Patch Notes Page 9

v0.52.0

Moved first-run onboarding into the run start flow.
Fresh profiles now play the Intro Chronicle after pressing Start Run, and the run begins only after the cinematic completes or is skipped.
The Chronicle narration now carries the broad first-run setup while Kalibros saves most instruction for contextual first-appearance callouts.
Split the old first-run tutorial chain into one-time live lessons.
Kalibros now explains level-ups, copper spending, health and shields, hotzones, nightfall, weather, and each newly seen standard enemy type when those moments actually happen.
The map-points tutorial now appears in Round 3 instead of Round 2 and remains profile-once only.

Removed the Intro Chronicle dialogue backdrop.
Opening cinematic narration now renders directly over the artwork with only the text and shadow visible.
The prior dark text-panel background has been removed while advance and skip behavior remain unchanged.

Simplified the Intro Chronicle overlay.
Removed the visible screen-edge frame and vignette from the opening cinematic artwork.
Removed the speaker label, lower lesson text, right-side panel counter, and continue/skip prompt from the cinematic overlay.
The intro now presents only the main dialogue text over the generated parchment panels while keeping the same advance and skip input behavior.

Refined the Intro Chronicle presentation and narration.
The cinematic caption panel now uses colors drawn from the Wardens of Wen logo, including navy ink, stone gray, ivory text, dull gold, orange, and restrained red accents.
The seven intro captions now align more closely with the game’s lore, including Wen’s enchanted soil, its role as the western realm’s trade lifeline, Kalibros awakening the Wardens, Verdaxis’ return, and Dreadmoor’s undead campaign.
The prompt and panel count now sit in a dedicated right-side rail so narration and lesson text have cleaner spacing at handheld and desktop resolutions.

Added generated parchment artwork to the Intro Chronicle.
The seven first-run story panels now load real medieval chronicle illustrations from assets/cinematics/intro/ instead of relying on fallback parchment placeholders.
The intro data now points only at available art assets, avoiding missing placeholder-layer warnings while keeping the reusable layered cinematic support available for later final art passes.

Added a first-run Intro Chronicle cinematic.
Fresh profiles now open with a seven-panel parchment chronicle that introduces Wen, the Wardens, survival waves, scavenging, effects, campaign choices, and the first defense.
The sequence is data-driven through assets/cinematics/intro_tutorial.json, supports fade/pan/zoom/parallax, typewriter-style narration reveal, skip/advance input, and safe fallback art when final illustrations are not present yet.
Completing or skipping the chronicle marks it seen for the active profile; developers can replay or reset it with replay_intro and reset_intro from the dev console, or use the cinematic debug keys in data/gameplay.json.

Added difficulty-based Gold Find scaling for standard runs.
Very Easy now pays 80% Gold Find, Easy 90%, Normal 100%, Hard 110%, Chaotic 125%, Insane 140%, and Torment I 170%.
Infinite keeps its existing endless gold rules unchanged.
The New Game character/difficulty screen now calls out the selected difficulty’s Gold Find value directly.

Refined placeable bomb visuals and placement.
Small Bomb and Large Bomb now use the authored BombsAnimated.png atlas for both inventory icons and in-world countdown art, with the placed bomb advancing across its four fuse frames before detonation.
Bomb placement now anchors at the Warden’s location instead of projecting toward the cursor or controller reticle.