Patch Notes: The Elite Breach

A new endgame: the Elite Breach

• The tier above Dagon's Breach. Your party of up to 8 goes down through the torn halls of the Battlespire under a 30-minute count.
• Open one with a Weir Key. Stand outdoors, online and signed in, and use the key from your inventory. Your party at that moment becomes the breach's company and is called.
• No key yet? Choose Rehearse in the start window, or type /breach rehearse, to open the day's Rehearsal. It runs the first circle of five halls, needs no key, and pays nothing.
• The breach rises for 5 minutes while your company gathers, then takes members for 5 more.

Opening a breach: the start window, the arch and the call

• The start window. Using a Weir Key asks where to begin before any key is spent:
  • Hall 1, or any Redoubt you have reached this season (or half your all-time best), deepest first, each named with its region;
  • a mark beside each party member shows whether they can make that start. If someone can't, you are asked whether to go without them;
  • it shows how many keys you hold and warns you if a tracked quest will run out while you are inside;
  • The Boards of the Spire opens the boards.
• The Wager. Before you open, choose up to three decrees, one from each family, to take on from the first hall.
• The arch. An arch of the gate's white marble and gold rises out of the ground in front of you, with a gold beacon 400 m tall. Other players nearby see it too. It burns open when the breach opens and sinks once the first hall wakes.
• The key tells you why when it can't open here: indoors; in a duel or a siege; with enemies nearby; while travelling; in water or aboard a boat; inside a town; within 300 m of a Dagon's Breach or 150 m of another arch; while you already hold a breach; while the road is shut; or without 8 m of clear ground for the arch.
• The call. Wherever your party is in the Bay, they hear a war horn and see a prompt with the time until the breach opens. Once it is open, press Enter (A on a gamepad) or the prompt's button to answer. A portal opens at your feet: step into it. The opener steps through the arch itself. A late step through the arch still admits you.
• A key that fails to open comes back. If the Spire fails to open, your Weir Key comes back on its own the next time you are online within a week, even if you reload. A stake the Spire never settles is spent after two weeks, and a letter in your mailbox says why.
• One breach at a time. A call to another breach while you stand in one no longer takes you out of yours.
• Finding it: the breach is in the Timers row (its opening, then the hall and the count), you get a sight line (You see an Elite Breach 140 metres to the North!), and your company's arch is marked in gold on the map and the compass.

Weir Keys

• Closing a Dagon's Breach can drop a Weir Key:
  • your first close always gives one;
  • after that the chance is 1 in 6, or 1 in 4 with the rite broken;
  • after five misses in a row, the next close is certain.
• Clearing an Abyss Dungeon's Hour drops one 1 in 3.
• Everyone who has already closed a Dagon's Breach gets one key as a launch gift.
• Opening a breach spends a key. You need to have closed a Dagon's Breach before you can open a keyed one.

Four regions, deeper every circle

• The Broken Galleries (circles 1-5), the Soul Cairn (6-10), the Shade Perilous (11-15) and the Havoc Wellhead (16 and deeper). Each region has its own enemies, lords, platforms and element.
• A Brink opens the Soul Cairn, the Shade Perilous and the Wellhead: a long crossing through the Spire's broken passages, ending in the new region's own set piece. The Brink into the Cairn always carries its Sinking Stair.
• Each circle is five halls: a fight, a crossing, a trial, a second fight, then the lord's Court. Enemies get tougher every circle.
• Entering a new region, you fall past the Spire's broken underside: torn floors, hanging spires, broken galleries and upside-down columns, lit by that region's glow. Other steps are a quick fade; reduced motion gives a plain cut. The hall number shows each time.

