A Town Grew Around the Hole

The design document has said since the beginning that a gold-rush boomtown grew up around the hole. For months that town was a sentence. You started a run already standing at the top of the stairs on depth 1, and the Merchant and the Trainer were down there in the dark with you, set into the floor like furniture that happened to talk.

That's over. Climb depth 1's up-stairs and you come out in Rimhold.

Rimhold

Depth 0 is a town built around a seven-by-seven Pit. The Pit is the only way down — walk into it and you land beside depth 1's up-stairs. No combat up here, no Mood. The Labyrinth doesn't need to hunt in town. Town is where the bait gets sold.

The Training Center and the Trading House are always there, and the Trainer and Merchant live in them now instead of loitering in the dungeon. They're invulnerable, and they no longer vanish on you when a fight breaks out. Their offers key off the deepest depth you've reached, so a trip back up from depth 6 finds better steel on the racks than the walk down did; potions and scrolls restock every visit.

The town has people. A map-seller hawks charts "accurate to the fourth floor. After that, I'm told, it gets opinions." A returned seeker went down four and is not going down five. There's a widow, an assayer's clerk, and a child who'd like you to look for a man in a red scarf. Bump into one and they talk. They wander. None of them are going in.

North of the lanes is the boneyard: one grave for every hero this profile has lost, already dug. The gravedigger will tell you there's always plenty of room. That's true, and it's partly my fault.

It's painted, too — trampled night mud, a broken-earth rim around the Pit, torch posts throwing warm light down the lanes, and roofs that lift away when you step inside a building. Everyone in town has a portrait. I'm told the child now renders at three-quarter size, instead of as a very convincing adult.

Rings are magic again

Rings and abilities had quietly become the same thing: two slots of passive buffs and a trainer selling a parallel list. I drew one line between them. An ability is a trained art. A ring is a bound magic power. Only the strongest rings bite.

So nine rings walked down the street to the Training Center and became arts — Duelist's Form, Haggle, Field Surgery, Anchor, Scavenger, Wand Mastery, Sniper. The Flensing Knife folded into Backstab as a flank edge.

And six abilities went the other way, into metal. The flicker gives you Blink. The far door gives you Teleport, and the Labyrinth notices every time you use it — it's the one thing outside a kill that feeds the Mood. The ghost-stone walks you through walls for a hit point per three tiles of stone, and yes, it will kill you if you ask it to. The reprieve saves your life once, heals you to full, and shatters. The surveyor and the dowser read the floor for you.

The rest got reworked rather than moved: old blood turns bleeding into healing, the red tithe takes 35% but halves your potions, the ashen band halves flame, frost and scorching ground, the ironroot counts retroactively, and the twin doubles your other ring — bite included. Wear it next to the far door and find out what the Labyrinth thinks of that.

The HUD caught up: ring powers name the ring that grants them, and a Rings list says in one line what each worn ring is doing to you.

Everything else

• A killing blow can't leave you at negative HP on the death screen anymore. You were dead enough at zero.
• Greyed-out abilities are actually legible on their buttons now; I'd picked a text colour for the panel, not the plate, and then stared at it for a week without noticing.
• The win screen's Hall of Fame no longer sits on the bottom edge at 1080p, and it moves beside the buttons at 720p instead of falling off.

What's next

The town is the first piece of the world above the hole, and it's still a quiet one. Next is making it matter between runs — and, as always, the balance work the deep floors keep asking for. Download the new build, climb out once, and meet the neighbours. They've been expecting you.