Version 1.56.4 Released

Version 1.56.4 is a focused mobile stability and performance update.

After the 1.56.3 initialization fix, real-device testing on iPhone exposed two additional issues: the “While You Were Away” report could become effectively impossible to dismiss, and startup/resume performance had become noticeably slower than intended.

Both problems have now been addressed at the system level rather than patched only at the visible UI layer.

“While You Were Away” Modal Fixed

The offline activity report could close visually when pressing X, but its underlying report state was not always marked as consumed.

On mobile browsers, especially Safari on iPhone, several lifecycle events can occur almost immediately after returning to the page:

• focus
• pageshow
• visibilitychange

The same offline report could therefore be detected again immediately after closing it and reopen.

From the player's perspective, this looked like the close button simply did not work.

What Changed

Offline reports are now marked as processed before the modal is displayed.

This means that once a report has been shown, the same report cannot be reopened by a second lifecycle event.

The following actions now dismiss the report correctly:

• X button
• Continue
• clicking outside the modal where appropriate
• normal return to gameplay

The mobile lifecycle deduplication window has also been increased so clustered Safari resume events are treated as a single return event.

Short Offline Sessions No Longer Interrupt Gameplay

A short absence should not stop the player with a full-screen report.

A normal return such as 13 minutes away now avoids the large blocking modal.

Instead, the game displays a lightweight notification while the full activity details remain available through World Activity.

The full report is now reserved for cases where it is genuinely useful, such as:

• a significant offline duration
• a new World Boss
• a completed Guild Expedition
• important Crownstead progression
• other major simulated-world events

This keeps the living-world simulation visible without constantly interrupting play.

Startup Performance Investigation

The mobile slowdown was not caused by one single rendering problem.

The production build had accumulated a large startup workload over many updates.

Before this patch, the game could load 112 separate JavaScript files during startup.

On top of that, several expensive systems were performing immediate catch-up work shortly after initialization.

Most importantly, the complete historical release/self-test suite was also being scheduled during a normal production boot.

That test suite has grown enormously over the lifetime of the project and is intended for QA — not for a player's phone.

A manual execution of the complete historical test path was able to remain active for several minutes in the development environment.

That work should never be part of normal gameplay startup.

Runtime Bundling

The release runtime has now been consolidated.

Before

112 active JavaScript requests

Now

2 bundled runtime JavaScript requests

This significantly reduces request overhead on mobile browsers and simplifies the startup dependency chain.

The total compressed script payload is also slightly smaller, but the largest improvement comes from reducing the number of individual files the browser must request, parse, schedule, and initialize.

Faster First Screen

The startup order was changed so the player-facing interface appears earlier.

The Home screen is now rendered before the heavier offline-world catch-up work is completed.

Offline simulation then continues in staged browser turns instead of forcing the entire workload into the initial blocking startup sequence.

This improves perceived responsiveness and reduces the amount of work occupying the mobile browser's main thread before the game becomes usable.

Duplicate Offline Work Removed

Several systems were capable of performing catch-up work during both initialization and the later offline-world processing path.

This could cause unnecessary repeated processing.

The startup path has now been cleaned up so systems such as:

• Market simulation
• Social simulation
• Crownstead catch-up

are not immediately processed twice during the same boot sequence.

The simulation results themselves remain intact; the redundant work has simply been removed.