Open Country

Added

• Gathering skills climb to 100, and the Garden's deepest strains are reachable at last. Every profession stopped at 80, but Wedding Cake, Zkittlez and Pink Runtz ask for Herbalism 82, 87 and 92, so nobody could ever plant them, and a capped skill went on banking experience it could never spend. The cap is 100 now, and everything you banked against the old one turns into levels the moment your save loads. One reported skill opens at Herbalism 99.
• Gathering speed keeps climbing to the new cap. The route timer had its own ceiling written in at level 80, so levels 81 to 100 would have shortened nothing at all. It runs to 100 now at five percent a level, and the Discord bot's timer, which had no ceiling whatsoever, stops in the same place, so a cross saved skill gathers at the same pace on both sides.

Fixed

• Bars that had nothing left to fill say so. The Class Tree path bar quoted a next level cost that was never going to be paid; at its ceiling it now reads full, the same way the gathering bar does.
• Hero experience can no longer wedge the level up loop. The hero curve outgrows a 64 bit integer somewhere around level 235, where the loop could spin forever. It stops and banks the experience instead. No live save is anywhere near it.

On the website

• The Compendium holds the whole Atlas cast, named as the game names it. The gallery had been stuck on the pre Atlas library. It shows 1077 pieces against 737 now, with all thirty one vistas in ladder order, real counts on every filter, names drawn from the game's own tables, and tiles at full width again.
• The AwayWard pages match the game again. Regions, creatures, classes, abilities, boss gear sets, titles, the Garden, the summon pity and the parity count are the live numbers; the Menagerie, the turning year, clan sieges and the Lantern League are on the features page; and the AI disclosure in Terms and Privacy says exactly which models are used, for what, and that no purchase or supporter tier funds any of it.
• This page. Introduced in this release to lay out the full Atlas notes, and linked from every AwayWard page.

