News

The Main Story now runs the full length of the continent. Thirty-one chapters, beginning beside a wayshrine that had already gone out, and ending somewhere considerably worse.

The arc marches north to south on purpose, so the story pulls you along the same road the level bands already follow. Thornwake for the waking and the Wardens. Vantorel for the builders' workings under the mountain. Sunder for the hollow node and what it has been feeding. Zaharath for the desert, and the last shrine still burning.

Then the reckoning, and the Ember's own turn.

Every objective asks only for monsters that genuinely spawn and materials you can genuinely obtain. Finish Chapter 31 and the sky opens up.

Every settlement now keeps two people with work going: a Taskmaster who hands out daily jobs and a Steward who hands out weekly ones. A giver is one or the other, never both.

What they offer rotates on its own and is the same for everybody within a given day or week, so you can compare notes. Reset runs on the calendar rather than a rolling timer - a daily taken at 23:59 is available again at 00:01, which is what anyone would expect.

Gathered materials are counted from your pack at hand-in, not when you pick them up. Bring the goods.

The Black Ember panel is a hub now rather than a single page. One key - comma - and everything is a click away, with a Back button that actually goes back.

Escape closes the whole window only when you are on the menu itself. Anywhere else it steps back one level first, the way a menu ought to behave.

The Escape menu keeps the system entries: profile, friends, battle, inventory, minimap, hotkeys, market, guild, shop and options.

Outfits bought from the shop now land in a proper wardrobe you can reach from the Ember hub, and what you put on stays on.

This also quietly fixes something that had been broken since the shop opened. Outfits are keyed on sex as well as look, and the shop was selling a single id to everybody - so if you bought a look on a male character and nothing happened, that is why. Buy it again. It works now, and you own both variants.