Caelumora — v0.74.1: Collection & Combat Polish

This patch focuses on completionist QoL and combat bug fixes — the Collection tab got a major overhaul, several dungeon combat bugs are squashed, and the last missing resource for 100% completion is now craftable.

Collection Overhaul

The Collection tab has been reworked to be much more useful for completionists:

• Filter everything — All/Unlocked/Locked filter pills now appear on every Collection tab (Resources, Actions, Equipment, Enemies, Gems, Skills, Achievements). Quickly find what you’re missing.
• Click to Wiki — Every item in the Collection is now clickable and opens the in-game Wiki directly to that item’s detail page. No more hunting through the Wiki manually.
• New Gems tab — All 13 skill gems now have their own Collection category with a progress bar, matching the other categories.
• No more “???” — Undiscovered items now show their real name and icon instead of “???” with blur. You can always see what you’re working toward.
• Accurate counts — The Discovered/Total numbers at the top now correctly match the per-category breakdowns. Previously, stale entries from old saves could inflate the count.

Dungeon Combat Fixes

Several combat bugs that slipped through the v0.74.0 release have been fixed:

• Mastery XP bonus pipeline — Dungeon mob kills now correctly apply all your bonus sources (equipment, prestige, skill trees, gems, enchantments, discovery passives) to mastery XP. Previously only the raw base × multiplier was awarded.
• Boss attack bars — Attack speed bars no longer vanish when fighting dungeon bosses. Boss mobs weren’t recognized by the attack bar component since they’re dungeon-only enemies.
• Target switching — Changing your combat target mid-fight now properly resets the encounter. Before this fix, the old enemy’s HP pool persisted.

Mob Tooltip Loot Tables

High-level mob tooltips now show their real tiered loot table instead of stale placeholder drops. You’ll see drops organized by rarity (common, uncommon, rare, very rare) with actual amounts — including things like Primordial Shard that were previously invisible.

Prismatic Shard & Jewelry Fixes

• Craft Prismatic Shard — New Jewelry action at level 90 (costs 3 faceted gems + 2 refined gem dust + 1 gold wire). This was the last unobtainable resource blocking 100% completion.
• Ring IDs fixed — Copper Ring, Silver Ring, and Gold Ring from Jewelry now correctly produce the Jewelry-specific variants and appear properly in the Collection and Wiki.
• Sell prices — All Jewelry ring and necklace outputs now have sell prices.

Other Fixes

• Hard Mode label now accurately says “permanently enraged (+50% HP & stats)” instead of the vague “enrage over time”
• Construction and Jewelry now appear in the Instant Mastery / XP Potion skill picker
• Achievement filter no longer shows doubled All/Unlocked/Locked buttons

What’s Next

More combat polish and content expansion on the way. Stay tuned!

Play now at vhschmidt.itch.io/justanotheridle

New update! In main topic post.

Caelumora — v1.7.2: Insano Gold Rebalance

A targeted income-side rebalance for Insano mode. Insano was structurally gold-negative at every level — sinks (the per-skill tax, bank upkeep, assistant gold) far outpaced any income source, because Insano disables selling. v1.7.2 doesn’t touch the sinks (Insano’s identity stays harsh) and instead opens up three new ways to earn gold per action.

The Problem

In Normal and Hardcore, you make gold by selling resources. Insano disables selling on purpose — it’s the central design constraint. But the only per-action gold sources in the game (a skill-tree node and one gem attribute) were tiny and gated to a few skills, so by mid-game an Insano player was watching gold fall faster than they could replace it. At lvl 99 in hostile faction territory, the per-action net flow was something like −17× — for every gold you earned, the area tax took 17 back.

The fix is income-side, in three coordinated levers.

Lever B — Action.gold: Intrinsic Per-Action Gold

Actions can now define a gold field that pays out alongside XP and resources. It scales by skill level and category — Combat and Exploration pay the most (these are “earn” skills), Gathering pays moderately (already monetizable in non-Insano via selling), Processing pays less (its inputs are themselves valuable).

Calibration was tuned so that at level 60+ with full investment (max prestige Golden Touch, slotted gold gem, skill-tree gold node), an Insano player nets roughly break-even in neutral territory. Without investment, Insano stays as harsh as today. The gold field is opt-in per action — early-game lvl 1-20 actions still pay nothing on purpose, so the early game keeps its bite.

Lever C — Prestige goldMultiplier Now Applies to Per-Action Gold

This was effectively a bug. The Golden Touch prestige unlocks (max +64% gold) only multiplied selling. But the only meaningful per-action gold sources (skill tree node, gem attribute) bypassed the multiplier entirely — meaning prestige investment in Golden Touch was worthless in Insano, the mode that needs it most.

Fixed. The multiplier now wraps all three per-action gold sources in one consistent step. Selling continues to benefit too.

