Changelog: Difference between revisions

* FARMING HAS MASTERIES NOW (from user testing: “easiest skill to 99, but it has no masteries”). Every crop carries its own 1-99 mastery ladder, fed by harvests — the same ladder every action has had since v0.29, transplanted to the plot grid. Slow crops pay more mastery per harvest, so every crop climbs at the same pace per plot, and growth runs around the clock — the farm learns while you hunt.

* '''The perks are farming-shaped.''' M25 grows that crop 5% faster, M50 doubles every 10th harvest — counted, never rolled, with a “2× in 3” countdown on the plot card — M75 another 5% faster, and M99 pays +25% of the base yield through the same honest carry crafting uses. More food and more seeds from the same plots, growing with use.

* Under it, one conversion. The game picks the wing you are CLOSEST to being able to finish but cannot fund yet, tells you what your spare buys there — “85 spare maps → 17 Scorched Wash digs, enough to finish the wing” — and does the whole trade in one click. Drag the slider for less, or aim it at any other ground.

* '''Clicking dispatch always does what it says now.''' A dino holding a gathering job has never been allowed to ride out — quit the job first — but the war-party picker didn’t know that: it offered jobbed dinos as free, the stable refused the send behind the scenes, and the picker closed as if the squad had left. Reported within the hour; fixed the same night.

* Jobbed dinos now show dimmed in the picker with the reason — “on a job — Fish for Minnow” — exactly like injured, marching and already-dispatched dinos always have, and ★ Best three only picks dinos who can actually go.

* '''Dispatch missions are kill missions now.''' The eleven gathering errands retired — your hired hands already gather in the background, so the bay flies a different flag: SIXTEEN STRIKE MISSIONS, one against every rival tribe on the ladder, from a half-hour raid on the Mudfoot Clan to a ten-hour war on the Mostly Harmless. Each strike still hauls home the tribe’s own plunder, tuned to about one hired hand’s take.

* '''Weapons and gear drop from the kill.''' A returning war party rolls the rival’s blueprint sheet, a piece from their armoury, and their signature relic — the same odds a hands-on raid victory pays. Their war banner stays raid-only: the flag is the trophy of beating them yourself.

* '''The strikes ride the rivals ladder.''' A strike opens once the tribe below it has fallen to you hands-on, and locked rows name exactly who to beat first. The Mudfoot strike is open from your first tame, and every mission wears its rival’s own mark.

* Squad math is untouched — your dinos’ gear has always counted, and weakness still costs time and bruises, never the haul. A squad caught mid-flight on a retired errand steps down at the stable immediately, ready to ride out again.

== v0.57.4 — The Hand Ledger — The Crew’s Hauls On The Books ==

* '''The rates sit right on top.''' The ledger head shows your whole crew’s per-item take (≈ per hour, summed across every working hand), and each line carries its hand’s own live rate while the job runs. A line whose hand has since stopped or changed jobs stays as a “past haul” — history outlives the job.

* The old “latest gathers” chips retired in the ledger’s favor; the skill pages’ hired-hand bars still show their own recent gathers.

* THE DROVER’S PADDOCK is a new homestead structure: each of its 21 levels adds one dino job slot, so with the Foreman’s Whistle the crew ceiling climbs from 3 all the way to 24 working dinos.

* PICKING A JOB now works like the [[Tribe]] page: the [[Stable]]’s Hired hands tab is a crew board, and each dino opens a job sheet — every trade its diet allows, banded with a “Best for them” shortlist, every rate priced for THAT dino (veteran levels and niche included), locked rows shown with their unlock reason.

* Existing background tasks carry over automatically — the dino that held each skill’s task simply keeps it as its own job. A task the new diet rule forbids (a herbivore that had been fishing, say) stops with a note, exactly like the old boot sweeps.

* A jobbed dino eats from its diet’s pantry like any working dino, pauses while hungry, and can’t be dispatched, stasis-cased or sent to fight while on the job — pull it off the job first (joining your pack does that automatically, as it always has for workers).

* THE DEMO’S LEVEL FENCE NOW GATES WHAT YOU CAN DO, not just what you can gain. The save file is an editable document by design — but in the demo, a save edited past level 20 now buys you rendered numbers and nothing else: every action, crop and unlock reads your EFFECTIVE level, which rests at the fence. Everything below 20 plays exactly as before.

* FULL-GAME PLAYERS ARE UNTOUCHED — the clamp exists only when the game is launched through the demo’s own Steam app. Beta saves, web saves and the save format itself are all exactly as they were.

== v0.57.1 — The Demo’s Welcome Page Tells The Truth ==

* The full game’s welcome page is untouched, and the Send-feedback door works in both — demo players’ bug reports land in the same inbox.

* A FEW ENDGAME DOORS WAIT FOR THE FULL GAME and say so where they stand: the Alpha [[Arenas]], the [[Museum]] beyond its entry hall, the clans’ late-map outposts, and everything behind the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]].

* '''For full-game players nothing moves.''' The fence exists only when the game is launched through the demo’s own Steam app — the game you own never caps, never badges, never pitches.

* '''The film sometimes never played on mac.''' MacOS can quietly carry the "already played this launch" marker across app restarts, so the previous run ate the next one. The marker now only counts against in-app reloads (importing a save, restoring from the cloud, walking the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]]) — a real launch always opens on the film, and the welcome page got the same cure.

* '''Finishing a museum wing used to end it.''' The [[Museum]] was the only thing in the valley that wanted a dig map, a journal page, a skull or a fossil u2014 so the moment a wing stood complete, everything that ground produced turned to vendor trash, and the Curatoru2019s Desk that bought your pages simply VANISHED off the page while the [[Delving]] panel and the [[Bank]] both went on pointing at it.

* '''The desk changes job instead.''' A completed wingu2019s Desk stops selling skulls and starts buying your leavings: that groundu2019s dig maps, its Field Journal pages, and any duplicate skull whose skeleton already stands. Each is stamped into a CURATORu2019S SEAL u2014 maps by tier (11 at the deepest ground, 20 at the shallowest), pages at the Desku2019s own price, and a spare skull at three pagesu2019 worth, which is exactly what the dig already pays you for a duplicate.

* THE MUSEUMu2019S PATRONS STOCK A SHELF, and amber cannot buy any of it. The [[Museum]] Annex lends you its back rooms (+4 bank slots a rank, six ranks); the Wardenu2019s Stasis Wing keeps two more dinos in amber a rank; and the DEEP SURVEY TEAM funds a permanent extra excavation crew.

* '''That last one is the point.''' Dig slots have only ever come from the [[Delving]] ladder u2014 which stops at level 75 u2014 and one 0.2% relic, so every level after 75 added maps and no way to spend them. The Deep Survey Team is the first excavation slot in the game you can simply go and earn, and it is bought with the exact surplus those levels produced.

* IT OPENS PER WING, not at 57/57. Every ground whose wing already stands is surveying the moment you load; the ones you are still filling keep their old Desk, unchanged, and a skull you still need can never be sold out from under you. The shelf is priced as a long tail u2014 the whole thing is roughly 335 hours of surplus u2014 and it re-stocks after the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], so the sink renews instead of running out.

* '''Digs were invisible to the bounty board.''' The whole fossil chain u2014 maps, crates, skulls, the [[Museum]] u2014 sat outside the Fang Mark economy that every other activity in the valley feeds. [[Delving]] had ONE contract in thirty-three, and the board had no way to even see an excavation.

* '''Two new writs.''' The [[Excavation]] Writ wants six digs dug out; the Deep Survey Writ wants twelve. Both are gated on [[Delving]], so they never deal to someone with no maps and one slot, and both are sized to the 12-hour rotation rather than to a caveu2019s tempo u2014 twelve is 38% of what four slots can dig on the slowest ground in the game, which leaves room for the manual collect every find needs.

* THEY COUNT WHEN YOU DIG THE FIND OUT, not when the timer ends. A dig that finished while you were away is parked in its slot and has not counted yet u2014 the same line the Excavator track and the toast have always drawn.

* '''And two bounties were gated on the wrong skill entirely.''' The Delveru2019s Writ has been gated on EXPEDITIONS since v0.25: it dealt to players who had never lit a torch, and withheld itself from delvers whose [[Expeditions]] lagged. The Harvest Writ was gated on [[Taming]], copied from the Tameru2019s Writ beneath it. Both now gate on the skill they actually ask for, and a new rule ties every bountyu2019s gate to its subject so a third one cannot happen quietly.

* THE SAME TEN BUTTONS, THREE TIMES OVER. The [[Excavation]] panel drew its map picker INSIDE every empty dig slot u2014 so with three slots free you got the same ten Start-a-dig buttons three times, thirty buttons deep. It is drawn once now, under the slot grid, and it starts the dig in your first free slot.

* '''And it no longer disappears when you need it.''' The old picker lived inside empty slots, so the moment every slot was busy your whole map stock vanished from the page u2014 exactly when you want to look at it. It stays put and says "Every slot is digging u2014 collect one to start another".

* PLAYER REPORT — "I have all of the museum upgrades except the last pack, so Iu2019m 52/57. But Iu2019m at level 89 and I have like 351 digging maps." Both halves of that are the same bug seen from opposite ends. Dig Site Maps drop per cave WIN and are spent per dig SLOT, and every map is locked to one biome u2014 so a cave mints its own groundu2019s maps about two and a half times faster than every slot in the game can burn them, and roughly thirty times faster across an offline night, while the one ground you still owe skeletons trickles in from somewhere else entirely. You end up drowning and starving at once.

* THE WARDENu2019S SURVEY opens on the [[Delving]] page, under the dig slots: trade a stack of spare maps for a single map of the ground you actually need. The price is 4 maps for the shallow grounds, 5 for the middle, 7 for Cinder Terraces, Skyfall Scree and The Shattered Bed. You always lose maps on the swap and you can only survey into ground you have already opened, so it is a way to spend dead stock u2014 never a shortcut past running the right cave, which stays several times better.

* '''The museum costs exactly what it always did.''' The survey changes WHERE a dig happens, never how many digs a skeleton takes or how long one runs: the full 57-species hall is still about 386 digs and 381 slot-hours. It also rescues the other end of the ladder u2014 the Sunken Barrow is the most expensive wing in the game and nobody at [[Delving]] 80 goes back to the Sunlit Grotto for its maps.

* '''The fifth dig slot exists now.''' The Echo of the First Warden grants one, and the [[Excavation]] panel has never drawn it u2014 it built exactly four slots no matter what you owned, so the rarest relic in the caves did nothing at all. It appears, and a locked slot no longer invents a [[Delving]] level it cannot reach.

