Patch notes

What Changed

Everything that has changed in the game since it opened, newest first. Most of it came from somebody writing a letter, and the ones that did say so.

2026-09-24· latest

New: the smith. Every shop in the Market now has a forge at the top — pay gold and he hammers one more point into the piece you are already wearing, up to +10. The price is a share of what the piece costs, so refining a good weapon costs like a good weapon, and the odds drop with every point already in it. Nothing breaks: up to +3 a bad strike only costs the gold, and past that it knocks the piece down one. That is deliberate, and it is onko342's argument from the board — if gear could break, the game would need a backpack for spares before it could be fair. Kasumi asked for a piece to come back as gold; the trade-in already does that, and now your gold has somewhere to go once your gear is good. Measured before shipping: a player who spends every spare coin at the forge still dies 2.5 times on the way to level 15 and takes 9.4 days, which is the same run as before. There is a question open in the Assembly about whether the forge should bite harder.
New, asked for on the board by onko342 back on the 16th: you can save your build. Spend your points the way you like, press Save this build on Your Path, and from then on every point you earn — from a level or from a Dragon — places itself the same way, in the order the tree is written. It stops when your saved shape is full, and anything past it is still yours to place by hand. This matters most the moment you kill the Dragon: your points all come back at once, and without this that is thirty clicks before you can play again. Fixed at the same time: levelling up was quietly wiping the extra max health your talents gave you.

2026-09-23

New, and you chose it: three paths to fight by. Classes won the Assembly 8 to 1, and three fixed paths beat free points 4 to 3. Pick yours at Your Path in the village. You choose ONCE and it is yours for good, so choose it like it matters: Warrior stands in front of the thing and keeps standing, Rogue hits where it already hurts, Mystic bends the fight instead of winning it head on. Inside your path there are four talents with thirty ranks between them, and every one of them is passive — no new button in a fight. What they give you is what the game never had: max health on top of your level, damage reduction, critical damage, life steal, and a chance to strike twice in the same exchange. A rank in your own path costs 1 point, in another path 2 and only to its second rank, which is the mixing the board asked for. One point a level, and every Dragon you kill leaves one more, for good, up to thirty dragons — when someone gets there we will talk about what comes after. Killing the Dragon hands every point back so the next run can be a different build on the same path. Every number you now have, including the new ones, is written out on Your Name. The path names are provisional: the Assembly is voting on them.
Changed, and you decided it: your gear survives the Dragon. Keeping it won the Assembly with 6 votes against 4 for melting it down, 3 for one piece and 1 for the old reset. The Dragon still takes your level, your experience and the gold in your hands. To keep the end a real fight, the Dragon now measures itself against whoever walks in: the better your gear, the bigger it is, and it gets a little kinder with every dragon you have killed. Measured: about seven wins in ten from the first run to the fiftieth, where keeping gear without this measured 94% on the second run. Classes won the next vote 8 to 1, so there is a new question open: what the three paths are called.

2026-09-17

Changed: losing to the Dragon no longer kills you. You crawl out on 1 health and keep your gold and your day — the fight is decided in about ten blows each, and a bad run of rolls was costing whole days. The Dragon also grows more gently for your first five kills, and a little faster after. From onko342, who lost three in a row at full health.
Changed: you level up on your own now, the moment you have the experience — in a fight, on patrol, anywhere — and a fifth of your health comes back with it. No more walking to a master. The Training Grounds stay, and will become the place to train skills that give you extras. And the Healer now charges for the health you are missing: coming in on 1 health costs more than coming in scratched.

2026-09-15

Changed: every Dragon now leaves a stronger relic, with no ceiling. Every relic adds defense, a chance of critical hits for double damage, and extra gold from fights — your profile shows exactly what yours does. To keep the end a real fight, each Dragon after it is harder too. Killing the Dragon also gets one big moment now: the win, what it gave you, and the relic spinning, all in one place.

