Patch Notes: Dungeons you can read

Find your way

• Look around: selecting Info mode underground lights up, for six seconds, what's near you, in sight and nameable (within 8 m). A secrets tier also shows the hidden movers that only a lever chain reaches.
• Lever echoes: a lever that moves something out of sight tells you which way. It marks the spot on the dungeon map until you find it, and the mark glows when you reach it. In Info mode, a lever's plaque says which way its work lies.
• The way out: the compass points you back to the entrance along the trail you walked. It takes you down a drop you jumped from, and never back up one you can't climb.
• Exact quest guidance (optional): a quest's people and things are marked on the dungeon map and the compass - a finished quest's no longer are.
• Detect Treasure now also finds what's hidden in searched objects.
• Secret walls are no longer labelled "Door".

Dungeon sizes

• Online, every dungeon has its own size - small, medium or large - the same for everyone in it. Dungeons that were already small stay small, and about half of all dungeons are medium. The main story's dungeons and Abyss Dungeons are always large.
• Medium Dungeons (offline): a new option builds dungeons at a medium size: two interior blocks closed by six.
• Dungeon sizes as online (offline): a new option uses the online sizes offline. A quest keeps the size it was set up at, so quests you started online keep their dungeons at the online sizes.

Regular, Elite and Abyss

Online, a dungeon now says what it is - Regular Dungeon, Elite Dungeon or Abyss Dungeon - with its size beside it, as in "Elite Dungeon, Small". It shows on the entrance sign, the overworld name plates and the sighting message, and as a line when you go in; the held map says it for the Bay's own dungeons.

Abyss Dungeons (online)

• One at a time, where the players are: an Abyss Dungeon - a Hollow of the Hour - rises beside a busy city in the region with the most players online.
• Seen and heard of: a column of brass-gold light stands over it from the moment it rises, and the taverns of its city talk of it.
• Found: the first player to reach its door finds it, and everyone online hears where - by its city, or its region when no city is near. From then on its ring is on the map, its mark is on the compass, and it has a row in the Timers window and a note on the notice board, until it is gone.
• The hardest dungeon in the game: three foes at every spot, each four times as tough and hitting two and a half times as hard, drawn from the strongest monsters there are; six elite foes; half again the loot; and no campfires - the Hour is cold.
• The Rift: at an Abyss Dungeon's deepest point stands the Rift - a ring of brass light around a dark membrane, tolling like a bell heard under water. Press it or walk into it. Beside it, a small Return of pale light takes you back to the way in. Once the Remnant has fallen the Rift takes no newcomers, but anyone who already went through can step back in while the Hour collapses.
• The Shattered Hour: through the Rift lies the moment the Warp left behind - islands of stone and brass hanging in a void, under a sky of brass aurorae, with the Bay's skylines hanging upside down in it and a clock-face of stars whose hands run backwards. Every player sees the same sky at the same moment. The Hour refuses what the Burning Court refuses: no rest, no saving, no map, no Mark or Recall, no regeneration - and no Levitate. The Rift at its back takes you home to the Hollow.
• The Orrery of Endings: the Shattered Hour's first hall holds six Ending-stones - Daggerfall, Sentinel, Wayrest, Orsinium, the Underking and the Blades - each showing an hour of twelve. Turn a stone by its handles (the right turns it forward, the left back), and its hidden gears turn others with it. Six Ledger plaques round the hall say in riddles the hour each stone keeps; the dial in the floor lights a segment for every stone at its true hour - how many, not which. Every turn frays the Hour: at 48 it snaps back, resetting the stones and lashing a quarter of their health from everyone in the hall whose turns did not bring the stones nearer the Concord - whoever was setting them right, or never touched one, is spared. While others are turning, a player who has turned the stones the wrong way six times since the last snap has to wait, and guests count as one player. Set every stone right - the Concord - and a bridge of light opens toward the Unmoored Steps. Every Hollow's puzzle is its own, and everyone in the Hour turns the same stones.
• The Unmoored Steps: past the Orrery, a course of platforms over the void in three spans, each begun at a stone checkpoint. The Drift: eight brass platforms swinging side to side - the leap is in the timing, and a platform carries you as it swings. The Beat: platforms that are there only on the Hour's beat (they blink before they go, and the Hour ticks as they come back), and two brass walls to run up. The Crumble: cracked platforms that shudder and give way moments after you land, while the Warp's breath gusts across them - you hear the wind rise a second before each gust. Fall into the void and the Hour casts you back to the span's checkpoint, at the cost of some of your health (never your life). The platforms move the same for every player; a platform you break is broken only for you.
• The Brass Remnant: past the Steps, in the arena of the Last Moment, waits what the Warp kept of the Numidium - a brass colossus four times a man's height, its chest a cage around a heart of shattered soul-gem light. Step into the arena and the fight begins for everyone in the Hour at once; it grows tougher with every fighter who joins, by each fighter's own level, and once you've joined, the arena holds you until the fight ends, you die or you take the way home. The Walking Hour: it stamps a shock ring that rolls out across the arena (jump it), sweeps the Hour-Hand - a beam from its chest - across half the arena (outrun it, or put a pillar between you; its top is no shelter), and hurls gears that leave burning brass where they land. The Dragon Break: at 70% it steps outside time and two Echoes of it, gold and silver, take its place - fell them within 15 seconds of each other, or the one left alone rises again. The Last Moment: at 35% it returns, faster, and about once a minute it winds up the Reset - break every Heart that rises around the arena before it lands, or it takes most of everyone's health and heals. Through it all its heart pulses, a little harder each time - never more than three quarters of your health - and fifteen minutes after it wakes the Hour Ends. Its blows show on the arena's floor as they wind up; a blow about to land on you says Move!, with an arrow to the way out of it, or Jump! for the ring. When it falls, a chart ranks everyone's part in the fight and everyone online hears of it.
• Each Hollow's marks: every Abyss Dungeon keeps one of six Endings - the element the Remnant fights in, its signature and the light it burns with - and two of nine omens that change the fight (a quarter more health, quicker wind-ups, a shorter Hour, a Pulse that climbs twice as fast...). They're said when it's found, shown on a card at its door and as you step into the Hour, and its blows and burning brass take its element - resist it to blunt them.
• Hours broken, Hourbreaker and The Turning Hour: when the Remnant falls, everyone who truly fought it is credited an Hour broken, counted on their account card and on their Inspect card. Each Hour broken has a one-in-four chance to grant the title Hourbreaker and a one-in-eight chance to grant the aura The Turning Hour. Once held, they are yours for good. Online accounts with a username only - a guest's Hour is kept for a week and counted once they add one.
• The Brass of Numidium: a new Aetheric set of Dwarven brass - nine pieces, every one at the very top of the Legendary range. Dwemer Brass (2 pieces): +4 to +10 magic and shock resistance. Gearward (4 pieces): the next blow a foe lands on you is 15% to 30% lighter, then the gear winds again. The Hour Turns (6 pieces): a blow that would kill you does not - you are left standing and 15% to 25% of your health returns. Only the Brass Remnant's spoils carry it, one time in three.
• The Remnant's spoils: when it falls, everyone who truly fought it sees their own share burst from the cage of its chest and scatter across the arena floor - gold, a Rare piece that is Legendary one time in four, two more pieces Rare or better, one time in three a piece of the Brass of Numidium, and one time in fifty the Hourlock. Your share is yours alone. Whatever is left goes into your pack when you leave the Hour.
• The collapse: three minutes after the Remnant falls, the Hour collapses. Everyone still inside the Abyss Dungeon or the Hour is told how long is left. Once the Remnant's body has sunk, a way home of pale light rises where it fell: step into it or press it to leave the Hour for the Abyss Dungeon's door outside.
• One life: die in the Shattered Hour and it casts you out for good - you wake before the Abyss Dungeon's door, and its Rift will not take you back. It's your account's one life, on every device and tab. When an Abyss Dungeon ends, anyone still inside it or the Hour is put out at its door.