* '''And the panel stopped fibbing.''' A skull you have already found is announced as the spare it is, instead of "the [[Museum]] will want this someday" u2014 which at 52/57 is nine finds in ten. Journal pages for a wing you have finished say so, rather than flashing READY at a Curatoru2019s Desk that closed when the wing did. And the headline no longer says "about one dig in twelve": the real rate runs 14% on the shallowest ground down to 8.6% on the deepest, and now it says that.

* '''Then a welcome at the door.''' As the film fades, the launch lands on the sign-in screen’s sunset and rising embers with a short letter from the developer: a thank you for playing a passion project, credit to the Mostly Harmless Guild for beta testing the valley, and where Send feedback, the Discord and the wiki live (the info button, bottom right). One amber button — Enter the Valley — walks you in.

* '''Both are yours to turn off.''' Settings → Game grows two desktop-only rows — "Intro video" and "Welcome page" — for anyone who wants to jump straight in. Each shows once per LAUNCH, never once per reload: importing a save, restoring from the cloud or walking the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]] repeats neither.

* FOLLOW-UP TO v0.55.13, AND A CORRECTION TO IT. That version made the Mark Exchangeu2019s tack beat every saddle and barding you can CRAFT or find. It missed the forge u2014 and the forge was the real rival all along, because a forged saddle takes the SAME slot as a bought one. Fitting one unequips the other; they never stack.

* '''The test could not see it.''' Forged pieces are blueprint ROLLS, not items, so the v0.55.13 check walked right past them and stayed green while four of six Exchange pieces lost to a forge. Two of those forges need no ascension at all: a Sunstride Saddle rolls up to 17 swiftness off [[Crafting]] 60, a Frostbound Barding up to 26 guard off [[Smithing]] 70 u2014 both reachable long before you could grind the marks.

* '''Every piece now clears the ungated forge outright.''' Huntmasteru2019s Saddle 18 swiftness / worker u00d71.30 and Trailwarden Barding 27 guard / 13 power hold the 60-mark entry pair.

* '''And each slot keeps a crown no blueprint can take.''' Longstride Saddle 23 swiftness beats even a PRIMAL Moonshadow roll; Nightwarden Barding 35 guard beats a primal Moonlit; Duskwarden Barding 18 power beats the best Moonlit that will ever come off the anvil; Ridgeback Saddleu2019s worker u00d71.48 is untouchable by construction, because no forge can roll a worker buff at all. The top-wave forge still carries power a saddle never will, so it keeps the best TOTAL sheet u2014 the Exchange owns the records, not the game.

* '''Three blurbs that were false are gone.''' V0.55.13 shipped lines claiming no crafter cut a better saddle and nothing forged matched the guard u2014 both untrue against a forge roll, and one of them named the forge directly. Two new pins now walk every Exchange piece against every ungated forge band and check each slot still holds its crown, so a blurb cannot outlive the numbers again.

* '''And they were not worth the marks.''' Half the Exchange gear lost to something you could simply make. Longstride Saddle beat a [[Crafting]]-80 Skyleather Saddle by two swiftness — for a saddle that turns up one week in four. Ridgeback and Huntmasteru2019s were SLOWER than it. Duskwarden and Nightwarden both carried less guard than a smithed Moonstone Barding, while Nightwardenu2019s own description called itself the heaviest guard ever stocked.

* '''All six pieces now top the ladder.''' Huntmasteru2019s Saddle 15 swiftness / worker u00d71.32 and Trailwarden Barding 23 guard / 13 power are the entry pair — above every craftable and every trail-cache piece, on every stat they carry. The weekly exclusives specialise from there: Longstride Saddle 20 swiftness is the fastest tack in the game, Ridgeback Saddle worker u00d71.42 the hardest-working, Duskwarden Barding 18 power the sharpest, Nightwarden Barding 30 guard the heaviest wall there is.

* '''Priced for what they are.''' The exclusives go 45 u2192 60 marks, Ridgeback and Duskwarden 75 u2192 90, Longstride 60 u2192 80, Nightwarden 90 u2192 110. Every one still liquidates for less amber per mark than selling the marks raw, so the Exchange stays a gear shop and never an amber printer.

* '''The ladder is pinned now.''' A test walks every Exchange gear offer against every craftable and droppable piece in the same slot and fails if one of them stops winning u2014 and a second test forbids a blurb from quoting a number the row already derives, which is how the stale "+30% worker buff, +10 swiftness" line survived the saddle it described.

* '''It stacks with kibble.''' The tool cut lands OUTSIDE the capped speed stacks, exactly like every other tool rank, so it multiplies with kibble mode’s 15% instead of being swallowed by a ceiling. Best case on the deepest tames — a Starfall Bola and a full kibble bowl — is a little over a third off the clock.

* '''The speed breakdown shows it.''' Open any taming card’s timer and the Bola has its own labelled row, reading the same number the engine applies. Nothing about tame chance, stats or levels moved — this is the clock, and only the clock.

* THE GRAND HALL HAS PAID 5% SINCE v0.36.8. Mounting every species in the valley makes every skill in the game work 5% faster, forever, and it has done exactly that for twenty versions. The speed breakdown you opened was reading the live multiplier straight out of the engine; the [[Museum]] page’s celebration banner was reciting a number typed into it back in v0.28.5, when the prize really was 2%, and never touched again when the balance pass raised it.

* TESTER REPORT (with screenshot): "Both of these say max bloodline but have different stats." Two Giganotosaurus, side by side in the [[Stable]], both labelled BLOODLINE MAXED u2014 one showing 127 guard, the other 114. THE LABEL WAS WRONG, NOT THE DINOS.

* '''A bloodline hits its ceiling one stat at a time.''' Power, guard and swiftness each climb to their own wall (the speciesu2019 best roll, times five generations of imprinting, plus this lineu2019s mutations). The stall card called the WHOLE bloodline maxed the moment ANY ONE stat reached its wall u2014 so a dino finished in power and swiftness, with three points of guard still to climb, wore the same badge as one that was genuinely done.

* '''The chip now tells the truth.''' Only a line at the wall in all three stats reads "bloodline maxed", and it wears the accent colour. Anything still climbing shows the ceiling it is climbing toward instead u2014 "breeds at 97 / 54 / 41 u00b7 ceiling 97 / 57 / 41" u2014 so two different dinos can never read as the same dino again.

* '''Hover it for the rest.''' Which stats are finished, which are still climbing, and exactly how many points each has left to go. In the reported pair that reads "guard is 3 short of its 57 ceiling" u2014 the number you would otherwise have had to work out from two cards side by side.

* NO STATS CHANGED, and no breeding maths changed. Every dino passes on exactly what it passed on yesterday u2014 the game was clamping correctly all along and simply describing it wrong. If you were about to shelve a "finished" parent, check it again: it may have had room left.

* '''What was actually wrong.''' The game stored ONE auto-drink setting per potion EFFECT, and thirteen skills each have their own speed brew u2014 Miner's Brew, Chef's Tonic, Angler's Brew, Lumber Tonic and the rest all count as u201cspeedu201d. So all thirteen shared a single switch. Arming [[Mining]] lit the auto pip on [[Cooking]], [[Fishing]], [[Logging]] and everywhere else; arming a second skill silently disarmed the first; and tapping the pip off on any page took the setting away from all of them. Walking through the skill menus was enough to lose it. The four double-yield brews shared a switch the same way.

* XP POTIONS ARE UNCHANGED and still share one switch everywhere u2014 a Focus Tonic really is one buff no matter which page you drink it on, so one switch is the truth there. The same goes for the attack, defense, regen and crop brews. Only the effects the game runs SEPARATELY PER SKILL were split, because those were the ones being lied about.

* '''Tester report.''' "[[Crafting]] speed bonus is missing from weather effects." It was u2014 and so was [[Alchemy]]'s. Every other skill in the valley has had a sky that favours it since weather shipped; those two had none at all, in any weather, in any season, ever. MORNING MIST NOW SPEEDS CRAFTING BY 10% (damp air keeps cord and hide supple u2014 dry ones crack) and RAIN NOW SPEEDS ALCHEMY BY 10% (soft rainwater is the brewer's water). Both skies already existed and neither got rarer, so this is straightforwardly two skills that idle faster on days they used to ignore.

* '''The boosts panel now names who is actually paying.''' A season's own passive u2014 Blaze speeding [[Mining]], Frost speeding [[Fishing]] u2014 rides in the same number the weather does, so on a Clear day in Blaze your Mining page said "Clear Skies u00b7 5% faster" while Clear Skies' own description reads "nothing helps; nothing hinders". It now reads "Blaze season", and when the weather AND the season both pay it names both: "Heatwave + Blaze u00b7 15% faster".

* '''A storm's expedition bonus stopped underselling itself.''' Storms have paid the greater of +10 score or 3% of the trail's difficulty since v0.36.7, but the weather chip only ever quoted the +10 u2014 so on a difficulty-1100 trail the top bar said "+10" while the expedition page's own ledger said "+33 score", both on the same screen. The chip now states the real rule.

* EVERY CAVE NOW BURNS ITS OWN LIGHT, and every light is its own recipe at the [[Crafting]] bench. One torch used to open all ten biome caves, which meant the deepest delve in the valley asked no more of your workshop than the first one did u2014 and Crafting had nothing to offer a delver but a better spear. Nine new lights fix that: the Pitchwood Brand, the Bogfire Lamp, the Sporelight Lamp, the Brimstone Flare, the Brinewick Lantern, the Rimeglass Lantern, the Coalheart Lantern, the Stormglass Lantern and the Voidwick Lantern, one per cave, up the ladder.

* THE BENCH RUNG ALWAYS SITS BELOW THE CAVE IT LIGHTS u2014 [[Crafting]] 8 for a [[Delving]]-10 cave, Crafting 80 for the Delving-90 one. That gap is deliberate and it is pinned: no cave you can walk into today can be walled off tomorrow behind a bench you cannot reach, and the [[Chronicles]]' delving note (and so the Sigil, the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]] and Ascension tier V behind it) can never end up locked by a Crafting level. If your Crafting trails your Delving by more than a tier, though, the deeper caves will now wait for you u2014 which is the whole point.

* '''Your torches are not wasted.''' The Torch stays exactly what it was, keeps its [[Crafting]] 5 recipe, and still opens the Sunlit Grotto u2014 so a stack of three hundred still burns, and the tutorial quest still works.

