Alpha v0.57.13 - Moar Bugfixes

v0.57.13 - Discord Bridge + Companion Loot Sync + Shaman Balance + Website i18n Race + Beta Banner

Discord ↔ In-Game Gossip Bridge

#in-game-gossip in the official Usurper Reborn Discord now mirrors the in-game /gos channel in both directions, via a new bot (UsurperBot).

Game → Discord: any /gos <message> posted on the online server relays to the Discord channel as **AuthorName** *(in-game)*: message. Roughly 250-500ms latency (poll interval + Discord API send).

Discord → Game: any message posted in the designated Discord channel relays into the in-game /gos channel as [Gossip] AuthorName (Discord): message. Same latency budget.

Architecture. Bridge is layered on the existing shared SQLite database — no new services. A new discord_gossip table (direction / author / message / created_at / processed) is the queue. Game side writes to it from MudChatSystem.HandleGossip and polls it for inbound Discord messages. The Discord bot runs inside the existing ssh-proxy.js Node process — reads the channel via discord.js v14 gateway connection, enforces rate limit + sanitization + 200-char cap, and queues inbound rows for the game to pick up.

Configuration. Two env vars on the usurper-web systemd service: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN and DISCORD_GOSSIP_CHANNEL_ID. Both live in /etc/systemd/system/usurper-web.service.d/discord.conf with 600 permissions — not in git, not in the binary. If either is missing at startup, the bridge logs once and skips silently; the rest of the web proxy runs normally.

Safety.

• Discord user identity prefixed with (Discord) in-game so source is never ambiguous.
• @everyone / @here neutered (zero-width space injected between @ and keyword) so Discord users can't mass-ping from in-game relay, and allowedMentions: { parse: [] } on every outbound post blocks any ping attempts from in-game into Discord.
• Per-Discord-user rate limit: 1 message per 3 seconds, 200-character truncation. Hitting the limit gets an ⏳ reaction.
• Control chars stripped from message content before queue.
• Old processed rows auto-cleaned after 7 days.
• Bot permissions minimized: View Channels, Send Messages, Read Message History on the designated channel only. Message Content Intent (required to read text) is the only privileged intent. No admin, no mod, no manage-messages.

Post-deploy overlap-timer bug (fixed in same release). v0.57.13 initially shipped with the outbound poll running on a naive setInterval(fn, 250) and a sequential await channel.send() loop inside. Because each channel.send() takes 100-200ms, the next interval tick could fire before the previous tick finished marking rows processed — so the next tick read the same rows again and re-sent them. Observed symptom: a single /gos message posted to Discord 10-20 times within a second. Fixed by (1) a re-entrant _discordPollInFlight guard so overlapping ticks no-op, and (2) atomic claim — the SELECT and the "mark processed" UPDATE now share a single dbWrite.transaction(), so even if the guard were bypassed (or a process restart happened mid-poll), no two invocations can ever see the same unprocessed row.

Mystic Shaman — Full Balance Pass

Community report from Rozro (Lv 71 MysticShaman, INT 966, WeapPow 1242): endgame Shamans were one-shotting Old Gods on basic attacks — elemental rider procs of 400-800k per swing. Zengazu and spudman chimed in noting the scaling was obvious enough they were considering re-rolling to abuse it. Three rounds of fixes landed in v0.57.13, all bundled here because they build on each other:

Round 1 — Rider base off WeaponPower instead of actualDamage. The enchant rider at CombatEngine.cs:3301 (and twin at :11335) computed as actualDamage * ShamanEnchantPower / 100.0 where ShamanEnchantPower = 20 + INT*3. At INT 500 that's +1520%; at Rozro's INT 966 it's +2920%. Because actualDamage is the post-crit, post-passive, post-buff final number, crits DOUBLE-compounded — a 3x crit on the main hit became a 29 * 3 = 87x elemental proc on top. Fixed by switching the rider base from actualDamage to raw WeaponPower of the hitting hand (isOffHandAttack ? OffHand : MainHand) so dual-wielders scale each swing off that hand's weapon.

