to open all at once. They now come with the helpers above. Manual converting, collecting and descending stay free forever, and existing saves keep everything.
• ♻️ The Converter no longer converts on its own until the Smeltmaster joins. Each entry in your conversion list now has a Convert button so you can run it by hand.
• 🏅 Challenge rewards reworked. A challenge used to count as completed just by starting a New Dig with it active. Medals now need their goal depths.
• 📉 Prestige reward scaling capped at 5x, and the cap rises by 2.5 with each ascension (5x, 7.5x, 10x and so on; it was uncapped and hit 10x by prestige 10 / ascension 2). Each ascension raises the cap, so ascending always helps. Quest reward growth per depth lowered from 1.7 to 1.5; a single depth 8 quest was paying for 7 to 8 descents.
• 🧢 Reward ceilings (nerf at high prestige and ascension). Quests pay at most 30 minutes of your production, cave-ins at most 15 minutes, and expeditions at most 4 times their duration. These only matter when rewards were already huge.
• 🪙 Reward floors past depth 20 (buff). Quests pay at least 5 minutes of production, cave-ins 2 minutes, troll kills 3 minutes and dragon kills 5 minutes. Quest targets past depth 20 now track your production, so deep quests stay worth doing.
• 🎯 Omen and biome bonuses apply after the floors and ceilings, so the Troll Moon, the Hollow Dark and the Guild Fair keep their full effect at any depth.
• 🔮 Omens and biomes tuned in simulation so each is a real trade and not a free bonus.
• 🏗️ Engineering Hall: 4% per engineer, up to +80% (nerf). It was 6% per engineer, up to +120%. It still takes 20 engineers to reach the cap.
• ⛏️ Better Pickaxe and Mining Expertise cost more blueprints (nerf). From level 5 the blueprint price starts at 40 (was 8) and still doubles each level, so it is 5 times what it was at every level. Blueprints now hold an upgrade back from time to time instead of being pocket change. Their ore, timber and mithril prices are not affected.

⚖️ Balance: Raids, Expeditions and Economy

• 🐉 Lithodore is beatable on first meeting (buff). The dragon's health now grows from depth 12 instead of from the surface. The first dragon has about 1,500 health instead of about 5,400, so a prepared hold can win the fight instead of losing five dwarves. It still gets tougher every depth.
• 🧭 Late expeditions pay off again (buff). Expedition rewards now have a minimum based on your production when you send them, like trade caravans. Longer expeditions with bigger crews have a higher minimum (about 2.4 minutes of output for Abyssal). Quick expeditions got a higher minimum too, almost 3 times what it was, so a Quick trip is worth sending.
• 🧌 Troll tribute is cheaper (buff). Paying tribute now costs 40% of your ore, blueprints, timber and mithril, down from 90%, and it no longer takes Trade Points. Paying the troll off now costs less than letting it run off with your stock.
• 📐 Surveyor's Office buffed: 0.25 to 0.32 blueprints per second per worker. The depth 7 to 14 blueprint wall was eating about 13 hours of a 20-hour run.
• 🐫 Caravans un-deadened. Rewards now floor at 1.5, 8 and 20 minutes of your production for Short, Medium and Long. Past depth 13 they were pure noise.
• 🤝 Offline progress and Time Warp now earn Trade Points (buff). They were producing everything except Trade Points.
• 💎 Diamond and Opal gems and the Primal Surge ability now boost mithril too (buff). They say "all production" but were leaving mithril out.
• 🏮 Miner's Lantern works with full-rate offline (buff). With full-rate offline progress on (the default), the Lantern could not raise efficiency past 100% and did nothing. It now extends the offline time limit by 25% instead (12 to 15 hours). With 15% offline it still adds +25% efficiency.
• 🔁 Blueprints to Timber conversion (nerf). The recipe used to give 50 timber, which allowed infinite resources. It now gives 10 timber per 60 blueprints: worth using, but it can't be looped for profit. Mithril to Timber now yields 120 (was 300). Every conversion loop now loses a little at max efficiency.
• 💎 Trade gem bonus corrected (nerf). Gem trade tiers now amplify the bonuses of gems you have actually crafted instead of acting as a hidden global multiplier. If you hold trade tiers with few gems, your numbers will drop. The old behavior was a bug and was never intended. The Bonuses tab now shows it as a gem amplifier.
• 🖤 Shadowsteel economy tightened (nerf). Cave-in shadowsteel is no longer multiplied by production multipliers. Quick and Standard expeditions no longer drop shadowsteel, and higher tiers drop a flat amount per tier. Prestige scaling of shadowsteel is capped at 2x, and quests, deep cavern events and the Shadow Weavers bonus all respect that cap. A tier-4 or mythic buyout should now take hours of endgame play, not one.
• 🗿 Relic drops reworked (nerf). The four strongest relics (prestige, shadowsteel double, all-production, runestone multipliers) now drop only from Underworld and Eternal expeditions, with a maximum of 2 expedition relic drops per prestige cycle. Descent cave-ins and the Tomb gamble no longer drop premium relics. All 12 relics were farmable in about 100 minutes with zero risk; they are now a multi-run pursuit. The five new trophy relics never drop at random.
• 💍 The 4th relic slot now follows your current prestige count (nerf). It goes away when you ascend and returns when you reach prestige 100 again. A relic in that slot moves to a free slot, or back to your collection if none is free. You never lose the relic itself.
• ⚒️ Dark Forge capped at 10 workers (nerf). It was the only uncapped bonus room, and auto-assign was parking unlimited workers there for uncapped shadowsteel. The forge bonus now honors the cap even with barracks and mercenary bonuses.
• 🛡️ Barracks and mercenary bonuses again require at least one assigned worker in the room (nerf). They were staffing every built room for free.
• 💠 Quick expedition rune shard chance: 10% to 4% (nerf). Six auto-Quick slots were dripping about 22 shards an hour against a 162-shard skill tree.
• ⏫ Offline efficiency capped at 100% (nerf). The offline relic could push persistent-offline production above your online rate.
• 🕳️ Offline cave-in penalty softened (buff). Quitting with a cave-in wall up now costs 5 minutes of offline earnings instead of all of them. Quitting mid-raid still earns nothing offline.
• 🕸️ Shadow Weavers trade bonus fixed (nerf for small rewards). It was rounding small shadowsteel rewards up, so a reward of 1 became 2. It is now a true +10%, and the leftover fraction carries over to your next reward instead of being rounded up.