Lever G — Gem gold_on_action Attribute Broadened to All Skills

Previously only Woodcutting, Combat, and Exploration gems could roll the gold-on-action attribute. The other 10 skills’ gems could never give gold, locking out a whole income axis for builds focused on Mining, Smithing, Cooking, etc.

Every skill’s gem can now roll gold_on_action at the same tier values (1–2g / 3–4g / 5–7g / 8–10g). Tighter weight tuning across categories is on the followup list.

Offline Parity

Same gold paths now apply to offline progress. The Welcome Back modal shows per-skill gold gained alongside XP and resources. Tested via integration coverage.

What Insano Looks Like Now

At lvl 60 hostile with mid-prestige investment, the per-minute net flow improves roughly from −2,365 to around −1,285. Hostile territory still loses gold (you’re paying rent in someone else’s land). Neutral territory becomes break-even. Friendly territory is mildly positive. Insano stays harsh, but it stops being a math trap.

Discord

Found a balance edge case or have feedback on Insano specifically? Join the Discord — Insano is a live design and your runs inform the followups.

— VHS

Caelumora — v2.1.0: Faction Presence Redesign

Hey all! v2.1.0 is the headline feature — the territorial conflict UI gets a full redesign with two role-based panels and a click-to-commit army composer. But because this is also the first devlog you’re reading if you’ve been away for a while, the rest of this post catches you up on everything that’s shipped since v1.7.2 — about three weeks of work spread across 14 versions. Skip ahead to the section that interests you.

Your save continues seamlessly through every version below. No migrations break, no progression resets.

🆕 What’s New in v2.1.0 — Faction Presence Redesign

The Territory Status panel that lives on the right rail of every area was a 572-line all-in-one UI that mixed presence bars, stage rails, conflict badges, area effects, tax notices, AND combat operations into one vertical scroll. It was complete but cluttered — Conflict and Warzone players who actually had decisions to make had to scan past three sections to reach the operation controls.

Now it’s two role-based panels, swapped by a 200ms crossfade so the transition reads as one component:

• AreaConflictPanel is the default. A single relational tug-of-war bar with your class icon on the left and the rival faction icon on the right, an in-bar projection that lights up when you commit units, a continuous-gradient stage rail with a “Tension N / CONTESTED” needle callout, an inline “Also Present” minor-faction chip row with strategy verbs (pressing / holding / observing), and a “What to do:” guidance line tinted amber.
• AreaCombatOpsPanel mounts when there’s a stationed rival army and the area is in Conflict or Warzone bracket. Threat-styled owner header with a pulsing “Hostile” pill, a stance toggle (Build presence / Run offensive), a horizontal army composer with click-to-commit unit ticks (default = full commit), a 3-cell cost grid (Presence cut / Reputation / Spoils) that updates live as you toggle, and a full-width Launch Offensive button with a right arrow.

The composer is the headline mechanic change: you can now commit any number of units from 1 to the full army instead of being forced into all-in. Default is full commit because momentum stacks within a single op (compound damage) and completion gold scales with units committed — but if you’re under-leveled and worried about dying, you can dial down and run a smaller op for less risk. The cost grid is honest: the slice now respects the commit count, so the −20 reputation preview at 4-of-10 is exactly what you’ll pay (it used to fight all 10 anyway — that’s fixed).

Active operations stay visible and retreatable even if the bracket cools out of Warzone mid-fight, so you’ll never be stranded with a war running and no UI to retreat from.

The Insano Economy Rebalance (v1.7.2 → v1.7.4)

Insano mode used to be a strict gold-loss spiral mid-game — there just wasn’t enough income to cover assistant upkeep + tax. Three patches fixed that:

• Per-action gold now intrinsically pays out from combat, exploration, gathering, and processing, scaled by skill level. The mid-game (lvl 21–60) gold income across gathering/processing/combat/agility went up roughly 1.5–2×.
• Starter gold seeded for lvl 5–20 combat & exploration so the early-game 0g dead zone is gone.
• Prestige’s Golden Touch (the goldMultiplier perk) now boosts skill-tree and gem gold_on_action bonuses — previously it only buffed sell prices, leaving most of its potential value off the table.
• Enchantment’s goldGain property now applies to per-action gold, not just sells.
• Processing gem pools (smithing/cooking/fletching/crafting/enchanting/jewelry) stopped rolling gold_on_action, refocusing them on yield and XP — combat/gathering/exploration gems keep gold-on-action as their identity.

Net result: Insano is now a meaningful build choice instead of a tax run.

🔧 Enchant Workflow + Sound Cleanup (v1.8.0 → v1.8.1)

The Enchant Equipment workbench used to demand a dance: craft a regular item → bank it → switch to the Enchant tab → pick the gear → enchant. Now there’s a “Convert Equipment” picker right inside the workbench that takes regular un-enchanted gear and lets you enchant it without leaving the tab. There’s also three new tool enchant recipes at Enchanting lv 25 — enchant_hatchet, enchant_pickaxe, enchant_fishing_rod — so gathering players have access to the same enchant ladder combat players get.