Round 2 — Windfury fixes. Rozro separately: "Does Wind Fury work? Doesn't look like it does much, not even an extra mainhand attack." Two problems: (1) the 30% proc was silent — no terminal message when it fired, so players couldn't distinguish it from Agility/dual-wield/class extras, and (2) the bonus swing always landed on off-hand because ExecuteAttack's split keys on s >= baseSwings and Shaman has zero class extras. GetAttackCount return type changed from int to (int attacks, bool windfuryProcced); five call sites updated (player + teammates + rage) so baseSwings extends by +1 when procced, shifting the bonus into main-hand. Flavor line emits on proc for the current player (new loc key combat.shaman_windfury_proc in all 5 languages), suppressed for teammates to avoid spam.

Round 3 — Comprehensive balance pass (Tier A + B + C). Even after Round 1, Shaman was still 10-25× peer DPS at endgame because ShamanElementalMastery was unbounded in INT — the only uncapped class passive in the game. Every other passive (Magician spell cap 8×, crit cap 75%, tank damage reductions) is bounded. Audit across all 12 base classes confirmed this was the outlier:

• A1 cap on ShamanEnchantPower. New GameConfig.ShamanEnchantPowerCap = 250 constant (max 2.5× weapon-power rider per hit) + new GetShamanEnchantPower(long intelligence) static helper as single source of truth for the formula. All 16 inline sites in CombatEngine.cs (8 set + 8 display) route through the helper.
• A2 Healing Totem solo-vs-group split. Was 10% MaxHP/round per ally regardless of party size — at a 4-member group that's 40% total group healing/round, trivializing group PvE. Now the tick reads result.Teammates.Any(t => t.IsAlive) to pick the rate: solo keeps the full 10% (ShamanTotemHealPercent), group drops to 5% (new ShamanTotemHealPercentGroup) symmetrically for caster and allies.
• B1 ShamanElementalMastery 0.03 → 0.01 per INT. Matches Sage's WIS scaling tier. Combined with A1 cap, the ceiling now reaches at INT ~230 instead of INT 77 — smoother mid-game curve while still rewarding INT investment up to the cap.
• B2 ShamanWindfuryProcChance 30% → 40%. New GameConfig.ShamanWindfuryProcChance constant. Compensates the A1 damage nerf, combined with Round 2's visibility + main-hand routing Windfury is both more common AND lands on the stronger weapon.
• C combat modifier. Shaman was the only class returning empty GetClassCombatModifiers() — the totem + enchant kit was treated as the substitute. Post-A nerfs the kit is proportional, so added DamageReduction = 2 (matches Barbarian's value) for MysticShaman. Rewards the medium-armor tradeoff and the "spiritually warded warrior-shaman" archetype.

Per-hit weapon-enchant rider progression at Rozro's stats:

Build state	Formula	Rider per hit
Pre-Round 1	actualDamage × (20+INT×3)/100	~400-800k
Round 1	WeaponPower × (20+INT×3)/100	~36k
Round 3 (A1+B1)	WeaponPower × min(250, 20+INT×1)/100	~3.1k

Dual-wield round end-state: 2 × 3.1k rider + normal weapon hits (~3-5k × 2) + Windfury 40% proc ≈ 12-17k/round (down from ~800k). Magician Disintegrate at comparable level is ~4.8k/cast — Shaman now roughly 3× Magician DPS, appropriate for a melee-hybrid with utility kit. Not trivializing bosses anymore.

Companion Combat-Loot [E] Equip Sync

Player report (Usurper Reborn community): "a companion gave me all their stuff back for some reason and I didn't notice til we got back to the dungeon and they had a bad default weapon again. I had originally handed her one from the weapon shop through equip party, but later I equipped her two or three times from drops in the dungeon that were better, using the equip direct from looting screen."

Same class of bug as Hesperos's Lyris-reverting-to-starting-gear report (fixed in v0.57.7), but a different code path. The [E] equip-on-companion option on the combat loot prompt at CombatEngine.cs:7524+ called player.EquipItem(equipment, targetSlot, ...) on the Character wrapper returned by CompanionSystem.GetCompanionsAsCharacters, but never invoked CompanionSystem.Instance.SyncCompanionEquipment(wrapper) after the successful equip. The wrapper's EquippedItems dictionary was updated; the underlying Companion.EquippedItems was not. On the next wrapper regeneration (re-entering the dungeon, save/load, another location change that builds fresh wrappers), the companion reverted to whatever their last-synced state was — which for this player was the original recruit-time starting gear from EquipStartingGear.

