The Circuit, the Grand Circuit, and a raid board that hits back

Chain Trials were a hit, so this patch is mostly about where they go next. Update dwraid, dwleaderboard, dwwarehouse, dwbags and dwpolitics through the launcher; the server side is live now.

The Circuit

A Chain Trial that does not stop. Enter any trial with the word circuit (!raid enter tidebound circuit, or the new Circuit button under the difficulty ladder) and the run starts as a Chain Trial, Easy upward. When the top rung falls, the run does not end: the arena stays open for ninety seconds, a Breather runs on the whole party (Regen and Refresh for the length of the wait, so nobody walks out to recover MP), and anyone in the party names the next boss, from the new intermission panel or by typing !raid next riptide. The next boss spawns on the same spot, Easy upward again, with fifteen minutes added to the clock. And so on, round the board, with no zone change anywhere in it.

Prefer one rung per boss? The Tier Circuit button, or !raid enter tidebound savage circuit, runs every boss at the tier you picked: Savage after Savage after Savage.

Let the ninety seconds run out, or type !raid leave, and the run ends the ordinary way. Nothing is lost by stopping: every rung was paid at its kill, exactly as before. A boss already fought in the circuit cannot be named again, and the board's usual doors still apply, so a Promyvion rung needs the whole party past Chains of Promathia.

The Grand Circuit

Clear every boss on the board in one circuit run and that is a Grand Circuit. Your time from the first spawn to the last kill is recorded, and two new leaderboards read it, fastest first: Grand Circuit, every rung and Grand Circuit, Savage. Every member of the party gets their own row and their own personal best. The day's element still favours some bosses over others and changes every fifty-eight minutes, so the best route round the board is never quite the same twice.

The variety chain counts a trial once

Two of you wrote in the evening Chain Trials landed, and you were right: a five-link variety chain followed by a Chain Trial dropped straight back to one, because the chain counted the same boss at a second difficulty as a repeat. Fixed. Every rung of one boss is one link. Chain the first boss and its rungs pay nothing extra; chain a second, different boss and every one of its rungs pays +10%; chain a third and every rung pays +20%, up to the cap. What resets the chain now is repeating a boss at a difficulty you were already paid for today, or letting the ninety-minute clock run out. The intermission panel shows what each candidate pays before you name it, which is the whole reason to run a circuit.

The bosses stand up to a skillchain

Player power has outgrown the board: most bosses fell to one skillchain, some to one weapon skill. Every raid boss at every difficulty now carries double the maximum HP and twenty percent more of every stat the tiers move: attack, accuracy, the seven primaries and defence. The ladder keeps its shape and each fight's own weight still applies on top; the adds are untouched. This is the first turn of the knob, not the last, so say how the new numbers feel.

One thing to know about circuits: a run holds an arena for as long as you keep picking. Every venue has three, and a trial whose venue is full still runs at the next one with room, so the board stays open.

Also in this patch

• Bard reforging, un-swapped. The raid forge handed Aoidos' +2 (Empyrean) pieces the Brioso set and Choral +1 (artifact) pieces the Fili set, the wrong way round. Aoidos' now reforges into Fili and Choral into Brioso, as retail has it. Every other job's lines were already right. If you reforged a Bard piece before this patch and hold the wrong set, tell a GM.
• Nemesis: the Jailer of Faith door. Paying a Legend fee and being warped straight home was the Throne Room becoming a shared arena when the Fell Shadow Lord moved in. The Nemesis door now sees a full hall, moves a paid run to a free one instead of sending it home, and the raid's own housekeeping no longer catches a Nemesis party mid-arrival.
• Nemesis chests. Three item families that could not actually hold augments no longer pretend to, a held delivery says how many augments it carries, and the Mercy meter no longer climbs forever on a monster whose table holds no gear. Absolute Virtue's chest pays the Sins, as designed; the gear Meret trades them for comes plain, as retail's does.
• Trash Selected, Vendor Selected. Both the warehouse window and the bag window now act on a selection: tick rows, then throw them all away or sell them all to the NPC price after one confirmation that names the count and the gil. A per-row Sell button sells one item; rows a shop will not buy are greyed with the reason. Around them: Tick all, None, Invert, Same item, a Sellable filter, a Value column you can sort by, and a readout of what you have ticked and what it is worth.
• The politics window explains itself. A phase line saying what this phase is, what you can do now and when the next begins; a "How it works" tab through the whole season; hover text on everything; "cannot file" says why; !politics help in chat.
• Pledges, once per four hours. One candidate raising a pledge a hundred thousand at a time was announcing it to the whole server every few seconds, and players were muting system messages to escape it. A pledge may be raised once every four hours, per account, and the announcement reads what changed: "Sorroto pledged 100,000 more gil to everyone who votes in the Bastok race, bringing the total to 3,300,000."