Added

• Four new regions to hunt, slotted between the ones you already know. Thornbriar Glen at level 4, Gloomshelf Mines at 12, Coralspine Shallows at 21 and Emberreach Dunes at 32. They fill the long gaps in the early and middle climb, so the ladder from your first forest to the frost now has a next step every few levels instead of a wall.
• Forty four new creatures, and a boss for each new region. Bramble hares and hedge shrikes in the glen, pale crawlers and pickaxe wights down the mines, coral spines and tidekin in the shallows, ember jackals and mirage stalkers out on the dunes. Every one has its own drawn sprite and its own field record in the Bestiary. The Thorn Matriarch, the Deepdelve Foreman, the Reefmother and the Glasswright are waiting at the end of each.
• Four new boss gear sets. The Thornbriar Crown, the Deepdelve Kit, the Reefmother's Mantle and the Glasswright Regalia, four pieces each with their own art and the usual two, three and four piece bonuses.
• Six more regions, and the climb to 120 no longer has a dead stretch in it. Howling Tundra at 45, Wyrmspine Foothills at 58, Umbral Fen at 64, Starfall Crater at 77, Aurelian Bastion at 92 and Rustwater Undercity at 108. With the four added earlier there are now twenty regions between level 1 and 120 instead of ten, and the longest wait between one region and the next has gone from twenty levels to twelve.
• Sixty six more creatures, and a boss at the end of each new region. Rimewolves and cairn bears on the tundra, scale pickers and marrow crawlers in the dragon graveyard, drowned lanterns and lampless pilgrims in the fen, glasslings and fallen starborn in the crater, gilded sentinels and brass choirs in the fallen sky fortress, and rustborn scrappers in the drowned undercity. The White Howl, the Wyrmspine Elder, the Fen Sovereign, the Starfall Herald, the Aurelian Castellan and the Rustwater Magnate are waiting at the ends.
• Six more boss gear sets, four pieces each with their own art: the Whitehowl Pelt, Wyrmspine Harness, Fenlight Shroud, Starfall Reliquary, Aurelian Panoply and Rustwater Ledger.
• Five regions past the old level 120 wall, and the ladder keeps going. Dawnshard Steppe at 130, Mirrorglass Flats at 140, Verdigris Titanwood at 150, The Sunken Choir at 160 and Cindermaw Depths at 175. Until now the world simply stopped at the Lantern Roads; there is now another 55 levels of real ground past it, each region with its own vista, weather, music, particles and place on the lit road.
• Fifty five more creatures, and a boss standing at the end of every new region. Light that grazes and light that stands up out of the ground on the steppe, mirror twins and pilgrims walking upside down under the flats, verdigris apes and rootway wardens in the wood grown over a fallen titan, a drowned choir that is still singing, and imps, smiths and slagheart brutes down the furnace root. The Dawnshard Warden, The Other Sky, the Verdigris Titan, the Abyssal Choirmaster and the Cindermaw Heart are waiting at the ends.
• Five more boss gear sets, four pieces each with their own art: the Dawnshard Aegis, Mirrorglass Weave, Titanwood Verdigris, Choirmaster's Vestment and Cindermaw Plate.
• The road runs all the way to two hundred and fifty now. The Bleached Expanse at 190, Stormcrown Peaks at 205, The Umbra Gate at 220, Fields of First Light at 235 and, at the end of everything, The Worldheart at 250. That is the last of the map: thirty one regions on one continent, the lit road reaching every one of them, and no stretch of the climb left without somewhere new to stand.
• Fifty five more creatures, and the five hardest ordinary bosses in the game. Salt scoured sentries and stopped machines out on the flats where a circuit ran dry, wyrmlings and packlead wyrms hunting the mana off the peaks, pilgrims who walked into an arch that was never lit, herds grazing in a light that has been standing since the first morning, and down in the last gallery a drake, an automaton, a starborn and an imp that all followed something down there and never came back up. The Bleached King, The Stormcrown Wyrm, The Unlit Gate, The First Dawn and The Deep Assembly are waiting at the ends.
• Five more boss gear sets, four pieces each with their own art: the Bleached Saltplate, Riven Peak Scale, Umbra Gate Shroud, Firstlight Vestment and Deep Assembly Plate.
• Two world bosses at a scale the realm has not seen before. The Titanwood Regent walks out of the wood at realm scale and holds ground until it is put down, and the Stormcrown Tempest is a storm that stopped behaving like weather. Both are tier 4, both take a turnout rather than a hero, and both carry a four piece set of their own: the Titanwood Bulwark and the Stormcrown Regalia.
• Two world bosses at a scale no realm has put down alone. The Mirror Sovereign stands up out of the glass and leaves its reflection a moment behind it, and the Worldheart Avatar comes up the gallery with the whole deep arriving behind it. They are tier 5, they do not fall to a hero and they do not fall to a young realm; it takes a realm that has been going long enough to bring a real turnout. Each carries a four piece set of its own: the Sovereign's Reflection and the Worldheart Vestments.
• ULTRA monsters. A rare few SUPERs turn out to be something more: a rainbow foe that pays twelve times a normal kill. They are the rarest thing in the world outside a world boss, they sparkle when they appear, and they are counted separately in your log, your bounties and your charter.
• PRIMAL monsters. Above the Ancients there is now something older still. A PRIMAL foe pays six times an ordinary kill, drops from a deeper table than its parent, and is counted on its own in your log, your bounties and your charter. Like the ULTRA it is a promotion rather than a spawn, so the only way to meet one is to meet an Ancient first and have it turn out to be something else.
• Rare foes finally look rare while you fight them. Elites, Ancients, Spectrals, Gilded and SUPERs were already rolled out in the world, but on the Hunt screen every one of them looked like an ordinary monster. They now carry their own colour and a halo around them, brighter the rarer they are, so you can see what you have run into without reading the log. Reduced Motion keeps the colour and the halo and holds them still.
• You can keep them now. Put down an elite or rarer foe and it may decide to come home with you instead of just dropping loot. The rarer the thing that fell, the likelier it is, and an ULTRA or a PRIMAL walking back with you is an event. Failing costs nothing: the kill already paid.
• The Menagerie, a new wing of your House. Eight habitats, each themed to the families that live in it, from the Wildwood Run out to a sealed and warded Void Oubliette. A beast you house settles in, builds a bond the longer it lives there, and pays you a small standing bonus for keeping it well. A beast you have not housed pays nothing, so the wing is somewhere to actually put them.
• Beast treats, grown in the Garden. Eight new recipes, one per habitat. Light one before you hunt and the families it lures are friendlier for a while. They are ordinary items: they stack in your bag, overflow onto your Pantry shelves, and spend from either.
• Patrols. Send a companion and one of your housed beasts into any zone you have opened and they come back with materials. What they bring scales with how deep the zone is and how well bonded the beast is.
• The Bestiary shows the living, not just the dead. A befriended species now says so on its card, with the variant that came home and the bond it has built.
• A beast broker at the Tavern. Rotating daily stock: treats, habitat fittings, and once in a while a contract for a common species you have not managed to befriend yourself.
• The year turns. The world now wears one of four seasons, on the same quarterly clock your Chapter already runs on: the Greening, the High Sun, the Turning and the Long Dark. Each one repaints the circuit in its own light, and each one puts something in the field that is only out while that season lasts. A Greenclad, a Sunstruck, a Rustfall or a Rimebound is an elite that the season got to first, and when the season ends it stops appearing.
• Clan sieges. The two tier 5 world bosses were never going to fall to one realm's turnout inside a four hour window, and they did not. An officer can now open a siege on any tier 4 or tier 5 world boss: everyone in the clan gets a handful of strikes a day, the boss keeps whatever HP you left it on, and you come back tomorrow. Felling one hangs a trophy on the hall wall, and where you stood on the contribution ladder decides your share.
• A season's work, played from both sides of the game at once. Every season the whole realm pushes on one shared goal, and it is genuinely shared: what you put in from the game and what someone puts in from the Discord bot land on the same bar. The World Raid screen shows the total, the split between the two halves, and who is pushing hardest.
• The Lantern League. A seasonal ladder for whoever gets furthest out along the roads. It pays in standing and something to wear and nothing else, it settles once when the season turns, and your deepest run only ever counts upward: a shallow trip afterwards cannot cost you the depth you actually reached.
• Four new Chronicle chapters, one for each season. The Road Softens, Standing in the Light, Turned With the Year and The Lamps Do the Work. Each opens once you have put down enough of that season's own kind, so finishing the ring means having actually been out in all four rather than grinding one of them. The last of them carries a title: the Yearwarden.