The sibling flows — combat-loot auto-equip via TryTeammatePickupItem (CombatEngine.cs:7952 and CombatEngine.cs:8408), and the Home/Inn/TeamCorner manual equip menus — all call SyncCompanionEquipment after the equip. The combat-loot [E] manual path was the one that didn't, and it's the path this specific player was using.

Fix: one-line addition after the successful equip, gated on isCompanionEquip && player.IsCompanion, matches the pattern used by the four already-correct sibling paths. Pre-v0.57.13 save data with the original starting gear will remain as-is; the next time the player equips gear via combat-loot [E], the sync fires correctly and the companion retains the upgrade.

Beta Announcement Banner

The title-screen banner (shown below the ASCII art) has been updated to announce the official Beta transition. Replaces the generic "ALPHA BUILD — Expect bugs... (full wipe planned at Beta)" warning with dated, specific language:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ [!] BETA LAUNCHES MAY 1, 2026 - ONLINE SERVER WIPE INCOMING [!]         ║
║ All characters on the online server will be wiped on May 1st.           ║
║ Report bugs via /bug in-game or join our Discord:                       ║
║ discord.gg/EZhwgDT6Ta                                                    ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Five localization keys updated across all 5 languages (en/es/fr/it/hu): engine.alpha_compact, engine.alpha_sr, engine.alpha_wipe, engine.alpha_box_title, engine.alpha_box_wipe. Box title padded to exactly 71 chars and wipe line to exactly 72 chars in every language so the English box aligns cleanly; non-English translations run long and overflow the right edge (pre-existing behavior, not worsened by this change). The "Report bugs / join Discord" lines (alpha_report / alpha_box_report) and GameConfig.DiscordInvite URL row are deliberately kept unchanged.

Kings Blocked from Joining Teams

Player report: a king who ascended while on a team was forced out on ascension (existing behavior) but could then just walk to Team Corner and re-join or form a new one, nullifying the whole eviction.

Root cause: TeamCornerLocation.CreateTeam() and TeamCornerLocation.JoinTeam() only checked !string.IsNullOrEmpty(currentPlayer.Team) as a gate — they didn't check currentPlayer.King. The "Apply" menu option at line 299 routes into JoinTeam() so it shared the same hole.

Fix: added an early-exit king check to both entry points, message "A king cannot join or form a gang. The crown stands alone." New loc key team.king_cannot_join in all 5 languages. NPC recruitment INTO the king's own team is still allowed — that's the king wielding power, not joining.

Shield-Turned-Sword on Save Reload

Player-visible bug: equipping a shield and then reloading the save produced a dual-wield pattern — a normal main-hand swing followed by an "Off-hand strike" for ~50% damage, with the shield acting as the off-hand weapon.

Root cause: the save-load equipment migration at GameEngine.cs:4320 was introduced to re-infer WeaponType and Handedness for legacy items whose fields had been written as None or defaulted to Sword. It ran on any item in MainHand or OffHand, called ShopItemGenerator.InferWeaponType(name), and overwrote both fields with the inferred result. InferWeaponType has no shield keywords and falls through to WeaponType.Sword; InferHandedness(Sword) returns OneHanded. So on every reload a shield became WeaponType = Sword, Handedness = OneHanded. HasShieldEquipped (keyed on WeaponType) then returned false, IsDualWielding passed all four checks, and the combat loop fired off-hand strikes. Same migration duplicated in the LoadSaveByFileName online-mode branch at GameEngine.cs:5510.

Fix: migration now detects shields up front via ShieldBonus > 0 || BlockChance > 0 || WeaponType ∈ {Shield, Buckler, TowerShield} and skips the weapon-infer path for them. For shields that previously got mangled by a prior load, a heal branch resets Handedness = OffHandOnly and re-infers the shield sub-type via InferShieldType, so affected saves self-repair on next login. Both migration sites updated. Tests: 641/641 pass under invariant globalization (matches CI).

