Well, this update fixed plenty of longstanding bugs, but more importantly, overhauled things that were long standing weak parts of the game; namely, the creator lacking a proper growth/skills that could work with anything but support/magic skills build, which was itself limiting due to limited skills that benefited from mana pool/magic and stat growth not being good, but now, thanks to updating that gives stat growth plus alternate playstyle that focused on strength which can rival druid, I can say this update goes great things to make characters more varied overall, while also adding variety, since druid got an alternative that focuses on magic rather than strength, but at the moment, the plot still plays as if you played the original characters rather than their alternatives. It is not enough to usurp shapeshifter's fame as the most powerful overall character(which makes playing others not so appealing as a result), but it is a good start of progress to make each character powerful in their own way. And the ritual dagger skill on the alternative creator is fairly good, it can deal damage without consuming action points, or deal some damage to yourself in order to have an extra action, which makes it fairly solid once you have a good health pool.
But something that could be a very huge change in gameplay overall is unaffiliated, AKA normal/unique character run(with expection of town characters and story important ones), which basically puts you in shoes of a normal humanoid or unique character, with both benefits of character's skills/abilities, and the disadvantage of lacking unique encounters/events/brothel work, though powerful unique/normal characters will make up for lack of character's special abilities, though you cannot adapt characters at all when playing those. Time will tell what stories that run can have, since fighting powerful competitors as a third party does seem fun if there could be more uniques/normal characters to play as.
The new characters, especially of alternative option kind offers a reason to reject the initial offer, since it gives variety between having one reward and one type of experience, and another, that feels at first wrong, but eventually can become just as good as previous option itself. I still have yet to encounter other new characters and new biome itself, but I can tell it will be a good surprise.
The revamp of game length is good, since the game already feels long when you have to think of optimal solutions to problems, and the 15 day option just feels right, especially due to fact you can now climb challenge ranks even faster and will make up for any extras beyond 10 in the future.
The difficulty modifier that restricted to a single element type was removed, apparently because of how restrictive it was compared to everything else, even with shapeshifter relying on hidden power trait and replaced with "easy" modifier, that doubles all stamina gain for main character, at no penalty at all. It also makes endurance trait pretty much a must have instead being an option. Very useful, despite not reducing difficulty in exchange for balance.
There's new bugs of course, like the unaffiliated characters not getting bonuses from purity/focused traits, as well hidden power, which makes them useless on them, and not having their own unique advisor, instead using druid's as a base, which also includes brothel interactions, though understandable.
I am very surprised and pleased by this turn of events, but I am also expecting very good things in the future, since the unaffiliated runs give so much potential variety, if they were refined, but also stories to tell.