⚖️ Balance: Prices and Rewards That Follow Your Income

Another round of simulated playthroughs (active, casual and idle players, with and without caravans) found a few systems priced in fixed numbers that the economy outgrows. These changes tie them to your own production instead. Players who play the way the sims did reach depth 20 in about the same time as before.

• 🕳️ Deep Cavern events now follow your production (rework). Every resource reward used to land on a 30-second minimum, so no choice mattered, while paid choices doubled in price every depth and became unaffordable past depth 35. Now a paid choice costs 3 minutes of that resource's income, a free choice pays 10 minutes of production, a paid choice pays 20 minutes, and the Collapsed Treasure Room jackpot pays 30 minutes. Paying is now always worth more than the free option, and gambling beats playing it safe on average.
• 📜 Quests pay at least 2 minutes of production before depth 20 (buff). Ore quests (mine ore, miners, assigned workers) had fallen to almost nothing by depth 7 while the other quests paid minutes of production. From depth 20 the minimum stays 5 minutes, and the 30-minute maximum is unchanged.
• 🐫 Trade caravans are priced in minutes of your Trade Point income (nerf). Short costs 3 minutes of income, Medium 10 and Long 25, and never less than before (500, 2,000 and 8,000). From depth 14 a caravan cost less than a second of income, so a player who kept both caravans busy got a third of all blueprints and timber and half of all mithril. They are still well worth sending.
• 🛡️ Embargo is priced the same way (nerf). Light Embargo costs 5 minutes of Trade Point income and Heavy Embargo 15 minutes, at least 2,000 and 8,000 as before. Mercenaries keep their fixed prices.
• 🌙 Offline time limit raised from 8 to 12 hours (buff). A full night and a morning now count. The Quiet Hold omen doubles it to 24 hours and the Miner's Lantern raises it to 15 hours.
• 🌋 Endless blueprint and timber costs grow a little slower past depth 20 (buff). The per-depth step is 1.25 instead of 1.3. Endless runs were stalling at depth 38 to 39; in simulation depth 40 now comes at about 20 hours of active play instead of after more than 40 hours.

✨ New Features

🎨 A New Look

• 🖼️ The whole hold is redrawn. New art for the ore vein, the cave-in walls (with crack stages as they take damage), all 13 room buildings (with staked-out plots before you build them), the campfire, the crown pedestal, the cart track and carts, the ten trade embassies, Gold banners and tombstones. The fire, lamps, furnaces and crown now light up the cave around them.
• 🌄 Every biome has its own layered backdrop that fades in as you cross into it.
• 🧔 Animated characters. Miners, Runic Warriors, the troll, Lithodore and the four Wardens are now frame-by-frame sprites, and so are the helpers, the campfire dwarves, the station workers, the cart pusher and the embassy folk.
• 🦀 Three Wardens are their own creatures. Lithodore is still the only dragon. The Cinderwyrm is a magma serpent rising out of a lava crack, the Drowned King is a crowned hermit-crab king in a sunken ship's stern with a trident and a lantern lure, and the Hollow Wyrm is a pale cave centipede with glowing mushrooms on its back. Each has its own animations, and their achievement icons are redrawn to match.
• 💠 New game icon. A mithril nugget now marks the game window and the taskbar.
• 🛒 Miners spread out. They now share several carts around the vein (one per 6 miners on screen) instead of crowding one, walk around the rock instead of over it, and draw in front of or behind the vein correctly. Raiders do the same.
• 🫣 Workers take cover. During a troll or dragon raid, station workers duck behind their buildings and come back out once it's over.
• 🏮 A living cave. As your hold grows, miners haul ore out to your rooms and carts roll along the track, and the cave brightens with every room you build. A New Dig starts it dim again. Turn it off in Settings > Gameplay/Stats > Living cave.
• 🪵 A new interface skin. Carved wood, brass and stone panels, new fonts with matching Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, chunkier progress bars and gain numbers that bounce.
• 🔣 123 new icons for resources, rooms, relics, gems, artifacts, mythics, runestones, omens, helpers, medals and biomes. They appear in the resource bar, the panels, tooltips, the log and toasts. All 57 achievement icons are new art too, with metal frames by tier: the 53 you can see in the list, plus the 4 hidden ones.
• 🏔️ New title screen. It is set in your hold, with Pip, our dwarf mascot, and a new carved logo. The victory screen gets light rays and sparkles, and the Forge the Crown minigame is redrawn to match the cave.
• 💥 Cave-ins feel heavier. Stones fall in with a dust cloud and a jolt, chips fly on every hit, the wall crumbles at each crack stage and bursts when it breaks. An HP bar and "Click to break!" sit over the rubble.
• ⛏️ New mining sound. A click is now a pick striking rock, with 3 variations, instead of two ringing tones.
• 🔢 Gain numbers stack. Rapid hits count up in one floating number, then it floats away. Critical hits still pop on their own.
• 🔊 New sounds: a medal fanfare, a Warden stinger, an omen chime, a low drone for each biome and a rumble when a cave-in collapses.