* THE AMBER DOOR'S DEEPLIGHT LANTERN MOVES TO CRAFTING 90, up from 60, so the last cave in the valley genuinely asks the most of your bench instead of less than four of the caves above it. THE DOOR ITSELF DOES NOT CLOSE: if you are already delving it with [[Crafting]] under 90, every lantern you have banked still burns and the Door still opens u2014 what waits is CASTING MORE, until your bench catches up. Everything else about the lantern is untouched, and 90 still sits under the Door's own [[Delving]] 95.

* '''The caves still feed the lights they burn.''' Each new light is made of the cave ladder's own materials u2014 Stalactite Chip, then Glow Moss, then Cave Pearl, then Echo Shard u2014 and from the Cinder Vault down, every cave drops the deepest material its own light asks for. The shallower part of the bill comes from the cave one tier up. [[Amber]] Resin is still in every recipe and still comes out even, exactly as it has since v0.36.8.

* Lights are keys, not merchandise: every one of them sells for 8 amber, far under what it costs to make, so nobody is ever tempted to vendor the way into their own cave. And nine new items means the Completion Log's Items line has nine more to find u2014 your percentage will dip by a hair until you have lit them all.

* '''The last free-amber loop is shut.''' V0.55.5 fixed the trader's side of this; the shop had the same hole. Its shelf charges four times what an item is worth precisely so buying from it can never be a way to MAKE amber u2014 but every bonus that raised what you get PAID (the [[Ancestral Monument]], [[Amber]] Affinity, Friend of Wardens) left the shelf price flat, so at a full amber bonus that fourfold markup had quietly decayed to about two-and-a-half. Raw Meat cost 12 on the shelf and the trader would pay 13 for it.

* SHELF PRICES NOW CARRY YOUR AMBER BONUS, exactly like the trader's do, so the markup is a true 4u00d7 at every level of wealth. As before, IN PRACTICE NOTHING CHANGES: if your income is up 55%, so is the price, and a shelf of potions costs the same share of your day's earnings that it always did.

* '''If you have never ascended you will not see a single price move.''' The Monument alone cannot reach the level where any of this bit u2014 these loops only ever opened for wardens deep into ascension perks.

* THE TRADING POST COULD BE FARMED FOR FREE AMBER, and the richer you were the better it paid. The trader's 25% cut is meant to be the reason you can't just buy from him and sell straight back u2014 but every bonus that raised what he PAYS you (the [[Ancestral Monument]], [[Amber]] Affinity, Friend of Wardens) left what he CHARGES exactly where it was. Past about +25% amber gain his cut had eaten itself, and past that he was paying more than he asked.

* HIS PRICES NOW CARRY YOUR BONUS TOO, so the cut is a real 25% at every level of amber gain instead of only for wardens with no bonus at all. IN PRACTICE NOTHING CHANGES FOR YOU: if your amber income is up 55%, the trader's asking price is up 55%, and a day's shopping costs exactly the share of your income it always did. What stops working is buying and immediately selling for a profit u2014 which was never meant to work.

* '''The real trade is untouched.''' Buying on a Surplus day and selling on an In-demand day is still the whole game at the [[Trading Post]], and still pays exactly what it always did u2014 the profit is in WAITING, which is what the spread was always there to insist on.

* TAKING AN OUTPOST NOW PAYS ITS AGE CATALYSTS ONE TIME IN FIVE, up from one in twenty. Everything else about them is the same: the fort still pays its OWN count when the roll lands, so a Sundered Bastion capture is still four catalysts and a Briar Den is still one u2014 depth still matters, it just no longer takes twenty banners to see any of it.

* THE BLUEPRINTS AND GEAR ARE UNCHANGED at 5% u2014 the catalysts used to share that number and now have their own, so the two can move apart from here.

* '''The curator card argued with its own progress bar.''' It read "Mount all 54 skeletons and open the Grand Hall" while the bar underneath filled towards 57 u2014 46/57, not 46/54. The bar was right: there are 57 species in the valley, and one skeleton for each. Only the sentence was stale.

* NOTHING ABOUT EITHER GOAL CHANGED u2014 both already required 57, and every mounted skeleton and tamed species you have still counts exactly as it did. The cards simply say the true number now.

* '''The trading post now stocks as much as it buys.''' Every one of the 26 goods had a daily BUY cap well under its SELL cap u2014 the trader would take 6 Sky Opals off you but only ever had 3 to hand over, 4 Abyssal [[Amber]] against 2. Both numbers are now the same on every row, so whichever side of the counter you are on, the day's cap is the same.

* '''It lands hardest where the shelf was barest.''' Sky Opal 3 u2192 6, Abyssal [[Amber]] 2 u2192 4, Ember Topaz 5 u2192 8, Starfall Melon 5 u2192 8, Vale Heartfruit 6 u2192 10, Deep Sapphire 6 u2192 10, Moonstone 8 u2192 12. The gems were the point of the change: buying one on a Surplus day and selling it on an In-demand day is the whole trade, and a shelf holding two barely let you make it.

* '''The workhorses got deeper too.''' Iron Ore and Flamegrain 30 u2192 45, Redwood Log 24 u2192 36, Cloudbean 20 u2192 30, [[Amber]] Resin and Frostgourd 15 u2192 24, Echo Shard 12 u2192 20, Skyfruit 10 u2192 16 u2014 fewer gathering trips when the recipe wants one more stack. The early rows climb as well: Gourd and Raw Meat to 100, Sunroot and Hide to 80.

* '''Nothing else moved.''' Prices, the Surplus/In-demand bands, the amounts the trader will buy, the special orders, and the Trader's Charter's +25% per rank are all exactly as they were u2014 and the Charter still multiplies these new numbers, so a rank-4 Charter doubles every one of them.

* THE REINFORCED VAULT NOW PAYS +3 SLOTS A RANK, up from +2, at exactly the prices it always charged u2014 and every rank you already own counts. A rank-9 vault jumps from +18 stacks to +27 on the spot; a maxed rank-100 one from +200 to +300. The [[Amber]] Exchange's bank line was the cheapest slot in the game and the slowest to matter; now it moves half again as fast for the same amber.

* '''At the very top the two moves all but cancel.''' Everything maxed is 725 stacks, up from 723 (32 base + 99 Storage Hut levels + 300 Exchange + 294 Broker). Below the ceiling it depends which line you bought u2014 if you went deep into the Broker without the Exchange ladder behind it, your cap comes down.

* '''Every piece of armour you make just got three times better.''' Hide Vest goes from 3 defense to 9 (plus 2 attack), Hide Leggings from 5 to 11, Iron Plate from 8 to 26, Obsidian Plate from 15 to 53 u2014 nineteen pieces in all, across [[Crafting]] and [[Smithing]]. The rule they now follow is the one the game always meant to: what you can MAKE should be about as good as what DROPS one biome back. Always worth wearing on the way somewhere, never better than the reward for getting there.

* This is the other half of v0.54.9. That version made Hide Leggings possible to build; the trouble was that a def-5 legging was worse than the loot lying around where its materials came from, so there was little reason to bother. [[Crafting]] armour had been sitting at roughly a THIRD of its intended strength since v0.36.58, and nothing measured it u2014 the tests checked that each tier beat the one below and that drop sets stayed ahead, both of which a far-too-weak ladder passes perfectly.

* '''Crafting and smithing now feel different.''' A [[Crafting]] piece is light: it spends a quarter of its strength on attack, so Fiber Tunic is 4 attack / 20 defense. A [[Smithing]] piece is heavy and pure defense u2014 Iron Plate is a flat 26. Same total, spent two ways; pick the line that suits you.

* '''Mostly harmless hit the gym.''' With everyone's gear this much better the final rival gauntlet would have stopped being the wall it is meant to be, so the [MH] crew are about 10% tougher across the board u2014 Keltar's crown now costs what it always did.

* '''Starter armour is starter armour again.''' Stitch Hide Leggings sits at [[Crafting]] 32 and gives 5 defense u2014 but it was asking for Deepchitin, which only drops in the Cavern Depths. Getting there meant [[Hunting]] 60, or three guardians down and [[Expeditions]] 30, by which point the Depths are handing you a 20-defense set for free. Hide Vest, Wooden Shield, Bone Helm, Copper Cap, Bronze Helm, Bronze Shield and Bronze Greaves were all locked the same way: the gear you make to reach a place was sitting behind reaching it.

* Every crafted armour recipe now asks for a material you could already have gone and got at that recipe's own level. The whole low ladder u2014 everything from Copper Cap at 25 up to Bronze Greaves at 48 u2014 takes RIDGEPLATE, a new Redwood Wilds plate that drops from Redwood hunts (from [[Hunting]] 25) and the Redwood patrol ([[Expeditions]] 15). Fiber Tunic and Iron Plate take Bogscale, Iron Helm takes Deepchitin, and the rest of the ladder steps up one biome at a time from there. The deep materials keep their place at the top, where the recipes that want them are already past them.

* '''Your catalyst hoard is safe now.''' The Primal Catalyst has whispered "it will matter enormously, someday soon" since long before the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]] existed — but its only use, aiming Mutation Lines clutches, unlocks two walks in, and until today the walk wiped your hoard with the rest of the bank. No more: Catalysts now carry through EVERY ascension at full stack, the Ledger of the Door says so, and the item itself now promises it. Collect with confidence.

* '''No more berry lessons for veterans.''' Ascending resets the First Steps quest chain with the rest of the run — and the Getting Started coach read that as "brand-new player" and popped up with step 1 of 6. Anyone who has walked the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]] has definitionally finished the game once; the coach now checks your ascension count and never triggers past the first walk.

* '''Ascending no longer trips the save picker.''' Walking the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]] starts a fresh run on purpose — but the cloud-sync safety net read those small new numbers as "you lost 169 million XP" and recommended your own past. The sync brain now counts ASCENSIONS FIRST: your ascended save is recognized as the future it is, the picker stays closed after a walk, and if it ever does appear (real progress from another device) it shows an Ascensions row, explains which side walked the Door, and never red-flags your prestige as "far less progress".

* '''The door is a button now.''' "Approach the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]]", "Arm the Door" and "Walk through the Amber Door" rendered as bare lines of text — the most momentous press in the game gave no hint it could be pressed. All three now wear real button chrome: raised, amber-edged, glowing on hover, and the final walk sits dimmed until you arm it.

* '''Every species gets a job.''' For everyone past their FOURTH walk through the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], 35 species now wear a JOB TITLE on their card — a fact about the species, printed plainly with its stars: GATHER SPECIALISTS for the four hired-hand skills, HAULERS and PATHFINDERS for dispatch squads, and the EGG TENDER. Every one of the 13 species the min-maxers politely called dead tames carries at least two stars. Every tame matters again.

