Fresh from the Forge

News & Patch Notes


Wyvern ships player-facing improvements nearly every day. This is the running log, newest first — also available as an RSS feed.

2026-07-17

Clearing the workbench

  • Lock onto your target. A new target command lets you lock onto a foe at a glance — firing with no argument now aims at your current target, and Duel and Shadowstep fall back to it too.
  • Your phone gets its own view. The map is now a full-screen tab on phones, with your HP/SP always visible in a persistent strip; a badge lights up if you take damage while you're looking at another tab, and rotating your phone reshapes the layout automatically instead of squeezing it.
  • Maintenance without the kick. Scheduled server restarts no longer warn you and boot you off — you, and your whole party together, get quietly handed off to a live sibling server mid-session instead.
  • Sound finds its direction. Sound effects now pan toward their source as you move, and combat gained a fuller sample table — ranged attacks, unarmed hits, and bites all have their own sounds now. New sound commands let you replay what you just heard and mute channels you don't want.
  • More light, and better light. Spells cast their own glow again — Fireball's orange bloom, other bolts in their own hues — glowstones now burn a cooler blue-green, jars of fireflies glow warm yellow, overlapping light sources blend more naturally, and the overall brightness ceiling was raised.
  • Bolt, cone, and ring spells get their moment. They now render their own casting effects instead of a generic flash, including a first look at sonic boom's own visible form.
  • The Hall of Records grows. Dedicated arena and Monster-vs-Monster leaderboards join the Hall, a revived Demigods board tracks who's ascended and when, and every board's summary now teases its #1 entry at a glance.
  • Loot, tuned again. Loot beams lose their washed-out mid-tier flicker, the orange rarity band got brighter, beams slow down as they age, and gear you already own never beams at all — legendary-and-up drops now add a sound cue too. Loot on the ground is properly sized to match players and monsters instead of towering over them, and Sokoban prizes get their own beam colors (azure with gold trim, true red for the Red set).
  • A player asked, we listened: you can now place a Monster Pit Crystal Ball in your own home through Builder Mode — apply it to watch a live pit fight from your couch.
  • New in the world. Nagas can shed their skin to slip out of a losing fight, leaving a decoy husk behind; water-walkers and levitating forms (nagas included) now render properly gliding over water; tougher "badass" enemy variants glow crimson so you can spot them coming; and the massive diamond golem finally has real art — a faceted, translucent crystal form.
  • Missions with a nudge. The world can now hand you a mission instead of waiting for you to find one — the first is a proper first-timer's guide the moment you land in jail. The road out of besieged Begynne Towne is open again, too.
  • Monster & item balance. A couple dozen monsters had their damage smoothed out for consistency: pirates and big horn sheep hit softer, purple dragons, monkey king, and riagor hit harder, Kirins attack a touch slower, Frozen Xipes came up near their unfrozen strength, Ghasts lost their near-one-shot double-strike, and apex yaks were reined in while sharks got stronger. Arch Demons' fire recoil, brutal since their old live-quest days, is cut down to size. The Ultimate Warrior ring now grants all ten weapon skills (two were missing) and its bonus rose from +3 to +4. Food got a pass too: high-end foods' fill values were trimmed, K-Ration is a little lighter to carry, and satiety, create food, and the Monk's guild bonus now restore more hunger to offset it.
  • A quieter, cleaner world. Casino and gambling content is gone from the game, and taverns and a few items got a non-alcoholic refresh. The Coin Box goes further than its odds disclosure, too — it now shows you the exact coin waiting for you before you spend a Crown.
  • Comfort & commands. commands now groups and describes what each one does instead of a flat list, keys shows your modifier-key (ctrl/alt/meta) bindings too, aliases can include apostrophes, and your saved UI preset sets now roam with your character across devices, just like your window layout.
  • Fixed: quest items are rescued from a corpse before it rots away or gets eaten (and greedy monsters no longer eat them off the ground first), giving an item nobody can accept no longer destroys it, expand-ing an empty bag now gets its own panel and stale bag windows no longer linger, point-blank shots at big monsters resolve instead of silently dropping, holding down fire or throw now follows your latest target instead of a stale one, Medusa's Death Wail no longer spares you just because you're blind, buffs tied to a summoned ally no longer linger after it dies or vanishes, a coiled naga wedged into a tight corner no longer crashes the game, dormant fleas no longer throw errors, HP bars now update for spell and ranged hits too (not just melee), elemental sprites face the right direction (no more moon-walking elementals), hovering the upgrade button no longer accidentally confirms a purchase, new players dropped at the newbie shop land inside it instead of on the doorstep, and wait works again after an atmosphere-collision bug broke it.
2026-07-16

