Patch Notes Page 19

v0.40.0

Reworked mercenaries into invulnerable support companions with contract upkeep.
Mercenaries are now excluded from enemy aggro/taunt targeting and no longer participate in normal damage/death cleanup flow.
Contracts now charge level-scaled upkeep once per wave; unpaid upkeep dismisses the mercenary without wiping run-local merc progression.
Added mercenary shared-XP progression and run-local skill advancement.
Mercenaries now gain XP from player-earned XP events, level up independently, and earn merc skill points.
Rehiring the same mercenary during a run now restores its saved level, XP, unspent points, and learned node ranks.
Replaced merc inventory access with mercenary skill tree flow.
The inventory Merc button and merc dialogue now route to Merc Skills instead of gear transfer/trading.
Merc talent trees now support prerequisites plus mutually exclusive branches and apply merc passive/reactive gameplay effects through runtime sync.

Fixed exclusive fullscreen sizing so it always matches the active monitor.
Switching Display Mode to Fullscreen now uses the monitor’s current native mode instead of the saved windowed resolution, so ultrawide and high-resolution displays fill correctly.
Resolution changes made while exclusive fullscreen is active no longer knock the game out of that native 1:1 fullscreen fit; windowed and borderless behavior stay unchanged.

Fixed fullscreen resolution changes leaving the Options menu partially unclickable.
The SDL input bridge now refreshes the mouse snapshot every poll instead of waiting only for motion events, so menu hit-testing stays aligned after a fullscreen mode or resolution switch.
RmlUI now receives an explicit mouse-position resync after viewport changes, which keeps button focus and click routing stable when fullscreen resolutions change under the menu.

Fixed ultrawide HUD and inventory scaling.
The combat ability tray now sizes with the active UI scale so four-slot kits stay fully visible instead of clipping the last ability above 1080p.
The character inventory overlay now expands beyond its old 1080p-era cap on larger viewports, and the inventory tile layout scales with the live UI density so 3440x1440 no longer compresses the card content.

Expanded the crafting screen with recipe tracking and faster filtering tools.
Right-clicking a recipe now toggles tracking for every reagent it needs, and tracked recipes can be toggled back off the same way.
Search now filters crafting recipes in real time by item name, and a Can Craft toggle can hide everything the player cannot currently make.
Inventory and trader items that can break down into tracked reagents now show a marker so salvage targets are easier to spot at a glance.
Added a dedicated Credits screen to the main menu.
A new bottom-left Credits entry opens an in-game credits page that reads from docs/Credits.md and covers contributors, music, asset sources, playtesters, and supporters.

Added authored spell and projectile sound hooks across more Warden kits and enemy shots.
Jade now plays elemental primary sounds plus dedicated Lightning Bolt, Lightning Dome, Fireball cast, Fireball impact, and Flame Wall cues.
Sally, Maria, Bjorn, Ellis, Sage, Raven, Flame Skulls, and enemy archers now trigger their requested spell, summon, transform, and projectile sounds during combat.
Fixed another Dragon gate stall near the portal.
Dragons now keep steering to the gate exit until they fully clear the portal pocket, so a nearby Warden no longer pins them inside the encounter gate before the chase resumes.

Fixed a crash when timed buffs or debuffs first appeared on the minimap HUD strip.
The buff/debuff strip now tears down its previous Rml slots before releasing hover listeners, matching the safe listener lifetime used by the ability bar.

Fixed minimap buff and debuff icons ignoring mouse hover.
The timed-effect strip now accepts pointer input directly and uses the same hover event path as the ability bar, so buff/debuff tooltips appear reliably when the cursor is over an icon.