2026-09-13

Fixed: a patrol can no longer cost you gold. After today's cut, healing out there could charge a full room for a patrol that found 5 gold — one of you lost his whole purse on a 4-hour one. Now the healer takes her fee from what the patrol finds, never from your purse. Worst case it breaks even and you keep the experience and any drops. From onko342.
Changed: patrols now pay a tenth of the gold they did. They still pay the same experience and still find things. I finally put patrols into the balance simulator, and the result was clean: patrol gold alone was enough to stop the climb killing anyone, because gold buys beds. Experience only made runs faster. So patrols train you, and gold comes from the forest by hand.
Added: the cave now warns you about the gold in your hands before you go in. Winning resets you to level 1 and that gold goes with the rest — that has always been true and nothing said it. The bank is one click away from the warning. I did not make it bank automatically on purpose: the rule is fine, the silence was the problem.
Changed: the relic the Dragon leaves now waits for you, at the top of whatever page you are on, and turns over on a reel. It used to appear at the bottom of one screen and vanish if you reloaded — a once-per-Dragon moment lost to an F5. The reel is theatre and honest theatre: the pieces going past are the relics that exist, the spin is always the same length, and it stops on the one you already won. It never almost-lands on a better one.
New: the Assembly has a board. Leave what you think, or a tip for whoever reads it — one note each, editable. There are three questions open now: whether the Dragon should keep taking your gear, what I should build next, and what classes should look like if they come. Every answer says what it costs. The home page now points at the Assembly and at these notes, because a game that changes this often should say so on the way in.
Fixed: you could rob someone in the street while they were out on patrol, hours away in the forest. That was my mistake — patrols went in yesterday and nobody looked at the Streets. And you can no longer be jumped in the middle of a forest fight, which onko342 asked for by letter three days ago and was right about. The rule is now simply where you are: the Streets can only reach people who are in them. Paying for a room still hides you, camping still does not.
New: the Assembly, in the village. Questions about how this game should work, and every answer says what it costs — measured, not guessed. The first one: should the Dragon keep taking your gear? What I measured is that keeping it does NOT get you back to level 15 faster (8.8 days against 8.9), it just turns the Dragon from about a 70% fight into a 90% one. So if gear survives, it needs somewhere to go: upgrades (+1, +2, with a chance to break) and legendary pieces with real effects. That is the actual trade, and that is the question. Your vote does not decide on its own and I will not pretend it does — it tells me what you want, and these notes say what I did with it. Results show after you vote, because a scoreboard above a question just measures itself.
Fixed, and reported by a player who was stuck: down in the Delve with no forest turns left, both buttons refused the click — including the one that says take the gold and head back. Coming back up was the same click as exploring, and exploring costs a turn, so you needed a turn in order to give up. Your gold was never actually in danger down there (the turn of the day brings you up and heals you), but being stuck is being stuck, and charging a turn to QUIT an optional gamble is the wrong rule anyway. Climbing back to the edge now costs nothing, ever, and still mends you on the way. Also fixed while in there: the end-of-day summary still said nothing of yours keeps moving while you are away. That stopped being true yesterday — there are two things now, the Road and the patrol, and both are offered on that screen.
New: patrols now come in 30 minutes, 2 hours and 4 hours, and you can let your character pay the healer while they are out. Both asked for by a player on the same day the first patrols went out — and the numbers said yes: of the patrols that finished in the first day, 77% were collected, by seven different people. A third of them turned back early, which is what the healing is for. Two things are deliberate. Longer patrols fight fewer times per hour — 6 an hour at thirty minutes, 3.5 at four hours — because convenience should cost efficiency; without that, a four-hour patrol restarted all day would pay three times what playing by hand pays. And the healing money comes out of what they CARRY, never the bank, so putting gold away before you send them is what decides how long they last. Measured at level 10 on a four-hour patrol: authorise nothing and they manage 4 fights and come home 99 gold up; authorise 400 and they last all fourteen and come home 25 gold down. Want gold, send them poor. Want levels, send them rich. The ceiling of about three healings showed up on its own — nothing is capped by hand.
Changed: coming back from a patrol now looks like something happened. What you got before was three lines in the same grey box as a round of combat — the reward arrived and the screen did not react. Now the numbers count up, the encounters come in one at a time in the order they happened, and the health it cost you is spelled out, because that is the bill the patrol ran up and the reason healing first is worth it. Nothing there is invented: if they lost all three fights, you get three losses with the same ceremony. Also fixed, and found by a player within minutes of yesterday's change: with your day over you could send a patrol but the Healer was shut, so every patrol left you worse and nothing could put you back — while the forest cheerfully told you to go see her and the door refused the click. Sleeping now closes what costs a turn, and nothing else. The Healer and the patrol both cost gold and health, not turns, so either both are open or neither is.