Lithodore raids the hold while the Runic Warriors hold the line.

🏛️ The Guild Hall, the Forge and Records

• 🏛️ The Guild Hall. The row of menu buttons is replaced by a single Guild Hall button (hotkey H, rebindable). It opens a hub with every screen as a large tile showing its icon, name, hotkey and a one-line description. Locked screens show a padlock and what unlocks them. The Guild Hall button carries one badge for everything: a "!" when one screen is ready or has something new, or the number of screens when there are more. Inside, those tiles get a small dot. A screen opened from a tile has a "◀ Guild Hall" button to go back. Settings is a tile too; Escape and F3 still open it directly. All your other hotkeys work as before.
• ⚒️ The Forge. Artifacts, Gems and Mythics now share one window with three tabs. Each tab appears once its room is built this dig, and the old hotkeys (F, G, D) open the matching tab. Crafted artifacts and gems are now kept through New Dig and reset only on Ascension, so no more re-crafting every run. Mythics stay permanent, and gem polish is still per run.
• 📊 Records. Modifiers and Stats are now one screen with Bonuses and Statistics tabs. M and F2 still open them, and Records has its own tile in the Guild Hall.
• 📚 Knowledge Base tile. The Knowledge Base has its own Guild Hall tile and a hotkey (L, rebindable).
• 🔓 Screens open when they become useful. Achievements, Quests and Records unlock after the tutorial, the Skill Tree at your first Rune Shard, Time Warp once you have earned 500 Mithril, and Challenges after your first New Dig. Each one gets a single "New in the Guild Hall" toast, and a locked hotkey tells you what it's waiting for. The Ascend button shows up once an Ascension is within reach.
• 🗂️ The Stations screen is gone. Every built room in the rooms list now has an Open button for its own screen. The rooms list is compact by default on new installs; click a card to open its assign row.

The Guild Hall: every screen of the hold in one place.