The Hour's detail

• Its own score: nine songs - the Hollow, the Orrery's hall, the Steps, one for each of the fight's three phases, its last minute, its fall and the collapse - each place's music giving way to the next.
• Its voice and its air: the Remnant's steps, wind-ups and blows are heard where they happen; the Hour has its own wind, the ticking of its works, the Orrery's hum, and motes of brass drifting in its light.
• Seen: every blow bursts in sparks, shakes the arena and lights the floor; the colossus walks, turns and swings with its whole body; its gears fly and the Hour-Hand's beam sweeps the floor it strikes; title cards mark each turn of the fight.
• Its presence: near a standing Abyss Dungeon the land's light and haze lean to brass; at its door a banner names it and how long it has, its marks on a card beside it; its last hour is said to everyone online.

Polish

• A tab hidden through a landing no longer dodges it, and a frozen page no longer holds a place in the fight; the Hardened Hearts omen and the Hearts' toughness are fair to small parties; the Pulse never lands on top of the Reset.
• The fight runs smoother: its frames make next to no garbage, and its effects are built before the first blow lands.
• The music no longer cuts out or plays the street's song between the Hollow's and the Hour's; the End sounds once, then tolls; nothing plays war over the dead.
• The banner at an Abyss Dungeon's door fits a phone's screen; the title card stays clear of the Remnant's bar; times read the same everywhere ("1d 22h"); its ring's card on the held map can be reached beside its city.
• A Resurrect in an ended Abyss Dungeon no longer strands you there; /unstuck in the Hour leaves by the Hour's own way home.

Patch Notes: The Hourlock

A new rarity: Gilded

Gilded is the new top of the rarity ladder - above Aetheric, and above even Artifacts - the rarest thing in the game, its name in gold leaf and its frame breathing light in every slot.

The Hourlock

• A Gilded Thunderlock: what the Warp kept of a Dwemer smith's last commission, gilded in the Hour that never ended. Its lines never vary: +40% damage, +15 Agility, +30 Archery and +10 shock damage a shot - each at the very top of the Legendary range.
• The Hour Tolls: every third shot that lands strikes for double, and a foe it fells gives back the pellet that felled it.
• Where to find it: the Brass Remnant's spoils, one time in fifty (online).
• About twice what any Legendary Thunderlock lands a shot, still the slowest weapon to fire. It can't be broken down, reforged, honed, cursed, socketed or made an heirloom, and in a duel its power sleeps. Its first find joins your codex, at the head of the list.

Patch Notes: The Thunderlock

• Shot in the shops: Dwemer Pellets are now sold wherever weapons are - Weapon Smiths, Armorers, General Stores and Pawn Shops - and restocked each day.
• Its pictures in every slot: the gun and its pellets show their own art in your pack, on the hotbar and in the quick slots, instead of their initials; a list shows the whole gun.
• The Morrowind gun, closed and kicking: the 3D gun has no holes left (you no longer see into its receiver), it kicks back at the shot, and the reload tips the gun down and back up - the breech heard after the bang, never before it.

What's Changed

• THE DELVE ARC + SUPER DUNGEONS + GILDED: dungeons a player can read, medium dungeons online, the Hollows of the Hour, the Hourlock and the Thunderlock by @Lattymoy in #632

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.6885...app-v0.1.6980