2026-09-12

Changed: the card you turn over now reacts to what is actually under it. A piece that changes your build comes up quietly; an Epic lights up; a Legendary lights up the whole room. Before this, Rare, Epic and Legendary revealed identically — the rarity was a word on the screen and nothing else, and the reward happened without the screen reacting to it at all. Two things I will not do here, and they are the same thing twice: the glow never promises what might have dropped, only reports what did, and the rarity has to be earned in absolute terms. I found that second one by forcing a Legendary to check the animation, and watching the screen flash gold for a Kitchen Knife — the cheapest item in the game — because at level 1 anything above your gear counted as legendary. A glow that lies once stops working forever, and no amount of animation fixes it afterwards. So the card turns over whenever something changed for you, which at level 1 is almost every drop, and the rarity decides only how hard it shines.
Changed, and it came from watching a real patrol go wrong: while your character is out, the Forest now shows the trail as they walk it — the marker moving, the clock running, and each encounter appearing at the moment it happened. None of it is invented; the whole patrol is decided when they leave, and the trail just tells it back at the pace it was lived. And the fix underneath: someone sent their character out on 59% health, won the first fight, dropped too low and turned back within a minute — but the patrol stayed booked for the full half hour. Waiting thirty minutes for one encounter is the worst possible version of this. Now whoever turns back comes home, and the clock ends when they do. Sending them hurt does not pay less, it pays less TIME, and the Forest warns you before you send them. They still cannot die out there: the worst case is walking home on 1 health.
New: when somebody pulls something rare out of the forest, the whole village hears about it. Rare, Epic and Legendary pieces now show up in the Daily News with the finder's name. Common and uncommon do not, and that is the same line the face-down card already draws: what is not worth revealing is not worth a headline either, and a paper that announces everything teaches you to stop reading it. Finding something good on your own is a number. Finding something good where everyone can see it is a reason to come back.
New, and it is the biggest change since this opened: you can send your character out on patrol. You will find it in the Forest, at the bottom. Send them, close the tab, come back in half an hour, and see what happened — how many things they met, what they beat, what they found. It costs no forest turn and it does not end your day. What it costs is the health they spend out there, so gear still matters and coming back hurt is a real outcome. Why this exists: of 267 characters, 221 played a single session and never came back, and nobody has reached level 15. Fixing the healing last night did not move that, which told me the problem was never being unable to keep playing — it was having no reason to come back tomorrow. The hunt does not restart itself on purpose. It finishes and waits for you, because what I actually need to learn is whether people come back for it. While they are out you cannot explore yourself — they cannot be in two places, and more to the point, every half hour should be a choice: you go, or they go. When your twenty turns are gone the patrol moves to the top of the page, because that was the moment the game used to just stop. One place and one duration for now. If you do come back for them, there will be more paths to send them down and longer trips to send them on.
Changed: the Dragon now gets 2% tougher per kill instead of 2.5%. A player argued for exactly that number yesterday and he was right, though not for the reason he gave — and checking it turned up something worse than the thing he was complaining about. I had only ever measured this out to an eleventh run. Past that, at 2.5%, the curve turns over and goes down: fifty dragons in, you were winning 33% of the time, against 58% for somebody who had never killed one. The player with the most kills in the game had the worst odds in the game, and nobody decided that — it is just what a straight line did where nobody was looking. The cause is worth knowing if you are planning a long career: each dragon gives you 5 more maximum health and no extra damage, because your gear resets and level caps at 15. A tougher Dragon makes the fight longer without making you kill faster. At 2% it settles at about 70% from the tenth kill onward and stays there. It will not reach 91% at fifty, and it cannot: prestige stops buying fighting power once your relic maxes out at two dragons. There is now a test that fails if a fifty-dragon veteran is ever worse off than a beginner again.