CI Test Failures Under Invariant Globalization

CI run 24871997948 failed 48 of 641 tests with ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'key') at LocalizationSystem.cs:118. Locally all tests passed. Reproducible locally under DOTNET_SYSTEM_GLOBALIZATION_INVARIANT=1 (which matches CI's env).

Root cause: Loc.Initialize() was not thread-safe. xUnit runs test classes in parallel, so two test threads racing through Loc.Get("item.foo") could both pass the if (_loaded) return; guard. Thread A populated _languages[langCode] = dict while Thread B concurrently enumerated _languages.Keys.OrderBy(k => k) at line 116 — concurrent Dictionary<TKey,TValue> modification during enumeration is undefined behavior, and in this case the enumerator yielded a null code which then hit KnownLanguageNames.TryGetValue(code, …) and threw. Invariant mode exposed the race because it removes the one-time culture-data-loading delay that was incidentally serializing the first few Loc.Get calls on the normal path.

Fix: double-checked locking around Initialize(). Added _initLock and volatile bool _loaded, extracted the body to InitializeLocked(), and routed the public entry through lock (_initLock) { if (_loaded) return; InitializeLocked(); _loaded = true; }. Interior _loaded = true assignments removed (the lock block is now the only writer).

History / Story Screens — Double "Press to continue" Prompt

UsurperHistorySystem was writing a hardcoded [Press Enter to continue] line in 5 places right before calling terminal.WaitForKey(), which itself renders Press any key to continue... — so the player saw both prompts stacked. Hardcoded lines removed; WaitForKey is the only prompt now.

Website Landing Page i18n Race (shipped between v0.57.12 and v0.57.13)

The live stats feed on usurper-reborn.net would occasionally display raw localization keys (stats.feed_news_title, stats.time_hours, etc.) instead of translated strings. Root cause: fetchStats() and loadLanguage() fire in parallel at page load, both async. When the stats API resolved before the language JSON, renderStats() called t('stats.feed_news_title') against an empty i18nStrings dictionary, t() fell through to returning the key literal, and the feed rendered with raw keys baked into innerHTML. applyTranslations() only patches elements with data-i18n attributes, and the feed was injected as raw HTML without them — so when the language did finish loading, the already-rendered feed stayed frozen with raw keys until the next setInterval refresh cycle (up to 2 minutes later).

Fix: cache the most recent stats payload in a _lastStatsData variable, and re-render from cache whenever loadLanguage() completes (both the normal localized path and the English-fallback inline fetch). New Last-Modified on the deployed file forces a fresh fetch on browsers that cached the broken state.

Deployed Apr 24 01:19 UTC. No game restart required — nginx serves the static file directly.

