Mechanics
Waves, retries, and lock farming
Wave lock unlocks at leader level 13.
Keeping the authenticated client open now builds stamina passively even outside live waves. Running waves build it 50% faster than idle-open play, moving units and manual loot always count, recent wave clears stay eligible for about 2s after each response, wave lock never suppresses the gain, and any positive payout resolves to at least 1s. Premium doubles active manual loot, unit move, wave clear, event clear, and boss clear stamina, while passive open-session gain stays unchanged.
Gameplay-earned stamina now bursts from the live right edge of the stamina bar in green hit-register ticks, including manual loot, unit moves, and delayed clear rewards that land on the next active snapshot. Exact-minute rewards stay compact, shorter rewards show whole seconds, and batches stagger briefly instead of all popping at once, while passive open-session gain stays silent.
Ground loot now survives normal wave clears and the next wave start until you pick it up, its magnet finishes, or it expires on its own timer.
Off-screen next-wave warnings now arrive as red border gradients sized to the incoming monster footprint at your current zoom, collapse shared corners into one cue without stack numbers, and still replay briefly when you manually start the wave.
Queued battlefield reinforcements now need a 3-second windup before ranged attacks or boss spells can hit, while they still keep moving into position during that window.
Contact-minded monsters with ranged attacks may throw from range briefly while allies remain, but they close in once they are alone or after about 8 seconds of keeping distance.
Normal monsters now pick the nearest visible friendly first, keep that focus through small position changes, and only switch for a much closer target, heavy damage from someone else, or an invalid target. Exeta Res, Walter Jaeger prey, and merchant taunts still override normal focus.
Clicking a monster, choosing it in Battle, or pressing Tab now makes the leader and alive owned mercenaries focus that enemy for attacks and offensive spells until it dies or disappears. Event NPCs keep their own targets.
The target-switch tutorial keeps its message steady during combat while the highlight can keep following the monster.
Equipment opens during live waves, and gear equips, Equip Best, Unequip All, and retirements queue for the next wave instead of changing the fight already running. Hiring a mercenary creates an undeployed contract card; drag it onto a deployment tile to field them. Shop, Bank, and Bestiary requests made during live waves open at the next safe intermission, including after you stop the wave.
Fresh accounts glow the Play button until the first wave starts, then early popups point to automatic attacks, spell queue/autocast inputs, hover loot, active stamina, offline stamina, and Battle priority controls as those states become relevant.
Guest accounts use a local account handle for support lookup, but offline stamina storage, recovery from another device, premium payments, and leaderboards require a registered identity. Character renames spend rename credits, must stay unique across account handles and character names, and the Customize Colors window checks availability beside the edit control.
While a wave is live, the Stop control stays visually highlighted so you can spot it quickly without losing the other transport buttons.
During a live wave, Stop counts the current attempt as a loss and returns to setup. Retry also counts the active attempt as a loss, then immediately restarts that same wave.
If the leader falls while at least one hired mercenary is still alive, those mercenaries keep fighting as a rescue attempt. Clearing the wave revives the flow, grants each hired mercenary +1 loyalty, charges 1% of your pre-clear purse, and skips flawless-victory loyalty; failing or stopping the rescue costs each hired mercenary 10 loyalty.
Wave starts charge hired mercenary upkeep from purse gold. If purse gold is short and bank funds are available, Jefrey can draft the missing upkeep with an emergency fee; if the bill still cannot be covered, unpaid mercenaries lose 5 loyalty and start that wave with 20% lower readiness.
Fresh defeats still hold on the defeat snapshot until you choose a wave-manager action. Retry wave jumps back in immediately, and repeated defeats on the same wave point to Previous wave so you can step back, make it easier, and grind.
The wave manager keeps all four transport controls on matching widths, and boss waves now lift a darker skull-accent HUD above the board and local HP/MP strip so it stays readable during the fight.
Stamina is banked spare play time: closing the client, hiding the tab, losing focus, or leaving a tab pause unattended spends it on eligible server progress once the live request lease expires.
Offline catch-up stops at zero stamina, boss fights, mercenary escape risk, or explicit stopped intermissions. Active Sensei endurance duels still resolve their own timer while you are away, but they do not spend stamina, start later waves, or grant unrelated rewards. Interaction-only rewards such as manual loot, unit movement, and Dojo hits still require the matching player action.
Battlefield zoom unlocks at wave 60. Premium accounts get +/- zoom controls and keyboard + / - in the safer 8-14 range.
