v0.2.8: Straight Answers

🌍 v0.2.8: Straight Answers

Russian and Brazilian Portuguese, a small-screen pass, a longer climb to Depth 20, safer saves, and a game that says exactly what it does

🌍 New languages

• Russian (Русский) and Brazilian Portuguese (Português do Brasil). Every text in the game is translated, including the story, the Knowledge Base and all achievements.
• Pick them from the flags on the title screen or in Settings > Language. On a first start the game follows the language you set for it in Steam, then your system language; any Portuguese system language picks Brazilian Portuguese.
• Headings and buttons in Russian use a bold Cyrillic face that matches the game’s own fonts.
• Steam friends list status now also reads in Russian and Brazilian Portuguese.
• Cave-in names (Rockfall, Crystal Vein, Troll Nest, Treasure Cache, Unstable Shaft) are now translated. They showed in English in every language.

🖥️ Small screens

• On small screens the game now starts in borderless fullscreen on first launch, with the UI scaled up so the smallest text stays readable.
• A window size picked in Settings is never larger than your screen.
• Renaming a save slot, naming an Automation profile or naming a Blessing loadout can use Steam’s on-screen keyboard.
• The slot rename button on the title screen and the choice marks on the Next Dig screen are larger.

⚖️ Pacing and balance

• The climb from Depth 15 to Depth 20 is longer. Each descent from Depth 15 to Depth 19 costs more blueprints and timber than before (x1.28 more per depth, so the descent from Depth 19 costs about 3.4 times what it did). Ore and mithril costs are unchanged. Depth 1-14 and Depth 20 and deeper cost the same as before.
• A first trip to Depth 20 now takes a few more New Digs. Depth 20 to Depth 40 goes faster than before, because you arrive at Depth 20 with more Blessings.
• Veteran: each New Dig now adds 10% Ancestral Knowledge to every later dig (was 15%). The x5 limit is unchanged.
• Transcendent Power: +100% DPS and +50% Ancestral Knowledge (was +100% for both).
• “All Production” achievement bonuses now apply once, as their text says. Before, they were added two or three times to ore, blueprints and timber, and also to the depth bonus and Ancestral Knowledge.
• Mithril Vein (reach depth 20) now gives +100% All Production (was +50%).
• Mithril Vein now also gives +50% Ancestral Knowledge, and Endless Digger (reach depth 50) +100% Ancestral Knowledge. Both are shown on the achievement cards. The old double count also boosted Ancestral Knowledge without saying so; these lines keep New Digs past depth 40 paying what they did.
• Trolls and dragons now raid as soon as the Runic Barracks is built, even if no warriors are assigned. Emptying the Runic Barracks no longer keeps raids away. You can still assign warriors while a raid is on.

🛡️ Exploit fixes

• Time Warp no longer pays mercenaries for the whole warp. Mercenaries are hired by the minute, so they don’t work through warped time (the same as time away). The preview shows the same amount.
• Expedition and caravan rewards now come from your own workers. Hired mercenaries no longer raise them, the same as with Time Warp.
• Several rewards are counted in minutes of production: cave-in walls, quests, deep cavern events and lucky finds. They now use your steady production, not the few seconds of a beast ability or a timed event.
• Caravan and Embargo prices now follow your Trade Point income more smoothly. When your income falls, the price comes down over a few minutes, not at once.
• Quest boards now follow the game’s own clock while you play. Changing your computer’s clock during a session no longer brings a new board or a free refresh.
• Deep cavern choices that leave things to chance are saved the moment you pick them.

📜 New Digs, Blessings and heroes

• Records has a new list of your last 10 New Digs: the depth reached, the play time, the Ancestral Knowledge earned and the AK per hour.
• The New Dig screen shows the pace of this dig next to your last one, for example “This dig: 12 AK in 1h 5m (11 AK/h). Last dig: 30 AK (9.5 AK/h).”
• Blessing loadouts: save up to 5 named sets of Blessing levels on the New Dig screen. Load buys a set again at the normal price, one level at a time across the set, as far as your Ancestral Knowledge goes.
• Blessings show what the next level really gives when Double Blessings or the Deep Knowledge limit changes it, for example “+15% ore production per level (next level: +30%)”.
• The hero seats on the Next Dig screen are now portrait cards with the hero’s rank and effect. Click a card to pick who sits there. A hero who rests in the picked challenge is named with that challenge.
• Fast Start now gives its starting Ore at the start of every New Dig, not only the dig right after an Ascension.
• A King freed this dig keeps the chair at the fire after you reload the game.
• Records shows your lifetime New Digs, so the count no longer drops after an Ascension.

⌨️ Controls and display

• Hold Space to mine. It mines at the same rate as holding the mouse on the vein and only works when no panel or dialog is open. Space still presses a button you moved to with the keyboard.
• New Dig Deeper key (Page Down). Both keys can be changed in Settings > Keybindings.
• Three new color palettes in Settings > Display for deuteranopia, protanopia and tritanopia. They keep green timber apart from blue blueprints and cyan mithril.

