This update introduces World Magic Levels: a new mechanism that touches almost every aspect of the Wayfarer’s Journey. There is an individual level for each magic element that represents how powerful that element is. The power of magic items is bound to these levels, as are the power of most magic creatures, among others. Magic will diminish as the Empire advances, so it is extra important to interact with machines and beings such as the Elementals in a bid to bolster them before they are completely depleted.

Another big change concerns deeds, backgrounds, and background specific legacies. The immediate rewards for getting deeds have been reduced and no longer require a camping action to collect. Instead, accumulating deeds will unlock background specific legacies. Some of these legacies will immediately restore world magic levels. Most legacies, however, will only activate if you retire that wayfarer. These legacies grant a bonus to the next wayfarer, sometimes to all subsequent wayfarers.

On top of all that there is a whole new legend for you to unravel: The Fire Tyrants Demise. This legend comes with its own new locations, items, rumors, and whatsmore.

World Magic Levels
- New mechanism: World Magic Levels
- The power of magic items, magic used by creatures, sources, and other level features waxes and wanes with the rising and falling magic levels.
- The hardships spawned on the map are influenced by the magic levels.
- As the Empire advances, magic in the world diminishes.
- Abusing the staff might diminish world magic
- Interacting with machines large and small can restore or further diminish magic levels.
- Waking the Elementals has a big positive impact on the magic levels.
- The boons for waking Elementals have been changed. Instead of a choice of boons, the rewards are always the same. Instead, you will get the opportunity to retire your character for an extra, global reward.
- Adds a difficulty option to start a world with lower magic levels.
- Adds a difficulty option to start a world with a random element depleted.

Backgrounds Overhaul
- The starting number of hope traits is reduced to 3.
- Every elemental power that is maximized increases the starting hope traits by 1 (up to a maximum of 4).
- Every elemental power that is depleted decreases the starting hope traits by 1 (down to a minimum of 2).
- Different backgrounds gain bonus skills for with high magic levels of certain types.
- Removes all challenges (but you can still get deeds, and you still see story objectives).
- Removes the distinction between minor, major, and epic deeds.
- Adds a bunch of new deeds you can score.
- New mechanism: accumulating deeds unlocks background specific legacies that can boost new wayfarers once or permanently.
- Brings back an old background: Vault Warden, including the new Marang Ward trait.
- New trait for the Gate Guard background: Stand Firm.
- The Farland Hunter starts with the Marksman trait.
- Reintroduces the Superior Parrying skill for certain backgrounds.
- New traits for the Silver Tree Hermit background: Forest Friendship, Forest Harvest.
- The soulhound is removed from the Silver Tree Hermit. (It will reappear in a different background soon enough)
- The silver seed enters the world in a new way.
- The fallen star actually needs to fall from the sky.

The Flame Tyrant’s Demise
- New Legend to unravel: The Flame Tyrant’s Demise
- New settlement: Birnui
- Bir’s cradle is hidden somewhere in the world.
- Bir’s tomb is hidden somewhere in the world.
- New item: charred ebony.
- New item: the Frozen Flame.
- New background: the Pyromancer.

Other Changes
- Adds an option to override the gamepad button images used in the UI. This feature is still pretty experimental, and when changing these settings you are advised to restart the game.
- Removes the world event that reduces hope by 6.
- Adds a new experimental level template that has no entrance key.

Bug Fixes
- Fix for rare cases of worlds that broke after in patch 1.4.14
- Addresses a rare generator issue that caused intended paths to be interrupted by blocking terrain.
- Clanfolk guarding certain sites will not accuse the Wayfarer of trespassing incorrectly.
- Clans don’t try to recover the Wayfarer’s belongings after they died, as they don’t have a way of returning those items yet.

This update will have a big impact on the balance. Especially as a run or a world progresses. The dwindling magic levels put extra pressure on the wayfarer to complete the quest: after all, if the Empire advances unchecked, most magic will be gone from the world before you know it!

Balance changes like this are very hard to predict at design time. Of course we tested this a lot ourselves already, but that’s never a substitute for releasing it into a live game. We are very keen to hear your experience with these new systems, and we fully expect to tweak the balance over time to make sure the emerging game dynamic is what we intended it to be.