Changed

• ULTRA and PRIMAL are now as rare as they read. ULTRA has always been described as vanishingly rare and rarer than a world boss, and at the old odds a hero left hunting was running into dozens of them a day. That is not rare, and it made a twelve times payout ordinary. Both promotions now sit at odds that match what the game says about them: you will go days between them, and one is worth stopping to read the log for.
• Two zones were harder than the zones after them. The monsters in Stone Caverns defended better than the ones in Gloomshelf Mines, and Starfall Crater's out-defended the Shattered Heavens, so the climb had two backward steps in it. Stone Caverns has come down and the Shattered Heavens has come up, and the difficulty now rises the whole way up the ladder.
• Eighteen creatures were carrying traits meant for something else. The tool that assigns combat traits was matching pieces of words rather than whole ones, so anything with asp, ice, arc, roc or cog buried inside its name quietly picked up the traits written for asps, ice, the arcane, rocs and clockwork. Eighteen already shipped creatures were affected and now carry the traits they were meant to have.
• World bosses no longer all turn up equally often. The bigger the boss, the rarer it is: the new tier 4 pair shows up about half as often as the tier 1 ones, so a realm scale fight stays an event instead of becoming the default.
• The biggest world bosses are rarer still. With the tier 5 pair in the rotation the ladder of rarity goes one step further, so the fights that need the whole realm turn up least often of all.