🛠️ Quality of Life

• 🔢 x1 / x10 / Max hiring. A toggle on the Workers and Mine Rooms headers (or the X key) sets how many you hire per click. A bulk hire costs exactly what the single hires would, all or nothing, and Max buys as many as your ore allows. The Better Pickaxe and Mining Expertise cards follow the same setting: x10 buys ten levels for their total price, all or nothing, and Max buys as many levels as you can pay for.
• 🎯 Next goal strip. A line under Dig Deeper and New Dig shows your next target with a fill bar and about how long it will take at your current income. The target is the next room when it's in reach, otherwise the next depth, or a New Dig once digging deeper has slowed down. Its tooltip lists what is still missing.
• 🧮 Resource counters show what you're using. Ore always shows. Blueprints, timber, mithril and shadowsteel show while your next goal or something on screen needs them, and the rest fold behind a "+N" button that opens them all.
• 🪜 Dig Deeper shows what's missing. It lists what you are still short of and, once you have the income, when it will be ready.
• 📥 Claim All, Collect All and Send All. Quests get a Claim All button and expeditions get Collect All and Send All. Send All fills every free slot with the expedition that slot sent last, and your expedition reserve stays home.
• 🪨 Restore Last Loadout. After a New Dig or Ascension, the Runestones and Runic Focus screens can buy back your last setup into the same slots at the normal price, as far as you can pay for it.
• 📜 Expedition Return Log. The last 40 collected expeditions, saved and kept through New Dig. The return popup no longer closes on a stray click outside it.
• ✋ Hold to confirm New Dig and Ascend. Hover either button for a preview of what you gain, what resets and what stays. The final confirm is a 1-second press and hold.
• 🌀 Runic Focus window. The four Runic Focus cards get their own readable window instead of small grey text in the cave-in section, and their texts now show the real numbers: x2 warrior damage, +6 fire damage per warrior and x1.5 damage to walls.
• 🎓 Tutorial updates. Two new steps have you build and staff a Lumber Mill before your first descent, and the descend card lists what is still missing. A Hide button sits beside Skip, the tutorial no longer covers Settings, Stats or Achievements, and the last card stays until you dismiss it. Hint toasts that repeat a tutorial step stay quiet, no more than 3 wait in line, and longer ones stay up longer.
• 🏔️ The first New Dig is explained. The Prestige screen shows how much more ore this dig needs for its first Ancestral Knowledge, with a progress bar, and Blessings show their effect.
• 🕳️ The first cave-in is explained. At depth 9 a toast warns that cave-ins start at depth 10, replacing the old red warning strip, and the "Cave-ins Ahead" card opens when you click the Runic Barracks. Your first cave-in tells you to click the rubble, and your first hit opens a one-time card covering what stopped, how to break the wall and the reward. The CAVE-IN section opens on its own when a cave-in starts.
• 📰 Fewer popups for small events. Instant payouts and the Treasure Goblin now go to the log with a toast. Timed events, Ore Rush and the Wandering Merchant are small cards at the top of the screen instead of popups. Clicks go straight through them to the cave, a thin bar shows the time left, and only the merchant's buttons take a click.
• 🙅 Wandering Merchant "No Thanks" button.
• 📌 Unlocks show up in the hold. A new room or screen no longer stops play with a full-screen card. The room glows once in the cave, a short toast names what opened, and its explanation opens the first time you click that room or screen. Full-screen cards stay for your first New Dig and each new biome, and every unlock text can be read again in the Knowledge Base under Unlocks.

⚙️ Settings and Accessibility

• 🖥️ Frame rate limit. 30, 60 (default), 120, 144 or Unlimited, in Settings > Display. With V-Sync on, the lower of the two applies.
• 💤 Reduce frame rate in background. On by default: the game draws 10 frames a second while minimized or in the background. Production, timers and music carry on as normal.
• 🔍 UI scale. Auto, or 75% to 150%. Auto makes the interface 120% in a 1280x720 window and 100% at 1080p and up. The cave keeps filling the window at any scale, and big windows shrink to fit when needed.
• 🧘 Calm HUD. A new option in Settings > Gameplay/Stats that hides the music bar, the vein's sparkles, the gain numbers by your resources and small event toasts (they still go to the log). A new save starts with it on until the first New Dig, then a short toast brings everything back. Existing saves keep their setting, and changing it yourself always wins.
• 🔊 More audio settings. A Master Volume slider, a Mining Hit Volume slider and Mute when the window loses focus, which is on by default.
• 🔢 Number notation. Choose letters (15.00M), scientific (1.50e7) or engineering (15.00e6) in Settings > Gameplay/Stats.
• 🟢 Show my depth on Steam. On by default, so your Steam friends see your depth and biome. Switch it off in Settings > Gameplay/Stats.
• 🎨 Color palettes. Warm, Cool or High contrast tints the whole screen, in Settings > Display. Default keeps the original colors.
• 🕳️ Auto-take event choices. Off by default, in Settings > Gameplay/Stats. When it's on, a Deep Cavern event waits in its small bar at the top instead of opening the full panel. You can still open it and choose, and if time runs out, the safe free choice is taken for you. Events where every choice costs something expire as before.
• 🔇 Conversion sound switch in the Converter header.
• 🌀 Reduce screen shake and flashes. A new accessibility option in Settings > Gameplay/Stats that stops screen flashes, blinking highlights and screen shake.
• ⚠️ Photosensitivity notice. A one-time notice on first launch explains the option above and can turn it on for you. Even with it off, every flash now stays under 3 a second, looping pulses are slower, and screen shake is capped.

📚 More New Stuff

• 🎬 Credits screen on the main menu, and a new CampbellSoft Studios startup screen when the game boots.
• 📚 Knowledge Base expanded with pages for the helpers, helper upgrades, the Ledger, Dig Omens, challenges and medals, biomes, Wardens, Deep Pressure, and relics and trophies.
• 📊 New stats: medals by tier, Wardens defeated, omens finished and time to first depth 20. The depth milestone stat now shows the real milestones.
• 🗿 Relics panel shows where each trophy relic comes from, with hints for the ones you don't own yet. The Achievements panel marks elite achievements.
• 🥚 A few secrets. Some easter eggs are hidden around the hold and the title screen, with 4 hidden achievements to find and a Curiosities shelf in the Relics panel. They are cosmetic and change nothing about your numbers.
• 🎃 Spooktober decorations. From October 15 to November 1 the hold puts up jack-o'-lanterns, cobwebs, a flag garland and a few friendly bats. Decoration only. Turn them off in Settings > Gameplay/Stats > Seasonal decorations.

Depth 52, the Hollow Dark.

🐛 Bug Fixes

✅ Working For The First Time

These were in the game but never actually did anything. They do now.

