Since the last post almost every screen in CombaTON has been redrawn. Fights moved onto a hex battlefield, chests open in 3D, the maps follow a day and night clock, and the Drowned Isle and two city dungeons are open. Here's the tour, with the full battle breakdown coming in the next post.
✨ A NEW LOOK, TOP TO BOTTOM
Sign-in, the world HUD, the bottom bar, every window: nearly everything you touch outside a fight has been redrawn, and it now fits phones held either way as well as wide PC screens.
• New bottom bar: a smoked-glass capsule over the world, with your hero's portrait in the fire-rune orb in the middle. On desktop it becomes a full MMO bar: Character C, Inventory B, Loot L, Map M, then Activities J, Social O, Wallet K and Menu Esc. The bag tile shows how full it is, the loot tile lights up with new drops, and the map tile shows your coordinates and stops your route with a click. The duplicate side buttons are gone on desktop.
• New world HUD: your health, class resource and XP run as glowing threads, the zone name sits on an iron plate that is easier to read on bright maps, and every button on the map is a round painted ring. Chat, the target frame and your own panel, loot window and history, party, quest tracker, dungeon panel, cast bar, world boss alerts and the FPS counter all join the same style.
• The ember ring at the top is now the game clock: the time in the middle, the dial coloured by night, dawn, day and dusk, and a sun or moon riding around it. Tap it for the full in-game date. Your level moved next to XP («Lv 2 · XP 10%»); hover or tap that line to see how much XP is left to the next level.
• Map zoom is one magnifier button: tap it and drag the slider. It closes by itself after a few seconds. The center button in the bottom bar brings the camera back to your hero on every map.
• New look for every window: smoked glass with a smouldering ember thread on top, one style for quests, loot, backpack, settings, the pause menu and confirmations. On a phone windows slide up from the bottom, in landscape they slide in from the right, on PC they stay draggable.
• More windows moved to the new look: the quest journal, the item window (with a close button on PC), loot filters, the shop, premium, guild, party and arena match found, city travel, enchanting, the workshop, the resource market, dungeon ready check and run summary, the prologue and story cards, character select and the character card.
• Backpack: a compact status line (CBT, TON, slots used with a fill bar), tabs with icons and counters, sort and zoom behind one View button, and quiet dashed empty slots, so your items start much higher on the screen.
• Windows on desktop have two sizes: the expand button switches between a small and a large window, each keeps the place and size you gave it, and a window reopens in the size you closed it in.
• Esc on desktop now closes whatever window is on top, one at a time (item details, bag, map, chests, dialogs), and opens the pause menu only when nothing else is open.
• Phones held sideways: the world screen no longer piles buttons on top of each other. Side buttons sit in the bottom corners beside the main bar, the quest pointer moved to the top right instead of covering your hero, keyboard hints are gone on touch screens, and names above characters use the game's own lettering. Inventory, Loot and Map sit in the bottom bar like on desktop, so the screen edges stay clear; on iPhones the side buttons hug the edges and step around the notch, whichever way you turn the phone.
• Map on phones: pinching zooms around your fingers instead of throwing the map off screen, two fingers also pan, and lifting them no longer picks whatever was under the last finger.
• New sign-in, hero select and hero creation: one torch-lit hall, hero cards with level, location, health and mana, and creation that shows the server's reason when a name is taken or slots are full. Creation no longer breaks on devices where the 3D hero can't load: the painted class art stays and you can still make your hero.
• Game sounds (birds, music) now go quiet when you minimise the game or switch to another app, and come back when you return.
• Guild and team actions (kick, leave, disband, role change) now ask in a proper in-game window instead of the phone's system pop-up, and class names show in your language instead of BARBARIAN or ROGUE.
⚔️ TACTICS BATTLE: TARGET FIRST, THEN STRIKE
Fights now play out on a hex battlefield, and this is the biggest change in the update. Here's the short version; the full breakdown is in the next post.
• Target first, then strike: tap an enemy to take it as your target, then tap an ability to cast at it. Tap your target again for a basic attack. No target picked? The ability goes to the nearest enemy in reach.
