Update 0.8 — Expanded Memory

Hey everyone!

Before anything else: thank you. So many of you filled out the survey and sent in feedback, and it directly shaped this update. Your voices matter a lot, and I read every response.

The biggest change in this update, Expanded Memory, exists because of what you told me. Your storyteller can now hold far more of your adventure in mind at once, and free players get the biggest jump of all. There are plenty of other pieces landing alongside it. Here's what's in it:

• Expanded Memory — context limits are up on Free (3,000 → 8,000), Adventurer (5,000 → 10,000), and Pioneer (8,000 → 12,000), so your story stays sharper for far longer
• Message Editing — edit, revert, or regenerate the narrator's last message
• Compendium — a new home for your campaign summary and the characters you've met
• Item, Skill, and Spell Icons — most emojis are replaced with real icons matched to what each thing actually is
• Combat Retry — if your party is wiped out, retry the fight right from the death screen
• Critical Successes and Dice Tweaks — critical successes, easier difficulty classes, and a reworked fail-forward system
• Support Inbox — feedback and support tickets, with replies delivered right in the site
• Smarter Moderation — fewer false positives, with clearer content controls

Let's get into it.

Expanded Memory

This is the one I'm most excited about, and it's a direct result of your feedback. Thank you to everyone who took the survey and told me what you wanted from the game. You asked for a storyteller that remembers more, so that's what this update delivers. The chat history context limit is how much of your recent story the storyteller keeps in mind while writing the next part of it. A bigger limit means it holds on to more of what's happened: the details you set up, the threads you left dangling, the promise you made to that innkeeper ten scenes ago. Fewer forgotten details, fewer contradictions, and a story that feels like it's paying attention.

This is possible because of optimization work on the game engine that's been running behind the scenes, cutting down what it costs to run each turn. Rather than pocket that as savings, I've put it straight into the storytelling side, which is why the context limits below went up across the board.

So I've raised it, a lot:

Free players get nearly triple the message memory they had before, Adventurer doubles, and Pioneer gets half again as much. Free now has more memory than Pioneer used to. Hero (16,000) and Champion (24,000) are unchanged. As before, game state, plot direction, character info, and summaries are included in context on top of this limit. You can see how much of your limit each message used in its context stats.

Message Editing

Sometimes the narrator's last message just doesn't land right, and now you don't have to just live with it or spend a turn trying to talk it back. As the host, you can edit the narrator's most recent message directly, revert it back to the original AI-generated text if you change your mind, or regenerate it entirely for a fresh take.

Regenerating costs a turn and won't undo anything that already happened as part of that message, like items gained or damage taken. But it will help improve future messages if things aren't going in a direction you want them to.

Compendium

The Compendium is a new place to look back on your adventure. The Summary tab shows the campaign summary I mentioned was running behind the scenes in the last update, and you can now read it and edit it yourself if you want to correct something or nudge the story in a direction. The Characters tab lists everyone you've met in the adventure, and you can open any of them from there.

Item, Skill, and Spell Icons

In the last update I mentioned we were moving from simple emojis to a richer image system. This is the first big step. Items, skills, and spells now get their own icons, matched to what they actually are, so a flaming sword looks like a flaming sword and a healing spell looks like a healing spell. Emojis still show up here and there as a fallback for anything without a matching icon yet, but they'll keep getting replaced over time. They show up on the cards and tooltips across the Items, Skills, and Spells tabs.

Tooltips also got a pass to make it clearer what an item or skill changes when you use or equip it.

Combat Retry

Losing a fight doesn't have to be the end of the road. If your party is wiped out, the death screen now lets you retry the fight. Note that this only works for combat encounters started after this update, so retry won't be available on a fight already in progress when you update.

Critical Successes and Dice Tweaks

Critical successes are here: land a nat 20 and it gets its own treatment, with the outcome handled and displayed properly so the big moment looks the part.

Alongside that, a couple of tweaks to how dice rolls feel overall:

• Easier Difficulty Classes — difficulty ranges have been reduced across the board, so rolls shouldn't feel as punishing, especially early on with a new character
• Reworked Fail-Forward — the fail-forward system has been reworked so successes feel more like successes and failures feel a bit more like failures, without being completely punishing or frustrating. This one's hard to get perfectly right, so I'll keep playtesting and tuning it as I see how it plays out

Support Inbox

Feedback and support have been reworked into a proper support system. You can send feedback or open a support ticket from inside the game, and replies show up in an inbox in your profile menu, with an unread count so you know when there's something waiting for you.

Moderation and Content Controls

• Two-tiered moderation — moderation now works in two tiers, and I've tuned it to cut down on false positives, so fewer stories get flagged for things that were fine
• Content warnings — you'll see a content warning when a story moves into flagged territory

Smaller Improvements

• Plot Driven Can Now Be Changed Mid-Adventure — the Plot Driven chat setting (for player-driven or slice-of-life adventures) can now be toggled after an adventure has already started, experimentally. Changing it mid-adventure may not drop existing plot points
• Narrator Tweaks — small tuning to the DM/narrator behavior so it eases off constantly pushing the plot forward, plus more flexibility in how long its responses are instead of sticking to one length
• Stat Detail — click any attribute (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) to see its saving throw, attack or spell bonus, and which skills it's tied to, including your proficiencies
• Character Detail Tooltips — the character detail view now shows the same icons and rich tooltips for items, skills, and spells that your own sidebar does
• Memory Tooltip — the context stats popup now explains what your memory limit covers and shows a token breakdown alongside the message count
• Cleaned tooltips and the character sidebar tabs on mobile

Bug Fixes

• Fixed allies not turning hostile in combat when the story called for it
• Various other bug fixes and polish throughout

What's Next

The survey feedback was clear: story quality, combat, and dice rolling are the top things you want more of, and that's where I'm headed next.

• Combat improvements are definitely coming — the other big thing requested on the survey. I have a lot of ideas to make it feel more immersive and less frustrating at times, looking forward to seeing how it shapes up
• More dice skins — looking into additional dice skins, some purchasable, some not; selectable when you roll your dice

Thank you for playing and thank you everyone who has enjoyed the game. I know it's been a bit less noise from me recently as I've been head down in the dev-side, but I do appreciate you all sticking with me. I'll keep working hard to make Farlands Odyssey a great experience and building out our community.

Thanks everyone!