* SQUADS GET SMARTER, NOT BIGGER. The squad’s best HAULER brings home 8/16/25% more of a mission’s guaranteed haul; its best PATHFINDER cuts the trip 5/10/15%, already in the countdown you watch. Only the best of each counts — no stacking puzzle, and the dispatch sheet names exactly who and how much.

* THE OVIRAPTOR’S AURA, MADE OFFICIAL. Egg Tenders cut every egg-lay timer 15/25/40% by stars — and the Oviraptor formalizes at 2★, EXACTLY its famous −25%, so nothing changes for a single stable today. The egg ledger finally names who is tending.

* '''Groundwork for niches.''' The staircase’s sixth and FINAL system — the count-4 finale — is wired in under the floorboards: 35 species carry a JOB now (Gather specialists for the four hired-hand skills, Haulers and Pathfinders for dispatch squads, and the Tender), every one of the 13 forgotten tames among them. The honesty ceiling on hired hands becomes real engine math, and a new score row will pay 25 per niched species you keep. None of it is visible yet — the star chips and crew hints arrive with their own update.

== v0.53.0 — ITEM QUALITY — The Forge’s 1% And The Rite That Chases It ==

* '''The forge learns perfection.''' For everyone past their THIRD walk through the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], every cast now has four grades instead of three: 70% Common, 24% Fine, 5% Masterwork — and at the very top of the band, the 1% PRIMAL FORGED. A primal piece BEATS the Primal set piece in its slot, glows amber wherever its name appears, and is the only way past the gear the Door already gave you.

* '''The rite of refinement.''' Any forged piece you own — in the locker, on your back, or fitted to a dino — can be re-cast IN PLACE: pay 15,000 amber plus HALF the blueprint’s rare bill (exactly what salvage would return), or burn ONE Quality Whetstone instead, and the forge rolls the piece fresh. You keep the BETTER of the two casts, always — the Rite never hands back a downgrade, and your fitted gear never leaves its slot. No XP, no locker shuffle: the forge’s endgame is the amber, the mats, and the 1%.

* SEVEN TOP BLUEPRINTS, ONE PER SLOT. Valeglass Warblade, Riftwarden Aegis, Sky-Tempered Casque, Vale-Heart Cuirass, Stormstride Greaves, Moonshadow Saddle and Moonlit Barding — levels 88–99 across [[Smithing]] and [[Crafting]], sheets sold one-off at the [[Rifts#The Rift Bazaar|Rift Bazaar]] at count 3. Each one’s PRIMAL window is the only cast that out-rolls the matching Primal set piece; a masterwork merely ties it. The 90-to-99 forge grind finally has a reason.

* TWO LIFETIME TITLES ride the anvil — PRIMAL SMITH at your first primal cast, THE VALE’S OWN MAKER at six (one for every forged slot) — plus a new score row for your next walk: 75 points per lifetime primal cast.

* '''Groundwork for item quality.''' The staircase’s fifth system — the count-3 forge endgame — is wired in under the floorboards: the 1% PRIMAL FORGED grade at the very top of every blueprint’s range, the RITE OF REFINEMENT (re-cast a piece you own and keep the better roll, never the worse), the Quality Whetstone’s long-promised verb plus its third source, seven TOP-TIER BLUEPRINTS at levels 88–99, and two new lifetime titles. None of it is visible yet — the Rite and the new grade arrive on the forge with their own update.

* '''The bloodlines awaken.''' For everyone past their SECOND walk through the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], the [[Stable]]’s breeding pen learns lineage: every pairing tracks a MOTHER LINE and a FATHER LINE, each with its own visible counter to 20. Each clutch, each unfinished side has a 6% chance to mutate — +2, permanently, to one of the four stats. And HEALTH CAN FINALLY MUTATE.

* '''Aim the mutation.''' The Primal Catalyst — hoarded since the breeders first whispered about it — is burned at clutch start to land that clutch’s mutations on the stat YOU choose. The smart play writes itself: arm it on the guaranteed 12th clutch.

* '''Taming 90 opens a second pen.''' Two pairings at once, twice the line’s pace — the 90-to-99 grind finally has a parallel project.

* '''The dynasty is the summit.''' A side at 20 is finished; at a combined depth of 40 a pairing goes sterile — the 20×20 DYNASTY, worth about +80 on a chosen stat, is a real finish line, not another treadmill. Every dino’s card wears its line badge and its bloodline’s own colour; the detail card itemizes exactly what the line added, stat by stat.

* '''Groundwork for mutation lines.''' The staircase’s fourth system — the count-2 breeding redesign — is wired in under the floorboards: mother and father lines with visible counters to 20, a 6% chance per side per clutch, +2 flat to one of FOUR stats (health finally included), a forced mutation every 12th dry clutch of a pairing, the Primal Catalyst’s long-promised verb, a second breeding pen at [[Taming]] 90, and a real finish line at the 20×20 Dynasty. None of it is visible yet — the bloodline panel arrives on the [[Stable]] page with its own update.

== v0.51.0 — THE WHOLE JOURNEY — The Staircase’s Last Step ==

* '''The valley keeps your score.''' For everyone past the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], the Completion Log now opens with THE WHOLE JOURNEY: one honest percent for everything you have ever done — the plain average of five bars for SKILLS, MASTERY, COLLECTION, BESTIARY and FEATS, recomputed live from your save and never stored. The log counts everything the Census ignores, and gates nothing.

* '''Groundwork for completion log ranks.''' The last of the first staircase’s three systems is wired in under the floorboards: one overall completion percent averaging five live axes — Skills, [[Mastery]], Collection, Bestiary, Feats — with five ranks along it, two new lifetime titles, and the Banner of the Vale waiting at the summit. None of it is visible yet — the log ranks arrive on the completion page with their own update.

* '''The wardens are hiring.''' For everyone past the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], a bounty office opens on the [[Hunting]] page: hold one bounty at a time, pick your TIER, and the board deals the quarry — cull ten of them for a flat purse of WARDEN’S MARKS. The deck is fixed: reloading never rerolls a deal, and walking away burns it.

* FIVE TIERS climb with your [[Hunting]] level, exactly the ladder your new cycle re-climbs: Novice at level 1 (free, 21 Marks) · Seasoned 35 (95) · Veteran 55 (192) · Elite 75 (368) · Apex at 90 with the Vale guardian down (554). Taking is always free — each tier’s fee is the price of ABANDONING, never more than you hold.

* '''The hunt leans your way.''' While a bounty is live, its target pays +25% [[Hunting]] XP — the card shows the boosted number — and alpha prey cross your path half again as often. Your target’s card wears a bounty chip counting the cull.

* THE BOUNTY EXCHANGE spends Marks: the AUTO BOUNTY LEDGER (6,000 — finished bounties chain straight into the next), the WARDEN’S LONGSPEAR (3,000 — hunts against your target run 15% faster while it’s in hand), the TROPHY HARNESS (2,400 — alphas half again as often anywhere, worn), the WARDEN’S STANDARD (1,500 — +10 expedition score from the bank), Quality Whetstones and Primal Catalysts for the systems still coming, and Ration Crates of salted meat. Everything the Exchange sells survives future ascensions in the Trophy Case.

* '''Two lifetime titles.''' CULLER at 10,000 lifetime Marks and WARDEN OF THE VALE at 25,000. Lifetime means lifetime — the record spans every ascension, and neither can ever gate the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]].

* Below one ascension nothing changes — same hunts, same drops, same odds, byte for byte. The staircase’s next rung, Completion Log ranks, arrives as its own update.

* '''Groundwork for the bounty board.''' The second post-Ascension system is now wired in under the floorboards: the Warden’s Bounty Board’s five-tier ladder, its Marks currency, the Bounty Exchange and its gear, and two new lifetime titles. None of it is visible yet — every piece waits for a walk through the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], and the board itself arrives on the [[Hunting]] page with its own update.

* '''The first step of the staircase.''' For everyone who has walked the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], the three rift zones reveal what was always underneath: today’s four boss fights were only GAMMA RANK. Two harder cuts open above each — BETA at 1.5× difficulty paying 45 Rift Shards, ALPHA at 2× paying 75 — listed under their zone exactly like arena tiers, with mastery, tooltips and the battle screen all working unchanged.

* '''Harder does not mean unfair.''' A rank’s damage arrives in more, smaller strikes: the worst single hit at Alpha is the same size as at Gamma — the fight is longer, never spikier. That promise is enforced by the balance suite, not just written here.

* '''Earn your way up.''' Beta reveals after 8 wins against that boss; Alpha after 8 Beta wins. Every rank card names exactly where you stand — “Win it 8× to reveal — 3/8” — and every boss card now counts its wins.

* '''Rift sigils.''' Every Beta or Alpha attempt costs one sigil, minted automatically every 12 rift patrol wins — the rank row’s chip tracks your purse and the next mint. The Sigil Press (1,800 shards, one-off) quickens the mint to every 10.

* Below one ascension nothing changes — same fights, same drops, same odds, byte for byte. The staircase’s next rungs, the Warden’s Bounty Board and Completion Log ranks, arrive as their own updates.

* '''Groundwork for rift ranks.''' The machinery for the first post-Ascension system is now in place under the floorboards: Beta and Alpha versions of the four rift boss fights, the Rift Sigil economy that will meter attempts, the Riftheart Relic’s chase, and three new [[Rifts#The Rift Bazaar|Rift Bazaar]] offers. None of it is visible yet — every piece waits for your first walk through the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]], and the full reveal ships with its own update.

* '''The drover’s drills card told an old story.''' It still promised “each drill adds +5% of hands-on pace” — the worker-rates update trimmed the two drills to +2% and +1.5% a while ago, and the card never heard. It now reads the real number for the exact drill you are about to buy, straight from the data, so it can never drift again. The drills themselves never changed here — only the words. The “they work at X% now” half was always honest.

* '''The amber door opens.''' Primal Ascension is here: the valley’s true endgame. Once you have finished everything the Warden’s Census counts — every skill at 99, every species, the museum, every quest, every chronicle, every Guardian, arena tier and rift boss, and (almost) every achievement — you may walk through the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]]: your run resets, and permanent power follows you out the other side. Nobody is ever forced through; until you qualify, the new Ascension page is a completion tracker, not a button.

* '''The warden’s census.''' The Ascension page appears once all ten Guardians have fallen, showing a live checklist of 100% completion. Every line derives from the game’s real content, so future updates raise the bar for anyone who hasn’t crossed it. You only prove 100% once — after that, the Door stays earned forever, and later walks just need the Guardians re-felled and a rising score bar beaten.