The halls are ways now, not lines

• A hall is a way through the torn academy. Corridors turn, rooms have more than one way out, and the way climbs and falls between the arrival plate and the door, crossing over and under itself.
• Rooms: stair halls with a grand stair up to a gallery, towers with spiral stairs, two-level gallery halls, cloisters round a court, broken halls whose floor fell into the undercroft, and crossings where two ways pass at two heights.
• Climbing: short climbs on the main way, never more than two pitches in a row and never longer than 9 m, sized so a character at Climbing 0 with no grip left can make them. Each has a stair or ramp somewhere in the hall for anyone who would rather walk. Harder optional climbs lead off the way to the academy's caches and vantage points.
• Floors can stand over other floors. Blows, danger shapes, the legion and the lords all judge the floor you are actually standing on, never the one above or below.
• A fall that would skip you ahead along the way casts you back, as the void does.

The halls

• Yards:
  • the Rift-Yard: close the rifts before the Sappers reopen them (Kynval Squads hold some of them);
  • the Wellspring: break the anchors, then the great rift;
  • the Muster: cut down the standards;
  • the Holdfast: hold the relic against the legion;
  • the Wellmouth: rifts that wander.
• Ramparts:
  • the Siege-Walk, where fire vents erupt across the walkway, each warning you a second before;
  • the Falling Wall, which crumbles behind you: keep moving, or be thrown forward to the stone that still stands;
  • the Winch: two of you work its winches (a company short a member can still raise it);
  • the Gauntlet: plate by plate;
  • the Forge Bridge, whose belt drags you back toward where you came from.
• Stairs climb to the Rampart's caster pillars, the Wyrm's perches and the Council Rotunda's balconies: every raised floor has its way up.
• Crossings: the Span's platforms and, from circle 3, the Deepway's chambers. Deeper spans carry more passages. The platforms grow in kind as you go down:
  • drifting platforms hang on chains from an arch rib, a ribcage, a moon-shard or a crane hook, and lean as they swing;
  • blinking platforms show a clock face counting down, flash and dissolve in their last moment, and leave a gold outline where they will come back (the flash follows your danger-colour setting);
  • crumbling platforms crack, pour grit, break into chunks that fall and fly back together, then click into place;
  • walled Drops to a landing below, with a doorway onward and a lamp on the far wall;
  • in the Soul Cairn, Rails that carry you along the course (their tracks marked at both ends) and Gusts that push you sideways, with wind vanes and a rising wind a second before each gust;
  • in the Shade Perilous, swinging Pendulums across the gaps: a touch knocks you back to your last solid ground;
  • in the Wellhead, fire Vents under wide platforms, ringed in fire before they erupt.
• Islands carry waystones that light up gold where you would be cast back. A teammate standing on a crumbling platform that already fell for you stands on a faint gold outline instead of floating.
• Every crossing is proven crossable before you ever see it. The Spire checks every jump's timing at the slowest build the game makes, and lays the course again if a jump is ever unfair or if the usual crossing takes far longer than the fastest.
