A More Stable World, Above and Below Ground

The game now spans 18 authored playable maps, with seven enterable Greyhaven interiors, connected forest routes and the Old Cave. That scale matters because each location has to join the same coherent journey: doors must lead to the correct interiors, paths must connect and return transitions must preserve player position and progress. The October 8 playthrough documented all 18 maps; they were already present in the October 6 main build.

The Old Cave had started as a rough placeholder. The October 5–6 work gave it a composed dirt-cave backdrop, standalone props, wall-mounted torches and a collision perimeter based on the actual room shape. The aim was to make exploration feel like entering a real underground place rather than an unfinished test scene.

At the same time, we brought together separate fixes to character proportions, NPC animations, inventory artwork and mobile dialogue scrolling. That consolidation mattered: the game had several promising improvements on different branches, but they needed to work together while preserving authored maps, combat behavior and existing saves.

We also reduced unnecessary startup work, improved shared asset loading and controlled texture-cache residency. These are mostly invisible changes; their value is in entering scenes more reliably and keeping the game responsive on a phone. More extensive cave gameplay and editor work remains on separate branches.