You can die now, and come back

Until now the first thing that killed you bricked your character. Health hit zero and you became a ghost that could not move, could not act, with no way back to the living. People hit that and simply stopped playing. That is gone.

Death works. Fall in a fight and Sgrios takes you, sets his scar on your legend, and you lose a small slice of experience, five percent, and nothing at all while you are still under level five. Then you wake at the Mileth temple, healed to full, to a holy chime:

You awaken in the temple at Mileth, bearing the scar of Sgrios.

And it goes into your legend beside your birth and your deeds:

Scarred by Sgrios, the God of Destruction

This is the core of it, not the whole of it. A friend reviving you on the spot with a Red Potion, the visible ghost and skull, the walk through Sgrios's realm, a pile of your dropped gear where you fell, those still come later. But the part that matters most, that dying no longer takes your character out of your hands, is in.

The tutorial has its teachers

The opening, the Path of Beginnings, went from a rough first draft to the real thing, and the big change is the cast. The single guide we had is retired, and five teachers stand in his place, each handling one thing:

Myles grants Srad Tut, a weak fire spell that only ever exists inside the tutorial, so you have something to cast before you leave. One small fire hit for a sliver of mana, feeble on purpose.

Eadaoin sells apples, five gold to buy and two back. Keelin stands by her grey slate, the board anyone can read but only Demagogues may post to, and we seeded it with a few words of counsel.

Gerard's floppies

The tutorial's first quest meant building the machinery for quests that count what you kill. Gerard the gardener wants his garden to the north cleared of one male floppy (white) and one female (brown). A new path leads up into the garden, now full of hopping floppies. Bring down one of each, come back, and he pays 600 gold and a mark on your legend. Strike the right floppies and you watch the count climb. The practice floppies down on the main field do not count, so there is no shortcut.

Two more touches in here. The mantis that used to wander the tutorial did not belong, so it is gone. And the practice creatures are findable now, the dummies right by Raghnall the combat teacher, the floppies in a grove just north of the teacher row instead of scattered thin across the whole map.

The gate out works again. Grendwald's "step through the gate" choice had quietly become a dead button. It sends you on to the Mileth Inn now, the way it says.

Flynn the basement trainer, the proper multi-room building, and the Tutorial Book reader are still to come. But all five teachers, the spell, the first quest, and a safe field to practice on are in.

Mileth, door by door

Mileth is the first town, so we checked every connection. All 38 building doors, the shop entrances, both inn doors, and the stairs down into the crypt land exactly where they should. We traced the whole crypt staircase, from the square down through the vestibule into Mileth Crypt 1, and it lines up end to end. The village message board is back at its corner, so you can read and post in town.

A couple of warps point at maps we cannot build yet, the Temple of Choosing and the Training Room, since they need art we do not have. And the Mileth Altar is real but it is endgame, so it waits its turn.

Groups and mail

Less visible, but we went through the social systems to be sure they hold. Grouping (invites, the recruiting box, kick and promote, shared experience and loot inside a party) and mail (reading, sending, your mailbox carried in the boards list) both work on the server. What is left is a live two-person run in the game, which we will do.

One bug fell out of that check: a leftover test board was quietly showing up in everyone's board and mail list. Removed, so your list is clean.

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