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Hearthward Updates
A running history of what's changed in Hearthward. Numbered releases (0.111, 0.112, …) mark playtest milestones; lettered releases (0.113a, 0.113b, …) are interim fixes and balance passes between them.
v0.114 — Free to play
Latest
- Hearthward is now completely free with unlimited play. We removed all ads and the daily-lives limit — expeditions no longer cost a "life" on defeat, and there's nothing to watch or pay for. Just play.
v0.113 — Ability reworks & combat depth
- Fenwick's ultimate is now Bullseye (formerly Quickdraw): for 3 seconds she gains +50% Critical and her crit-damage multiplier is tripled — crits deal 4.5× instead of 1.5× — replacing the old attack-speed buff with a burst-crit window.
- Excess Critical converts to crit damage: any Critical above 100% is turned into extra crit-damage (1% → +0.01 to the multiplier), so over-stacking crit is never wasted.
- Slows now stack with logarithmic diminishing returns — one slow is still 50%, but layering sources compounds, floored so nothing fully freezes. Bleed and poison also display as stacks, like Burn.
- Skewer (Kaelis' 2nd ult) reworked: strikes all enemies for a normal hit, applies a heavy Bleed to all, and grants Kaelis +25% damage for 2 seconds.
- Venom Bloom (Thornwild) now damages and Poisons all enemies; Mirror Light (Liora) shields allies for 75% of damage dealt (up from 50%); Shockwave (Branwen) also deals 10% of his Max HP to the stunned target.
- Refined Sever strikes 4×; Poison raised to 7% of the applier's average Attack/Magic Attack.
- Quality of life: swap between a hero's two ultimates directly from their card — no trip to the Curator. Curator training times reduced to 24h (refine) / 48h (second ultimate). Trader exchange rates rebalanced.
v0.112 — Rebrand to Hearthward, sync fixes & tuning
- The game is now Hearthward, and your fortress is the Ward — titles, story, and UI updated throughout.
- Cloud sync fixes: sign-in now survives a page reload, saves push reliably afterward, and the sync status bar is honest about "unsynced," "session expired," and "synced" states.
- Daily-lives losses merge by maximum across devices, so switching devices can't reduce the day's count.
- Removed the in-game display banners after an ad-policy review; monetization pared back to a single rewarded "continue" option.
v0.111 — The Molten Reaches, the finale
- A third realm: the Cinderwaste, the Magma Caldera, and the Dragon's Roost, ending with the Elder Dragon, Vauroth — and the reveal of the corruption's true origin.
- Harder than the Aquatic realm: stronger stats, many enemies inflict party-wide statuses, effects proc more often, and bosses surge the whole party and enrage early.
- Bosses drop Corrupted Scales; the only equipment is the Dragon's Heart, an inert keepsake from the final boss.
- Story added for the realm intro and every boss kill, plus champion vignettes across all three realms.
v0.109–0.110 — The Curator
- A third vendor, the Curator, joins the Artificer and the Trader. Its currency is the Corrupted Scale, dropped only by Aquatic (and later Molten) bosses.
- It unlocks once your Ward is strong enough and you've banked enough scales, then offers three things: free stacking party passives, one-time ultimate refinements, and alternate second ultimates that change a hero's role.
- New status effects — enemy Stun, per-enemy Slow, and Bleed/Poison damage-over-time — plus generalized taunt and reflect, enabling the new abilities.
- A large internal refactor split the codebase into focused modules and added automated tests, with no gameplay impact.
Have a bug to report or an idea? Reach us on the contact page.