• 🐻 Beast Den abilities. The ability panel was never connected to the Beast Den. "Open Menu" now opens it. Abilities have been unusable since launch.
• ☁️ Steam Cloud restore on a fresh install. Your cloud save is now restored on first boot when there is no local save, including saves from v0.1.8 and earlier. New Game can no longer overwrite or delete a cloud save from another PC.
• 🚫 Embargo Protection is purchasable again. It now has its own section in the Trade Post.
• 🏗️ Swift Builders and Mass Production skills now actually discount room costs, on the room cards and at checkout.
• 🔮 Artifact Resonance now actually boosts your artifact bonuses, and recalculates on unlock, respec and load.
• 🐻 Deep cavern Beast Taming reward is real. It now grants longer Beast Den ability duration and a bigger beast hire discount.
• 🔤 CJK font bundled. Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean now render the same on every platform instead of depending on your OS fonts. Linux and Proton players were at risk of missing glyphs. Windows players in these languages will notice a slightly different font style; that is intentional.
• 🀄 Traditional Chinese auto-detect. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau systems now get Traditional Chinese on first launch instead of Simplified.

🚫 Exploit Fixes

• 🏆 Challenges can't be started mid-run. Starting one seconds before a New Dig granted the full multiplier with zero handicap. They are now picked on the Next Dig screen only, and a challenge that doesn't mix with your omen is refused.
• 🧱 Walls and Wardens are sized to your best warrior damage this dig, so moving workers around right before a fight no longer makes it easier.
• 📋 Helper checklists can't be farmed. Every requirement counts your best-ever total or your real net progress, so buy/sell or assign/unassign loops don't help. Assigning and unassigning the same worker no longer counts toward the Overseer; the progress bar may dip briefly while you move a worker between rooms, and that is expected.
• 👥 Gifted dwarves count as hires. The 3 workers from the deep cavern "lost dwarves" reward now raise your hire count, so losing them later can't make hiring cheaper than before the gift.
• 🎒 Expedition bonuses are locked in at launch. The relic reward bonus is read when the crew leaves, so equipping a relic just before the return no longer pays out. Expedition and caravan minimum rewards use your production without temporary boosts, so timing a launch on a buff gains nothing.
• 🪜 No descending during a troll or dragon raid. The depth button waits until the raid is over.
• ♻️ Converter efficiency honors the room cap. Bonuses could push it past the cap.
• 🐫 Caravans and deep cavern events are cleared on prestige and ascension. Depth-scaled payouts no longer land in a fresh run.
• 🕳️ Deep cavern costs are enforced. The cost is charged when you click and the choice is refused if you cannot afford it. The worker gamble now costs workers even when all of your dwarves are assigned. The reward depth and reward floors are locked when the event appears, so descending during the window no longer multiplies the payout.
• 🎲 Expedition outcomes are rolled at launch and saved. Rewards, events, worker deaths, relic drops and the mithril, shadowsteel and shard rolls can no longer be re-rolled by reloading. The same goes for the omen offer.
• 🐉 Offline earnings blocked during threats. Quitting during a raid or cave-in no longer converts blocked production into full offline income. Time Warp refuses during a threat and tells you why.
• 🕰️ Clock changes earn nothing. Offline time is measured from the latest time the game has seen, so setting your clock back earns nothing. Expeditions, caravans, mercenaries, Embargo, Time Warp and raids run on the game's own clock. Changing your system clock also no longer generates new quests, resets the quest reroll cooldown or freezes a raid.
• 🐾 Beast ability timers persist. Buffs and cooldowns are saved as remaining time; restarting no longer skips a cooldown.
• ⛏️ Ore Rush no longer corrupts saves. Saving during a rush used to lock 5x or more click power into the run permanently.
• 🧌 Troll Nest spawn guard hardened. It checks whether you have built the Runic Barracks, so unassigning workers cannot dodge the spawn, and it never spawns a troll you have no way to kill.
• 🎁 Treasure goblin can no longer grant resources into a discarded game state.
• 🪬 Runekeeper's Staff bonus no longer sticks after you unequip it.
• 💎 Gems require the Gemcutter. Gems could be crafted before you had built it.