💾 Safer saves

• Quitting while a troll, Lithodore or a Warden is raiding no longer costs your whole time away. Once the raid would have ended, it ends the usual way, and the rest of your time away pays as usual. Welcome Back tells you how long production stopped and how the raid ended.
• If a troll or dragon ended its raid while the game was closed, Welcome Back now always tells you what it took, even after a short break.
• Steam Cloud: when the save on this PC wins over a different Steam Cloud save (for example after playing on a second PC with a wrong clock), the cloud save is kept beside your slot as a .conflict file instead of being overwritten (the newest 5 are kept). If it had more play time, the game tells you.
• Steam Cloud: if the cloud save is newer but the save on this PC cannot be copied aside (for example, a full disk), the game loads the cloud save with saving turned off for that session and tells you, so neither save is overwritten. Export Save still works in that session, so you can keep a copy of it.
• An old save file from before save slots that can’t be read is now kept aside instead of deleted, and its backup is used if it can be read. A very old save left as save.json.tmp can now be moved into slot 1.
• Export Save refuses with a message while a save that didn’t load completely is open, so you never copy a broken game.
• A damaged settings file can no longer reset your other settings (keybinds, Minimal UI, window position).

🔎 The game says what it does

• The tier-4 skills now list their real bonus (Adamantine Pickaxe, Vein Eruption, Forge Overdrive, Eldritch Power, Void Mastery, Ancestral Knowledge). The bonuses themselves have not changed.
• New Dig Milestones, Blessings, Gems and Artifacts no longer say “permanent”. They last through New Digs, and an Ascension resets them. The Ascension screen now lists the New Dig Milestones and says the Runic Warblade is kept.
• The troll raid banner counts down to the moment the troll runs off, and says the troll takes half your Ore, Blueprints, Timber and Mithril if it isn’t killed in time.
• The dragon warning now gives the dragon’s real pace: one Dwarf Miner every 30-60 seconds, depending on depth, up to 5. It also says the dragon leaves after 5 minutes.
• The notification log no longer calls every Warden “Lithodore”.
• Welcome Back now says why you earned nothing after leaving during a raid, how many minutes a standing cave-in wall cost you, that helpers only work while the game is running, and the Trade Points you kept after nation upkeep.
• Deep Cavern choices show the real Rune Shards, Shadowsteel and Ancestral Knowledge they pay after your bonuses.
• The Ore per click tooltip and Records > Bonuses show the real pickaxe base. They now also list Trade, Ore Rush and omen, biome and hero bonuses, so the rows multiply out to the total. Records > Bonuses also lists the DPS from Tavernkeepers and the Trade and omen factors on runic DPS.
• Trade nation buttons show the bonus you actually get: they round correctly (Tier 3 shows +45%, not +44%), include Imbra’s boost, show Clockwork Guild’s real cut to depth costs, and stop Shadow Weavers at +100%. With Imbra seated, the Trade Post says that no nation pays upkeep and no tier is lost.
• Time Warp: the preview shows the real amount during the Speed Decay challenge. During a cave-in or raid, the buttons say the warp is blocked. The help explains that mercenaries, events, beast abilities and the active-mining bonus don’t count during a warp.
• The expedition reward preview no longer shows more than you get: it applies the Guild Fair omen and the reward limit.
• The Ascension reward shows the Rune Shards it pays, Shard Magnet included.
• The runestone craft tooltip includes the Runekeeper’s Staff, the Choir Shard and the Stonehummer.
• The Runic Barracks and Resource Converter cards no longer show a “(+N)” bonus they don’t get.
• The Worker Rally summary shows your normal ore rate per second, as its label says.
• New tooltip on Full Offline Production: on means time away pays your full rate, off means it pays 15%.
• Many smaller labels now include every bonus that applies: active mining with Nettle Cartwright, the Shrine of the Deep, challenge Ancestral Knowledge with Dorrik, the New Dig shard preview, the runestone bonus line, Diamond and Opal, and the Veteran factor in Records.
• Many help, tooltip and Knowledge Base texts were corrected: Double Blessings (Head Start is not doubled), Embargo, mercenary rehire time, Frost Wraiths, expedition speed relics and Fast Carts, Shadowsteel, the converter, Rune Shards, relics and what a New Dig keeps.
• Russian and Brazilian Portuguese: many fixes to grammar and wording, and decimal commas for numbers in text. German, French and Spanish: a shorter hero-seat hint on the Next Dig screen, so it is no longer cut off.

🔧 Fixes

• Holding Space to mine stops when you let go, even if a dropdown list or the Steam overlay was open at that moment. Holding Space and the mouse button together no longer stops mining when you let go of only one of them.
• After a language change, mining no longer counts as “active” until your next click.
• Daily quests only offer goals you can work on now: no Converter, runestone or Time Warp goals before you have them.
• Golden Vein and Worker Rally no longer start during a cave-in, when they could not pay anything.
• Opening the Time Warp panel with mercenaries hired no longer makes Gem Polish dip for a moment.
• Russian and Brazilian Portuguese: resource icons no longer appear in the middle of a word.
• If a music file can’t be loaded, the game now just stays quiet instead of hitting an error loop when you enter the mine.
• Removed old unused text and screens left over from earlier versions.