• A cleaner battle screen: with the phone held sideways the whole header (portraits, HP, resource, effects, action points, timer and round) sits in the strip between the app's Close and menu buttons. The classic compact ability bar is back with cooldowns, locks and AP costs on each tile, and the turn timer is a medallion with a ring: gold on your turn, red on the enemy's.
• Your hero acts out every ability, two one-handed weapons strike right then left, Charge rushes your hero at an enemy up to 4 hexes away, and crafter summons stand on the field for 7 rounds.
• New results screen: it slides up from the bottom over the battlefield, with your loot, XP and stats in one place.
• Balance moved too: aimed abilities hit ×1.5 harder, self buffs and self heals cost 2 AP, Barbarian rage grows with the damage again, and talents that fire on a kill or a crit work in the new battle. Full breakdown in the next post.
💎 CHESTS & ITEMS
Opening a chest is a small show now: a real 3D chest cracks open, the item rises onto a card, and the loot is safe even if the server answers late or your bag is full.
• Every chest opens with its own 3D chest: it cracks, flashes, and the item rises onto a card with Claim / Re-spin / Open again. The spinning reel is gone. If the server answers late you never lose the loot.
• The five lootbox chests (common to legendary) were remade in high quality: sharp textures with real surface detail instead of the old blurry look, and they still load fast on phones.
• Chests have their own sounds: the chest lands, its runes charge up, the lid strains against the lock, the lock bursts and the item rises, and each rarity, from common to mythic, ends on its own chime. Skipping the opening plays only the best item's chime.
• Several items in one chest? They show as cards you swipe through (arrows or ← → on desktop), with a counter and one Claim all button. A small tapping finger shows that you can tap a card to see what the item does.
• Opening a chest with a full bag no longer traps you on the Retry screen: close it, free some space, and the loot arrives on its own (it is kept for 7 days).
• 121 weapons and armour pieces got new hand-painted icons, new descriptions, and names that match the art.
💰 REWARDS, CRAFTING & GATHERING
The daily reward finally pays the CBT it shows, gathering is live in the starting lands, and crafting tells you what you actually made.
• Daily login really pays the CBT it shows, and it grows through the week: from 1 CBT on day 1 to 4 CBT on day 7, +10% for every full week you keep the streak (up to +90%), and ×1.5 on every 10th day.
• New daily login window: your streak in a ring of fire that really burns (the flames sway and flare, sparks fly up off the ring), the week as chests, today's three rewards on cards, and tomorrow's reward shown with the cycle and 10th-day bonuses counted in. On PC it opens wide: your streak on the left, the week and today's rewards on the right.
• Gathering in the Forgotten Outskirts: chop trees, mine rocks, pick herbs and fish at the rings on the lake. Each node takes a few strikes, then grows back after a few minutes. What you gather goes straight to your bag, and your Lumberjacking, Prospecting, Foraging or Fishing skill grows with it.
• Resource rings on the map are coloured by kind (wood brown, ore grey, herbs and fibre green) and show through roofs. Gathering spots that sat inside houses in Pine Skete, Brigand Harbor, Gallows Road, Crimson Thicket and Forgotten Outskirts were moved out into the open.
• Crafting results: processing (tanned leather, ingots…) now shows what you made with its picture and amount, the crafter's portrait sits on top, items get a quality-coloured frame, and the Claim button really collects the order when you're at the crafter.
• Crafting chains no longer pop the result window at every step: in-between steps show a short note, and the window opens once for the finished item.
• Trainer resets are cheaper: from level 10 you get 3 free talent resets and 3 free stat resets, then 10 CBT each (was 100 CBT). The trainer shows how many free ones you have left.
🗺️ WORLD & DUNGEONS
New places to explore, maps that follow the in-game clock from dawn to deep night, and every hero on the map now wears what they actually own.
• The Drowned Isle is open: take the boat from the lighthouse pier in Brigand Harbor. Recommended level 10.
• Two new solo dungeons in the fenced yard on the east side of Volnograd. City Crypt, level 10+: Crypt Keeper Osten takes you down to the tomb of Lord Severin Vellar. Cemetery Catacombs, level 12+: Gravedigger Gavr, and the Bone King waiting at the bottom. Gates open as you clear the rooms; the first clear pays a CBT bonus.