Fixed

• You can actually send a patrol now. Patrols were built, tested and completely unreachable: the Menagerie showed you the ones already out and offered no way to start one. The wing now has a Send a patrol row where you pick the beast, the companion walking it, and the zone.
• The beast broker has opened. The broker's daily stock was being rolled every day and shown to nobody. It is now a tab at the Tavern, beside Maribel.
• A patrol's companion is a real companion. The companion you send was recorded and then ignored: it changed nothing and was never checked, so a patrol could name one you do not own. It is now validated when you send it, one companion walks one patrol at a time, and a higher level companion brings back more.
• The world map no longer has ground nobody can reach. A little under one percent of the map's walkable tiles sat in pockets cut off behind water or buildings. A townsperson could be placed in one and never walk out of it, and tapping one asked your hero for a route that did not exist. Every walkable tile on the map now connects to every other one.
• The world map no longer says there are eleven regions. The line under the map title had the number written into it, so it still read "eleven regions" long after there were more. It counts them now, so it says thirty one and it will keep being right.
• The Bestiary's Threat filter no longer offers dead ends. The Beasts tab listed a Legendary option that no beast has ever matched, and the Bosses tab listed Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic, none of which a boss can be. Each tab now offers only the threat levels it actually contains.
• The Forge's recipe family buttons no longer run off the side of a phone. Signature Weapons, Equipment and Supplies sat in a row that only ever folded on a screen narrower than any phone actually made, so on a real handset the third button was off the edge. Rows like that now fold on any phone, and they look exactly as they did wherever there was already room.
• The Companions list no longer runs off the side of a small phone. It packed two cards per row on every phone, which fits a large handset and does not fit a 360dp one, so the roster spilled past the screen edge and a few cards could not be reached. Narrow phones get a single column and large ones keep both.
• Your offline clan now takes on all six world bosses, not five. The weekly boss your clan chips away at while you are offline was picked from a list that had never been updated, so the Devourer's Aspect could never come up no matter how long you played. Every world boss in the game is now in that rotation, and any boss added later joins it automatically.

On the website

• AwayWard is one place now, not two. The game and the Discord bot shared a hero but sat in separate hub tabs. They are a single AwayWard panel that opens on a two-door picker, so you choose the client or the bot instead of choosing a tab. Old #awaybot links land there.
• Tool Quality Inc joins the SWINC Mods lineup. The fourth Software Inc mod now has its own card on the hub panel and the SWINC Mods page, and both pages link the Steam Workshop collection that carries all four in one click.
• ModernInc's showcase video is on the site. ConflictNerd built a company on it in "Starting a New Software Company in Software Inc. (with Mods!)", and the SWINC panel and page both link it.
• Quick BRT has left the site. Its hub panel, product page and assets are gone, and the studio line is now "Games worth idling in, mods worth installing" across the page titles, social preview, Patreon banner and both legal pages.
• Branding now focuses on the active games, tools and mods. Removed the Consensus reader, hub navigation, project copy, legal links and related public assets, and added an internal checklist for refreshing baked-in branding images.