💾 Saves & Loading

• 🗂️ Save slot isolation. Loading a slot fully resets state first; expeditions, caravans, skill tree and buffs no longer bleed between slots (which could duplicate workers). Import Save does the same.
• 🆕 New Game is truly fresh. Pause All, the crown pedestal, automation profiles, room order and run records no longer carry over. Automation "Reset All" now also clears auto-convert and Pause All, and it stays hidden until you own a helper.
• 🧯 Damaged saves are kept and flagged. A save that cannot be read shows as "Save file unreadable" instead of looking empty, and starting a new game in that slot keeps a copy of the damaged file instead of deleting it. For the Steam Cloud slot, you are offered the cloud copy.
• 🛟 Safer loading. A bad value in a save now falls back to a safe default, keeps a copy of the original and tells you. If a load stops halfway, the original file is set aside and saving is turned off for that session so nothing gets overwritten. If your main save is missing, the game loads the newer of your Steam Cloud copy and your backup and keeps the other.
• 🔒 Running the game twice is safe. A second copy of the game on the same save folder warns that the game is already running and stays read-only for the whole session, so the two can't overwrite each other.
• ☁️ Steam Cloud fixes. A save you delete stays deleted, and its cloud copy no longer comes back on the next launch. When a newer cloud save replaces your local one, your local file is kept as a backup and a message tells you so.
• 📤 Exported saves carry a check stamp, and imports of current-version saves require it.
• 🗿 An open deep cavern event is saved and reopens when you load.
• 🏷️ Deleting a save slot also clears its name.
• 🤖 Automation profiles with auto-convert no longer freeze all automation after a reload.
• 🪬 Runekeeper's extra runestone slot survives prestige and ascension. Socketed stones were being destroyed.
• 📦 Expeditions that finished while you were away now announce themselves on load, with toasts and death reports, and auto-collect and Auto-Redeploy work on them.
• 🔊 Volume settings persist even if the game crashes or is force-closed.
• 🚪 Exit Without Saving no longer triggers a false crash-recovery message next launch.
• 🍞 No more phantom "+N Shadowsteel" toast or log entry for your whole balance after loading a save.
• ⛏️ Older saves load the correct Dwarf Miner hire count.
• 🛡️ Save hardening. A corrupt automation priority can no longer crash the HUD on startup, settings files from before language support auto-detect your language, and quest and cave-in rewards can no longer overflow at extreme endless depths.
• ⚗️ Double Blessings and Runekeeper's Staff bonuses no longer vanish on load. Both were being dropped every time you loaded a save.
• 📣 Crash-recovery and backup-restore messages now actually appear. They were firing before the game could show them.
• ⌨️ Settings and keybinds are sturdier. Settings are saved safely even if the game closes mid-write, conflicting keybinds are sorted out on load, a lone Shift, Ctrl or Alt can no longer be bound by accident, and keys you deliberately unbind stay unbound.
• 🥉 A challenge already past a goal depth earns its medal on load.
• 📢 Unlock popups are no longer lost. A popup counts as seen only once it is actually shown, and a helper you own but never saw announced is announced on your next load.

🐉 Raids & Events

• 🧌 Troll timeout fairness. If you save and quit mid-raid, you now get at least 2 minutes after loading before the 50% theft instead of being robbed instantly.
• ⚔️ Raid overlap prevention. A troll cannot spawn during a dragon raid, raids cannot start while a cave-in wall is up, and prestiging mid-raid cleans up the raid, the raid panel and the threat music.
• 🎁 Mini-events respect raids and the menu. They no longer fire during a threat (the timer pauses) or on the main menu.
• ⏲️ Event buffs expire during raids. An expired Deep Tremor no longer keeps doubling wall damage through a raid.
• 🗿 Deep cavern events survive ESC. Pressing ESC or opening another panel minimizes an undecided event instead of destroying it, and a second event cannot overwrite a minimized one.
• 💰 Deep cavern choices show the real cost. Four choices showed their base cost ("Spend 50 Mithril") while the real, depth-scaled cost was far higher. The card now shows the real cost on its own line.
• 📋 Cave-in reward preview is now truthful. It was showing up to 100x the shadowsteel you actually received.
• 🐉 The dragon fleeing now properly ends the raid. The raid warning and the camp and mining visuals used to stay stuck in raid mode.
• 📜 Troll log messages are accurate. A troll that runs off or accepts tribute is no longer logged as "defeated".
• 🏠 Timed events stay put. They no longer tick on the main menu or carry over into a New Game.
• 💠 The Cave Trolls expedition event no longer wipes that expedition's rune shard chance.
• 🕰️ Omen and biome timing applies right away. Entering a biome or choosing an omen now changes the wait for the next troll, dragon or cave-in that is already counting down, keeping its progress.
• 👷 The Overseer's Rebalance pauses during walls and raids.
• 🧳 The Wandering Merchant's auto-close only closes its own popup. It could close the next popup instead, such as an Ore Rush.