On mobile, World hides the topbar and keeps the tab menu above the battlefield. Gold, ammo when equipped, potions, party, spells, XP, Server Log, and wave controls stay as lighter battlefield overlays; hired mercenary tiles show loyalty as a gold minibar under HP instead of mana. The compact Party popover shows mercenary rarity as a color dot, the detached wave manager keeps Premium and Logout in its top-right corner, and zoom controls stay desktop-only.
Backpack potion slots equip the highest owned HP and MP potion stacks your leader can currently use, show only that exact stack count, and leave lesser or locked potion stacks in the backpack grid. Double click a potion stack in the grid to use that exact stack. Potion use has a 0.5s shared cooldown plus a separate 1s HP or MP cooldown, and potion slot/HUD cooldowns use the same radial sweep style as spell cooldowns.
Backpack, equipment, and shop item tooltips start with the item name, then show useful stats, requirements, action context, and shop prices only while trading. Dropped battlefield gold keeps the Gold name but uses yellow, platinum, and crystal stack visuals for larger amounts.
Window layouts save per account. Hold the title grip on desktop and release over a slot to move a window across the three columns. Fresh desktop unlocks pick the lighter side column by estimated window height, with the right side winning ties; center stays for World or manual moves. On mobile, double tap the grip to pick a window up, then tap a slot in the stack to place it.
Server Log now skips routine wave-start, enemy-spawn, spell-cast, hit, miss, and routine enemy death chatter. Important alerts stay loud, while battlefield numbers and white MISS! callouts carry the regular combat feedback.
Later waves now put more enemies on the field together, queued reinforcements arrive faster, and a wave that stalls for over 60s can start leaking one extra queued monster at a time instead of freezing behind the normal spawn limit.
Monsters that would fully wall off a vocation now soften hard 100% resistances to 50%, so they still resist heavily but can be damaged.
Leader level now pushes much less extra danger into waves 1-39, so farming levels before the shop, Bestiary, bank, and first boss unlocks is safer.
After wave 40, a very overleveled leader no longer pulls much later monster bands into lower farming waves; waves close to your leader level still keep their normal challenge.
Retry rolls stay inside 80-120% of the base wave threat budget.
Sample budgets at level 1: wave 1 = 31 (25-37) • wave 10 = 192 (154-230) • wave 25 = 512 (410-614) • wave 50 = 1205 (964-1446) • wave 100 = 2782 (2226-3338)
Party building
Mercenary contracts unlock at levels 10, 20, 30, 40.
Hiring creates an undeployed mercenary card with their contract, outfit, and spellbook already rolled. Drag the card onto a deployment tile to field them; card backdrops preview the mercenary and the drag ghost follows your cursor.
Formation editing stays available before the first wave, during combat, and while the wave manager pause is active. Dragging or guided placement updates saved deployment tiles directly; on mobile, long-press and drag an ally on the battlefield. Dropping onto another ally swaps them, paladins can redeploy two deployment tiles at once, and redeployed units stay briefly vulnerable until speed shortens that window or slows lengthen it.
Dragging a deployed mercenary off the battlefield removes them from the current fight. During a live wave this counts as a mercenary death and loyalty loss; dropping that same contract on a valid tile reserves it for the next wave instead of redeploying immediately.
A freshly redeployed leader or mercenary can rarely lure an adjacent monster during that vulnerable moment, but each monster only checks once per move and then waits before another lure can happen.
Queued spell buttons spark around the icon frame, AUTO buttons keep a steady warm aura, and both cues can stack on the same spell. Duplicate queued casts show a small count badge near the icon.
Autocast keeps your newest picks. Free leaders hold 5 auto-spells, premium leaders unlock a 6th at level 25, and adding another spell at the limit replaces the oldest marked spell instead of doing nothing.
The spell queue HUD keeps every AUTO ON spell visible, but AUTO spells on their own cooldown wait behind ready queued spells so the left-to-right cue matches what can cast next.
Clicking an AUTO queue slot turns that spell AUTO OFF, while clicking a manually queued slot still cancels only that queued cast.
Manual queued spells that reach the front while their own spell cooldown is still running get dropped immediately, so later ready spells can fire in the same window while autocast waits visibly for the spell cooldown.
Autocast no longer lets a high-cost, targetless, or no-effect spell at the front freeze the rest of the queue; it moves on to later ready auto-spells while normal global and group cooldown waits still stay visible.
