The Underworld had dozens of Infernal Towns but a single stall jammed in one far corner — so its towns were, in practice, empty. No longer. A spread of hub towns across the whole map now carry a shop and a Deepwatch contract board, each stocked to its local zone’s level band.

Both share the town tile — one stop for supplies and work — and both now show on the Underworld map, marked $ for a shop and B for a board. You can gear up and take contracts without hauling everything back to the surface.

The Underworld’s story quests were seeded before the deep learned to keep its own records — so several never appeared, or turned up in the wrong place. They are now correctly claimed by the Underworld and stand where they belong: The Embercrown Abyss, The Fissure of Tides, Silence of the Frostspire, The Veilstone Hollow (and its Wraith), and The Heart of Darkness at the deep’s centre.

Returning to your safehouse from the Underworld — including after a defeat — could leave you standing in the daylight while the game still drew the Underworld map and its old compass over you. You now properly surface: the overworld is restored the moment you arrive home.

At high levels, magic had quietly pulled ahead of steel. The way a spell’s power scaled against a foe’s armour meant a caster’s biggest spells could out-damage a fighter’s swings several times over against tough, armoured enemies — the tankier the target, the wider the gap.

Magic now scales the way a weapon does: a spell’s power raises its damage in proportion, instead of compounding against defence. A fully-mastered top-tier spell now settles at around 50% stronger than the equivalent weapon strike — still a caster’s reward for range and element play, no longer a multiple of it.

Mastering a starter spell had become a substitute for buying better ones: a Tier VII beginner spell could out-hit a freshly-bought endgame spell, so there was little reason to ever upgrade. That’s fixed. A spell’s mastery now caps by its level — beginner spells plateau at Tier II, the level-30 line at Tier III, level-60 at Tier V, and only the top (level-100) spells reach Tier VII.

The result is a clean ladder: a fully-mastered spell of each tier clearly out-damages the mastered spell below it, so climbing the spellbook — not grinding one starter forever — is how a caster grows. (Heals and buffs are unchanged. Any spell already tiered past its new cap is settled back to it.)

A Spell Fusion used to be a fixed-power one-off. Now fusions earn AP every time you cast them and attune through tiers of their own (up to Tier V), each step adding a little more punch — so the fusions you favour become a rewarding, growing part of your kit rather than a novelty.