v0.3.5: Hearth & Hold

🔥 v0.3.5: Hearth & Hold

Dwarven touches all over the hold, heroes who tell their stories at the campfire, a music shuffle that leans toward each biome’s songs, rooms that grow, a smoother first hour, a clearer Ascension screen, and better support for AMD handhelds

🏕️ A livelier hold

• Click a hero at the campfire to hear their story. The first time a hero takes a seat, the fire flares up and they introduce themselves.
• A shuffle that fits the biome: the music player works as before, and its shuffle now leans toward songs that fit the biome you’re in. Digging into a new biome fades to one of those songs, unless you picked a song yourself recently. Your own picks always win.
• Rooms grow as they fill: a small camp at first, a pennant once 5 dwarves work there, and a bigger hall with a banner at 20.
• Rooms show a few dwarves at work instead of every worker, so busy holds are easier to read (the count still shows the real number).
• Pip moves smoothly on the title screen, in the opening scene and in the ending.
• One cart on the track: the dwarf pushes the full cart from the vein all the way into the tunnel, instead of a second cart rolling off on its own.
• The dwarves are a guild now, to match the Guild Hall: in the opening scene, the Rock curiosity, and the achievement “First of the Guild”.

⚒️ Dwarven touches

• At the tavern, off-duty dwarves raise and clink their tankards, and now and then one naps on an ale barrel.
• Beard pride: idle dwarves stroke and braid their beards, and Pip combs his.
• Work songs: miners at the vein fall into rhythm, with little notes rising, more often while a lyrical song plays.
• The forge rings: smiths strike tap, tap, CLANG with sparks, and flourish when you craft.
• Carved halls: ancestor statues stand in the cave walls as you dig deeper, and runes along the beams glow brighter in the deep.
• A grudge tablet by the graveyard gains a notch for every loss, and a beaten Warden strikes a row through.
• Little moments: a dwarf holds a fresh gem up to the lantern, haulers glare at the Crystal Elves’ embassy and grumble about elves, and helmets glint gold at big Ore milestones.
• Guild banners hang in each room’s colour, and every King you free is carved in stone, holding up a corner of the cave.
• An anvil oath: at each New Dig, the crew strikes the anvil three times: “On the anvil: deeper next time.”
• All of this is for looks only, and it follows the Living cave and Reduce screen shake and flashes settings.

🧭 A smoother first hour

• After your first New Dig, a card always points you to your Blessings, and its “Open Blessings” button opens them with the cheapest one you can afford lit.
• Until your first Ascension, the goal line says “Spend N AK on Blessings” while you have Ancestral Knowledge to spend, and the New Dig button carries a small gold mark.
• Dig Deeper only asks for confirmation when the next depth brings something new. The setting is still there, and Enter or the A button confirms.
• After a few dozen clicks the ore vein reminds you that you can hold the button (or Space) to keep mining.
• The opening scene gives each line enough time to read in your language and waits on the last one until you click or press a key.
• The last tutorial card finishes by itself on your next Dig Deeper or after 3 minutes, so Quests, Records and Achievements open on time.
• “Your clicks this dig: +38 Blueprints” under Dig Deeper shows what your clicking added.
• The first New Dig scene lists only what you actually keep, has a proper chest, and shows how many Blessing levels your Ancestral Knowledge buys.

✨ Ascension and the deep game

• The Ascension screen says what it spends: Ascension Points to spend at the top, where they come from, the Ascension Point icon on every price, green when you can pay and red when you can’t, and the cost in every tooltip.
• Only New Digs that reach Depth 10 count toward the New Dig Milestones, Veteran, the Rune Shards a dig pays, and the Old Bones and Ancestor of Ancestors achievements, the same rule Ascension Points already use. Tiny farm digs no longer stack up production. Everything your save already earned stays earned, and every New Dig made before this update still counts.
• Two speed achievements are within reach: Swift Descent is now Depth 20 within 13 hours of play (was 10), and Headlong Descent Depth 40 within 20 hours (was 16).
• Pace stamps now go up to 15 hours, so long endgame digs get them too.
• After the ending, with every King free, the depth panel names your next Depth Milestone and its reward as a “Deep goal”.
• The goal line stops suggesting an Ascension once you own every Ascension perk at its top level.
• The Ascension confirm names the King it will free, and that King now gets the full “King freed” moment at your campfire.
• The cave-in tooltip explains that click power counts up to x3 on walls.
• From Depth 60, entering each biome again plays its title card again.
• The Ancestral Engine now starts digging right after the Ascension that unlocks it.

🛠️ Fixes and comfort

• AMD handhelds and laptops (such as the Legion Go 2 and Radeon 890M, 880M and 780M graphics): the game now draws through Direct3D there, with the same look, to fix crashes a few seconds after launch. If the game ever fails to start twice in a row, it switches to that safer mode by itself and tells you.
• New: Settings > Display > Graphics Mode (Auto, Standard (OpenGL), Compatible (Direct3D)), applied on the next launch.
• Photosensitivity Warning: “Continue” comes first, and the second button says what it does: “Turn on photosensitive mode”.
• Fixed a freeze of several seconds when the game came back after the PC had been asleep.
• Fixed a crash that could happen in the first minute after launching the game (also fixed in v0.3.0.2).
• The hiring discount’s one-minute rule now holds across saving and reloading.
• The 3, 5 and 10 New Digs achievements count every New Dig you’ve made, including the ones before an Ascension.
• Brazilian Portuguese uses the decimal comma everywhere, and hours and minutes are written the same way everywhere (1h 05m).
• Latin American Spanish in the language picker shows four of the region’s flags (Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru) instead of a globe.
• Fixed an error drawing the shine on newly revealed panels.
• The Knowledge Base “?” now sits in the corner of the Settings / Guild Hall box, clear of the Guild Hall’s badge.
• The Guild Hall glows softly while it has something for you (a steady highlight with Reduce screen shake and flashes).
• The “+35% while mining!” line in Workers now always shows (dim until you mine, with a tooltip), so the left menu no longer jumps while you mine.
• The depth header names your next story goal: “/ 20” until the crown, then “/ 40” until the ending.

🐞 Crash reports and credits

• A short note by Send crash reports: “Reporting really helps us improve the game.”
• Crash reports now say which graphics mode was in use and what the game was doing just before (the screen and recent steps like “opened Settings”). Warnings and errors from the game’s log are sent too, at most 100 a session. No names, no save files. As before, you can turn crash reports off in Settings > Gameplay/Stats.
• Since v0.3.0.1: crash reports and bug reports never include your Steam name or Steam ID.
• Credits: a copyright line, a note that the license notices cover only the third-party software and fonts they name, and the crash reporter’s license notices.

Thank you for playing and for every report. Next stop: 1.0 on December 9.