📈 Economy & Progression

• 👷 Auto-assign deadlock fixed. A full capped room (for example Engineering Hall at 20) no longer permanently blocks assignment to every other room.
• ⏱️ Automation runs the same at any frame rate. Auto-buy and auto-assign used to run once per frame, so they slowed down at low frame rates. They now keep a steady pace.
• 🎯 Quest rerolls at depth 10 and beyond now refresh per depth at cave-in depths instead of 3 total for the rest of the run.
• 🕐 Quests rotate hourly during play, and completed-but-unclaimed quests are auto-claimed on rotation and on prestige instead of vanishing. The first quest board of a dig now includes your omen.
• 🌟 Ascension offline parity. Offline and Time Warp earnings now include ascension production, depth and mithril perks plus fresh gem polish. Veterans were being shortchanged by about half.
• 📊 Achievement blueprint and timber bonuses now apply online (they were offline-only), and the mithril relic multiplier applies online too.
• ⚗️ Double Blessings applies immediately on purchase, and prestiging out of a Fresh Start challenge re-enables blessings right away.
• 🏔️ Prestige award is recomputed at confirm. Production while the confirm dialog is open now counts, and the preview and the award always agree.
• 🧮 Mercenary cooldown is no longer double-applied (about 33 minutes instead of 30).
• 🧾 Merchant shadowsteel offer fixed. It was offering 1 shadowsteel for around 10,000 mithril because of a formula bug; it now scales with depth, and the displayed amount always matches what you get.
• 📊 Auto-convert 5-minute summary now reports the amounts actually converted.
• 📈 Ore-based rewards use your full ore per second (instant Ore Rush, rally toast, cavern production floor, event banner, peak ore/sec stat) instead of just the base Dwarf Miner rate.
• 💍 Relic panel shows the 4th equip slot after prestige 100.
• 🗿 Duplicate relic rolls refund your per-run relic budget, and the "resonance" hint is hidden when a tier cannot drop anything.
• 🏠 Welcome-back popup counts expedition workers in its count of dwarves who worked while you were away.
• 🌟 Ascending records your run stats and starts a fresh run timer, like prestige does.

🎵 Audio, UI & Input

• 🎵 Music fixes. Crossfade race and track-label desync, back-to-back repeats after reshuffle, the lyrical toggle cutting an allowed track, volume changes mid-crossfade, and an old track that kept playing quietly under the next one or under the threat music.
• 🎇 Celebration sound hitch fixed. Victory and prestige sounds are prepared in the background instead of stalling the frame at the big moment.
• 🔇 Mute Mining SFX now also mutes clicks on cave-in rubble. They played anyway.
• 🖼️ Panel fade race fixed across 25 panels, including the Beast Den and Challenges panels. Rapidly closing and reopening a panel no longer leaves it invisible.
• ⌨️ Key-repeat fix. Holding a bound key no longer rapid-toggles panels, and the Knowledge Base respects your rebound close key.
• 🎹 Keybind fixes. Escape cancels a key capture instead of binding it, Settings / Close always stays on Escape, and starting a second capture restores the first button's label.
• 🔙 Escape closes the top dialog first. Confirmation and help dialogs close one at a time with Escape, and hotkeys wait while one is open. Welcome Back, the victory screen and the Forge the Crown minigame now work the same way: Escape means Continue.
• 🔐 Hotkeys no longer open locked features. They also ignore Ctrl and Alt combinations, and button tooltips now show each panel's hotkey.
• 🖱️ Buttons no longer hold keyboard focus. Pressing Space no longer re-buys the last thing you clicked, and Tab works as a hotkey again.
• 📦 Expedition returns are grouped into one popup instead of stacking up to six at once.
• 📢 Unlock popups, hints, achievements and the victory screen appear above open panels instead of hiding behind them.
• 🏅 Achievement toasts after the first one stay on screen. Every queued achievement toast after the first was drawn off the top of the screen.
• 🔝 Top of the screen untangled. The minimized deep cavern bar, the event cards and achievement toasts now stack under the Early Access line instead of drawing over each other and over it.
• 🧱 No more covered buttons. The music player no longer covers Settings' Resume button, hint toasts or the cave-in panel, and stays clear of the cart track. The event cards and the Early Access line draw under open panels, "Saving..." no longer sits on the Log button, and the title screen's Settings and delete dialogs sit above the Discord, Website and Credits buttons.
• 💬 Long toasts wrap to two lines instead of being cut off with "...".
• 🎖️ Medal toasts stay on screen. A medal toast that merges with its helper upgrade toast now always ends fully on screen.
• ⏸️ Toasts wait for the Next Dig screen. Toasts and achievement toasts hold until you close it, so none are missed behind it.
• 📍 The omen and challenge line sits clear of the sidebar. It no longer runs into the sidebar's top edge, and an outline keeps it readable over the cave frame.
• ✔️ Check marks draw in the text color instead of as a Windows color emoji, in every language.
• 🧺 No popup for expeditions the Quartermaster collects. Auto-collected returns kept opening a return window; now only their toast shows.
• 🔢 Records > Statistics shows whole numbers for its counters.
• 🎶 The music bar's status line fits. It now shows only the lyrics setting, so it no longer ends in "..." in any language. Play and stop are on the play button.
• 🗂️ Event log filter tabs wrap to a second row, so the last tab is no longer cut off.
• 🌐 Long languages fit. The depth panel wraps instead of running off the edge in longer languages.
• 🧝 Trade Embassy memory leak fixed. Overnight idle sessions no longer accumulate thousands of dead animation references.
• 📋 Bonuses accuracy. Every production line now matches your real rate, including the full depth bonus, Engineering Hall, Shrine, worker sources, events and Momentum. The blueprint row reads the real gem stat and the phantom gem bonus is gone from the mithril row. Resource tooltips use the same breakdown.
• 🏆 Victory screen can show again later in the same session, and popups wait until you close it.
• 🚀 Smoother panels. Several panels no longer rebuild themselves every frame, hidden panels stop refreshing, tooltips are built when you hover, and counters only pulse on real jumps.