* '''The trophy case.''' Nothing crafted is ever lost: The Towel, the Don’t-Panic Pendant, the Improbability Charm, every war banner, the depths relics, the quest trinkets and the rift uniques all survive the wipe and keep working.

* GROUNDWORK, NOT A CHANGE YOU CAN FEEL YET. Primal Ascension step three of four: the art. Twenty-eight new hand-drawn icons join the registry — the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]] sigil, the Amber Spark, all fifteen perks, the five tier medallions, and the six achievement marks — drawn in the same flat, palette-only style as every other icon in the game.

* GROUNDWORK, NOT A CHANGE YOU CAN FEEL YET. Primal Ascension step two of four: the numbers. The fifteen permanent perks and their Spark prices (40,000 for the full catalog), the five free tier bonuses, the score weights behind every row of the breakdown, and the Trophy Case list — read from the game’s own item data, so any future one-of-a-kind effect item joins it automatically.

* The balance report gained a whole section grading the new economy — the catalog total, every speed cap, the honest gap between the catalog and a lifetime of Sparks, and the rising bar’s exact ladder — so none of these numbers can drift quietly.

* THE BLUEPRINT AND GEAR ROLLS ADDED IN v0.47.6 GO FROM 0.5% TO 5% (dev note: “lets make it a 5% drop rate”). Ten times more likely on both rolls — about one win in ten now pays something rare instead of one in a hundred. [[Rivals]] and outposts both.

* EVERY ICON IN THE GAME IS NOW 20% LARGER (dev note: they “seem a little small”). Sidebar art, action-card headers, bank tiles, item chips, battle badges — all of it. 20% is the exact point where the art grows and the layout does not: sidebar rows measure the same 44px they always did, so nothing reflows and the same number of entries fit on screen. Pushing on to 35% started making rows taller, so it stops here.

== v0.47.2 — A Frozen Tab Can’t Bury Your Save ==

* A PHONE TAB THAT SAT FROZEN FOR A DAY COULD WAKE UP JUST LONG ENOUGH TO SAVE ITS DAY-OLD MEMORY OVER YOUR REAL SAVE (Shae’s report, Aug 12) — the next boot then trusted the buried copy, greeted you with “away for over a day”, and pushed it to the cloud. Three locks now stop it: the one-tab guard remembers a newer session even after that session has CLOSED, so a thawed old tab freezes instead of writing its goodbye; every save now refuses outright to overwrite a newer one; and boot takes a second opinion — if the cloud copy out-leads this device on progress when it shouldn’t, the “which save?” choice opens instead of a silent push.

* A tab caught behind like this now says so honestly: “This tab fell behind — nothing from this tab was saved”, with Play Here reloading from your newest save. No more claiming it saved when it deliberately didn’t.

* v0.47.0 MEASURED THE CREW AGAINST A PLAYER WITH NO TOOLS, NO MASTERY, NO GEAR (beta report, same day): against a real endgame player — who moves ~2× that fast — a maxed camp landed nearer 1.3 players’ worth than the promised 2–3. The yardstick is now YOU as you actually play: tiers climb 1 / 1.35 / 1.7 / 2 and Ages ×1.2 → ×2, so a fully built crew lands ~2.7 real players’ worth. Roughly double yesterday’s rates, still nowhere near the old firehose.

* GEAR PAST +30 KIT PAYS AGAIN (beta report: “no need to bother beyond bronze”): the hard cap becomes a soft one — +1% pace per point to +30, then +1% per 10 points beyond. A 195-kit worker now works at +46.5% instead of +30%, the deepest kit in the game at +54%. Sentinels still count every point.

* The tooltip pile shows the soft cap honestly: “kit 195 → +46.5 (soft cap)”, and the numbers still multiply to exactly the clock you see.

* YOUR CAMP GATHERED TOO MUCH, TOO FAST (a dev call): a fully built crew was hauling roughly 288 players’ worth of goods an hour. The whole workforce now tops out around 2–3 players’ worth — camp automation is a strong second pair of hands again, not a replacement for playing.

* '''Workers now match each node’s own pace.''' A crew member works at a % of YOUR speed on that exact action — deep, slow nodes take them proportionally longer, exactly like they take you longer. Before, the deepest nodes were bizarrely the cheapest to automate; that inversion is gone.

* The [[Tribe]] page tells the honest story: each worker’s tooltip now shows “crew pace X% of yours”, every multiplier in the pile, and the exact clock on their current node.

* '''Dino hired hands.''' The two Drover’s Drills now add +0.02/+0.015 (was +0.05 each), so a fully drilled, max-veteran, best-species dino tops out at ~40% of your pace instead of ~49%. Undrilled dinos never moved. Drill prices unchanged.

* THE SMALL STEAM ICON — on the “Linked to Steam” row and the sync-reminder toast — is now Valve’s actual mark (the same official art the buttons wear), not our hand-drawn stand-in. One glyph, everywhere, the real one.

* THE DESKTOP HAS ONE DOOR NOW (a dev flow pass): Settings → Cloud shows just “Create a Primal Idle account” — no separate Steam button. Clicking it opens the signup form directly, with NO registration code on a Steam desktop: your purchase IS the code.

* '''Accounts are born connected.''' A desktop signup carries your Steam ticket, and the server verifies the purchase, links your Steam, and records the entitlement the moment the account is created — Settings shows “Linked to Steam — Account ID” from the first boot, and it stays through every restart.

* No more silently-created accounts: “Continue with Steam” now signs in ONLY through an existing link — an unlinked Steam gets plain words (“create your account first”) instead of an invisible throwaway account.

== v0.45.2 — Once It’s Connected, It Stays Connected ==

* “LINKED TO STEAM” NOW SURVIVES A RESTART (dev report): the game asks the server for your link on every boot instead of remembering it only until you closed the window — the linked row, with your Account ID, is there on relaunch and on a fresh install alike, web included.

* '''Linking is now one clear ritual.''' The button says “Link with Steam”, and clicking it asks for your Primal Idle email and password right below — the server checks your Steam purchase and your credentials, links, and that’s that. The same form serves a brand-new device.

* Typing the account you’re already signed into just verifies your password and links — no surprise “which save?” dialog for a link that changes no save.

* FOUND LIVE IN TESTING, FIXED THE SAME HOUR: before launch nobody can pass the “bought it on Steam” check — including dev accounts — so the new link gate refused the very accounts building it. The server now honors an exempt list for the dev and playtest accounts, and every refusal is logged with the exact verdict and Steam ID so the next mystery answers itself.

* The “Too many attempts” wall is gone for normal play: each Steam action now has its own allowance (30 per 15 minutes instead of 10 shared across sign-in, linking, purchase checks and email attach) — the desktop’s own background sign-ins no longer eat the budget your buttons need.

* CLICKED “CONTINUE WITH STEAM” BEFORE SIGNING IN? No longer a dead end: type your web account’s email and password into Settings → Cloud → “Add an email”, and when the game says that account already exists it now OFFERS it — one click signs you into your real account and brings your Steam along, purchase and cloud saves included.

* The same heal works from the sign-in screen: “I already play on the web — sign in”, then accept the link offer — it no longer refuses because of the throwaway account your first click created.

* Nothing lost, nothing guessed: the throwaway’s save is filed into your account’s “Restore an older cloud copy” list, and when both sides hold real progress the conflict dialog asks YOU which run continues — never a timestamp.

* '''Linking is for owners.''' If the Steam account hasn’t bought Primal Idle (or only borrows it via Family Sharing or a free weekend), the link buttons now answer “Buy Primal Idle on Steam to link this Steam account” with the store link — and after a successful Steam sign-in or link, a notice reminds you to run a Sync now so Steam gets your latest save.

* “LINK THIS STEAM ACCOUNT” (Settings → Cloud) and “LINK ACCOUNTS” (the first-run link offer) now wear the same official dark Steam dress as the sign-in buttons — white Steam mark, Steam’s own dark, no orange and no green (a dev pass, fourth sweep).

* “ADD EMAIL” on a Steam-born account goes stone-grey with the PI monogram, matching “Create a Primal Idle account” — because that is exactly what it does: it gives your Steam account its Primal Idle side for web & mobile.

* “CONTINUE WITH STEAM” now wears the real thing (a dev pass, third sweep): the official white Steam lockup on Steam’s own dark — no more orange — in Settings → Cloud and on the desktop sign-in screen alike, and the two can no longer drift apart.

* “LINK THIS STEAM ACCOUNT” — in Settings and in the first-run link offer — now carries the Steam mark like its sign-in siblings (a dev pass, second sweep).

* SETTINGS → CLOUD, DRESSED PROPERLY (a dev pass): the Steam button wears a truer Steam mark, the account button carries the campfire and says what it is — “Create a Primal Idle account for web/mobile saves” — and once you’re signed in through Steam the row shows your Account ID so support questions start with the number on screen.

* '''Under the hood.''' The server’s sanity check on Steam sign-in tickets capped them at half the size Steam actually issues, so every genuine ticket was refused as bad-ticket before Steam was even asked. The cap now fits real tickets with room to spare — and a refused shape gets logged with its length so it can never masquerade as a Steam verdict again.

* NO MORE LOGIN WALL ON DESKTOP (a dev call): the Steam build now opens directly into the game on your local save — Steam Cloud already roams it. Cloud sign-in and Steam account linking live in Settings → Cloud, including a one-click “Continue with Steam” right there.

* '''The sign-in screen got its act together.''' Choosing “Continue with Steam” no longer shows the email form underneath it, the button wears a proper drawn Steam mark, and on desktop you can always back out with “Keep playing without an account”.

* '''Under the hood.''' “Continue with Steam” was refused with bad-ticket — Steam bakes an identity string into each sign-in ticket, and the server has to present the SAME string when verifying. It now does, for sign-in, linking, and the purchase check alike.

* SIGN IN WITH STEAM (desktop): the first-run screen now leads with “Continue with Steam” — one click and your account exists, no email, no password, no registration wall inside a purchase. Already play on the web? Pick “I already play on the web”, sign in as usual, and the game offers — never assumes — to link the two so purchases and cloud saves are shared.

* '''Steam-born accounts can go web.''' Settings → Cloud gains “Add an email to play on the web”, upgrading a Steam-created account with a real address and password — same save, same progress, now on any browser.

* STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS COULD SIT OUT A WHOLE SESSION IN SILENCE (dev report, first desktop runs on Windows and Mac). The bridge refused to write until Steam handed over the player’s stats — a handshake the current Steam client may never volunteer on its own. The desktop build now asks for those stats itself the moment Steam connects, so the write gate opens every time and the boot sweep can restore your whole earned history.

