Version 3.5.4 Alpha Released

Narrative end-to-end audit

The automated progression harness programmatically satisfies every defined objective from the Prologue through Chapter X, the epilogue, all four optional side chains and Hollow Sun. It then verifies:

• all 145 narrative quests reach a complete state;
• all 129 non-side quests and 16 side quests complete;
• all 76 bilingual scenes remain valid and referenced;
• every completed quest has exactly one reward-ledger entry;
• a second full synchronization grants no currency or materials;
• a deliberately damaged completed quest state is repaired without repeating its reward;
• the resulting narrative-health summary contains no unknown IDs, invalid tracked quests, missing ledger records or duplicate pending rewards.

This is a deterministic state-transition test, not a substitute for a human multi-hour playthrough.

Migration matrix

Synthetic legacy profiles representing Narrative Data Versions 0, 2, 3 and 4 were migrated to Version 5. The scenarios correspond to pre-narrative 3.4.x data, the Chapter I–VI implementation, the complete Campaign implementation and the 3.5.3 Living World implementation.

Each migration was checked for:

• preserved Gold, Crystals and Quality Stones;
• reconstruction of completed regional story quests;
• reward-ledger coverage for reconstructed completions;
• World State Version 2 normalization;
• identical results after a second migration pass;
• a healthy narrative diagnostic state.

Reward protection

Version 3.5.4 adds a persistent quest-ID reward ledger. The suite verified that reward-claimed flags and ledger entries reconcile in both directions and that reload, migration, repeated synchronization and damaged-state repair cannot grant the same narrative reward twice.

The 145 one-time narrative quests now budget 731,130 Gold, 560 Crystals and 41 Quality Stones in total. These amounts exclude repeatable combat and economic rewards.

Balance correction

The 48 regional Quest Gold rewards in Chapters VII–X previously dropped below Chapter VI values. They now continue the established Chapter III–VI curve:

• Chapter VII: 6,500–7,710 Gold per regional quest;
• Chapter VIII: 7,400–8,610;
• Chapter IX: 8,300–9,510;
• Chapter X: 9,200–10,410.

Crystal and Quality Stone rewards were unchanged.

Journal and World State UX

Automated UI assertions verified:

• three tracked objectives render in the Journal strip;
• quest rows retain a readable minimum height and accessible status labels;
• completed quest details mark rewards as claimed;
• World State reports can be filtered by report kind;
• one report can be archived independently;
• all remaining reports can be archived in bulk;
• report archival does not alter Raid, Abyss, Map or Labyrinth counters;
• the German narrative completion message is localized.

Responsive matrix

All 27 main routes were rendered at five target viewports:

• 1920×1080
• 1366×768
• 1180×650
• 390×844
• 320×720

This produced 135 route/viewport combinations. Journal and World State were additionally checked at 130% interface scale on desktop and mobile.

Assertions covered:

• nonempty route content;
• no document-level horizontal overflow;
• no duplicate DOM IDs;
• no visible unnamed buttons;
• stable Journal rows and tracked-objective layout;
• stable World State report layout.

Content QA

The content validator checked:

• unique quest IDs;
• bilingual titles, summaries, objectives and quest givers;
• positive targets and finite ordering;
• nonnegative finite rewards;
• valid dependencies, locations, triggers and scene references;
• an acyclic dependency graph;
• twelve regional main quests in each of ten chapters;
• bilingual, nonempty scene bodies;
• bilingual character and faction codex entries;
• canonical visible spelling of Crystalline;
• absence of TODO, TBD, placeholder and undefined text.

The audit also found and repaired one real localization defect: the German body of The Gate Reads the Recordcontained the route string world instead of dialogue.

Assets and syntax

• 19 local asset references resolved.
• 18 raster images decoded successfully.
• 7 SVG files parsed successfully.
• data.js, narrative.js, playtest.js and game.js passed Node syntax validation.

Remaining external targets

The automated runtime suite uses Chromium. Firefox, Safari, actual iOS and Android hardware, browser audio policies and long-duration manual pacing remain external playtest targets before Beta.