In summary: Expanded accessible interiors and NPC interactions, primarily in First Layer areas. Added tooltips to main menu to reduce confusion in how to continue onto the Second Layer.

Patch Notes for Version 0.4.1 (10/12/2025)

• Added Hints of Oak tavern interior, accessible from Crossroads.
  • Populated Hints of Oak tavern with four new NPCs.
• Added Sans Libelle (Newspaper Office) interior (1F and 2F), accessible from Justice Square.
  • Populated Sans Libelle 1F with three new NPCs.
  • Populated Sans Libelle 2F with two new NPCs.
• Added Empty Office interior, accessible from Justice Square.
  • Added Fat Rat NPC to Empty Office interior.
• Added new NPC interaction in Reception Hall, accessible from Philosopher's Hill.
• Added unique dialog/conversations to many of the closed doors in front of Marlowe Whitaker's house and at Crossroads.
• Added new opportunities to obtain rhetoric/money by speaking to overworld NPCs/investigating.
• Various minor textual edits.
• Added a tooltip to the main menu to instruct the player on how to begin the Second Layer after completing the first, to reduce confusion related to the Start/Continue dichotomy.
• Adjusted focal blur shader to address issue where the blur "sticks" in an out-of-focus state.
• Made camera-panning framerate-locked (as opposed to framerate-independent) to prevent over-panning 
• Reduced intensity of bloom effect on last fullscreen illustration of First Layer.

This update primarily seeks to address shortcomings in the new player experience of the First Layer by introducing better rewards for exploration as well as more early-game-accessible tools for the debate mode. It also improves the main menu somewhat by introducing tooltips for behaviors which may be considered confusing or unintuitive.

This update is probably fine, from a stability perspective, but since the scope is a little more broad than intermediate-version patches tend to be, I may very well have missed something! As always, if you encounter anything weird, bad, or dumb while playing Reality Layer Zero, please send an email to support@realitylayerzero.com with any relevant details so that your problem can be resolved.