🏅 Achievements & Steam Stats

• 🏅 Master Builder now requires all 13 rooms (it said 10). The description is updated.
• 📏 Steam max-depth stat uses your lifetime deepest and no longer regresses after prestige.
• ⛏️ Steam total-ore stat now sends your lifetime total, not the current run.
• 💾 Stats are flushed on quit so the last minute of play is not lost.
• 📈 Steam stats never go backwards. Loading a different save slot no longer lowers them, and your lifetime prestige count survives ascension.

🔧 Under the Hood

• 🧮 One production calculation. Live play, offline earnings and Time Warp now share a single calculation, so they can't drift apart again.
• 🔄 One reset list. New Dig, ascension and New Game now reset from the same list, so nothing is forgotten or carried over by mistake. Your numbers are unchanged by both of these.
• 🖥️ New graphics renderer. The game now uses Godot's Compatibility renderer. It should look exactly the same; if you notice any graphics problem, please let us know.
• 🎼 Lighter soundtrack. The music now uses compressed audio and takes about half the space it did. The next track loads in the background, so track changes don't hitch.
• 🚪 Quitting is cleaner. An achievement that unlocks while you quit or return to the menu no longer causes an error.

🎨 UI / Text Changes

• 📝 One name for each thing. Ancestral Points, prestige points and AP are now Ancestral Knowledge (AK) everywhere, pickaxe dwarves are Dwarf Miners, the Engineering Bay is the Engineering Hall, and Auto Deploy is Auto-Redeploy.
• 📖 Corrected help text. The Knowledge Base and helper texts now match the game: the depth bar, Runic Barracks, cave-ins, workers, tavern, Beast Den, gems, runestones, rune shards, ascension and more. Numbers such as Deep Pressure come straight from the game in every language. The Engineering Hall hint says 4% per engineer, and the Converter, challenge, tutorial and "What Carries Over" texts match the game.
• 🔠 Bigger text on the new cards and screens, and wider toasts for long messages.
• 🔎 No more tiny text. Every piece of interface text under 12 px is now 12 px, including achievement rewards, relic descriptions, toasts and the embassy name plates.
• 🍞 Tidier toasts. A medal and the helper upgrade it teaches share one line, and trophy relics get one toast instead of two.
• 🏔️ The prestige panel shows your AK multiplier whenever it isn't x1, the Challenges panel shows the Fresh Start multiplier correctly (x1.75), and challenges your omen excludes are greyed out.
• 🧭 Depth panel shows your biome in the header, the next biome's twist before you descend into it, and Deep Pressure in the bonus line. The raid banner shows a Warden's name.
• 🃏 Compact upgrade cards. Name, level and cost on one row with the effect below, about half the height they were.
• 🪟 Consistent popups. All 13 "?" help popups share one layout, event popups center their title, text and countdown, and the deep cavern card fits its content.
• 🔢 Dark Forge, Converter and Shrine show MAX labels and grey out their + buttons at cap, everywhere room caps are listed.
• 🪬 Runestone combine tooltip corrected. It said "3 matching Tier {tier}" with a broken placeholder; it now correctly says 2 matching stones make a Superior.
• 📐 Surveyor's Office text shows the real 0.32 rate.
• 🔍 Expedition reward preview now shows what each tier can drop, and mercenary cooldowns show a timer.
• ♾️ Automation caps display INF properly, and converter rates show a localized per-second unit.
• 🏺 "+Relic!" toast when an expedition brings one home.
• 🏗️ Room rates read correctly on room cards and station popups: the Engineering Hall shows its cap, the Dark Forge shows its per-cave-in rate, the Converter shows its efficiency, and the Beast Den shows its multiplier.
• ⛏️ Pickaxe upgrade preview is accurate. It now shows your real mining power at the next level, and the tooltip correctly says the ore cost rises 2.5x per level.
• 🪬 Unequipping the Runekeeper's Staff now warns you before it destroys the runestone in the slot it removes.
• 🏷️ Clearer labels. "Exit Without Saving" says what it does instead of repeating "Are you sure?", and the Expedition Board toggle now reads "Suppress Collection Popups".
• ⚙️ Settings always opens on its first tab.
• 🔄 Display fixes. Resource labels no longer show stale values after prestige, Mining Expertise stays hidden until you build the Surveyor's Office, beast ability buttons show the real duration, depth milestone messages are translated, and the main menu version number always matches the game.

🌐 Localization

• 🆕 Added 520 new translation keys across all 9 languages.
• 📖 Every language got a terminology pass, so each thing in the game has one name throughout, plus grammar and punctuation fixes. The log filter follows the new terms.
• 🔧 Repaired corrupted rows that were shifting Italian, Spanish and CJK text into the wrong columns, fixed swapped Simplified/Traditional Chinese cells, and restored missing accents in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Thanks for playing, and for your patience while we built this one. Please keep the bug reports and balance feedback coming on the Steam forums and Discord. A lot of this update exists because of them.