Files Changed

• Scripts/Systems/DiscordBridge.cs — NEW — static helper with Initialize(databasePath), QueueOutbound(author, message), and DrainInbound(). Creates the discord_gossip table if missing; no-op if Initialize hasn't been called.
• Scripts/Server/MudServer.cs — calls DiscordBridge.Initialize(_databasePath) during RunAsync startup; new DiscordBridgePollerAsync background task polls inbound Discord messages every 250ms and re-broadcasts each through RoomRegistry.BroadcastGlobal matching the [92m [Gossip] {author}: {message}[0m format used by /gos.
• Scripts/Server/MudChatSystem.cs — HandleGossip calls DiscordBridge.QueueOutbound(displayName, message) after the in-game broadcast. No-op when the bridge isn't initialized (single-player, missing DB).
• Scripts/Systems/CombatEngine.cs — combat-loot [E] equip-on-companion path now calls CompanionSystem.Instance?.SyncCompanionEquipment(player) after successful equip (gated on isCompanionEquip && player.IsCompanion) so wrapper changes persist to the underlying Companion. Shaman balance pass: weapon-enchant rider at both combat paths (single-monster ~3299 and multi-monster ~11333) switched from actualDamage to WeaponPower of the hitting hand; all 16 inline ShamanEnchantPower computation sites (8 set + 8 display) replaced with GameConfig.GetShamanEnchantPower(player.Intelligence) helper call; Healing Totem tick (ProcessShamanTotemEffects) splits solo 10% vs group 5% via result.Teammates.Any(t => t.IsAlive) check; Windfury cast uses GameConfig.ShamanWindfuryProcChance (40%) instead of hardcoded 30; GetAttackCount returns tuple (int attacks, bool windfuryProcced) — 5 call sites updated so baseSwings extends by +1 on proc to route the bonus swing to main-hand; proc emits a flavor line on the current player.
• Scripts/Core/GameConfig.cs — Shaman balance constants: new ShamanTotemHealPercentGroup = 0.05, new ShamanEnchantPowerCap = 250, new ShamanWindfuryProcChance = 40; ShamanElementalMastery reduced 0.03 → 0.01; new GetShamanEnchantPower(long intelligence) static helper as single source of truth for the capped enchant-power formula.
• Scripts/Core/Character.cs — GetClassCombatModifiers() now returns DamageReduction = 2 for CharacterClass.MysticShaman (was the only class with an empty default).
• Localization/en.json, es.json, fr.json, it.json, hu.json — new loc key combat.shaman_windfury_proc in all 5 languages for the new Windfury-proc flavor line.
• web/ssh-proxy.js — new Discord bridge section: startDiscordBridge() function called from httpServer.listen callback; conditional discord.js client connection; messageCreate handler with rate limit + sanitization; outbound poller with atomic claim + re-entrant guard + graceful failure handling; cleanup task pruning processed rows older than 7 days.
• web/package.json — added "discord.js": "^14.16.0" dependency.
• web/index.html — _lastStatsData cache + re-render hook on language load to fix the i18n race on the stats feed.
• Scripts/Systems/UsurperHistorySystem.cs — removed 5 hardcoded [Press Enter to continue] lines; WaitForKey() (which already renders "Press any key to continue...") is now the single prompt.
• Scripts/Locations/TeamCornerLocation.cs — CreateTeam() and JoinTeam() now early-exit with a localized message when currentPlayer.King == true, closing the hole where an ascended king could walk back to Team Corner and re-join a gang after the ascension-eviction had already fired.
• Localization/en.json, es.json, fr.json, it.json, hu.json — new loc key team.king_cannot_join in all 5 languages.
• Localization/en.json, es.json, fr.json, it.json, hu.json — engine.alpha_compact / alpha_sr / alpha_wipe / alpha_box_title / alpha_box_wipe updated with Beta-launch announcement. Box title padded to 71 chars, wipe to 72 chars for clean English box alignment.

Deploy Notes

Game side: standard linux-x64 publish + tarball + extract pattern; both usurper-mud and sshd-usurper need a restart for the DiscordBridge.Initialize + poller to pick up. The new discord_gossip table is created idempotently on first game startup after the binary upgrade.

Node side: install discord.js in /opt/usurper/web (sudo -u usurper npm install discord.js), deploy updated ssh-proxy.js, create the systemd override at /etc/systemd/system/usurper-web.service.d/discord.conf with the bot token and channel ID as Environment= directives (chmod 600 — don't want the token readable to other users), then systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl restart usurper-web. Bot gateway login takes ~30s to complete; grep the journal for [Discord] Bridge logged in as and [Discord] Watching channel to confirm.

Website: standalone scp of web/index.html to /opt/usurper/web/index.html; nginx serves directly, no restart needed.

Operational Notes

• Discord bot token should be rotated any time it appears in chat scrollback, commit history, or anywhere it might be observed by a third party. Rotate via Discord Developer Portal → Bot → Reset Token → update /etc/systemd/system/usurper-web.service.d/discord.conf → systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl restart usurper-web.
• Bridge can be disabled at runtime by clearing either env var in the override file and restarting usurper-web. The game side's outbound queue will accumulate rows but no harm (cleanup task prunes after 7 days regardless).
• Discord API rate limits are per-bot, not per-user. If the bridge ever hits Discord's global rate limit, outbound rows stay queued and retry on the next poll tick.