Hail, Wardens!

A lot has changed across the road from the `v0.12` series to the current `v0.18.4` build. This announcement pulls the major additions, quality-of-life work, and most important bug fixes into one place, without the smaller iterative back-and-forth from the individual patch logs.

This brings Wardens of Wen to `v0.18.4`.

Highlights

- Added live `Global Stats` leaderboards to the main menu for Best Wave, Enemies Killed, Copper Earned, and Gold Earned.
- Added Bjorn as a new unlockable Warden with his own full kit and Valor unlock.
- Added first-time onboarding for roaming boards, crafting, broken gear, and major boss warnings.
- Opened Event, Bounty, and Contract boards during active waves, with their effects queued for the next wave.
- Added in-game Save Management tools for backup, restore, upload, and deletion.
- Reworked the Baron Von Dreadmoor finale into a full celebration sequence with a victory screen and direct continuation into Infinite Mode.
- Expanded hired mercenaries from simple companions into fully interactable allies with dialogue, trading, equipment, consumables, dismissal, and major AI improvements.

Mercenaries

The biggest recent system expansion has been hired mercenaries.

- Hired mercs can now be interacted with directly in the field through `Talk`, `Trade`, and `Dismiss` options.
- Mercs now have runtime inventories, can equip gear, benefit from stat changes, carry consumables, and use healing items during combat.
- Mercenary contracts were reworked so hiring costs are consistent, contracts no longer expire by wave, and they now end only on death or manual dismissal.
- Dismissed or fallen mercs now drop their items properly, and dismissed mercs leave the field more naturally instead of disappearing in place.
- Merc AI received multiple rounds of polish to improve follow distance, regrouping, retreat behavior, line-of-fire checks, ranged positioning, and general combat reliability.
- Warden healing can now target hired mercs, Paladin mercs make better support decisions, and merc support actions are clearer in combat.
- Mercenary hover cards and health/shield presentation were improved for readability.
- Fixed multiple mercenary issues involving fallback hire pricing, fallback contract duration, staged-client tuning mismatches, Sorcerer collision and firing logic, aggressive unstuck warping, and Minutemen melee reach.

Gameplay, Bosses, and Combat

Several combat systems and encounter flows have been improved.

- Bjorn joined the roster as a fast, high-health berserker with `Flurry of Blows`, `Shield Bash`, `Furious Regeneration`, and `Nord Banner`.
- Bjorn then received follow-up polish to his scale, combat presentation, dash visuals, movement during `Flurry of Blows`, and Banner behavior.
- Gunther’s `Diamond Tipped` execute logic was fixed so charges are no longer wasted on scripted boss swings.
- Verdaxis guidance was clarified so players are told more clearly that the boss is invincible and regenerates while airborne.
- The Baron Von Dreadmoor finale was upgraded with a larger end-of-run celebration, Kalibros victory dialogue, and a `Continue` option that pushes the same run into Infinite Mode.
- Fixed the Baron victory dialogue flow so it now displays cleanly across proper dialogue panels.
- Fixed haste-on-kill boots stacking movement speed indefinitely.
- Improved spawn safety so enemies, portals, encounter pieces, and major boss content stop selecting spawn areas occupied by players.
- Verdaxis and Baron Von Dreadmoor were restricted to safer center-lane encounter spaces on `Main.tmx`.
- Slowed the fast non-dragon enemies that appear during the Verdaxis encounter to reduce runaway pressure.

UI, UX, and Menus

A large amount of work went into menu clarity and frontend stability.

- Added the `Global Stats` screen and split Stats into separate `Personal Stats` and `Global Stats` pages.
- Expanded the live leaderboards to a top 10 and then repeatedly fixed their scrolling, layout, panel sizing, wheel input, scroll extent, and bottom-rank visibility until they behaved correctly.
- Added one-time onboarding dialogues and interaction markers for Event, Bounty, and Contract boards.
- Improved tutorial and Kalibros messaging around progression systems and boss encounters.
- Added better visual support feedback for healed heroes and mercs.
- Improved hover-card readability in several places, especially for hired mercs.

Progression, Saves, and Systems

Permanent progression and account safety saw major upgrades as well.

- The Vault progression curve and Mastery track were reworked earlier in the `v0.11` cycle, and the `v0.12+` range built on that with new player guidance and usability improvements.
- Added a full in-game Save Management panel in Options.
- Added local backup, restore, upload, and delete actions for save data.
- Improved Steam Cloud reporting so the game now surfaces disabled cloud states, quota, and pending sync information more clearly.
- Split local backup from manual upload so those actions are clearer and safer to use.
- Fixed vanilla save-slot routing issues that could create the wrong file path.
- Fixed legacy save import handling so older vanilla progression is preserved correctly.
- Updated restore behavior so it now recovers the newest matching local backup for the active profile.

Onboarding and Guidance

A lot of recent updates focused on explaining systems better without getting in the player’s way.

- Added one-time Kalibros explanations for Event, Bounty, and Contract boards.
- Added a first broken-item warning that directs players to Trax for repairs.
- Added a wave-8 crafting tutorial covering break down reagents, crafting, and stronger forged gear.
- Improved major boss guidance, including Verdaxis warnings and broader late-run reminders.

Stability and Fixes

Across these updates, many smaller but important issues were addressed.

- Fixed repeated leaderboard scrolling failures and layout regressions.
- Fixed boss dialogue clipping and progression flow issues.
- Fixed boss and encounter spawn placement problems near players and map edges.
- Fixed runaway move-speed stacking from item affixes.
- Fixed save import, save deletion, backup/restore, and Steam Cloud routing issues.
- Fixed multiple mercenary pricing, collision, spacing, targeting, and HUD issues in both authored and staged client builds.

Thank you to everyone continuing to play, test, report issues, and help shape Wardens of Wen through Early Access!