• The toll. If you are still on the road when your company is pulled at the end of a crossing hall, you pay 5% of your health for each quarter of the road you didn't cross, at most 20%. Reaching a new island in your last 15 seconds waives it, and it never takes your last point of health. The toll rings when it is taken.
• Late to the hall? After you have arrived late to two halls in a row, the next hall waits only 10 seconds for you instead of 30.
• Trials:
  • the Proving Walk: a champion's duel;
  • the Athenaeum: turn the Orrery's stones to the true hours. Look at a stone's handle and press it to turn it forward or back. Every turn frays it, and a full fray lashes the whole company. Harriers harry you while you turn.
• Twists turn about one hall in four, trials included:
  • a hidden vault (its Reliquaries pay in Proving Walks and on forked spans too), a Ghost, a Mimic, a Captive to free (hung on three chains, on Spans too), or a Squad of elites;
  • a Deserter who closes rifts for you, if you are fast;
  • a travelling Sutler;
  • a Scriptorium;
  • Dagon's Bargain: vote to take on a decree for a Reliquary. It is offered only when it has a decree to give.
• Sixteen kinds of enemy:
  • Harriers, Sappers, Ward-Bearers, Breakers, Casters, Divers, Lurkers;
  • Binders that raise the dead, Wraiths, Shades, Thralls;
  • Dremora Lords and Kynvals, some Shielded (strike them from behind; splash hits respect a Shielded Kynval's front too).
• The legion hunts:
  • Harriers follow your company across the Spans, hovering beside you and biting when you land on an island or a plate;
  • from the Shade Perilous on, Divers wait over the island ahead;
  • enemies go through a chamber's arch, up its stairs and across Grath's bridges instead of through walls, and no longer walk through a wall after a charge is cut short or they're knocked aside;
  • Rampart Casters stay on their pillars;
  • sleeping Lurker statues don't hold back the next wave;
  • blows land only from the fight floor, and anyone who leaves it for more than six seconds is Hunted.
• Enemies stand on the ground they're actually on: a Court raised above the hall, a chamber past a Deepway's shaft, Harriers following you down a course. Your blows reach them where they are.
• Every enemy blow is drawn on the floor before it lands: a disc, a lane, a cone, a ring, or the whole floor with safe havens marked in gold. Every blow gives you time to step out of it, and the Spire never stacks blows so that nowhere is safe. A chained follow-up blow is drawn dim until the first one lands.
• Your company gathers on each hall's arrival plate, and the hall wakes once everyone is there. When the door opens, step through it to be pulled to the next hall.
• The Count: you have 30 minutes from the first hall. It runs during fights and pauses briefly between halls. If it runs out during a fight, the breach tears shut.
• Falling into the void is not death. You are cast back to the last solid ground you stood on, for a tenth of your health. It never takes you below a quarter.
• Two restoring potions a hall. Healing, Heal True and Purification count toward the limit; every other potion and every spell is free. The count refills at each hall's wake and at each Redoubt, and a reload keeps it. The desktop HUD shows it.
• In the Spire you cannot save, rest, open the map, use Mark or Recall, levitate, or bring companions.