Knight mercenaries now lean harder toward Exeta Res in their spellbooks, and Exeta Res taunts monsters in a 3x3 area around the user.
Premium opens on the Lux Shop first. Desktop keeps account status, one Lux balance readout, perks, and premium-time offers side by side, while mobile stacks them; Buy Lux on an unaffordable offer jumps straight to the HL Studios billing flow with the needed amount prefilled.
HL Studios billing owns Stripe card-style Checkout in USD, Stripe Pix Checkout in BRL when that rail is enabled, and the existing USDC/USDT crypto transfer routes where configured.
For crypto routes, Premium can ask your wallet to switch to or add the selected network with public network metadata; Lux is still credited only after backend transfer verification.
Premium conveniences include Faster Stamina Regen for active stamina, 6 hours of auto-wave storage, More Auto-Spell Slots at level 25, outfit color customization, Equip Best, Sell All, and battlefield zoom controls once wave 60 unlocks the zoom HUD.
Bows and crossbows keep firing weaker, less accurate fallback ammo when your matching stack is empty, and the ammo reminder now nudges you toward Equip once that tab is unlocked.
Equip Best is premium-only, keeps ranged loadouts matched, and now prefers a better one-handed + shield setup over a marginal two-handed swap while still taking a clearly stronger two-handed weapon.
The fielded party holds 4 members total, so late contracts mostly add replacement flexibility instead of infinite scaling.
Mercenaries keep automatic spell rotations and frozen progression after hiring, so treat them like specialist slots, not second leaders.
Mercenary upkeep is a recurring purse-first gold sink paid when a wave starts. After bribery unlocks, Premium accounts can Bribe in the Party window to restore 5 loyalty and clear any stored unpaid-readiness penalty, spending 1 Bribe Contract before falling back to purse gold.
When a mercenary flees or backstabs during an escape check, Server Log calls it out and the departing mercenary walks to the battlefield edge as a visual only; they are already gone from combat.
Magic, Melee, Distance, and Shielding now share a level 1 starting baseline. Adjacent basic attacks train Melee, ranged basic attacks train Distance, Shielding grows from blocking hostile hits, and Magic grows only from mana spent on spells. Druids and Sorcerers have a lighter first Magic step so normal early offensive spell use can show Magic 2 around wave 10; later Magic levels keep the normal curve.
Sensei endurance unlocks the Training tab and awards training scrolls. He enters as a friendly green-reticle NPC, turns hostile when the duel starts, and shows the orange-red top-center countdown while the Battle target list keeps him hidden.
Paladin shots, wand strikes, and single-target attack spells now travel as visible projectiles. Ammo choice changes the sprite, moving targets stay aligned when the snapshot lands, damage lands when the projectile arrives, and wave-ending hits stay visible through the transition.
Projectile impacts, rods, monster missiles, and spell-hit flashes all use the same restored classic visual family across the battlefield.
Shop, bestiary, bank, and triggered events
Rashid unlock target: level 15, earliest event wave 9.
Grizzly Adams unlock target: level 18, earliest event wave 10.
Jefrey unlock target: level 35, earliest event wave 19.
Misguided Thief unlock target: level 20, earliest event wave 11.
Sensei endurance target: level 40, wave 30+ after the normal wave is cleared.
The All sell-queue shortcut stays visible in Rashid sell mode. Premium accounts can fill every sellable backpack stack at or below the leader's current level, while empty eligible sell states leave it disabled.
The Lux Shop sells Naming Rights for 100 Lux. Each purchase grants 1 character rename credit and does not add premium time.
Equipment stays available during combat and prep until you click Battlefield or use the wave controls. Shop and Bank stay intermission-only, and confirmed shop trades pause wave starts before spending gold or selling items.
LuxBank withdrawals cost 1% normally. Emergency bank drafts cost 3% and are used automatically when mercenary upkeep cannot be paid from purse gold. Compact million, billion, and trillion balances keep one useful decimal when needed.
A successful Jefrey rescue makes him grateful for 900s, cutting bank withdrawal and emergency draft fees in half. Emergency drafts and failed Jefrey rescues make him wary instead, raising manual withdrawals by 0.5% and emergency drafts by 1% per wary level, capped at level 5, until the next successful rescue.
When Rashid refreshes his stock, a compact NEW badge stays on Shop or Menu until you open Shop. Newly unlocked Equipment, Shop/Bank, Bestiary, and Training tabs also mark the collapsed Menu until you open that tab.