Parchment and polish

  • Parchment pages. Item tooltips and your Journal now show their text on a parchment page instead of the dark ground, easier on the eyes — the window frame and title bar keep their usual dragonhide look.
  • Never stranded. If server discovery ever goes down, the character screen now offers to reconnect you straight to the last server you were on instead of leaving you stuck.
  • Know your climb. Your level gauge now shows XP-to-next-level at a glance, with the exact numbers a hover away — no more typing tnl to find out.
  • Damage numbers hit harder. Floating damage numbers now scale smoothly with the size of the hit instead of jumping between a few fixed sizes, so your biggest hits and crits really stand out.
  • The manual, easier to find. The player manual is now linked from the Help menu, the Bazaar, and the website homepage, and reading it on your phone gets a proper navigation sheet.
  • Comfort on the go. Mobile bottom panels resize to fit your screen better, cascading menus stay within the screen on phones and tablets, tablet tap targets meet the full 44px floor, and typing in the command box on mobile Safari no longer triggers an unwanted zoom.
  • HUD tidying. The hotbar now stays clear of your stats gauges, and the status-effect chip cluster no longer hides under the mission objective card or drops below a legible opacity.
  • Fixed: missing spell lists are back, login refusals now explain why instead of failing silently, your HP and mana bars center correctly under large polymorphed forms, keystrokes typed while your focus drifted off the command box are no longer lost, the chat popup's message styling now matches the main log, touch-tapping to fire toward the southeast no longer hits the game clock instead of firing, and the Sokoban prize colors in your item lists are easier to read.
2026-07-15

Cast in a new light

  • Cast auras. Casting a spell now wreathes you in a glowing aura keyed to its school — incantation ripples with runic glyphs, evocation gathers crackling sparks, conjuration spins a summoning circle beneath your feet, and enchantment shimmers in a spiraling veil.
  • Paperdoll polish. Duplicate equipment slots now merge into a single row you can drag gear straight onto, and fighting bare-handed shows an "Unarmed" stat on your Defense strip for your fists or claws.
  • Make it yours. The status-effect icon cluster can now be dragged to a new spot and its opacity dialed down, you can switch on small health and mana bars under your own character (a player suggested it), and the message log gains real customization — per-channel text colors and a choice of font.
  • Blackrose City joins the sign-in screen's rotating cast of backdrop scenes, alongside a touch-up to the Hystria scene and a fix for the animated captures.
  • Fixed: a version-refused client now tells you to update instead of wrongly claiming you'd logged in elsewhere, ball-spell detonation flashes fire on every paced cast instead of just the first, holding down a movement key no longer keeps you walking for seconds after you let go, scorch marks and submerged creatures no longer freeze mid-effect, loot beams no longer split oddly, switching from phone to desktop no longer leaves your hotbar empty, edge-of-screen shortcut buttons no longer get stuck behind floating windows, and turning off touch controls no longer hides the switch you'd need to turn them back on. Also mended: character creation and account deletion no longer risk a duplicate attempt after a network hiccup, a stuck purchase setup could no longer strand your ability to buy Crowns for the rest of a session, and some Hall of Records leaderboards that failed to load are back.
2026-07-14

A guide to the game

  • A player manual, at last. There's now a written guide to Wyvern online at play.ghosttrack.com/manual — a Getting Started walkthrough plus how-to pages for combat, inventory and gear, magic and spells, skills and training, missions and your journal, talking and chat, death and recovery, and finding your way around, all rounded out by a full command reference.
  • Settings, redesigned. The Settings dialog is rebuilt around eight clear categories — Interface, Combat, Chat & Speech, Map & Display, Text, Sound, Language, and Touch — with a search box that finds any option across all of them, plainer on/off labels, and help text on every switch.
  • Projectiles glide. Fast-moving projectiles now slide smoothly to their target instead of hopping tile to tile.
  • Fixed: reconnecting keeps you on the server you were playing rather than hopping elsewhere, your selected character survives a page refresh, numpad movement keys work again, the corner minimap fits small screens instead of covering the map, sound recovers on its own if it gets stuck, and brief network hiccups no longer desync or freeze your view.
2026-07-13