The torn halls: fragments

The Spire did not fall as stepping stones. Whole caverns, collapsed wings of the academy and the vaults of the dead came with it, and the courses now pass through them.

• Ten places, each with its own danger:
  • in the Galleries:
    • the Oblivion Caverns: curtains of fire burn 2 seconds in every 5, shimmering white the second before; magma surges along the floor; basalt falls;
    • the Fallen Stacks: shelves topple one after another, so run the gap between the falls;
    • the Broken Colonnade: column drums roll along the course; ride them;
  • in the Soul Cairn:
    • the Ossuary: bone bridges crumble under you, and soul-wisps drain anyone who lingers near them;
    • the Mist Stair: flights wind down into rising mist;
  • in the Shade Perilous:
    • the Gloam Thicket: black-glass branches hold only while a moonbeam lies on them, so follow the light;
    • the Eclipse Vault: every 40 seconds the moon goes out, so stand in the walking moon-shafts;
  • in the Wellhead:
    • the Forge Gut: hammers fall where they are marked, and conveyors carry you across;
    • the Clan Pit: the Honour Horn calls one of you into a ring with a Kynval;
    • the deep Caverns: a magma tide floods the low floor every minute, so climb to the dry floors.
• Cooling slag (the Wellhead's Forge Gut): two spouts take turns pouring magma, and you cross on the crust while it holds. Its edge glows white in the last second before it breaks, and the spill's warning is drawn on the slag itself.
• Shafts: a Deepway goes down through a shaft of its region's kind, such as the Hollow Trunk's moonlit branches or the Slag Chute. Standing on a shaft's ledge facing the drop, the third-person camera tilts down and lifts over the edge so you can see where you'll land.
• The fork. From circle 2 every Span splits at an island:
  • the High Road stays over the void. It is harder and shorter, with a cache of Reliquaries at its hardest point;
  • the Low Road drops into a passage below. It is longer and safer, with more foes. Its Battlemage's niche heals you once and gives a Vestige shard.
  • Both roads end at the same door. If the door opens while a companion is still on the Low Road, the closing waits for them, and the pull waits for whoever took either road.
• Set pieces, one per region:
  • the Collapsing Tube: the cavern falls in behind you at a steady pace, and a quick run outpaces it;
  • the Sinking Stair: each flight sinks under your feet;
  • the Moon Path: walk with the moonbeams;
  • the Forge Line: ride the conveyors through the hammers. It always leaves a way clear of them.
• The Molten Rim leaves gold causeways across its magma.
• Chambers. Some Yards and Proving Walks stand in modelled chambers, with a second floor up a stair, a chokepoint arch, surging channels, or an engine.
• Engines:
  • look at one and press it, or type /breach use;
  • the Sluice floods its channel for 6 seconds, and the Shelf topples onto the legion once;
  • the Drop-Hammer crushes them and can stun a lord;
  • the Soul-Bell stuns Wraiths and Binders;
  • the Moon-Mirror blinds the Divers and lights a branch for you to stand on.
  • The others work once in 30 seconds. Every strike is marked first, and it hurts you too if you stand in it.
• The Honour Horn (the Clan Pit). Answer the Kynval alone and the crowd throws every member a Reliquary. If anyone else steps into the ring, the crowd throws fire instead, for the rest of the hall.
• Alcoves. Look for a faint gold seam in a wall. One blow breaks the false wall, and the alcove behind it holds lumen, a Vestige shard, or a page of the Annals.
• The Annals of 3E 398. Thirty pages the Battlemages left behind: seventeen hidden in the alcoves, and thirteen that each lord gives up at its first fall. Read the pages you have found with /breach annals, anywhere: your account keeps them.
• Grath's islands fall. In the first Court, the island Grath leaps from cracks and falls into the magma for 15 seconds. If you fall with it, you are thrown back onto an island that still stands.
• In third person, walls, shelves, pillars and other rock between the camera and your character fade to a see-through dither instead of hiding you.

Thirteen lords

• Each Court has its own lord, with phases, errands for the company to run, and a fury that builds. Every phase shows its card:
  • Grath awaits in the first circle, on islands over magma;
  • The Spellmaster, the Armsmaster, the Cairn-Keeper, the Twin Lords, the Dusk-Warden, the Night-Stalker, the Colossus and the Wyrm;
  • every fifth Court a Valkynaz: Ilthys, Morvayn, Seyth, and Garoth from circle 20.
• Courts of two lords (Garoth beside the Last Armsmaster, the Twin Lords) are won when both fall. Each lord keeps its own element, mirrors and decree, and the HUD shows a bar for each lord standing.
• The lords' own marks:
  • Morvayn's chains let go of a fallen member and snap link by link;
  • the Chain Snaps, a Soul Burst and the Cage Closes strike only the members they name;
  • the Night-Stalker's true shadow glints 2 seconds before it rises;
  • burning bridges and falling floors can be dodged like any blow.
• The Proving Walks have their champions: the Kynreeve (Shield-Wall, facing where he guards), the Kynmarcher (The Citadel) and the Markynaz (The Grand Duke's Decree). The Markynaz's arrival card names the decree he lays, and his decree adds to the circle's decrees instead of replacing them.
• Lords and champions walk around walls instead of through them: through an arch's opening, up a stair, across Grath's bridges. A Charge or Lunge stops at an arch's wall.
• Lords resize with your company: when a companion falls, the lord loses that companion's share of health, and it comes back when they're recalled.
• A Colossal lord looks as big as it is and can be struck at its true size.
• The lord's health bar shows from the moment the lord wakes.
• Standing still, or with the game in a background tab, a lord's blow still lands on you.

