No time to lament a small update like "v0.9.6" — what Chabu brings you now is the brand-new "v0.9.7 — Death's Legacy"!!
🧙 New Avatar · The Alchemist
A brand-new Avatar has been added — the Alchemist:
At game start, choose "Start Directly" to skip the intro, then pick it on the character creation panel.
The quiz path won't offer the new Avatar — it still uses the original four Avatars.
The Alchemist's new Base Talent + Signature Talent:
Base Talent - Death Warden: While on the field, each time an ally dies, trigger an awakening.
Signature Talent - Death's Legacy: At the end of each turn, trigger all allies' on-death talents in order from left to right (except Fengchu).
Both Death Warden / Death's Legacy support Zhenhu.
Unlock: In the Codex's Neutral units tab, spend 2000 Stardust to unlock the Alchemist.
More brand-new Avatars are still in intensive development — this update lays the groundwork for Avatar integration (selectable at creation / Codex unlock / Star Chart display / male & female forms), and they'll roll out one by one.
⌨️ Hotkeys
Full control upgrade! A complete hotkey suite has been added (you can ditch the mouse now!):
General & UI: top-right menu, all popup options, all screens (Cabinet / Banner, etc.).
Map: world province select / in-city node select, Enter to advance, Backspace to close/return.
Battle:
1–9 to pick a hand card, F1–F4 to pick a battlefield slot (Ctrl+ for enemy), for fast deployment.
Quickly open your / enemy / discard decks, Space to end turn.
In the inventory, 1–9 picks an item, then use the "battlefield slot" hotkey to apply it.
One-key achievement abilities: Z Zhenhu / X Retreat / C Dispatch / V Trade
On any screen, pressing the hotkey again closes it, as does Backspace.
Event and confirmation popups can be confirmed with Enter, or choose an option with 1/2/3.
Settings now has left-side tabs: switch between "Basic Settings" and "Hotkeys" — the hotkey page lists every binding for quick reference.
⚔️ Battle Experience
Battle Speed: a speed button in the top-right of the battlefield toggles between 1× and 1.5×.
Press Tab to toggle battle speed quickly.
The speedup applies to the entire battle flow — movement, attacks, resolution, and dynamic performances.
Speed is saved as a player preference: it persists across battles and scenes, no re-pressing every fight.
The speedup acts directly on audio and will cause pitch shifting — decide for yourself whether to enable it.
Battle Log: a new battle info panel on the left of the battlefield records everything line by line —
Basics: turn count, deployment/retreat, attacks and damage, deaths, etc.
Items & Ornaments: use of items and Zhenhu / Retreat / Dispatch / Trade
Talent Triggers: talent names are colored by their rarity.
Entries are grouped by turn, each line prefixed with Ally or Enemy in red/blue.
The panel is collapsed by default — click to expand/collapse, and the content scrolls.
🎨 Art
Reworked the allied banner bearer art: every banner bearer portrait on the battlefield has been replaced and improved, greatly reducing the rough noise and broken edges from the earlier AI generation.
🔧 Optimizations
Phantom units (Xuanmiao clones, units summoned by Zhang Jiao and Cao Cao) now grant half Stardust when killed as enemies or when dying as allies. (Ideally they shouldn't grant any, since it breaks the value system, but I didn't want to spoil the fun — so only a partial reduction.)
Star Chart Avatar stars are now merged into one star per male/female pair: after selecting the star, use the "Male"/"Female" buttons to switch between the two forms.
The Avatar star's awakening progress is counted by the higher of male/female; the bottom "discovered/unlocked" counts also use the merged star.
The Avatar star's call-out performance (triggered at 2 awakenings) shows the gender that awakened; during call-out and focus, the "Male"/"Female" buttons switch forms, and the right-side title shows the specific gender (e.g. Alchemist·Male).
Two new confirmation popups to prevent misclicks:
New Game: with a run in progress, clicking "New Game" now asks for confirmation first, preventing an accidental save overwrite.
Stardust Unlock: spending Stardust to unlock a new Avatar in the Codex also asks for confirmation first.