* NINE ACHIEVEMENT TRACKS NO LONGER WEAR THE SAME ART (dev report, from the Steam build-out). Three tracks shared one star, two shared a medal, two a compass, two a basket — and Warband’s banner was a twin of Raider’s flag. Sage now carries a scroll, Perfect Cast a starmetal blade, Drillmaster the drill whistle, Naturalist a leaf, Delegator the work ledger, Muster the worker quarters, Herdmaster the grand stable and Warband a captured stockade — every one drawn from art the valley already owned. The Log page and the Steam badges both pick it up.

* THE OUTFITTED TRIAL WEARS A SADDLE instead of borrowing the fleeing runner’s boots — equipping gear on a dino finally looks like it.

* FORGE THEM AT SMITHING 91 IN THE ASHEN PEAKS, from 3 Obsidian, a Skysteel Ore and a Valehide. They give 14 defense — above the Obsidian Helm and Bulwark, below the Plate, which stays the tier’s best single piece as the hardest thing in it to make.

* THE DISPATCH PICKER NOW SHOWS WHAT THE MISSION BRINGS BACK, ON DESKTOP TOO (tester report). Picking between eleven missions on a wide screen, all you got was a name and a difficulty number — the haul was only ever spelled out on the phone, in the mission sheet. The chosen mission now prints its guaranteed haul, with your squad’s multiplier already applied, and it does so on both screens: the phone’s sheet closes the moment you pick, so it lost the same information one tap later.

* EVERY MARKET CARD NOW PRINTS THE RANGE ITS PRICE MOVES INSIDE, so "Surplus" and "In demand" stop being moods and become numbers you can measure today’s quote against. A Deep Sapphire pays between 156 and 312 depending on the day; now you can see that before deciding whether to hold or sell.

* THE WANDERER AT THE FIRE NOW TELLS YOU WHAT THEY ARE GOOD AT BEFORE YOU DECIDE (player request). Every villager is born with a knack for one job, and until now you only found out after welcoming them in u2014 so Welcome/Turn away was a coin flip you could not read. The fire says it plainly now: "a knack for [[Mining]], +5% pace on that work". Same wanderer, same knack, same everything; you just get to see it while the choice is still yours.

* A RIVAL YOUR BLOW CANNOT GET THROUGH NEVER FALLS u2014 and the card says so plainly instead of quoting you a number. Come properly armed and nothing has changed: every duel is exactly the length it always was, and the loot, the cooldowns and the Apex track are untouched. Come under-armed and you will feel it, in time and in blood.

* '''A rival you cannot hurt no longer falls eventually.''' Duels used to end after a fixed number of bouts decided by your war score u2014 which meant any raid could be ground out if you were patient enough, no matter what you were carrying. [[Rivals]] now have real armour, and your blow has to get through it: land a strike that their guard turns aside completely and they simply never go down, while every bout still costs you blood. It is the same rule hunts and expeditions have followed since the gear wall arrived; raids were the last place you could win by waiting.

* AND THE FIGHT NOW ANSWERS TO YOUR WEAPON, NOT JUST YOUR SCORE. A rivalu2019s bar falls by what you actually hit them for, so a sharper blade genuinely shortens the duel and a heavily armoured rival genuinely lengthens it. Come to a raid at the gear the ladder expects and NOTHING has changed u2014 every duel is exactly the length it always was. Turn up under-armed and you will feel it in time and in blood, which is the point.

* The rivals board and the scouting sheet quote the duel you would actually fight, armour and all u2014 not the old score-only estimate.

* THE HEALTH BAR ABOVE A RIVAL IS A REAL BAR NOW, not a picture of the bout counter. It used to be drawn by working backwards from how many bouts you had left, over a health number invented purely for the drawing. The fight itself owns it now: the rival steps up with their own health, it falls as you land bouts on them, and the next one steps up whole. Nothing about how long a duel takes has changed by a single bout u2014 this is the same fight, told truthfully.

* GROUNDWORK, NOT A CHANGE YOU CAN FEEL YET. Every rival fighter in the game now has a real combat block u2014 health to drain, guard your blow has to get through, and a swiftness they slip with u2014 90 of them across all 16 tribes. Nothing reads those numbers yet, so duels play exactly as they did today; this is the first of four steps towards rivals being fought the same way hunts and expeditions are, rather than counted out.

* '''Ticking auto-eat no longer shunts your half of the screen downwards.''' The battle view is meant to read as two matched columns — you on the left, the beast on the right, their cards starting on the same line. Turning Auto-eat on added the “next bite” bar to your side only, which pushed your Food card and everything under it 22 pixels below the enemy card, so the whole screen sat slightly crooked for anyone playing with Auto-eat on — which is most people. Both sides now hold the same line whether Auto-eat is on or off.

* '''A siege you cannot win no longer quotes you a number with seventeen digits in it.''' Every bout of a siege costs your war party blood, and a wounded member swings for nothing — so if the fort wounds your whole team, the team’s strike drops to zero and the defender can never be felled. The card said that out loud in the worst way available: “falls in 9007199254740991 bouts”. It now says the defender NEVER falls, and that this team has no strike left in it — which is your cue to withdraw and rest them rather than feed the fort more blood.

* AND THE OUTPOST LIST WARNS YOU BEFORE YOU MARCH, not after. Pick a strike team who are all still nursing wounds and the fort’s line now reads “never falls” instead of quoting the same enormous number as a plan. Hovering says why: every member of this team is wounded, so it lands nothing — rest them, or pick others.

* A TRAIL RUN YOU CANNOT WIN NOW SAYS SO, INSTEAD OF SHOWING YOU NONSENSE. Last version taught a hopeless HUNT to stop pretending; expeditions and delves never got the same lesson, and they were in worse shape. Walk into a run whose guard your strike cannot get through and the beast’s health read “NaN”, its bar drew as a broken sliver, and the line under your health promised the Triceratops “falls in NaNs”. Every one of those now reads the plain truth: the beast sits at its full health, the bar is full, and the line says it NEVER falls — nothing gets through.

* '''And the pantry clock came back from infinity.''' On those same runs the Food card said your food lasts “Infinityd” — which read like good news and was the exact opposite, since a run with no end is precisely where you want to know how long you can stand there being bitten. It now gives you the real number: on a hopeless Grasslands patrol, 1h 47m against a 20h away cap, with the warning that you can die before you get back. That is the number that decides whether it is safe to close the tab.

* THE HEALTH BAR ON A TRAIL RUN IS NOW THE ENGINE’S OWN, not a second copy drawn from the clock. It used to work out how far along the fight was by multiplying your progress by the number of exchanges — fine on a run that ends, meaningless on one that does not, which is exactly where the NaN came from. The view now reads the same bar the fight is emptying, so what you watch and what is happening cannot drift apart. Hunts were fixed this way last version; the trail has caught up.

* '''A hunt you cannot win no longer looks like one you are winning.''' If your strike could not get through a creature’s hide, the card still put on the whole show: the beast’s health bar slammed from full to EMPTY once every interval, the words “next Woolly Bison winds up” slid past underneath, and a fresh one stepped up — over and over, exactly like a kill on a loop. Nothing was dying. That empty bar was the wind-up animation blanking it, not damage; the creature was standing at full health the entire time. The wind-up is a between-KILLS flourish, so a hunt with no kill in it now plays none at all: the card sits there, dead still, showing the beast at full health, which is the truth and always was.

* '''And the clock stopped promising a kill it could not deliver.''' The line under your health read “9.0s per kill” on a creature that was never going to fall — not a glitchy number you would question, just the beast’s ordinary rate sitting there looking like a promise. It reads “never falls — nothing gets through” now. Between those two, the game was quietly telling you the truth in two small grey stat rows while showing you a kill in the two biggest moving things on the screen; both of those now say the same thing as the footnotes.

* AND A HUNT IS PRICED LIKE A TRAIL NOW, NOT A DELIVERY. Your weapon used to decide only WHETHER a creature could die, never how fast: a keeper scraping one point past a Woolly Bisonu2019s hide killed it exactly as quickly as one who could halve it in a blow, because the kill landed on a timer either way. The creatureu2019s health is real now and your strike takes it down swing by swing, so the kill takes as long as the fight actually takes. COME PROPERLY ARMED AND NOTHING MOVES u2014 four swings is the line every hunt is tuned to, and any weapon the biome hands you is comfortably over it, so every hunting rate in the game is exactly what it was. Come under-armed and you pay in time: a stone blade at the Woolly Bison drags each kill from 9 seconds to 23. Come with nothing and it never falls at all. The Falls-in row on the card tells you the swing count before you commit, and the health bar you watch is now literally the bar the hunt is emptying u2014 not a drawing of one.

* '''And the free ride ends earlier than it did.''' The hide every wild creature wears got twice as thick (dev call, after seeing the first pass): bare hands can still fell the Compy, Titanis, Gallimimus and Pachy u2014 the whole starting ladder u2014 and stop dead at the Wild Raptor instead of carrying you all the way to the Cave Crocodile. They are slower at it than they were, mind: past the Compy a bare-handed kill drags, and the first stone blade you knap puts every one of those four back on its listed time. u201cBring a weaponu201d is a lesson you now learn at level 40 rather than level 60, and it keeps mattering: a stone blade will no longer scratch a Dire Mammoth at all, where before it managed a very slow kill. As ever this only touches keepers who turned up under-equipped u2014 the weapons each biome hands you clear its own hunts with room to spare, and nothing about a properly armed keeperu2019s rate has moved by a single point.

* '''The museum gets its own name.''' Its banner read “Natural History [[Museum]]” — a real-world name on a valley that has never been anywhere near natural history. It is the Primal History Museum now.

* '''The ledger pays all the way to the top now.''' The foreman’s clock used to bottom out at every 30 minutes — which the 5-minute shave reached at Ledger 14, while a fully aged camp can build all the way to 17. Levels 15, 16 and 17 were three eras of upgrades that changed nothing, and they land exactly where a big camp needs him most: a stockpile that fills in twenty-odd minutes spills everything after that, no matter how much you have paid. The floor is now every 15 minutes, which is where level 17 lands — so 15 runs every 25 minutes, 16 every 20, and a maxed Ledger every 15. Every level you can build now pays.

* BUY ALL, TO MATCH SELL ALL (Keltar). Every trade card now has a Buy all beside Buy 1: it takes the trader’s whole remaining stock of that good, or as much of it as your amber covers, in one click. Hover (or long-press) it and it tells you exactly what it is about to do — “Buy all 13 left today — 1,014 amber” — and when it is greyed out it says which wall you hit: sold out for the day, not enough amber for even one, or a full bank with no room for a new stack.

