Characters and progression

• Added Alden: The Vanguard, the fourth playable character and the first unlockable character. Alden can join as a supporting character through a Character Acquisition stage; meeting him permanently unlocks him as a selectable starting character for future runs.

• Added Alden's complete combat kit: the three-hit Vanguard's Slash, three-cast Blazing Charge, Ignition-storing passive, Flaming Surge Focus Skill, and Blade of Justice Ultimate. His kit adds a new resource-and-empowerment loop built around Ignition, Burn, status-sensitive damage, and area attacks.

• Added Alden's Consume, Crit, and Break archetype paths, including 18 levelled character-specific Amplifiers and Alden-specific Chosen effects.

• Added Alden's character-select, HUD, icon, animation, weapon, VFX, SFX, and combat-presentation assets.

Dungeon flow

• Added dedicated Floating Ruins stage levels for Combat, Rest, and Character Acquisition, with separate non-combat handling. The tutorial dungeon now has matching Combat, Rest, and Character Acquisition layouts.

• Reworked stage transitions to reload the persistent dungeon level behind a fade, then rebuild the party and restore run state before the next stage begins. Health, Energy, Ultimate charge, Skill charges, Chosen charge, and archetype stacks persist across stage changes.

• Rest stages now use their dedicated presentation while healing living characters and reviving fallen party members. Character Acquisition stages add the next eligible unowned character to the party.

• Fixed tutorial progression and stage-transition issues, including fade timing and non-combat controller/HUD setup.

Difficulty and combat

• Expanded campaign difficulty scaling with per-dungeon enemy health multipliers and progression-based adjustments to enemy health, damage, attack pacing, and perfect-dodge timing.

• Added visual hit reactions for players and enemies on non-lethal damage, along with clearer target-hit, Timestop, and archetype color feedback.

• Continued the roster and archetype balance pass, including Alden's area-of-effect Break specialization and tuning across the new Amplifier paths.

Rewards, UI, and fixes

• Reworked archetype and reward descriptions into shorter, clearer player-facing text with level-specific values and improved color coding.

• Improved reward completion and target selection, including safer handling of changing enemy targets and Warden phase changes.

• Added a confirmed Return to Main Menu action from Settings.