Forge the Crown

Reaching depth 20 for the first time now triggers an interactive Forge the Crown mini-game instead of a passive victory screen.

Three phases:

  1. Heat the Ingot — Hold click to heat a metal ingot. Release in the gold zone. Too early and it’s cold; too long and it overheats.
  2. Hammer the Crown — Click glowing targets in sequence to shape the crown. Each hit sends sparks flying as the crown takes form — filigree, gems, and spires emerge with every strike.
  3. Quench — A timing bar sweeps back and forth. Click in the narrow green zone to perfectly quench the crown.

After forging, a permanent crown on a stone pedestal appears near the campfire. It persists through all prestiges and ascensions — a permanent testament to your first victory.

Subsequent victories skip the mini-game and show the standard victory screen.

New Features

  • Dig Deeper Preview Popup — Before descending, see what unlocks at the next depth: new rooms, milestones (mithril, cave-ins, Lithodore, victory), and cost breakdown. Toggle in Settings > Gameplay.
  • Minimize Deep Cavern Events — Click the minimize button to collapse active cavern events to a compact top-center bar. Timer continues, game interaction restored. Click to expand.
  • Campfire Dwarves Flee During Threats — Dwarves sitting at the campfire now scatter when trolls, dragons, or cave-ins are active. They return with a smooth walk animation when the threat ends.
  • Larger HUD Button Text — All HUD buttons bumped from 13pt to 15pt for better readability.

Bug Fixes

  • Prestige music now plays correctly — Victory screen was calling play_threat_music("prestige") which silently failed. Now correctly triggers the prestige stinger.
  • Debug console gated to dev builds — The debug console is no longer accessible in release builds.
  • Graveyard position fixed — Dwarf graveyard moved up on screen and label repositioned to not overlap tombstones.

Localization

  • 17 new translation keys across all 9 languages (1395 total)
  • Regenerated all .translation files

Early Access launches tomorrow — March 11, 2026. Wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already.