• The Sealed Descent in Pine Skete now leads somewhere: the Cellar Warden waits by the hatch and takes you down into the Skete Dungeons.
• Maps follow the in-game clock: dawn, day, dusk and night, with smooth twilight between them. Characters and monsters are lit to match, so nobody glows in the dark.
• Every hero on the map wears their real gear: other players see your armour and weapons, and you see theirs. Two-handed weapons are held in both hands: the left hand grips the shaft, two-handed strikes play their own swing, wrists no longer twist into a cone and fists close around the handle.
• Mounted heroes: the horse looks straight ahead instead of off to the left, turns its head and leans into turns.
• Monster packs are marked on the map: target one monster, and its packmates that will join the fight get a faint ring, with ×N on the target bar.
• New world map window (M): every map in the same 3/4 view as the game, with your hero, markers and route right on it. Breadcrumbs from Known worlds to the map you're on, an all-worlds layer with every realm you've found, names sitting next to their own markers without overlapping, a points-of-interest list with quest marks, and the route card with distance, portals and travel time. Centre-on-me button on every device.
• Expeditions: routes are now a hand of painted cards. Swipe through them, flip a card to read its conditions, and the chosen one shows its facts, rewards and task. Running, evacuating and going deeper live on the same card.
• In dungeons, the panel shows how many enemies are left in the room you're clearing.
• Wide doors in Crimson Thicket, Gallows Road, Pine Skete, Brigand Harbor and the Drowned Isle are now double doors: a fixed frame and two leaves that swing outwards. The Thicket hut door no longer hangs in the air above the doorway.
• Roofs turn see-through around you and nearby creatures instead of hiding you as a gold outline, and chimney smoke no longer rises inside a house.
• Tapping a resource, chest or door you can't stand right next to: your hero walks to the closest spot and gathers or opens from there. If it's truly out of reach, you're told so instead of nothing happening.
• Heroes leave footprints on soft ground again, just like monsters.
🛠️ FIXES & TRANSLATIONS
The small things that kept getting in the way, a few class bonuses that finally apply, and three big translation passes.
• Class bonuses that never applied now do: the Barbarian's +20% and the Cleric's +50% out-of-combat regeneration were reset to the base 100% by every stat recalculation. Existing heroes were corrected.
• Crafter luck is counted once: the class's +15 luck, as listed on the class card, was being added twice.
• Fewer disconnects from the world while running with the stick, and the wallet history and skill screens no longer throw silent server errors.
• Fixed the map going dead after talking to a merchant: taps did nothing and the camera came loose until you reopened the game. If it ever happens, the next tap brings it back.
• Volnograd no longer opens to a black screen, and the crypt keeper and the gravedigger now stand in the city to send you into the crypt and the catacombs.
• After dying in the Forgotten Outskirts you no longer come back standing in the water, and on Gallows Road you no longer respawn hidden under a roof.
• Monsters no longer shuffle back and forth by one tile on patrol, and names above running heroes and monsters stay on them instead of jumping ahead.
• Roofs in Pine Skete, Brigand Harbor, Gallows Road, Drowned Isle and Crimson Thicket no longer come back when you walk between rooms inside a building.
• Phones in fullscreen mode: your health and resource numbers no longer slip under the Close button, both bars are the same width, and the map buttons on the right sit just below them.
• Windows can no longer be dragged or resized off the screen, and the route distance on the map no longer shows long decimals like 31.0103 tiles.
• Translations, pass one: about 1,300 lines in 29 languages that had been glued to the text of a neighbouring line (a word from another button tacked on the end) are translated again from English.
• Pass two: the expedition panel is now translated into all 28 languages that showed it in English, and broken lines (cut-off phrases, mixed-up gem and stat names, machine-translation slips) were fixed. Intellect now reads INTE so it is no longer confused with Intuition (INT).
• Pass three: about 1,600 half-English lines in 23 languages are fully translated, Belarusian and Serbian no longer fall back to Russian text, and Kazakh and Serbian lines that were just English spelled in Cyrillic now read as real sentences.
• Italian: the chest Claim button now reads «Preleva» so it can't be confused with a reroll.
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See you in the arena. ⚔️