Two full weeks of combat, polish and lore-building ship today. Thornfeld now has a working tournament ground — and Brazilian players get a dedicated low-ping route.

🛡️ The Jousting Arena

• Herald NPC — the arena announcer. Ride up mounted and ask about tiers, rules, or your record.
• Four tiers by Speed DNA bracket: Bronze (1-3), Silver (4-6), Gold (7-9), Champion (10+). Each horse fits exactly one tier.
• Solo matches vs AI opponents. Say the tier name and confirm — the Herald teleports you to the arena.
• PvP duels via challenge <playerName>. Target must be at the Herald to accept. 30-second expiration.
• Best of 3 rounds. Each round: pick your aim (HIGH / DEFEND / LOW), time your STRIKE in the green zone, clash at mid-arena.
• Aim rules: HIGH beats LOW, LOW beats DEFEND, DEFEND beats HIGH.
• Pot economy: winner takes 2x entry fee minus 10% bailiff tax. Loss = entry forfeited. Draw = refund.
• Points: +10 on win, -10 on loss, 0 on draw. Clamped at zero (never negative).

🏟️ The Living Arena

• 22 ghost spectators live in the bleachers 24/7, chatting between matches and reacting during fights.
• 14 town NPCs (Bailiff Roderic, Marta, Hank, Cedric, Ivy, Captain Aldwin, Fletcher, Barnaby, Osric, Grubb, Wick, Elara, Rashid, Father Edmond) appear in VIP seats during real matches.
• Idle demos: when the arena is empty for a while, wandering riders stage a quick duel so passers-by get a show.
• Live reactions — crowd cheers, boos, and shouts during every match phase.

🇧🇷 Brazil Proxy — Low Ping for BR Players

• Dedicated São Paulo proxy server for Brazilian players.
• On the login screen, pick "Brasil" in the region dropdown — all game traffic now routes through SP before reaching the main server.
• Connection quality went from ~700ms spikes with 20% packet loss to a stable ~143ms with no loss.
• Transparent — no client install, no VPN, no config. Just pick the region.
• North America / Europe players keep the default "USA" route (unchanged, direct to the main server).

🏠 Thatched Roof

• New roof style in the Building Book: 13 variants of Thatched Roof.
• Cost: 6 bunches of wheat per tile (harvested from your crops).
• Alongside the existing Tiled Roof (6 clay each, 10 variants) — 23 roof tiles total now.

🐴 Mount Colors Sync Everywhere

• Engine patch: colorizable White Horse now shows its coat colors instantly to every nearby player, no login or walk-up delay.
• The riders unique horse colors ride along in the standard outfit packet.

🐛 Fixes & Polish

• Roofs can no longer be placed outside your ranch footprint (upper floors now properly validated).
• Jousting match UI is compact and per-phase (aim panel small, skill bar wider, result banner centered).
• HUD auto-hides during a match so the arena gets full focus — restored automatically on exit.
• Result message formatting bug on loss fixed.
• Mid-match logout now forfeits gracefully; opponent wins the pot, stranded riders are teleported out on relog.
• Arena locks to one match at a time — second inscription waits instead of overlapping.

Ride with honor!