Aethalas

Hi everyone! This was a big week in-game. Your characters look different, the starter critters got a glow-up, and a pile of stuck-in-the-world bugs got cleared out. ## Fixes - **Stuck less often in the world.** Pond banks, bushes, trees, and covering pines should stop trapping you. You can walk up to walls and slide along them more cleanly, including on slower machines. - **North exit stays open.** Leaving through the north exit no longer disconnects you or leaves you stuck. - **Camera and clicks on phones and high-density screens.** Zoom drift, off-target clicks, and the black screen some phones hit should be gone. Characters also draw sharper on retina-style displays. - **Other players see you properly.** Cloak, hood, chat, and Leave World now show up for everyone else the way they should. Leaving the world hides you on their screen right away. - **Small site polish.** Community category counts add up correctly, Member of the Day matches on Home and Community, existing accounts can unlock “A New Journey,” and sign-up keeps the check-your-email message plus clearer password rules. ## Improvements - **New player look.** Meet the updated Aethan and Lyra: eight-direction walk, cloak, and hood. Phones get a lighter version so the HUD stays clear. - **Jellits replace the starter dogs.** The Jellit slime family is in as the new starter creatures, with matching sounds. You can also turn game sound on or off. - **Easier first steps.** A **How to play** panel appears the first time a character enters the world. Press **Space** to attack the nearest enemy, and **Leave World** now lives under a Game Menu. - **Achievements page.** Signed-in players have a place to see their achievements. - **Member of the Day.** Picking Member of the Day now looks at Republic Points. - **Spectator preview.** The home-page preview uses the real game map and starts at the saved camp. ## What's next These are plans, not promises: - **Dewmere Vale**, the new world that will eventually replace the current island. Phase 1 (smoother map loading, spawn zones, and fresh ground textures) is lined up after the current polish pass; the island stays live until the full switch. - More polish on the new character art across the site (avatar, profiles, and create-your-hero), plus any leftover zoom or click quirks on the new sprites. Thanks for playing and for telling us when something feels off. Drop a note here on the forum anytime. We read everything! — The Athena Online team

Hi everyone! We've just shipped a batch of fixes around the site. They're mostly small things, but together they should make Athena Online feel a lot smoother. ## What's new and fixed - **Password resets work properly.** The short `/forgot-password` and `/reset-password` links now take you to the right pages, and reset and verification emails link back to Athena Online like they should. - **Forum categories are real links now.** Clicking a category on the Community page always takes you there, and you can middle-click or open it in a new tab. If a category has trouble loading, you'll no longer get an error page. - **Notifications page fixes.** Visiting Notifications while signed out now sends you to sign in instead of crashing. If your inbox is empty, you'll see a clean empty message instead of blank placeholder cards, and a **Try again** button shows up if loading fails. - **A friendlier "page not found."** Broken or mistyped links now land on a styled page with **Home** and **Go back** buttons. Athena Online also has its own shield icon in your browser tab now. - **More stable updates.** We've added a lot more automatic checking behind the scenes, so new changes should break things less often. ## What we're working on next These are plans, not promises, but here's what's on the workbench: - A fix for the **Birthdays** panel on the Community page, which currently says it can't load - Friendly error screens with **Try again** and **Go home**, instead of a bare error page - Better screen-reader and password-manager support on the sign-in and register pages - More polish for notifications - A **"How to play"** panel that pops up the first time you enter the world, showing the controls - Settings tabs you can link to and refresh without losing your place Thanks for playing and for your patience while we polish things. If you spot something odd or have ideas, please tell us here on the forum. We read everything! — The Athena Online team

Heck **yea**