Same window: seven stub 219-byte MP3s that had been quietly throwing Chromium decode errors on tab/purchase/sell/prestige sounds got replaced with real audio. And dungeon clear rewards now route through the unified drop system, so pity tracker, Fortune scaling, the Rare Drop Table, and Chronicle logging all participate. A 🗝️ dungeon_cleared Chronicle card shows clear time, waves cleared, XP, BP, and every drop.

🏗️ Architecture Sprint — Bundles N1 through N4 (v1.8.2 → v1.8.6)

Five back-to-back bundles spent on internal cleanup. The kind of stuff that doesn’t show up in screenshots but compounds over months:

• Title selector auto-collapses after picking. Structure cards in Areas show per-tier buff values on hover. Skill Tree’s WikiBookmark deep-links to the Skill Trees wiki section. Arcane Satchel backpack actually renders artwork instead of a 404 silhouette.
• DungeonPanel and AreaHeader delegate domain logic to dedicated hooks — pure presentation in the components, testable derivation in the hooks. Action-completion flow is now documented at the top of the actions slice.
• AreaConflictPanel and the faction simulation share a single source of truth for action-exclusion lists (the offer_bones-style filter) — the drift bug class that caused display rates to disagree with actual gameplay is eliminated. New parity test suite across 152 tests catches structural drift between online/offline bonus paths and between sim and display.
• EnemyGrid, BankPanel, InventoryPanel, SettingsModal, and WikiSystemsTab — five of the largest untested components — now delegate their inline derivation logic to pure utility functions with 114 new unit tests across the bundle. Save export/import goes through one helper pair across every surface.

The test count went from ~4900 at v1.7.x to 5097 at v1.8.6. Engine-level hygiene that future feature work will benefit from invisibly.

✨ Crystalline Refresh — Full Visual Rebuild (v2.0.0)

This is the one most players noticed visually. A full visual rebuild on top of the v1.8.6 baseline — no balance changes, no new systems, no new content. The game just looks different now:

• Crystal-faceted modal rims (faintly brighter top-left, fading bottom-right) on every modal.
• Unified tab strips across Character, Bank, Shop, Wiki, Faction Shop, Prestige, and Settings — all using Cinzel uppercase labels with a crystal underline when active.
• Tinted chip buttons replace ~300 inline button styles. One vocabulary, parameterized by accent color: crystal for defaults, amber for warnings, red for danger, purple for class, emerald for race, blue for info.
• The Prestige Points counter is now a “hero” surface — the single carved card that earns the full signature treatment per panel.

About 40 component files touched. CSS hex literals normalized to design tokens. The previous look isn’t gone — it just feels more cohesive now.

🧹 AreaModal Retirement + Tier 1–3 Polish (v2.0.1 → v2.0.3)

Three small patches stitched between the Crystalline Refresh and v2.1.0:

• AreaModal removed in v2.0.1. AreaView already covered every render concern (discovered/unlocked indicators, structures, conflict panel, travel CTAs) — the modal was a 378-line redundant surface. Two callers that previously opened it (the dungeon panel and the reputation tab) now navigate to AreaView with the target area pre-selected, which is a UX upgrade since both used to open the modal with no focus context.
• 9-item bundle Tiers 1 & 2 in v2.0.2 + v2.0.3. GemAutoRulesPanel collapsibles for Auto-Salvage and Auto-Lock, sidebar Discord link, denser modal backdrop, opaque WikiEntryCard. Combat now plays a sound on every landed player attack (style-keyed: melee/ranged/magic) and on every incoming enemy hit. Quest objectives that require leveling a capped skill substitute to complete_actions instead — no more unsolvable quests for endgame players.
• Operation death penalty in v2.0.3. Dying mid-operation now has real consequences: completion gold is forfeited, the targeted faction takes a rep hit, that faction’s operations go on a 5-minute cooldown, and auto-eat suspends for 30 seconds so you don’t get pulled straight back into food consumption while recovering.

🚧 What’s Next

Lining up for the next stretch:

• Audio adapter follow-through (BACKLOG #197) — proper sound abstraction layer so the placeholder combat hits get real assets
• Drag-and-drop inventory slot reordering (deferred from the unified-inventory spec)
• Ongoing balance tuning based on community feedback on the partial-army composer

If you’re playing v2.1.0 and have thoughts — especially on whether the partial-army composer feels like a real choice or just a UI tax — please pop into the Discord. The feedback loop is genuinely tight; previous suggestions have shipped within days.

💬 Join the Caelumora Discord — patch notes, balance discussion, bug reports, and the occasional dev stream.