Patch Notes Page 18

v0.41.2

Fixed enemy pursuit so waves keep advancing on a visible stationary Warden.
Offscreen enemies now receive a lightweight chase update instead of idling at zero velocity until camera or player movement wakes them.
Cloaked heroes still break pursuit, and paused/interior states still suspend enemy pressure as before.

Fixed boss entrance speeches so Verdaxis and Baron Von Dreadmoor announce themselves reliably.
Verdaxis now delivers his arrival dialogue from the live dragon encounter start instead of an earlier spawn-only path that could miss the wave 10 intro.
Both boss entrance speeches now trigger only once per run, so their portraits and dialogue cards appear on first arrival without repeating if encounter state is revisited.

Added portrait-backed boss entrance speeches and richer mercenary conversations.
Verdaxis and Baron Von Dreadmoor now interrupt their arrivals with pauseable dialogue cards using their own portraits before combat resumes.
Pub mercenaries now open a conversation hub before hiring, letting you ask their existing lore questions or jump straight into the contract menu.
Added authored portraits to dialogue and mercenary contract screens.
Trax, Jules, and Father Mathias now show their portrait art in direct conversations.
Mercenary dialogue and Mercenary Hall details now show each merc’s matching portrait while you review or hire them.
Fixed the first v0.41.0 dialogue regressions before packaging.
NPC portraits in the new dialogue cards now render through the engine-backed portrait slot instead of falling back to blank white squares.
Pub mercenary interaction once again opens the pre-hire conversation when you press Interact, instead of getting swallowed by the generic pub/trader branch.
Pre-hire merc conversation topics such as Ask about their life, Ask about the war, and Ask about the current situation now advance correctly instead of failing silently when clicked.

Fixed the in-world mercenary hover card to show contract progression instead of dead vitals.
Hovering a hired merc now shows level, current EXP progress, and upkeep-per-wave instead of health and shields.

Updated mercenary hall details to match the new companion contract model.
Mercenary tooltips now show merc level, current EXP progress, and current upkeep-per-wave instead of obsolete health and shield stats.

Added combat sound effects to mercenary attacks.
Melee mercenaries now play weapon swing SFX when they connect their attack cycle.
Archer merc bow shots now fire the same bow-attack SFX family used by player ranged attacks.
Wizard merc fireballs and flame-wall casts now play spell SFX instead of staying silent.

Lowered mercenary sustain costs and tightened owner follow distance.
Merc upkeep now starts around 25 copper per wave instead of the previous triple-digit sustain cost.
Merc follow tuning now keeps companions closer to their hiring player, with shorter allowed separation and faster catch-up when the owner moves away.

Fixed mercenary pathing, recovery, and target discipline.
Mercs now anchor to dynamic formation slots around the player instead of mirroring raw owner position, which cuts down ping-ponging and idle drift.
Combat fallback targeting now stays inside an owner-centric engage bubble and prefers useful nearby threats instead of peeling off toward distant enemies.
Merc movement now uses stronger corner sliding, wall-follow memory, faster unstuck repaths, side-step recovery, and large-gap owner snaps so companions recover from corners and teleports much more cleanly.