0.11.21 — Hidden Means Hidden

Client 0.11.21 (launcher 0.11.6). The launcher updates itself before you play. Much of the game's art was re-imported, so this update is a big one: about 34 GB on a PC and 7.5 GB on a phone.

The Haven

• Safe ground round the island towns. Within about 150 paces of Bridhill, Madfallsti and Thorvault the wild now puts out only its mildest beasts, alone or in pairs, and no bandits. Beyond that, the island is as dangerous as ever.
• No thieves on the Haven. No one can Peek into your pack or Steal from you on Bridhill island or in its goblin mine.
• A city army's soldier is held to the Dove Peace like any player: on the Haven his blow takes at most 2 health and never stuns.

Armies

• Armies keep to the land. They march by road or straight across country, never over the sea or a lake, and cross a river only by a bridge or at a ford, taking the long way round when they must. Fords now join every stretch of land a river cuts off, so no city's army is shut in by its rivers.
• An order into the water, into the Haven, down into a dungeon or to a place no road reaches is refused. An army whose way is cut on the march halts and tells its guild.
• Armies hunt only what they see. You can send an army after another side's army only while your side sees it, and a hunted army that slips out of sight is lost. An army follows or marches to a player only if that player is of your guild or nation.

Cities, guilds and mines

• The city owns what it builds. Every building your city pays for belongs to the guild, houses included, and so do those an officer placed inside the city before. Only the Guild Leader and the Inner Council manage them, and they can no longer be given to a character.
• Lowering a building's rank no longer repairs it. While the city is under siege a damaged building's rank cannot change.
• A fallen city takes only its own. When a Heartwood falls, only what its city and its members own inside its grid falls with it, together with the Warstone of its siege: never a Farportal, a mine, a town's buildings or another guild's. Demolishing a finished building while a Warstone stands against the city returns only what a rank-1 building would.
• A city may have at most 64 construction jobs open at once, new sites and upgrades together.
• Banishment and fealty take hold at once. A banished member leaves the moment it is made, and a guild that banished you will not take you back through a Runemaster's re-pledge either. Invitations and calls to swear fealty last five minutes; a guild released from fealty cannot be called to the same guild again for two days.
• Guild messages stay in the guild. Only your guild reads its message of the day, and only your nation's guilds read the nation's.
• Mines are claimed at the tower: stay within 18 m of the felled tower from the first moment of the channel to the last. A mine's window hour can move the next window by at most 12 hours.

Fair fights

• Hidden means hidden. Someone who cannot see you hiding can no longer aim a power at you (save a summons or a Send to Farportal), Track you, Peek at you or Steal from you, and creatures and NPCs that cannot see you no longer notice or chase you. A swing, an arrow or an area spell that reaches you still hits, and reveals you. The horse you ride and the pet at your heel hide with you.
• Bolts stop at walls. An aimed bolt strikes the first thing in its way: a wall, a gate, a hill or another body.
• No way through a wall. Mounting, taking a helm or a siege engine's controls, stepping aboard or ashore, deploying a siege kit or calling a horse now needs an open way from where you stand. A sword, a bite, a charging horse or a bolt no longer reaches through a shut gate or door.
• Fear reaches the saddle and the spellbook. Afraid or confused, you cannot cast, mount, board or take any controls, and the horse you ride bolts with you. Mantle of Courage now truly lifts fear. Stunned, knocked down, afraid or confused, you cannot read a Scroll of Recall (it is not used up), travel with a Waykeeper or be recalled or summoned.
• No blows on the way out. From the moment a far journey begins until you arrive, you cannot strike anyone, just as no one can hurt you.
• No way out of a fight by logging out. If you were hurt in the last minute, your body stays in the world for a minute after you leave, and can still be killed. Coming back returns you to that same body, as hurt as you left it.
• A bind is checked when you use it. Death, a recall or logging in takes you to the Heartwood you bound to only while you could still bind there; otherwise you wake at your guild's Heartwood or your hometown. Nothing teleports the dead any more.
• Shops and chests at hand. Buying, selling and using a building's chest need you at the building, within 30 m.
• A character can be deleted only two minutes after it leaves the world.

Creatures and townsfolk

• A creature with nowhere left to run no longer cowers in a corner: it turns and fights. Fleeing beasts run along walls instead of into them.
• Archers draw a short sword when you close in, and crossbowmen shoot. No more fighters swinging weapons they do not hold.
• Bandits and guards call their challenges one at a time instead of all at once, and bodies already dead when you arrive no longer cry out.
• The doors of Bridhill's cottages, and of other small houses like them, no longer let you walk straight through.
• A body's loot is listed when you open it.

Phones

• Turn faster, face your target. A slow drag turns as far as your thumb goes and a quick flick up to twice as far. The new Face button turns you to what you have selected; hold it to keep facing it. Pinching follows your fingers smoothly.
• Sign out on the character screen leaves your account, so you can switch accounts. The game also starts much faster.
• The City Builder is easier on a phone: the first card plants your Heartwood, the toolbox sits under your health bars, and leaving takes you back to your characters.
• A phone whose graphics cannot run the game is now told so before the download, not after.

Everywhere

• Combat Arena: Yield the Fight from the game menu (on a phone, the Yield button, tapped twice). A lost ladder round can be retried, and Survival offers Retry wave (such a stand sets no record). The minimap marks you with a faint dot at its centre.
• Gathering: the prompt to chop, break, cut or skin shows only when you carry the tool; look at a tree or a rock and you are told which tool it needs. Nothing behind a hill or a wall is outlined or selected through it any more.
• Walls, stone and lakes no longer shine at night as if wet, and hundreds of re-imported materials (house timber, fur on deer and other beasts) no longer look polished or mirror-smooth.
• The realm runs steadier and lighter, and busy places hold together better.
• Account security improvements.