Light, loot, and living spells

  • The world lights up. Light sources now cast warm, colored glows across the map, with a soft fog vignette drawn at the edges of your sight — a new modern lighting mode (with the old look kept as classic) that you can switch under Display settings.
  • Loot beams. Valuable loot lying on the ground now sends up a colored pillar of light — brighter and taller the rarer the item — so a treasure buried in a pile catches your eye across the room, the very rarest crowned by a white-hot core and rising sparks.
  • Every spell speaks its own element. Ball spells no longer all detonate like fireball — each element now flashes, pops, shakes, and leaves its own scorch or frost in its own colors, and fire burns with a new procedural flame. Spell-effect controls live under Settings.
  • Interactive item cards. Hovering an item in your inventory or on the ground now opens a card showing its name, rarity, and charm — plus one-click actions: Use, Examine, or Drop from your pack, and Get or Examine from the ground.
  • Know your defenses at a glance. The Character sheet's paperdoll now shows your defense: total AC with its armor and magic parts, an AC chip on each piece you're wearing, and dashed warnings on empty protective slots that could raise your AC — so you can spot the gaps in your armor.
  • A richer Sign In screen. The living backdrop got a big upgrade — wider, hand-stitched scenes that slowly pan, with a rotating cast of real places now including Alaria, the Havishfel docks, Henteko, Upper Havishfel, and Hystria.
  • On your phone. Touch controls now show by default on every device (turn them off under Settings), the character sheet fits a sideways phone, you can drag items between your inventory and your bags by touch — and drop one onto a row to tuck it into a bag — and speech bubbles no longer wrap one word per line on narrow screens.
  • Comfort & control. The client no longer connects on its own when you open the page — you pick a server and click Connect, and the server picker now explains what each choice does for you. You can dock the command button bar along the bottom of the screen, the minimap remembers its spot per character, the mission-destination marker is now a soft cornsilk beacon in place of the old fiery ring, and the "Disable hover text" toggles finally do.
  • Fixed: the Buy Wyvern Crowns menu now opens the purchase dialog, reconnecting players are no longer dropped onto a server that's shutting down, speech bubbles sit correctly above taller speakers' heads, cached art appears the moment it loads and shows the right tiles across servers, stored panel widths no longer shrink your layout on smaller screens, the public Hall of Records table fits a desktop window, and Google email sign-in works again in the desktop app.
2026-07-12

Beasts, banter, and a wider world

  • Zoology, overhauled for the naturalist. Study the wildlife you meet: appraise beasts to learn their worth, and as your Zoology grows you gain a Naturalist's Eye that spots animals even through walls, an Anatomist's knack for extra damage against them, Wildcraft to shrug off their venom and slip their attacks, and a Call of the Wild.
  • Your words now carry your nature — and your afflictions. Elves speak with an elven lilt and the cat-folk with a feline purr, while whatever ails you shows in your speech: fear sets you stammering, cold makes your teeth chatter, confusion scrambles your words — and a certain duck-curse leaves you quacking.
  • The world feels like one place. Shouts now carry across every server with shared scrollback, tells reach players wherever they're logged in, and who shows everyone online across the realm.
  • Combat & magic. Meditation now restores you along the same curve as healing — and twice as fast when you're out of a fight — smart-heal cures confusion and fear before it mends your wounds, a slain caster's lingering cone or bolt winks out at once, nagas gain a constrict signature move, and Kiz's blade-enchant spells (flame, frost, life, vampire, and static) have been overhauled.
  • Take a seat. You can now settle onto chairs, benches, and other furniture — or just plop down on the ground — and you'll rise automatically the moment a fight starts.
  • A tidier journal. Missions you can't yet start no longer clutter your journal.
  • Never hunt forever for a quest drop. Key quest items and reagents — a Forest Warlock's plants, Samhoc's keys, the zifa-witch's tentacle — are now guaranteed to turn up, and a monster carrying a quest item always leaves a corpse to loot. The pirate guild quest can also be seen through to the end now.
  • UI & comfort. The Character Card is now the bindable charsheet command, ready on button 1; XP boosts announce their size and duration and list their timers in score; a new Ground panel sits beside your Spells; the shout gauge stays hidden until you have points to spend; and you can switch the compass and footstep trail off under Settings.
  • A classic look, if you like it. New optional layouts bring back the old-school feel — a legacy stats bar that tucks your vitals into the command bar and off the map, alongside your name, title, and VIP line.
  • A living sign-in. The Sign In screen now shows a slow, living scene from the world with rotating tips, and when you disconnect the last moment of the map is gently veiled rather than blacked out.
  • World & weather. Weather now shifts with the seasons, and areas quietly reset and regrow over time so the world feels alive rather than frozen. Out on continent-scale maps, characters and creatures are drawn a little smaller so you can take in more of the view. A number of creatures, characters, and places have also been renamed.
  • On your phone. A wave of mobile polish: the layout respects the notch and safe-area edges, touch targets are bigger and easier to hit, the quick-slot bar scrolls to reach every slot, tapping empty HUD space moves you, the Android back button closes menus instead of dropping you out of the game, and a short-landscape layout sets the map beside your panels instead of shrinking it to a stamp.
  • Fixed: HP and mana no longer flash to zero when you reconnect, guns that were dealing no damage fire properly again, HP bars stop sliding off monsters as you move, phantom missions from an unshipped area are gone from your journal, a single de-registered spell no longer breaks your whole spell list, the "you last logged in with…" notice no longer spams returning accounts, and a stray wall-bounce while walking is gone.
2026-07-11