Falling, watching and coming back

• A death in the breach is a fall, not the end. A FALLEN card says whether a Redoubt can call you back and how many Reliquaries you lost (reduced motion cuts straight through). The end theme plays. Then you become a witness who can ping the floor for the living.
• The next Redoubt calls you back at full health, once a breach, at the cost of your newest Vestige. A companion can carry your Memento from where you fell to a niche to bring you back sooner.
• A second fall is final. A witness can also leave for good with /breach forsake (press twice).
• Witnesses see more: dormant Lurkers, hidden alcoves, and the next hall's twist. Pings show as blue pillars with a chime. A witness sees whom they watch, taps a row to watch another, and pings from the pad or touch.
• If the whole company falls, the breach ends.

Back into the Spire

• If your page reloads or your connection drops mid-breach, you're offered Return to the Spire while the breach still stands, even after the call has closed. You come back to the hall your company holds: at your last safe footing during a trial, or on the arrival plate between trials.
• Returning from a new device or browser drops you straight into the right hall. If the Spire doesn't answer, you're told so and can try again.
• Joining or reloading in the middle of a fight shows everything at once: burning ground, Grath's fallen islands, the lord's phase and where every enemy is.
• Receipts wait for you. A breach that ended while you were offline keeps your receipts, and you collect them when you come back.
• A server restart no longer loses a breach (see below).

Redoubts

• Defeating a circle's lord takes its Redoubt:
  • every member who pulled their weight has the Redoubt recorded on their account (a member recalled pulls their weight again for the next one, and a heal counts only when the Spire saw it cast);
  • the fallen are called back;
  • the company is healed;
  • the Count gains time.
• Choose a Vestige. Each member is offered three. Press 1-3 or type /breach pick N.
  • Vestiges are lasting boons for the rest of the breach, in families. Every Vestige now works, including those that strengthen their holder: Stoneskin, Second Wind, Searing Edge, Momentum, Bloodied Fury, Featherstep, Fleetfoot, Battlemage's Focus, Overcharge, Spellbane, Shieldweaver, Arcane Echo and Mender's Grace.
  • Stoneskin's extra health is a true cushion: the Spire's percentage hits count against your health without it, and the Spire's one-life count includes it.
  • A companion's Bastion, your Steadfast Line, a Lifeline heal, your Challenger's Oath and Immovable reduce the damage you see on your own screen by exactly what the Spire's count granted. Immovable also stops pushes while you stand still on a fight floor.
  • A companion who has gone home or been left behind no longer strengthens your blows.
  • Three of one family resonate into a capstone: Rooted makes you immune to pushes, Spellweave makes every fourth damage spell free, Rallying Cry gives back a spent Second Wind when a hall's door opens, Bladestorm's fifth melee blow strikes every foe around you, and Deadeye's long arrows pierce the add behind the target.
  • Accords take effect when their pair of holders stand within 10 m, among them Shield-Hymn (Bastion and Rally: the whole company gets Bastion's protection for 4 seconds when Rally heals at a door), Hammer and Anvil, Ambush, Kindled Steel, Living Wall and War-Chorus. The offer card names the Accord a pick would form with a companion.
  • Masteries are rarer.
  • Spare shards buy extra picks, and a Surplus buys a fourth card or a reroll.
• Vote on the next circle's decrees. Each is a hardship with a reward: gusts on every span, crumbling halls, raging lords, a new one, The Fraying (the Athenaeum's Orrery frays sooner), and more. Press 1-3 or type /breach vote N. The decrees you choose are the next circle's, and the Redoubt's beacon names them and the next Court.
• Ready up to end the rest early (Y, or /breach vote yes), or vote for a respite to make it longer. A respite can be asked for again after each one.
• The way home opens at the Court's heart: press it twice, or type /breach home. Or stay, and the stair takes you down to the next circle.
• Along the way:
  • every hall pays lumen;
  • caches hold shards, Spire Tonics and Cantrips: one-use spells such as Mending, Stillness and Long Step (/breach cant N). Stillness holds back the first wave of any hall that has one;
  • a Sutler sells them (/breach buy cant|tonic|shard).
• A Redoubt raises a beacon at the Court's heart, and each recall stands as a blue pillar.
• The damage chart: when a Court's lord falls, the gate's chart shows each member's damage, their share of the lord, blows, best hit, falls and healing.
• At the end, the recap shows your depth, your time, the circles you crossed and your Vestiges, each member's share of the damage and what they healed, every fall, and your place on the boards (The Descent, the Few: 14th). It survives a reload and has a Close button.