* THE FOREMAN NOW SHOWS HIS CLOCK (Keltar). The Stockpile card counts down to his next run — “the foreman banks everything in 12m — he comes round every 30m” — right beside the spill warning, since the two are the same question from opposite ends: does the shelf fill before he empties it? The Foreman’s Ledger card carries the same live line, so you can read the cadence your level actually fires on instead of working it out from the ladder. And that ladder’s wording was genuinely misleading: “shave 5 minutes each, down to every 30 minutes” never said WHERE the floor lands, so level 15 looked like it should be 25 minutes. It bottoms out at level 14, and the description now says so.

* '''Delving was showing a hunt’s loot.''' “Loot this fight” is one running tally, and only hunts and tames ever fill it — but the box was drawn on all four battle pages, so the meat and bones from whatever you last hunted (or were still hunting in the background) sat there under the [[Delving]] header, counting up beside a cave you had not entered. Nothing was mis-rolled and no drop table was crossed: the cave was simply wearing another fight’s chips. The tally now belongs to the page that earned it — [[Hunting]] and [[Taming]] keep theirs, and Delving, [[Expeditions]] and [[Rivals]] show nothing until they have loot of their own.

* THE M99 PERK IS +25%, NOT ZERO. Two of you are already at M99 and the pip you hover said “+0 primary yield” — a leftover from the patch that replaced the old flat +1 with a +25% carry. The engine has been paying the full +25% the whole time (measured on a real save: 272 crystal from 200 swings, exactly +10% doubles, +25% carry, +1% milestone). Only the words were wrong, and now they name the real number.

* EXPEDITION MASTERY SCALES, AND THE TOOLTIP FINALLY SAYS SO. M50/M99 on an expedition, arena or cave pay 3% of that row's difficulty, not a flat +3/+6 — on the hardest Alpha Arena that is +45 and +45, which the card had been describing as +3. The 2× countdown also stops claiming “every 10th” once a Skill Milestone tightens it to every 8th: the words and the number beside them now change together.

* '''The rift is now a true chain.''' The Warden’s fall opens the Deep Rift, the Twin Sovereigns open the Riftheart, and the Core answers only once the Colossus lies broken — each locked door names the boss that holds it. Zones you had already fought into stay open: your patrol wins there are proof enough. And every rift boss’s FIRST clear now fights at base difficulty — Guardian Heat is a repeat-farming tax, so a fresh Colossus victory no longer heats your first crack at the Core.

* Two things a full bank can no longer eat: a RIVAL FIRST WIN and your ARTIFACT PITY. First-win raids refuse to start until the guaranteed spoils — the signature piece and the tribe’s sure loot — have room, and the scout names exactly how many slots to clear. And a cave artifact that converted because the bank was full no longer resets the pity counter: an artifact you never held is a dry win, so the streak keeps building until one actually lands in your bank.

* The bounty board was the last page still pinning emoji to its cards. Every contract now wears the game’s own drawings: a cull shows the beast you’re hunting, a gathering or forge order shows its skill’s mark, a patrol shows its biome, and the tame, harvest and trade bounties wear their own systems’ art. No new pictures needed — the board just learned to use the ones the rest of the game already owns.

* The "What’s new" list you are reading right now ran its text and dates all the way to the edge, where Mac and phone scrollbars draw on top of the content — the release dates sat under the scroll thumb. The list now keeps a clear lane for the scrollbar. (Also: version numbers now roll the minor at 100 — after 0.36.101 comes 0.37.0, which is why this entry is one.)

* The Stockpile card’s "fills in about…" timer only counted what your tribe makes — never what your crafting lines eat. Run a conversion chain (Macenzie’s report: ore → ingots → hammers and spears) and the card could claim 3 minutes when the first shelf really filled in 15–20. The timer now walks the camp’s actual pipeline — every gather, every batch, what each line consumes from the shelves and then the bank, full-shelf pauses, wounded workers, palisade repairs, even the Foreman’s Ledger sweeping shelves clean on its rounds — so the time you see is the time it happens.

* Desktop gets the same info bubble phones just learned to hold for. Hovering anything labelled — a stat badge, a gear piece, a weather chip — now shows the styled popup instead of the browser’s slow plain tooltip: the same look as on phones, quicker to appear, and it can never show twice. Clicks behave exactly as before.

* The first time you touch the game on a phone, a one-time hint says so: hold any label to see what it means. While a hold is in flight the browser’s own long-press text-selection stays out of the way; text boxes still select normally.

* A tribe worker’s duty used to read “~1 gather / 11s” — a clock with no cargo. Each working tribemate now shows what they actually deliver: the item and about how many of it per hour, straight from the same numbers the stockpile fills on. Tap the rate for the whole story — what one gather or batch pays, a crafting line’s per-batch bill, and the clock factor by factor: crew pace, their tier, your Age, furnaces on a line, and the +1% per kit point their gear adds. Now you can see at a glance why the Vanguard Elite out-gathers the Novice, and what another pick or plate would buy.

* Workers also warn when their shelf is full: a red “shelf full” chip appears the moment their item hits the stockpile cap, because a full shelf spills gathers (and holds crafting lines) until you Collect.

* Raids now open with a scouting report. [[Rivals]] carry some of the game’s highest stakes, yet the Raid button used to throw you straight into the gauntlet. It now shows the whole picture first: every fighter’s own win chance and what their blade really does after your Guards and pack soak take their share, the expected number of bouts and roughly what that costs in food, whether you could survive the hardest single hit in their line-up, what a first win guarantees, and how many free bank stacks the spoils want. A warning spells out that raids are live-only — leaving retreats the war-party and resets the gauntlet — and nothing starts until you say so.

* The escape chance on an expedition card was missing your Scouts. Every Scout marching with you adds +10% to the flee roll on a lost run — but the card worked the number out again from pack speed alone, so a scouted party escaped more often than the figure in front of you said it would. The scouting report and the battle view now read the engine’s own flee number, Scouts and the 75% ceiling included, so the odds you are shown are the odds that get rolled.

* Fleeing also stopped over-promising. The line said pack speed slipped you away “unharmed”, when an escape still costs half the damage a rout would have dealt and still brings nothing home — what it really buys is the pack’s skin. It now says so: half the damage, no pack injury, no loot.

* The [[Rivals]] ladder was still showing emoji. Fourteen tribes now have their own hand-drawn emblem in the game’s own style: the Mudfoot’s muddy print, the Berry Snatchers’ stolen cluster, a Fern Gully frond, a river-worn Riverbone, a Thornscale barb, the Reavers’ felling axe, the Swampjaw’s toothy snout, an Ashwalker cone, the Obsidian Order’s knapped blade, a Frostfang tooth, a Skyplume quill, the Ember Court’s glowing crown, the Vale Wardens’ warding spiral, and the Apex Accord’s linked rings. Mostly Harmless keeps its own logo. The marks show on the ladder cards and on the raid-spoils lines.

* Your tribe’s Stockpile tells you when it is about to overflow. The Stockpile card now says how long the camp has before its first good caps out, warns under an hour, and turns red once it is full and throwing work away. The "while you were away" summary counts the goods that spilled, so an overnight stall is something you can see instead of something you have to notice.

* QoL: the area sections on the [[Expeditions]] and [[Hunting]] pages now fold — tap an area’s header to tuck its cards away (the header stays, with a count of what’s hidden), tap again to reopen. Your folds are remembered on this device, and the area jump bar reopens a folded area it takes you to. Much less thumb-scrolling on phones.

* Every hunt on the [[Hunting]] page now shows a drawn portrait of its prey instead of an emoji — thirteen new silhouettes (Gallimimus, Kentrosaurus, Daeodon, Deinosuchus, the pale Cave Crocodile, Arthropleura, Xiphactinus, Woolly Bison, Cave Hyena, Acrocanthosaurus, Teratornis, the Vale Stalker and Purussaurus), the Titanis wearing the Scarred One’s silhouette without its crown, and the wild Compy, Raptor, Utahraptor and Pachy wearing the same species portraits you know from the taming page. Emoji stay on only as hidden fallbacks.

* Every skill page now opens on a hand-drawn daytime scene of that skill — a banner across the top with the skill name on it, drawn in the same flat style and palette as the game’s icons. The level bar and [[Mastery]] Pool sit in a tighter header beneath it, and on phones the action cards stack in a single column so nothing squeezes.

* Polish: the bonus chips at the top of skill pages — the daily sky boost, your hired hand’s buff and its recent gathers — now sit on solid dark pills so they stay readable over the bright scenes, and the sky-boost pill hugs its text instead of stretching across the page.

* Fixed: the Heal button on a pack dino’s card did nothing unless the dino was fully injured. A dino hurt on a hunt or expedition — say 40/46 HP — lit the button up, but clicking it silently refused. Salves and Primal Balms now also restore a dino that’s merely below full health, so your pack can be topped up on the trail. (Pack dinos still don’t rest-regen — resting only happens at home, off duty — but now the poultice actually works on them.)

* Fixed: a dino’s "pts" on the Player page now match what it actually adds to your expedition strength. The Player-page number left out the bonus an ATTACK-role dino gets, so it under-counted your best attackers; it now uses the exact same calculation the battle screen does. ([[Stable]]-page pts are unchanged — those never claimed to include a role bonus.)

* Under the hood: the way action cards, the battle sheet and other live numbers stay up to date was rebuilt on a single, reliable trigger instead of ~40 hand-written "watch this value" hints scattered across the screens. Those hints were easy to get wrong — a missing one was behind the train-card freeze fixed a couple of versions back — and they’re now gone. You won’t see any difference except that these numbers can no longer silently go stale.

* The game now does noticeably less background work while it idles. It refreshes what’s on screen about eight times a second — but it used to rebuild the data for EVERY page each time, including all the pages you weren’t looking at: the dispatch board, dig sites, the food list, and every [[Trading Post]] row, rebuilt around 30,000 times an hour each for nothing. Those now refresh only while their page is open (and rebuild instantly the moment you switch to it — you can’t tell the difference by looking). Measured, this roughly halves the game’s steady background work, which on a phone means less warmth and battery drain from a tab you keep open all day. Nothing about what any page SHOWS changed, and the Trading Post tab still appears the instant trading unlocks.

* Under the hood: the cloud-save logic that decides whether an upload is safe — including the "is this the save I sent earlier?" check that prevents your own progress from ever being mistaken for a conflict — now has direct automated tests covering the exact tricky sequences behind past sync issues. Nothing changes in how the game plays; this is a safety net so those paths can’t quietly regress in a future update. One tidy-up rode along: signing in now fetches your cloud save through the same code path every other cloud action uses.

