The following is the record of public game progress for March 16th, 2022 through May 18th, 2022.

• New/updated helpfiles: boats, crafts, crafting process, drop, gather, light, scrape, smelting
• New items: bell earrings, belled belts, broad sashes, tassel earrings
• Updated items: dugouts, rowboats
• Characters using their common sense will now stop attacking inanimate objects after the first strike if they realize their target is invulnerable. This only applies to explicitly invulnerable objects, regardless of the target's size or resistances, and it is still possible to damage or even destroy a weapon (or body part) on technically destructible, but very durable, targets.
• Successful dodges and parries in combat will now only show flavor adverbs for very close, or overwhelmingly successful, attempts; most dodges and parries will not have extra descriptors. The varied other message options for these defensive actions (i.e. "Foo evades" or "Foo intercepts") have not been changed. This is purely a cosmetic update and has no effect on the actual efficacy of dodging and/or parrying.
• Previously, the game only understood failed melee attacks in terms of dodges or parries, but this didn't always make sense; now when an attack is technically "dodged" by a living target that would not reasonably be able or trying to do so, the game will print an appropriate miss message instead. The only difference between this and the previous way dodges were evaluated is that a miss does not tire out the target, while successful dodges do. This is mostly a cosmetic change and does not influence whether or not an attacker's hit will connect in the first place.
• Attacking inanimate objects smaller than 10 IC pounds now incurs a slight chance to miss, as determined by the size of the object, the attacker's attack skill and style allocation, the attacker's aim blows skill and style allocation, and the attacker's skill with their current weapon. This does not affect any damage dealt by successful hits, nor does it apply to living targets, and attacks against targets heavier than 10 pounds will automatically hit as usual. These miss chances are unrelated to the new missed-attack behavior when facing a living target.
• The "flee" command and hard-coded flee behavior in NPC brains now have a slight cooldown between when the actor first flees and when they can attempt to flee again; this should hopefully reduce some of the rapid-fire room crossings rarely seen when a faster pursuer keeps entering a room before their fleeing target. Manually leaving in another direction via typing exit names, entering objects, etc. has no cooldown and behaves as always.
• Scraping a fur, whether tanned or raw, is now a task that can be interrupted and resumed without losing progress, and looking at a fur being scraped will reflect how much of its hair has been scraped away. Furs show signs of being shaved as soon as anyone begins scraping them, though tangible progress requires successful continues. Tanning a partially-scraped pelt will yield a preserved fur with the same amount of hair missing. The time and tools required to scrape a fur have not changed.
• Tanning can now yield preserved skins that are partial handspans in size ("about three and a quarter" et.al.) instead of completely losing this extra material to the tanning process. The difficulty in doing so has not changed, nor has the chance of destroying a skin while tanning it.
• Using the "row" and "paddle" syntaxes aboard a rowboat or dugout will now check if the character is using their common sense before claiming they're not using the correct posture; characters who are using it will attempt to change posture automatically. Stopping rowing, whether through the "stop" command or getting interrupted by something, will now check if the vessel has anyone else trying to move it, and if not will eventually cause it to come to a stop. How long this takes depends on the speed at which the boat was moving. Finally, additional safeguards have been implemented to reduce cases of phantom crew taking up space in rowing slots or at oarlocks.
• Rowboats and dugouts now save objects left inside them across multiple days; how well they can handle permanency across reboots is still being tested, so players are encouraged to treat their interiors like wilderness rooms with cairns or pitched flags in them. The two available watercraft still have very little space aboard and are not designed for extended living situations.
• Clay and clay patches are once again separately-gatherable objects, with patches being harder to find than clay on its own in exchange for containing more. Clay patches have been updated to account for bulk material clay, and just like before will delete themselves once all their contents have been removed.
• Other players now have a chance to see when a character begins trying to gather or forage in their current room, though they will not see when they finish or what (if anything) the gathering character was able to find; this is to bring it a little more in line with searching. Also, attempting to gather immobile objects (such as peat patches) into a container now no longer erroneously claims they were able to fit into said container despite remaining on the ground.
• Searching a room or an object no longer has perfect visibility; poor lighting, night vision stats, and similar can reduce the chance others will see a character begin to do so. This has no effect on whether or not the searching character will be successful.
• Dropcloths now properly check if they are unrolled before allowing their contents to be used for crafting.
• Dropping a bulk material (such as grass, meat, or fabric) will now only combine the dropped pile with any matching materials that are close to where they were dropped; objects put into containers will automatically pile as usual. Due to the nature of this change, existing bulk goods can be updated by holding them while logging out and back in, and will be automatically updated after our next reboot.
• The "drop" command now has more robust failsafes to ensure special-behaviored objects, such as boats, properly recognize the coordinates of where they're being dropped, as well as whether or not they need to start falling.
• The "push" command (and its alias, "press") now have slightly better messaging when used, whether on physical targets, on oneself, or when used without an argument. If targeting oneself, the message displayed is slightly different based on whether one is using the "push" or "press" syntax, and potentially how many free hands a character has at the time. Due to the nature of this extended support, some existing objects may not completely recognize it until after the next reboot; any puzzle objects that require this syntax are guaranteed to respond to it.
• The "follow" command now uses slightly better messaging if told to follow something a character already is. It's also clearer about whether a failed follow attempt is because the target isn't visible in the room or if the target is present but can't be followed.
• Looking at the sky, sun, stars, or moon, assuming one is outside, all now better integrate the current weather into their descriptions. The moon will also no longer show up in "look graphic sky" results if the weather is overcast or stormy; this is purely a cosmetic change, as it still provides the same amount of light as it did previously. Moonrise and moonset messages will still display regardless of the weather due to how global messages are handled.
• A subtle issue with location description code has been tidied up to better ensure things print their current locations as part of their descriptions; some coordinate-checking math has been made a little more robust to help things show up properly, and an extra fallback message has also been added. While objects like severed limbs and corpses have been checked to use this behavior, due to the nature of this change some items may not properly inherit things until our next reboot.