Added

• The world map is one connected world now, not eleven separate views. All eleven regions sit on a single continent laid out so every tier touches the next, with one lit road running through every camp from the first green stretch out past the last waystation. We call it the Lantern Circuit.
• Your hero actually walks it. Tap open ground and they path around buildings, cliffs, water and rifts instead of sliding through them, and every townsperson, creature and echo walks the same grid.
• Everything on the map is tappable. Regions, camps, boss seats, landmarks, travellers and wanderers each open a card telling you what it is and what you can do with it: travel there, walk over, open the screen it leads to, or hear a line.
• No more black voids on the map. The ocean, the shelf and the coastline are painted past every edge you can pan or zoom to, at every zoom level.
• The region list does everything the canvas does. Travel, open a landmark, frame a leg and read its card, or listen to any wanderer walking it, all without touching the map itself.
• The map remembers where you were looking. Levelling up no longer throws your view back to the default framing mid read, and travelling keeps the zoom you set and simply moves the camera to the leg you arrived on.
• Your hero walks in when you travel. Arrive on a neighbouring leg and they come up the road from the gate they left by, and the people along it notice them pass. Anywhere further down the circuit is too long a walk to watch, so that arrives as a teleport instead.
• Six props are built as 3D models and rendered into the world. A waystone, a circuit arch, a well, a brazier, a supply cart and a stack of crates, each one modelled and lit from the map's own angle so it sits square on the ground and catches the light down one side. Every leg gets a marker on its approach and a piece of camp gear beside the camp.
• Beta players now leave Shades in the world. Everyone playing a pre-1.0 build is a tester, so the game turns the public leaderboard into echoes that drift through your zone and walk beside the world boss. Each one keeps the same title and the same line every time you meet it, on every device.
• A Standing Shade walks with the World Raid, and it changes daily. Whoever it is, every player on the same day sees the same one. Fell the raid and the shade is laid to rest.
• New title: the Shadebound. Earned the first time you help put a Standing Shade to rest. It costs a raid rather than a login, pays nothing but the title, and only beta players can ever earn it.
• Every class ability now has its own icon. All 64 shared just two pictures between them, so a Warrior's four arts looked identical to each other and to a Mage's four. Each one is drawn for what it does now, and Chronomancer's four, which had no art at all, are in.
• You can change class when you rebirth. All 17 are on the table, priced in Soul Gems and doubling with every change you take, so it stays a decision rather than a habit. The class you leave keeps its Skill Tree exactly as you left it, ready if you ever come back to it.
• A Compendium page on this site. Every piece of AwayWard art in one browsable gallery: painted zone vistas up top, then bosses, pets, creatures, boss gear, abilities, fish and materials with category filters and search.

Changed

• All 210 pieces of generic gear art are lit. Weapons, armour, helms, gloves, boots, offhands and trinkets had a flat fill and no light direction; they now catch the light along the top and fall into shadow underneath, so they read as objects rather than stickers. Spellbooks look like books, and helmets have a visor you can see.
• Plainer wording across 30 screens. Dozens of places welded two thoughts together with a semicolon; they are short sentences now. Easier to read on a phone, in the Bestiary, Crafting, Housing, Settings, Rebirth, the Market, the Pass, the Tavern, the Trial Rifts and everywhere else.
• Screens stay up to date while you are looking at them. Gold, materials, "can make N", a finished craft and a filling bar all move on their own now, instead of only once you had left the screen and come back.
• What you picked stays picked. The Forge remembers the slot you chose for each recipe, and every tab, sort and filter in the game holds its place until you change it, through a craft, a purchase, and leaving the screen entirely.
• The World Raid screen stopped redrawing itself sixty times a second while you watched your local realm boss.
• Travelling no longer rebuilds the world. Your continent is yours for the whole save, so crossing to the next leg keeps the map you already know. It used to generate a fresh one on arrival, which is what made travel stall and threw your view back to the default framing every single time.
• People stop to talk to you. Press Talk and they halt where they stand instead of wandering off mid sentence, and they stay for as long as what they said takes to read, so a short greeting goes quickly and a longer line holds.

Fixed

• Recent pulls now show pet names instead of internal ids. The summon history used to log pets as their raw data keys, while gear logged real names. New pulls store the pet's display name, old history entries are resolved to names when drawn, and the banner column shows the banner's proper title.
• Opening a dialog while another one was already up could close the game. The second card was destroyed on the spot while the code that had just built it was still reading it, so the game could crash outright instead of just declining to show it. Reachable from the cloud restore, device link and "you'll need to wait" cards, and from every confirmation prompt.
• Closing one of Wick's tips the instant it appeared could close the game. The tip's own dismiss button goes live a fraction before the card finishes sliding in, so catching it in that gap left the animation reaching for a card that was already gone. Wick now notices he has been dismissed and simply stops.