Rewards: what a Redoubt pays

• Each Redoubt pays once per arena week (Monday to Monday). Taken again in the same week, it pays its gold only.
• Spoils are thrown from the Court's heart when you stand in it, or go straight into your pack. They are decided when your claim is made:
  • gold, growing with each Redoubt;
  • one Rare or Legendary piece. The Legendary chance is 20% at Redoubt 1 and rises 3% a Redoubt, to 65%;
  • one to three more pieces of Magic or better;
  • the lord's named Legendary, 1 in 8. Its powers are rolled like any Legendary's:
    • The Houndfang, The Examiner's Staff, The Last Lesson;
    • Conquest, Tithe, Rivalry, Soulchain;
    • Duskwing, Bloodmoon, Mirrorshard;
    • The Engine's Heart, Wyrmbreath, The Clan-Breaker;
  • the lord's own card for Iliac Hand, 1 in 5. There are thirteen new aetheric cards, found nowhere else;
  • sockets, a gem and the technique pass, as a gate's spoils.
• A Valkynaz's Redoubt (every fifth) rolls its spoils twice.
• Reliquaries: a circle's Reliquaries open once per account a week.
• Silver: 20 Marks a Redoubt, inside the daily combat cap shared with gates, raids and serpents.
• Guild deeds: three members of one guild taking the same Redoubt pay 25 silver to the guild's treasury.
• Deadlands Embers go into your pack:
  • at a Valkynaz's Redoubt: 1, plus 1 more for every tenth Redoubt (1 at Redoubt 5, 2 at Redoubt 10, 3 at Redoubt 20);
  • 1 for each Redoubt you take for the first time this season.
  • Spend them at the Broker, on insignia or the Panoply.
• Weir Keys: a Valkynaz's Redoubt drops one 1 in 4, at most once a week. Elite foes in dungeons can drop one too:
  • 1 in 60 in an Abyss Dungeon;
  • 1 in 150 in an Elite Dungeon;
  • 1 in 400 in a Regular Dungeon.

The Battlemage's Panoply

• A new Aetheric Sigil Set: nine Mithril pieces (the Warhelm, both Pauldrons, the Cuirass, Gauntlets, Greaves, Boots, the Spire-Shield and the Spire-Saber).
• 2 pieces, Battlemage's Bearing: +5 to +15 to every resistance and +10 to +30 magicka.
• 4 pieces, Battlemage's Discipline: a spell you cast arms your next weapon blow with its element for +20% to +50%. Weapon blows return 5% to 15% of your last spell's cost. With a weapon in each hand, an off-hand blow returns it only when it counts in full, like any other per-blow power.
• 6 pieces, Battlemage's Reprieve: a blow that takes you under 20% (never a killing blow) raises a shield of 15% to 40% of your health for 6 seconds. Party members within 8 m get half of it. It recovers in 240 down to 120 seconds.
• Pieces drop from Redoubts: 1 in 12 at Redoubt 1, improving to 1 in 4 from Redoubt 16, and 1 in 3 at a Valkynaz's.
• No bad streaks: after 10 rolls without a piece, the next one is guaranteed.
• The Broker sells one piece of your choice once a week, for 20 Deadlands Embers.
• In an Elite Breach, the Reprieve and Shed Skin answer the Spire's blows, and death-saving powers (Unbroken, The Hour Turns, Shed Skin, the Reprieve, Divine Grace and the Ghost-King's Vigil) recover at the next Redoubt, not on a timer.

