Fellow Daoists, thank you for waiting. This is a big one: cultivation, relationships and the Merchants Guild all received major work.

The save format has changed. Saves from v0.2.3 cannot be loaded, so you will need to start a new game. We apologize for the trouble.

New

• Cultivation now has three tracks: the Realm page adds Body Cultivation and Spirit Cultivation progress bars, while your realm still advances through cultivation alone. Herbal baths, the cold pool, the observatory and waterfall training each feed their own track.

• Added Body-Tempering Pills and Spirit-Tempering Pills. Spirit meals, spirit fruit, beast cores, beast blood and similar foods now also add progress to the matching track. Cultivation Pills have been rebalanced, and one pill can carry you through several minor stages.

• Insight can now be raised permanently: the Wisdom Opening Pill, the Insight Heart Fruit and the endings of two encounters each grant it once, and the better treasure chests in secret realms may hold an Innocence Pill. Each source works only once per lifetime.

• Post Buy Orders at the Merchants Guild: leave a deposit, and the guild collects the goods for you each month and sends word when they arrive. Other cultivators post orders too, and you can fill them if you have what they want.

• The item encyclopedia is now the Compendium and lists everything in the world. Items you have never seen show only their name, look and category, and can still be followed.

• Cultivators ask for more kinds of help: revenge, recovering lost belongings, shelter, escort, and grudges entrusted on a deathbed. Some offer the most valuable thing they own; whether you take it, and whether you help, is up to you.

• Relationships are more detailed: the interaction window shows values for Affinity, Trust and Awe, and a new Acquainted tier sits between Ordinary and Friendly. Confessions, engagements and weddings now go step by step and need feelings on both sides, and someone may fall for you first and come to tell you.

• If you grow close to someone else while you have a Dao companion, your companion reacts according to their temperament, and promises you make must be kept.

• Seeing others depends on your insight: anyone's major realm is plain to see, but the minor stage depends on spiritual sense. You judge the grade of their belongings by your own eye, and you learn more about their spirit roots, cultivation and worries the closer you become.

• Borrowers may default on you: people of poor character weigh your strength before deciding whether to repay, and some come to your door to borrow artifacts.

• Disturbing the wonder at the heart of a secret realm now truly changes its county, with different consequences in each place.

• Every battle now opens with a matchup screen where you can Engage, fight Quick, or step back.

• Autosaves increased from 3 to 5.

• Grades two to five each gain two more body armor choices, along with new head, waist and foot treasures and flying artifacts, and four new robes for both men and women.

• Metal charge-ups now have sound.

Changes

• Vehicle speed is now a single multiplier, 2x to 6x from grade one to grade five, wherever you travel.

• Workshops no longer have tiers; the grade you can craft depends on your tools.

• All array products are now called Formation Discs, and matching kinds and grades stack. The tool formerly called a formation disc is now the Engraving Table. Array cores no longer hand out a free alarm array.

• Body and spirit cultivation methods are easier to find: the Scripture Hall lends spirit methods, bookshops always stock the Dragon-Elephant Body-Tempering Formula and the Great Void Spirit-Refining Formula, complete manuals now cost 3,000 spirit stones, sect exchanges and secret realms offer more methods, and every auction has at least one lot.

• Beast venom now has a fixed severity for each species. Poison can kill, and poison wounds that will be fatal within ten days flash red.

• The opening guide teaches each computer only once and can be turned back on in Settings.

• Asking someone what they have been up to now tells you where they are, what they are doing and when they will be back.

• Opening your inventory or other ledgers with shortcuts such as E inside a room now returns you to the same room when you close them.

• Stone gambling flows more smoothly: the hammer shows which stone to strike, commissioned cuts open on the spot, and identical items are collected together.

• The Medicine Study Hut's furnace and herb cabinet, and the mountain path at Lanke Stone, can now be clicked directly in the scene.

• Everything you receive is laid out at once instead of being revealed twice.

• A dodged pushing move still pushes the target away, but deals no damage and no longer interrupts their move. Hurled stones can now be dodged too.

• Cultivators save up to replace their gear piece by piece, and some of poor character will steal for it.

Fixes

• Your own consigned items were not auctioned while you were present at the auction house.

• In one main story battle, the cultivator stepping in to help you would stand idle after his opening moves and then withdraw.

• Crossing into a new month and running into a road encounter could lose the result screen.

• Patrols could run into beasts far above their realm.

• After joining a sect, clicking Xingzhou did nothing until you left the scene.

• Damage numbers jittered on the final blow, and the camera jumped when several effects overlapped.

• The result of a commissioned stone cut was hidden behind the trade panel.

• Pressing Tab with a detail popup open sent focus behind it, and text fields in popups blocked Esc.

• Dao companions were missing from the Family list in Life.

• Half-length portraits in the Party page did not sit on the bottom edge of their cards.

• Cloud patterns in empty inventory slots did not match the actual remaining capacity.

• Sleeve, boot and seam glitches on several robe portraits.

If something still feels awkward or goes wrong, please let us know in the Steam Community discussions. Your version number, where it happened, the steps, screenshots or save files all help, but please report it even without them. We will look into it as soon as we can. Thank you for your patience and advice, fellow Daoists.

Guixu Studio