📜 Immortality: The Path of Cultivation — Version 1.5.0 Release Notes

[!NOTE] Version 1.5.0 is a research & altar overhaul: 33 previously-undocumented items now have full research entries, the Jade Infusion Altar's 17 rituals are documented in-game for the first time ever, a new in-game Atlas tab catalogs all 7 structures, the research map got zoom/pan and a visual refresh, the aspect-chain study mini-game trades hard fail-states for a breakthrough-style success chance, batch talisman crafting, and a long list of bug fixes across cultivation, world generation, and localization.

📖 1. Research Tree & Altar Documentation

• 33 previously-undocumented items now have a full research entry (title, description, lore, correct icon) across the Qi, Body, Breakthrough, Beast, Soul, and Dao paths — manuals, beast-drop intent cores, Tomb of the Ancient God relics, Ruined Sovereign Palace relics, and more.
• 9 of those items had no in-game source at all before this update (not craftable, not droppable, not lootable — dead items). They now do:
  • Fire/Frost/Life Intent — rare drop from Flame Salamander / Frost Fox / Spirit Beast.
  • Immortal Bone Fragment, Celestial Dew Drop — now drop from mining the Immortal Bone Block and Frozen Celestial Dew Block respectively (previously dropped nothing).
  • Shattered Celestial Mirror / Sovereign Spear / Dao Bell, Scorched Dao Wood — new top-tier loot pool for the Pedestal Shrine and Ruined Sovereign Palace chests.
• Jade Infusion Altar fully documented for the first time: 17 new research entries with visual ritual diagrams (altar center item + Jade Pedestal ingredients) covering all 10 Rune rituals (Spirit Convergence, Taiji Shield, Mirage Concealment, Sword Forest, Heavenly Lightning, Frost Domain, Life Spring, Gravity Suppression, Flame Lotus, Qi Sealing) and all 7 equipment infusions (Tempered, Ignis Flame, Vigor Life, Swift Wind, Electrum Lightning, Sharp Qi-Edge, Unyielding Fortitude).
• 5 new visual crafting-recipe diagrams: Phoenix Feather, Nine Dragons Manual, Heavenly Ward Pill, Sovereign Ring, Sword Intent Pendant.
• New Atlas tab: an in-game compendium of all 7 world structures — what they are, which biomes to search, what guards them, and their loot tier. This information didn't exist anywhere in-game before.
• Fixed a stage-order bug where a research could require a lower cultivation stage than its own prerequisite, making it permanently unreachable.

🗺️ 2. Research Map Overhaul

• Scroll-wheel zoom, centered on the cursor, with a per-category floor so you can always zoom out far enough to see the entire tree at once.
• Map auto-centers and auto-fits on the current category when you switch tabs.
• Node icons now show the actual item instead of a truncated 4-letter label; nodes and tabs are color-coded by category with matching tab icons.
• New per-category background watermark art on the map.
• Fixed connection lines that visually cut through unrelated sibling nodes (e.g. Jade Infusion Altar rituals used to look like they branched off Formation Matrix instead of the altar itself).
• Fixed long titles/descriptions overflowing the page edge or getting cut off on the recipe/ritual detail page; tightened layout so it no longer collides with the page-turn arrows.

🎲 3. Aspect-Chain Study Rework

• Removed the hard fail-state for "dead-end" placed tiles — decorative or exploratory placements no longer invalidate the whole board.
• Yin-Yang imbalance and Qi-budget overage now scale your success chance down smoothly instead of instantly failing the attempt.
• Success chance now works like a breakthrough attempt (10–95%, with flawed-success/failure/deviation tiers) instead of a strict pass/fail gate.
• Raised the Qi budget on both study boards (and all per-research overrides) by +3, room for a few more aspect placements.
• A chain that genuinely can't connect start to finish is still an outright invalid attempt — this part stays a hard rule.

🧵 4. Talismans

• Batch talisman crafting: create multiple Written Talismans in one go instead of one at a time.
• Renamed the older Lightning/Spatial Shield Talismans to "Ancient Talisman of Thunder/the Spatial Shield" to distinguish them from the newer calligraphy-drawn talisman system.
• Fixed Infused Talisman Paper's Qi cap silently drifting if your cultivation stage changed mid-charge — it now locks in at first charge.

🛠️ 5. Bug Fixes

• Effect-stripping bug: the mod was force-clearing Strength/Speed/Jump Boost/Night Vision from any source — potions, /effect, other mods — every tick if the matching Qi Focus wasn't active. It now only clears effects it granted itself.
• Spatial Storm desync: storm timing was a single shared value across all dimensions; with both the World of Immortals and the End loaded, storms ticked twice as fast and could leak between dimensions. Now tracked per-dimension.
• Flight speed by stage was defined but never actually applied — Ascendant through Void Tribulant now genuinely fly faster at higher stages, matching the per-stage speeds already listed in the README.
• Formation Core collapse no longer levels surrounding terrain with a TNT-equivalent explosion when a flag is lost — it still punishes the player standing there, but can no longer be used to grief a base.
• Removed leftover dead code (duplicate beast-core selection call in breakthrough logic, unused node-label fallback path).
• Localization fully back in sync: 81 missing Russian keys backfilled, all new 1.5.0 content translated in both languages.