* Fixed: while the game is still checking your other devices at startup, it no longer re-saves in the middle of that check. On a slow connection, the 30-second autosave could stamp the freshly caught-up state over the save the check was about to read — so the "which save do you want?" comparison showed this device pumped up by its away-time catch-up and could recommend it over genuinely newer progress from another device, and the routine silent catch-up could turn into an unnecessary question. Saving and uploading now wait the few seconds the check needs (never more than a minute, even if the network hangs), then resume as normal. A slow check also no longer has its answer accidentally thrown away by the autosave’s retry — which used to keep cloud saving switched off for an extra cycle on every slow-network start.

* Fixed: the game no longer fills your browser’s storage with old safety copies, and it TELLS you if saving to this device ever starts failing. Every import, cloud-conflict choice and cross-device catch-up keeps a safety copy of the save it replaces — but nothing ever cleaned them up, so devices that sync a lot crept toward the browser’s storage limit. Only the five newest copies are kept now. If storage does fill up anyway, autosaves used to fail in complete silence — closing the tab could lose your session with no warning at all. A clear banner now appears the moment a save fails, stays until saving works again, and clears itself once space is freed. And a full device can no longer block CLOUD saving either — the cloud push (which needs no local space) now always goes through.

* Fixed: if the game failed to save an incoming cloud copy to this device — a full browser storage quota is the usual culprit — it could be left believing the copy HAD landed. The silent cross-device catch-up (open the game on a second device and it quietly adopts the newer save) and the Settings restore both recorded "this device now carries that version" before actually writing it; when the write failed, the next launch trusted that record and could push this device’s older save over the newer one without asking. The order is now write-first: the record only updates after the copy is really on disk, and a failed write leaves things exactly as they were — the game plays on, shows a sync error, and the next launch asks the honest "which save?" question instead of guessing. A failed import also no longer leaves the session silently unable to save at all.

== v0.36.73 — A Failed Cloud Check Can’t Overwrite Your Save ==

* Fixed: a cloud check that FAILS — offline boot, flaky wake, a server blip — no longer lets this device overwrite your cloud save blind. The game used to treat a failed check like a finished one and start pushing; on a device that didn’t know your cloud history (a fresh browser, or a shared computer where someone else signed in last) that push could bury progress made elsewhere without the usual "which save do you want?" question. Now a failed check keeps uploads on hold and quietly retries in the background — your game keeps playing and saving locally the whole time — and uploads only resume once the game has actually seen your cloud save. The same hardening stops a misbehaving network from ever LOOKING like an empty account.

* Fixed: signing in WITHOUT refreshing the page now keeps cloud saving fully alive. Signing in — or registering, or finishing a password reset — from the in-game login synced your save once, but the background protection stayed off until the next full page load: the every-minute cloud push, the goodbye save when the tab closes, and the freshness check when the game wakes from sleep were all silently dead, even while the sync chip said "synced". That was every new player’s first session. All of it now switches on the moment you sign in, and signing out now fully switches it off.

* Fixed: the Player page’s "hunts N% faster" pack banner overstated your pack’s real effect by roughly 1.7× — it was computed with an old formula the game engine never actually used. The banner now reads the exact formula your hunts run on, so the number you see is the speedup you get. Example: attack 30 with a 50-attack pack really hunts 14% faster — the banner used to claim 23%. Only the displayed number changed; hunt speeds themselves were always computed correctly.

* Fixed: DIG crates now respect the bank cap. A dig finishing against a full bank could push you one slot over, which silently stopped your action and blocked every restart with nothing saying why — the same lockout v0.36.51 fixed for eggs and dispatches, through a path that fix never covered. Crate goods a full bank can’t hold are now skipped and listed on the welcome-back screen like every other skipped drop. SKULLS and pity PAGES are deliberately different: those always land, squeezing at most one slot over, because losing a first skull or your pity progress would be worse than a briefly over-full bank.

* Fixed: a save whose RUNNING ACTION was removed from the game in an update could no longer start — the game hit an error on every load until you wiped. It now boots normally: the vanished action simply stops, a notice tells you why, and everything else in the save is untouched. The same protection now covers a WORKER (or a very old save’s companion) whose species left the game — the dino stays in your stable, just unassigned, instead of the save being reset.

* '''Drink potions on their own skill page.''' Each skill now has a little POTIONS shelf at the top with that skill's own potions as tap-to-drink bottles — Lumber Tonic on [[Logging]], Miner's Brew on [[Mining]], crop tonics on the Farm, and so on — so you no longer have to open the [[Bank]] to buff the thing you're doing. The bottle shows how many you have; drinking one flips it to a live countdown; a potion you haven't brewed yet sits greyed with a “Brew in [[Alchemy]]” hint.

* '''Expeditions tell you how to unlock the next area.''' A locked region used to just say “Unlock Coral Shallows” without saying how; it now names the boss that opens it — e.g. “Unlock Coral Shallows — beat the Scorched King” — so it's clear you need to defeat the previous area's guardian.

* '''And the zone boss shows both of its gates.''' A guardian card now lists the full path up front — “Unlock Murkwater Swamp — beat the Old Growth Tyrant” AND “Beat 0/25 patrols to unlock” — so you can see you must open the zone and then win 25 patrols there before the boss appears. (The patrol line used to hide until the zone was already open, and read “Clear … (0/25 patrols won)”.)

* '''A steadier start.''' The game now shows a brief “Loading Primal Idle…” screen while it boots instead of a blank page, and if it ever fails to start — a corrupted save, a misbehaving browser extension — you now get a readable recovery screen (your save left untouched) instead of a white screen. Browsers with JavaScript turned off get a clear note explaining the game needs it.

* '''‘Use the cloud save’ re-checks first.''' If the choice screen sat open while another device saved again, picking the cloud copy now re-fetches the latest first, so you never adopt a copy that's already been superseded.

* '''The “two saves found” screen uses the real icons.''' The "working on…" line for each save showed a plain emoji for the action instead of the same drawn icon you see in-game. It now renders each action's own SVG.

* '''The completion log is all svg now.''' The achievements board, the creature and guardian rosters, and the item/creature detail modals used to render raw emoji across headings, badges and placeholders (🏆 🟠 ❓ 👑 ❤️ ⚔️ 🛡️ 🧪 🩹 🐾 🌿 🍽️ 🍖 🧭). All of them are hand-drawn SVGs now — undiscovered entries show a drawn “?” and undefeated guardians a dimmed crown. Four new icons joined the set: a question mark, a potion flask, a leaf (herbivore), and a plate (omnivore).

* '''Clearer chronicle hints.''' The toast when a new lore page surfaces no longer says "read it in the codex" — it now points you straight to "Primal [[Chronicles]] ([[Quests]] page)", the same name as the section header. The offline-summary line and the [[Caves#The [[Amber]] Door|Amber Door]]'s lock message follow suit, so nothing tells you to read something in a place you can't find.

* THE ODDS, SHOWN WITH THEIR MATH: the win % now sits in its own card with the two numbers that make it — your strength vs their difficulty — and the division written out (96 ÷ (96 + 15) = 87%). The split bar between you and them IS the percentage: whoever holds more of the bar is winning. Rival duels show your war score vs the fighter’s duel score the same way, and the Riftbound Trinket’s +6% is named on the line instead of hiding inside the number.

* YOUR POWER, ITEMIZED IN THE FIGHT: potions finally show up where you fight — an Active Effects group lists every brew with its bonus and time left, plus today’s sky when it helps this page. Equipment tiles now say what each piece adds (+10 ⚔️ right on the spear), and each pack dino shows its own contribution to the run, with the exact group total alongside. Tap any stat row for its full source math — no more hover-only tooltips, so phones finally see everything.

* '''Between-fight beats.''' Kills, trail stages, and rival duels hand off with a brief wind-up ring while the next foe steps in, and finished runs flash their result — including the honest odds on a loss. Purely cosmetic: the ring rides the fight’s own timer, so pacing, loot, and odds are untouched, and a Settings toggle (or reduced-motion) turns it off.

* '''Polish from the first playtest.''' The enemy column now lines up exactly with yours (its cards sat a hair high — it gained the matching interval track), the [[Rivals]] raid screen keeps the same width as every other page instead of stretching across wide monitors, and the duplicate bottom progress bar is gone — the track under each fighter\u2019s health already shows it. Hover cards for gear and stat rows now keep themselves fully on screen instead of getting cut off at the page edge.

* '''[[Delving]] & Player polish.''' An active dig now pins its panel to the top with a sticky battle strip; losses read "ran away at X" with the exact odds you faced. The Player page gained your total skill level, [[Exotic Broker]] unlock status, and a live list of active potions, sky, and seasonal effects.

* '''Deeper [[Caves]] & [[Delving]].''' The [[Caves#The Amber Door|Amber Door]] — an eleventh cave behind Delving 95 and the Sigil — joins the roster, digs auto-restart, and a dry streak on [[Museum|artifacts]] eventually guarantees a drop. Farming one [[Expeditions#Guardian Heat|guardian]] too hard now heats its biome, nudging you into a boss-and-patrol rotation.

* '''[[Quests]], [[Weather]] & the [[Tribe]].''' New quest chains (Acts II–IV), fresh [[Achievements]] tracks, four severe [[Weather#Severe weather|weather]] types with their own window gathers, four nemesis [[Hunting#Nemesis hunts|hunts]], dino trinket slots, and the Foreman's Ledger for auto-collecting camp output all land together.

* '''Trading & camp.''' The [[Trading Post]] gains daily special orders that pay above the usual spread, camp work gains [[Taming]]-gated speed drills, and the [[Sets|Mark Exchange]] restocks with choice crates and a weekly Primal Catalyst.

* '''[[Taming]] & [[Hunting]] retuned.''' Every tame's experience value was rebalanced into a strict, rising ladder, patrol experience more than doubled, guardian and arena rewards climbed, and a defeated fighter now recovers over more wins with a capped ransom.

* '''[[Caves]] & [[Delving]] repair.''' Cave experience and loot were smoothed into a steady climb, dig slots open at Delving 25 with far more dig experience, and [[Chronicles]] now progress from taming, farming and expeditions too.

* '''Economy & [[Mastery]].''' Cull [[Contracts]] were normalized to a fair rate, [[Tribe]] gifts and [[Homestead]] paybacks were reined in, and the mastery pool fills faster with difficulty-scaled checkpoint perks.