Color and motion

  • Drag-and-drop your gear. Move items between your inventory and your bags — and from one bag straight into another — just by dragging them.
  • Combat comes alive. Creatures now carry floating HP bars, so you can read how a fight is going at a glance. Damage numbers get a full palette — every damage type shows its own color, with stabbing and stinging hits slanted and holy strikes glowing — and they cluster tighter so a flurry stays readable.
  • Smoother strides. Your character now stays pinned to the center of the view as the world glides past, ending the little jitter that could let your sprite drift ahead of the screen while you walk.
  • Accessibility upgrades. New under Settings: a screen-reader mode that reads fresh messages aloud, a dyslexia-friendly font, and colorblind-safe combat colors. You can also switch on small per-channel icons in the message log so each line's type reads without relying on color.
  • Speech bubbles, dialed in. Bubbles get their full width back, speech now stacks above emotes (tucked nearest the speaker), long messages gently scroll to the end before fading, and bubble sizing was corrected after last week's overcorrection.
  • Minimap tweaks. The corner minimap is now slightly see-through, clicking it no longer dims the whole screen, and dragging it to reposition finally sticks — one nudged off the edge heals itself back into view.
  • Layout comfort. A player asked for the room, so you can now hide the docked Spells panel from Settings. And each layout mode gets its own "reset to defaults" — resetting your docked view leaves your full-screen view alone, and vice versa.
  • Reconnect that knows when to stop. Quick Reconnect now gives up gracefully into the Sign In screen after repeated failed retries, and the login card explains why it stopped trying.
  • The loading sparkle is back. Art that's still loading once again shows the classic twinkle so you know something's on the way — toggle it under Display settings.
  • Chat: Ctrl+A now selects your draft in the chat input and Ctrl+C copies from the message log — both after players flagged them.
  • Walk into the same wall a few times and the game may now remind you, gently, "You can't go that way."
  • Legal pages — Purchase Terms, Refund Policy, and Privacy Policy — are now available right inside the client.
  • Fixed: invisible fireballs and patches of black terrain (bad placeholder art no longer sticks in the tile cache), the message log resting slightly above the true bottom of its pane, an unreadable map hover tooltip on light tiles, and a stray period trailing atmosphere bubbles.
2026-07-10