Feats, honours and boards

• Feats: each lord has three:
  • Unbroken: nobody fell in the Court;
  • Swift: felled within 3 minutes;
  • its own signature, for example Unsinged (Grath felled with nobody caught by a burning bridge), or the Twin Lords felled within 3 seconds of each other. In a Court of two, each lord's signature is earned on that lord, and a lone player can earn Every Challenge Met.
  • Holding every feat of a region's lords earns Master of the Galleries, of the Cairn, of the Shade or of the Wellhead.
• New titles:
  • Spirewalker (Redoubt 2), Beacon-Lighter (Redoubt 5), Kynbane (Redoubt 10), Battlemage of the Spire (Redoubt 15), Wellhead-Walker (Redoubt 20);
  • the Unfallen: Redoubt 10 from Hall 1 with no falls;
  • the Lone Beacon: fell a Court alone in a company of four or more;
  • Spire Champion: a season's top ten on the Descent;
  • First of the Spire.
• New auras: Beaconlight (Redoubt 10), The Burning Stair (Redoubt 20) and Firstlight.
• The boards (/breach board, the Boards button on the Timers window's Elite rows, or the start window):
  • The Descent: how deep with one life from Hall 1, in three brackets (alone, 2-4, 5-8);
  • The Depths: your deepest hall this season, from any start, with the run's Wager shown on the row;
  • The Deepest Redoubts: your deepest of all time.
• The Timers window has a row counting down to the end of the Spire's season.
• The herald posts to the gate's Discord channel when a company takes every tenth Redoubt, sets a new top of the Descent, earns First of the Spire or the Lone Beacon, or a sealed region opens.
• The Annals: the pages you find are kept on your account.
• First of the Spire: the first company to take Redoubt 10 gets a letter in the mailbox.

The HUD and your first breach

• The count chip is gold above 10:00, white to 2:00 and red below, pulsing in the last 30 seconds. When the count is held it shows a pause mark and why.
• Arrivals: each hall announces itself with an arrival card naming the hall, its objective and its twist. Reduced motion stills the title cards.
• Party rows show each member's numeral, health, falls and recall. An absent member shows an amber ring draining their 180 seconds.
• Every big moment has its sound and its line: the door opening, a lord waking (with a drum swell), a Redoubt, a fall, a recall, the toll.
• First breach: short lines explain the Spire the first time you meet each part of it, once per account, so a new device doesn't repeat them.
• Touch and gamepad: the panel, the votes and the Surplus work on touch and gamepad, and the pad reaches every panel choice. On touch screens you can flick up to jump and run at full speed on the spans.
• /breach help lists every /breach word.
• Settings > Accessibility: Danger colours (Standard, High contrast, Deutan-Protan, Tritan), Danger fill (50-100%) and Reduced motion.
• The Spire speaks English for now. Its own words (cards, lines, the panel) are in English whatever language you play in.

Fairer fights

• The relay judges where you really were when a blow landed: your movement history at that moment, on a clock corrected to yours. Lag no longer counts against you.
• Riding a moving platform counts as standing on it.
• Your health in the Spire is the relay's count: the Spire fells you at zero, never while you still stand.
• A feint is shown as a pulsing outline and fades out dashed when it's cut. A wind-up's sound plays only for a blow that will really land.
• Moving platforms run on the breach's corrected clock.

Faster circles

• The next circle is built while you rest at the Redoubt, off the main thread, so stepping down is a swap rather than a fresh load: no stutter stepping into a new circle, in a breach opened before an update too.
• Leaving the Spire, by any route, frees the circle's models and the region's textures, so repeated breaches no longer hold on to old ones.