2026-09-11

New: the Healer, and the Inn is now only about sleeping. Buying your health back and ending your day used to be the same screen, which is how people ended their day trying to heal. They are two places now: the Healer sells your health back for gold and costs you no turn, and everything at the Inn ends your day. And while you are below level 5, before your first Dragon, she does it for free once a day — not to full, just enough to get back out. This is the other half of yesterday's fix: the shop will no longer take the price of a bed off you, and now there is a way back even when you have nothing at all. Measured against 900 simulated runs before shipping, because free healing is free gear under another name: at this size the run still costs the same number of deaths it did before she existed. When you reach level 5 the game tells you what just changed instead of letting you find out.
Fixed the thing two separate players described in almost the same words: three fights, then an eight-hour wall. I assumed it was the monsters. It was not. Of everyone who had ended their day, 45 out of 46 ended it with turns still in hand — about half the day, thrown away. Of the 27 who camped, which is the free option and the one that ends your day, 18 had no gold left for the healing that does not end your day, and 11 of those had spent it in the shop. Average gold: 6, against a bed at 13. The shop and the bed were competing for the same coins, the whole game points at the shop, and doing what you were told left you with only the door marked exit. Two changes: the shop will not take the price of a bed off you while you are hurt, and the Inn no longer calls the button that keeps you playing Sleep and the button that ends your day Take the room. Nothing was rebalanced — no extra gold, no cheaper beds, no weaker monsters. The game was just selling you your own way out.
New: the Dragon leaves a relic, and the relic is the only thing that survives the reset. Killing the Dragon has always taken everything — level, gold, gear — and given back five health, which a player on Reddit called what it was: not exactly engaging. Now it also gives a relic, it improves for your first two dragons, and it is still on you in the next run and every run after. It adds defense only, and that was measured rather than chosen: counting on both attack and defense it was worth three times what any other piece is worth, which would have turned the endgame into a lap of honour. Also fixed while in here: killing the Dragon used to reset only your weapon and armour. Boots, ring and amulet quietly came with you. They no longer do.
New: things fall off monsters now. About one kill in a hundred leaves something behind, face down — you turn it over, and it is either better than what you carry, in which case you are already wearing it, or it is not, in which case it is gold. There is no inventory and there never will be: the piece is an upgrade or it is money, and that is what keeps the whole game on one screen. Rarity decides how high it lands, and most of what falls is common, which means most of what falls is gold. That is deliberate. The honest number is that every free piece of gear in a whole run adds up to about two steps of a ladder. I had budgeted for twice that, using a conversion that turned out to be wrong: a step of gear is not worth five percentage points against the Dragon, it is worth about fourteen, because gear does not just add — it gets you to the next level sooner, which opens the shop sooner, which buys more gear. And the real limit is not the Dragon at all. It is dying: free gear stops you dying, and the floor of two deaths on the way to level 15 breaks at half the drop rate that would break the Dragon. The Dragon can be fixed with a number, which is why he now has 288 health instead of 272. The forest being dangerous cannot.
Changed: each dragon you kill makes the next one 2.5% tougher. This came out of a bug in my own measuring tool — it fought the Dragon as if you had zero dragons, which hid the fact that a tenth run was winning 91% of the time. The endgame was becoming a formality for whoever played most. Prestige still buys a lot: a tenth run reaches level 15 in 4.7 days against 10.6 for a first. What it no longer buys is certainty. Measured flat at 56%, 55% and 56% for zero, three and ten dragons.
Fixed the worst first impression in the game. If you were hurt with no gold, the forest told you camping was free and healed half — true, and it left out that camping ENDS YOUR DAY. One player did exactly that two minutes in, then found every button refusing the click and no idea whether the wait was ten hours. The forest now says what camping actually is, the village shows a live countdown with what you wake up to, and every place that is shut says so instead of advertising turns you cannot spend. It also points at the Road, which has always kept running while you sleep and which nobody was ever told about.

2026-09-10

The Dragon's cave now says something it always should have: the health you walk in with decides that fight more than any piece of your gear, and nothing was stopping you from entering hurt. Measured on a real level 15 kit — full health wins about five times in six, three quarters of health wins about one in three, and half wins about one in forty. A player asked whether the Dragon had got harder after losing with half its bar still up. It had, by twelve health yesterday, but that was not what beat him. Nothing is blocked; you are just told now.
Fixed within hours of causing it: once losing a street fight stopped killing you, it left you on 1 health and still in the target list, so the same person could be attacked again and again. The gold was already gone but the experience was not, which made it free to farm. Nobody can be attacked at a quarter of their health or less now — nobody kicks somebody already down — and being beaten leaves you there, so it also buys you time to reach a bed. Found and demonstrated by the player it happened to, who hit the same target three times in five seconds to prove it.
Changed, and it is a big one: being beaten in the street no longer costs your day. You lose the gold in your hands and get up on 1 health, and your turns stay yours. Picking the fight is still different — attack somebody and lose, and the rest of your day goes with it, because that part you chose. Measured before changing it: forty-one street fights, forty-one defenders lost the whole day, none survived. A player put it best after killing the hardest Beast in the game and being jumped while the inn page was still loading: it is not being killed that stings, it is losing thirteen fights you never got to spend.

