Mithril & Mud

🗺️ What's Next for Mithril & Mud We've shipped 8 patches since Early Access launch — over 60 bug fixes, expeditions, offline production, automation, a full soundtrack, and a mountain of balance tuning. That's all in the first three weeks — and we're not slowing down. Mithril & Mud is a passion project built by a tiny team, and we're pouring every spare hour into making this the best dwarven mining game we can. When you drop a bug report in Discord at midnight and see it fixed in the next patch — that's us hunched over a keyboard with too much coffee and a stubborn refusal to ship broken things. We want to be straight with you — we're working on this game every single day. You might notice updates slowing down compared to the rapid-fire patches at launch. That's intentional. Instead of pushing a bunch of small fixes every few days, we're shifting to larger, more impactful updates that each bring meaningful new content and systems. The quality bar is going up, and we'd rather take the time to get things right than rush something half-baked out the door. Your feedback has already reshaped major systems. Expeditions, offline workers, the automation suite, the entire balance curve — those all came from conversations with you. We read every message, every review, every "hey this feels off." It matters more than you know. So — what's coming next? 🔓 Progressive Automation Unlocks Right now, the automation panel opens all at once. That's changing. Automation will become part of the progression system itself. Individual capabilities — auto-assign workers, auto-buy upgrades, auto-delve deeper, auto-convert resources — will be unlocked as upgrades you earn through gameplay. Early depths are hands-on. As you progress, you unlock the tools to let the mine run itself, piece by piece. Automation won't just be a convenience toggle — it'll be something you work toward. 👑 Dwarven Heroes & Kings A brand-new system: named dwarven characters with unique passive bonuses. Each hero brings ...

⛏️ Patch v0.1.8 — Balance Tuning & QoL This patch rebalances the depth bonus curve, adds quality-of-life features for mid-to-late game players, and improves UI discoverability across several panels. ⚖️ Balance 📊 Tiered Depth Bonuses — Depth production bonus now scales in tiers: +10% per depth for D2–D10, +7% for D11–D15, +5% for D16+. Replaces the flat +10% at all depths 🛡️ Artifact Depth Mult Soft Cap — Full value up to 1.5x, half effectiveness beyond. Prevents runaway stacking from multiple depth artifacts ➕ Additive Blessing & Gem Depth Bonuses — Blessing and gem depth multipliers now pool additively instead of multiplying separately, flattening the late-game curve 📈 Deep Cavern Event Production Floor — Event rewards now scale to at least 30 seconds of your current production (60s for big rewards), so late-game events always feel worthwhile ✨ New Features ⚠️ Cave-In Preparation Warning — A prominent banner + toast appears at depth 9, warning you to prepare workers for cave-ins before they start at depth 10 ⏸️ Pause All Automation — Master toggle in the automation panel pauses all auto-buy, auto-assign, auto-delve, and auto-convert without losing your individual settings ❓ Help Buttons — Added "?" help buttons with styled popups to the Prestige, Relic, Beast, and Challenge panels 🎓 Tutorial-Gated Automation — Automation button and keybind are hidden until you complete the guided tutorial on your first playthrough 🎨 UI Improvements 🔘 Expedition Suppress Toggle — "Don't show again" on expedition popups changed from a tiny checkbox to a visible toggle switch with brighter, larger text 🌐 Localization Added ~26 new translation keys across all 9 supported languages (cave-in warnings, help text for expeditions/relics/prestige, expedition worker death & relic drop info)

✨ New Features 🔄 Per-Slot Auto Deploy — Each expedition slot now has its own "Auto Deploy" checkbox, replacing the old global toggle. Mix and match which slots auto-redeploy and which you manage manually 👷 Manual Worker Reserve — Reserve workers specifically for expeditions with the new / controls. Reserved workers are excluded from room auto-assign but can still be manually assigned 🧌 Troll Timeout — Trolls now flee after 10 minutes if not defeated, stealing 50% of resources on their way out. No more infinite stalls 🔕 Suppress Expedition Popups — New toggle in both the expedition panel and Settings to hide expedition completion popups. Rewards still appear in the game log 🎯 Expedition Tooltips — All expedition panel controls now have descriptive tooltips explaining what they do 📊 Locked/Reserved Workers Display — The left panel now shows how many workers are locked in active expeditions and how many are manually reserved (visible once expeditions unlock at depth 3) 🐛 Bug Fixes 🏆 Expedition collect race condition — Clicking "Collect" no longer accidentally starts a new expedition when auto-collect fires in the same frame 💎 Rune shard preview — Was showing 0% for all tiers. Base chances bumped and tiny values now display as "