Safe through a server restart

• A breach survives a server restart. It picks up where it was, and the time the server was down is given back to the Count, the hall and every timer.
• Restarted between halls, a breach waits up to 3 minutes for its company to come back before it carries on.
• During an update the Spire may stop taking new breaches for a while. A refused opening gives your key straight back.
• If an update ends a breach early, everyone's key is returned and every Redoubt you took is kept.

The Spire's rules

• Jumps are more forgiving in the Spire. A jump pressed just before you land fires as you land, and a jump pressed just after you step off an edge still leaps.
• Leaping and dashing techniques don't work on the crossings (The Spire's spans are walked, not flown.). On fight floors they work as usual.
• Slowfall and Avoid Death don't work in the Spire. You lose nothing to the death penalty there.

The Spire's look and sound

• The Spire rebuilt to look like the Fractured Battlespire: every hall stands in the ruin of the Imperial Battlemages' academy - columns, arches, statues, cornices and lamps around and under every floor, in each region's own stone and forms.
• Each region has its own air and light: ash and embers over the Deadlands' fire-sea in the Galleries, violet mist and drifting soul-motes in the Soul Cairn, near-black dusk and silver moon-dust under a great moon in the Shade Perilous, smoke and sparks over the magma in the Wellhead. Each has its own painted sky.
• The academy's torn wings drift in the haze around each hall, and the sealed Spire's underside hangs overhead.
• The lords are drawn as oversized sprites, towering over the company; their hit area grows with them.
• Each region has its own stone: marble and gold leaf in the Galleries, slate violet and bone in the Soul Cairn, black glass and moon-silver in the Shade Perilous, basalt and iron in the Wellhead.
• Every platform edge has a thin, steady gold line, so you can read where the ground ends even in fog or the dark. It keeps its width in the Retro picture modes.
• The crossings tell you more: Rails have a dashed track; Gusts blow visible streamers the way the wind will push; the walkways' waystones are lit; the Mist Stair's mist is drawn rising.
• Danger shapes stay readable:
  • within 30 m, fog never fades a warning;
  • safe havens are gold with a dark keyline and inward chevrons, so they never rely on gold against red;
  • the blow aimed at you is drawn on top with a brighter rim, and blows aimed at others are fainter during a trial;
  • vents and fragment hazards show in the place's own white;
  • High contrast adds a double keyline and a hatch.
• The Spire's own score: fourteen songs for the halls, the Courts, the Valkynaz, a lord's wake, the Redoubt's hymn, the last two minutes of the Count and the end. Each region and lord has its own motif.
• The mix keeps danger audible: a blow aimed at you plays a sound of its own; the music dips briefly under critical sounds; only the four nearest enemies of a kind call out their wind-ups.
• The door: when the way down opens, a gold beam and a draining ring mark it, and it appears on the compass.
• Danger shapes lie on every floor they cover, at that floor's height, instead of floating or hiding under ledges. A "move!" arrow points the way out over safe ground. Tethers, burning pools, marks over companions' heads and the Eclipse each have their own clear look.
• Allies' spells are dimmed during trials so warnings stay readable, and a Vestige aura is a thin blue ring.
• Foes have a moonlit outline in the Shade Perilous. Heavy blows shake the screen (reduced motion turns this off), and a Drop lands with a thud and dust.
• Each hall has its own echo: a cave, a stone room or open air, fading smoothly as you walk into a passage.
• Other players' sounds are a little quieter in a fight, Watchfire's early warning has its own sound, and event sounds briefly lower the music so they cut through.
• The Caverns' fire falls burn in Daggerfall's own fire, the camera no longer snaps back out of walls, a faded Spirebridge plank is no longer solid, and the Weir Key has its own icon.
• Moving platforms are drawn in far fewer draw calls, and those out of view are skipped.

What's Changed

• Elite Gates: the Elite Breach - playable online, with the Spire's own lords, Vestiges, decrees and the witness by @Lattymoy in #800

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.9095...app-v0.1.9374