2026-09-09

Fixed: Keep the lights on had a form and no way to pay, so somebody asked for a founder number and then had nowhere to go. There is a Ko-fi now. The form comes first so I know whose name to put up, and then it sends you straight there. Nothing on that page has ever changed a fight, a drop or a rank, and it still does not.
Fixed, and it was a bad one: you could be attacked before you had opened the game since the day turned, which meant logging in to find the day already gone. Worse, the attack itself turned your day over first, so the fresh turns were granted and burned before you ever saw them. One player was found dead with twenty forest turns and three street fights untouched. From now on you can only be attacked once you have played this period. Ending your day camped still leaves you reachable until the day turns — that part you chose. Reported on the forum by Tremir.
New: What Changed, in the village. Every change since the game opened, on one page, newest first. Until now these notes passed through your inbox once and were gone, so anyone arriving later had no way to learn that The Watch exists or why dying at level 1 stopped costing the day.
Changed: the five shops are now one place, The Market, with the categories inside it. Spending your gold had grown to seven lines in the village and pushed the Inn and the Bank off a phone screen. The market lists what you are wearing in each slot and what the next piece costs, side by side, so you can see where the gold should go without opening five pages.
New: three more things to wear. The Cobbler sells boots (defense), the Jeweller sells rings (attack), and the Curiosity Shop sells amulets (both). They are shorter, dearer ladders than weapons and armour on purpose, so buying one is a real choice against your next sword rather than a straight upgrade. The Dragon gained 12 health to match, measured over 900 simulated runs, so the climb is as hard as it was yesterday.

2026-09-08

Changed: the level-up notice is now a real banner in the forest, the sidebar and the mobile bar, instead of a small line of text. Measured: 11% of everyone playing already has enough experience and had not gone to train. If that was you, look now.

2026-09-07

Said out loud at last: a dragon does not only give you 5 maximum health. It also makes everything you learn afterwards 12% faster, forever, and that stacks with every dragon. A first run reaches level 15 in about 10.7 days; a tenth run does it in 4.7. That bonus has always been there and the game never mentioned it. Your name page now shows what your dragons have given you.
Changed: below level 5, dying now costs you five forest turns and the gold in your hands instead of the rest of the day, and you get straight back up. From level 5 it still costs the day. Asked for by a player who was dead at level 1 with twenty-three turns he could not use.

2026-09-05

Fixed: the level-up and dragon-kill boxes counted one too many — level 3 when you had reached 2, three dragons when you had two. Spotted by a player with a sharp eye.
Changed: ending your day at the Inn now asks first, and tells you how many forest turns and street fights you are about to throw away. Suggested by a player who lost twenty of them trying to heal.
How to Play now explains armour and weapons with the actual formula, and how health works in the Streets.
Fixed: the Streets list showed a target's stored health, but anyone whose day had turned was healed the instant you reached them — so it could say 5/40 and you would fight 40/40. The list now shows the health you will actually face. Asked by a player, and a fair question.
Fixed: forest events that paid both gold and experience showed raw code instead of the reward. Reported by a player, which is the only reason I knew.
Fixed, and it was a bad one: buying a second name deleted the first one for good, with the favour already spent. Names you buy are yours to keep now, and you can switch between them freely. If you bought a name and it vanished, write a letter and I will put it back.
New: Letters. Write to whoever runs this place — bugs, ideas, complaints — and the answer comes back to your village inbox. A person reads them.

2026-09-04

New: changes to the game now arrive here, with the turn of the day, instead of appearing under you mid-session.
Changed: "One blow" is now "Trade one blow", because nobody could tell what it did. It swaps a single round and lets you run; "Fight to the end" settles the whole fight at once.
Changed: the shops show every piece at once, with how much gold you are short of the ones you cannot afford yet.

2026-09-03

New: The Delve. After a win the forest asks whether to take the gold and head back, or go deeper for more pay and a harder fight. Heading back mends your wounds.
New: The Watch. One number a week for the whole village, fed by everything anybody kills. Everyone who helps gets soul favour when it falls.
Changed: the village calendar no longer repeats every week, and the village screen names tomorrow's event.
New: days in a row are counted, and 3, 7, 14, 30 and 60 of them pay soul favour.
Changed: the first time you ever die, somebody drags you out. You keep the rest of your day. It happens once per character.
New: The Road. Send yourself on an errand that ends at a real hour, close the tab, and collect when you come back. It costs no forest turn.

Talk about any of this on the forum. r/DragonKills

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