Ammo stacks queue as a full stack in Rashid sell mode, then the cart arrows let you trim or restore the amount before confirming. Double click a queued buy or sell stack to remove just that stack from the cart.
After the first Misguided Thief kill, the Lux Shop sells Bribe Contracts for 25 Lux each. Contracts are spent before gold when Premium players bribe mercenaries.
Queued sell stacks stay in a 4-column backpack grid, grow to 4 visible rows, and only start vertical scrolling after that view is full.
Party and Progress only stay open on World. Equipment and Shop hide Progress, Equipment, Shop, and Bestiary hide Party, and Bestiary also hides Backpack while you review the notes.
The public /leaderboards page shows the current season's top 10 Level, Wave, Streak, Skill, and Gold highs. Daily and Weekly use UTC day/week windows, and “All time” still means the current season only.
The public /faq page covers browser play, premium scope, the pro-AI stance, payment finality, support, and where to follow development.
Merchant events start at 5% and cool down for 60s globally plus 180s per merchant after a proc.
After a successful unlock, Rashid, Jefrey, and Misguided Thief reset to 1.67%, and each failed roll only adds +0.33 percentage points per wave instead of +1 percentage point.
After Bestiary unlock, Grizzly Adams uses those same post-unlock values scaled by the share of tracked creatures that can still gain another reward star, and he leaves the normal random pool once none can still upgrade.
Rashid now only needs to touch your live leader to resolve successfully, then he leaves the battlefield immediately instead of waiting for the wave clear.
Grizzly Adams now spawns near board center, roams locally with ranged spear support, and only pays out his Bestiary reward if he survives the wave.
Misguided Thief sprints in a straight line across the board. Kill or taunt him before he crosses to unlock bribery and earn a Bribe Contract.
Walter Jaeger unlocks at level 30 and can appear from wave 15 onward. He marks one normal wave monster with the prey icon, green nameplate, and red HP glow, and that monster moves +25% faster while hunting Walter until you kill it.
Friendly event NPCs show a constant green battlefield reticle. Sensei uses that reticle while approaching, then drops it once the duel begins.
Sensei shares the triggered-event slot with merchants and bosses, and only enters after the normal wave is cleared.
Bestiary progression
Monster entries stay hidden until you kill that type once. The first kill reveals a silhouette, and killing that monster again starts tracking.
Each successful Grizzly Adams rescue unlocks +1 reward star for one tracked creature that can still upgrade. He first prefers eligible creatures that appeared on that same wave, then falls back to the wider tracked pool if none of those wave monsters can still gain a star.
Tracked kills and reward stars are separate. Grizzly unlocks the reward tier first, then only future tracked kills count toward that newly unlocked star, so the system stays intentionally non-retroactive.
0 stars only allow gold and ammo drops and keep HP, Threat, and Family hidden. 1 star unlocks the full loot table, 2 stars grant +15% damage from the whole controllable party against that monster family, and 3 stars add +10% resistance from that family while keeping +25% XP plus boss charge on kills of that exact monster.
The Unique drops panel appears only for monsters with configured drops, then shows the full possible loot table. Undropped items stay hidden as black silhouettes of their real item art until they drop once, and 3 stars reveal every remaining loot slot and icon.
At 2 stars the family boss appears as a silhouette tease. At 3 stars the real boss preview appears, and further kills of that monster start charging the family boss if one exists.
Bestiary preview squares now auto-fit every creature sprite, and locked notes use a solid black silhouette with a light outline so even tiny or oversized monsters stay readable at a glance.
Bestiary notes now sit on one continuous tab surface, while each creature note, preview square, loot slot, and kill meter keeps its framed utility look.
Bestiary notes now include inline Threat, HP, Name, and Stars sort controls plus a case-insensitive filter that only searches details already revealed on each note before pagination runs.
The first successful Walter Jaeger hunt unlocks the separate Prey window when the Bestiary tab is open, preferring the right side column when side columns are equally open. Later successful hunts grant prey cards, and spending one card sets a single active prey monster whose Bestiary tracking is unlocked.
Prey search suggestions start after you type at least one character and only match monster names from the beginning. If you already have active prey, a valid typed replacement appears as a separate candidate until you spend the card.
An active prey selection affects future wave planning only. It gives eligible normal waves a soft 50% chance to reserve one spawn for that monster, while Grizzly reward stars lean 70% toward that active prey when it can still gain stars.