Patch Notes 0.4 - Every Round Moves

Greetings, Masters. The Expedition Arbiter has been rebuilt around a single rule: a round you paid for has to change something. We measured the problem before touching it. Across a thousand logged rounds, 43% ended with nothing moved — no ground gained, no blow landed, nothing found. A hero would search the same stretch of mud four rounds running, and the chronicle would dutifully report all four. That is over. Searching compounds. A fruitless search makes the next one easier, and past a point the party simply finds what is there. No more rolling forever against the same ground. Standing still is now dangerous. Every wasted round raises how thoroughly the floor has noticed you. Linger, and whatever was waiting stops waiting — a stalled party is a hunted one. Enemies hold their ground instead of swarming. A floor's creatures are posted across its areas rather than arriving as one wall. You will meet two at the treeline and three deeper in, not five at once. Warbands make sense again. A bandit road fields bandits. A desert warren fields its own kin. No more banshees, hags and harpies sharing a camp because they happened to sit at the same difficulty. Heroes speak rather than narrate themselves. The italic inner monologue is gone; what a hero fears now reaches you through what they say and what their hands are doing while they say it. Beats are shorter, sharper, and no longer close on the same image twice. Sieges field real reinforcements. Each wave brings distinct creatures — no more watching the same named enemy fall twice in one hold. And the first floor is what it always should have been: a burning village, people running from it, and one goblin standing in the lane.