The pit and the bazaar

  • The Monster Pit — Buy arena tokens from tavern vendors, send monsters into the pit to battle, and watch the matches play out live on crystal balls in taverns across the land.
  • Set up shop in the bazaar — Claim your own stall, put items up for sale, and browse, search, and buy from other players through a new shopfront — complete with price tags and a payout when your wares sell. New directory portals and concierges help you find your way between auction houses.
  • New minimap — A redesigned minimap with fog-of-war, a full-map overlay, and markers for doors and stairs. It can show your current mission trail, and you can drag it anywhere or close it — your choice is remembered.
  • Missions: the journal gives smarter recommendations, and finishing a mission can now auto-track the next one, so you're never left wondering where to go.
  • Save your layout — Create named UI presets and switch between them whenever you like.
  • The website front page got a refresh: jump straight into browser play, see how many players are online, read the latest patch notes, and peek at the top of the Hall of Records — all without logging in.
  • World & creatures: the great fire, water, and air elementals have been rebuilt as fully animated, eight-direction giants; large multi-tile monsters like nagas and dragons now scale correctly out on the overworld; and giants and nagas standing in water are now clipped at a believable waterline, just like everyone else.
  • Comfort: your message log survives a page reload, docked column widths stick between sessions, and heavy bursts like sell all or shapeshifting no longer briefly freeze the screen. Speech bubbles are a little larger and easier to read, and the health and mana gauges look more solid.
  • Fixed: a bag-saving bug that could swallow items, smart-heal chugging potions forever after you shrank a giant, stat wrongly listing your online alts as offline, tap-to-move on phones and high-resolution screens, and a chat panel that could stop auto-scrolling on its own. Also mended: invisible ravine walls, a cut-off old castle interior, and a silent workroom piano.
2026-07-09

Wading in

  • Creatures wade into the water now. Anyone on foot standing in water is clipped at a waterline — ankles in the shallows, waist in open water, chest in the deep — with a dash of white foam and a gentle treading bob. A big monster straddling a shoreline only sinks the part that's actually in the water, and bridges and decks keep whatever's on them dry.
  • Character Card — a new one-stop card showing your identity, currency, XP to next level, vitals, readied weapon, and active effects at a glance, so you stop hunting across stats, score, and tnl. Open it from Commands → Info → "Character Card...".
  • Footpaths are easier to follow: the border glow around dirt, mud, sand, and cobblestone paths now reads with sharper contrast.
  • Fixed: stepping off the edge of the world could briefly leave the stone floor you just walked out of showing in the darkness beyond the map — off-map areas now always paint solid black.
2026-07-08

A big day in the forge

  • Speech bubbles! Nearby speech now floats over the map in reading-speed bubbles, with separate NPC/player toggles. Your message log is unchanged.
  • The Hall of Records is public — browse the leaderboards at https://play.ghosttrack.com/leaderboards, no login needed. Share your rank!
  • Patrons' Gallery & tip jartip <n> (add anon to stay humble) to support the game with crowns, plus crown-gifting polish.
  • In-game surveys — wizards can pose a question to the whole game; vote right from a card in your message stream.
  • Patch notes — you're reading them! Game menu → Patch Notes, updated as changes land.
  • New emotes — consider, pray, hum, meditate, flirt, grin, toast — plus a searchable emote picker.
  • Missions: the journal now has a Recommended section, ranked by how close each mission is — and when you're not tracking anything, the compass points at the top recommendation's giver. There's always a trail.
  • Mission rewards now show as chips in the journal, quest-bridged missions award XP/gold/tokens scaled to the quest (and auto-complete if you already solved it), and clicking the mission compass opens your journal.
  • New players: no XP loss on death while you're a protected newbie, no starvation confusion, and tutorial deaths respawn you in place.
  • Nagas: new coil stance — and a coiled naga in tall grass is hidden; observers see only a ripple. No other race gets this. Nagas can also wear dragon-scale mail now, and long bodies turn corners more smoothly.
  • Combat: autofire acquires new targets near-instantly, and trees, boulders, and bushes now slow movement — for monsters too.
  • Untraining skill levels 1–5 now refunds what you actually paid (previously: nothing).
  • skills output is grouped into natural / trained / guild, and body reports every equipment slot by name.
  • Mimic chests are officially evil — paladins take no alignment hit for smashing them.
  • Arena: round announcements, showman rounds, and lobby signage.
  • Coin Box odds are now fully disclosed — examine one, type odds, or see the public web page.
  • Monsters now show hover tooltips on the map, and rendering is crisper on high-DPI displays.
  • #who shows a rich player list with avatars and a per-player action menu.
  • Bag popups are resizable, HP/SP gauges are draggable in docked mode, the chat splitter can shrink again, and your viewport size survives logout.
  • Fixed: the empty spell-info dialog, the chat censor triggering inside innocent longer words, a rare glitch that drew a tree as a ship, and same-name character remakes not fully resetting.
  • World: the Ghanar Fyr volcano got bigger, and the dirt road art is back.