The last few weeks has been a really good one for Tharendell, and I’m excited to say I’ve pushed several major features into production.
⚔️ Single Fight Is Live (Alpha Testing)
The Single Fight feature is now live as part of our alpha testing of the battle engine. Players can jump in, run a full battle, and—this part is my favorite—get NPC narration after the fight.
As an added bonus, Alistair the Bard will narrate your battle round by round, bringing each clash, miss, and victory to life with vivid detail. This narration pipeline is a big milestone for the engine and a huge step toward our long-term vision.
If you enjoy breaking systems (politely), I’d love your help as an alpha tester.
🏆 Character Leaderboard
To go along with Single Fight, I’ve added a Character Leaderboard—purely for fun and bragging rights.
You can now see how your custom or random characters stack up across:
- Battles fought
- Wins and losses
- Monsters defeated
- Win rate and last battle time
Don’t worry: losses are cosmetic only. Your character is always reset to full health and strength after a fight. However, as an alpha tester, you do gain experience points, and yes—leveling is coming.
🎯 Quality-of-Life UI Fix
One tester request that really stood out was during custom character creation. Previously, it was possible to accidentally assign the same rolled stat more than once.
That’s now fixed.
Once a stat set is assigned, it becomes unavailable everywhere else, making the flow clearer and mistake-proof.
🔮 What’s Next for the Battle Engine
Coming up next on the roadmap:
- Two-PC battles (multiple player characters in a single fight)
- Ranged weapons
- Magic spells — the biggest challenge by far
Most of the underlying spell infrastructure already exists, but the real work is making sure magic is powerful, fair, and safe. Nobody wants to accidentally fire a Magic Missile into the back of a friend… unless the dice really hate you.
More to come soon.
Happy battling,
Babble Baz