Two of the game's oldest screens finally got the treatment the rest of the game grew into.
The character sheet is now an illuminated ledger: your character's name in gold across the top, a live portrait of your actual geared body, and the four attributes as big readable medallions — with allocation buttons right on them when you have points to spend. Below, offense and defense sit in proper cards, and the four resistances draw as bars filling toward their cap, so "how close am I to safe" is a glance instead of arithmetic. Every number still explains its full derivation on hover — that part the ledger inherited and kept.
The character select became a vigil: your characters as a rail of cards — name, calling, and how far into the dark each one got — while the selected one stands in a breathing candle-glow wearing their actual gear, because they've always been standing there in the real thing, not a painting. Fallen hardcore characters rest as dimmed red memorials. One gold button at the bottom says what it has always meant: ENTER THE DARK.
The other half of the round is invisible, which is the point. A long, adversarial pass went hunting for every way a clever player could cheat the economy — the tricks every game in this genre has been burned by. Ways to duplicate an item by dragging it in two directions at once. Ways to split one item between the stash and a back pocket. Vendors that restocked their shelves if you walked out and back in. Crafting results that could be un-happened by killing the game at the right moment. Backup files that could quietly resurrect a dead hardcore hero.
Dozens of doors, and they're now closed — moves commit atomically, the shared stash keeps a ledger that notices tampering, shelves stay bought, crafts stay crafted, and permadeath means dead. If two copies of the game open the same character, the second one is politely told it's a spectator. You'll never see any of this working. That's what working looks like.
Your gear is yours: earned once, owned once, lost only the honest way.