v0.8.b_9 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_8 pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums.
Pictured: Slice of Greap Debug Map. Greap has a more vertical layout versus Eoano, and lacks teleporters. The upper grouping of towns is mostly barren at the moment. This update has been cooking for a while now! While it lacks a centralized theme, it can be grouped into a few categories.

Worldgen

• new towns! Greap now is filled with towns. Half of them are not yet featured, but you can still travel between them, and build your own Lots.
• notable towns: [olist]
• Lunek, a creepy port city home to the Hunter's Guild and Witch Hut.
• Gopuo, with a Rigged Tower Lighthouse.
• Reahe, a merchant stall town with a Blacksmith and Enchanter.
• Mikol, a palace town with a Dungeon, Hero Guild, and Merchant Guild.
• Beola, a bustling city with a Doctor and Library.
• Xeyn, a farming town beset by unseen forces.
• Eaqu, a partially complete small town with a Graveyard.[/olist]
• new connection types! In addition to normal Roads, you can travel on small Paths or hitch a ride in a Caravan. These have different travel times, and Caravans require loading, just like how Ships require loading and unloading, and Teleports need a ritual to be completed.
• World distances increased to make travel more meaningful and progress the world state a bit quicker when moving about. Remember that you can turn off realtime displays if watching the sunlight proves annoying!

Town Features

• new feature! The Enchanter: Can enchant weapons and armor for world currency and Aether. Can also convert Aether into world currency at prices better than what Stores will offer normally.
• new feature! Hunter's Guild: The additions here will be gone into more depth in the 'quests' section, but this Guild's gem of choice is the Amber, and they focus on Cleanse quests, primarily against vampires and harpies.
• new service! Forest variant of Altar, with its own offering behavior and blessings.
• new service! Blacksmiths can Temper Armor to remove negative qualities for a price of world currency and Amber.
• new service! Inns can now have their rooms rented out, which comes with Bathing and Waiting.
• misc! Witch Hut has tweaked potion recipes, Corpsebloom fungus is a new plant.
• new node shape! Rigged Tower implements a Lighthouse.
• changed services! Traveling Features no longer just copy other features: Celebrations let you get free drinks by scavenging and watch duels, Fights give you a breadth of opponents to choose from, Oracles ramble for free, and Stores still act like stores.

Quests

• new venues! Hero Guilds, Rogue Guilds, and Hunter Guilds now offer quests, with different chances of different types of quests! Notably, their Fetch quests differ in both the legality and rewards. This also applies to existing quest board locations like the District, Inn, and Merchant Guild!
• rewards! All Quests now grant larger amounts of currency. Amber is offered as a reward for Hunter quests, and Reputation rewards got increased overall.
• new target! Cleanse quests now offered for Unicorns.
• new reactions! You can now get stopped by bandits wanting to ruin hero's movements, competition that seeks to take your ill-gotten gains for themselves, and vampires who wish to slay those who might slay them. These all count for Cleanse quests, which should make it slightly easier to complete those by doing other quests in the meantime!
• Quest Reactions grace period was lengthened to avoid besieging you with events back-to-back. Reactions are now weighted, lowering the chances of getting told directions over and over.
• Quest Targets now prefer certain Features over others (Districts, Inns, etc)- and more importantly are less likely to be in the same room as the person who gave you the quest. They can appear 0 to 5 towns away, preferring the middle range band.
• reputation! Reputation for killing world entities has generally been increased, especially positive reputation. This should feel more accurate to how much presence you are exerting in the world, with higher level enemies giving smoother scaling than before.

Misc

• 'Really Fight' and 'Really Attack' let you view a preview of the opponent's equipment, so you can choose to back out with this information.
• Wounds reworded for clarity.
• new wounds! Blackened, Jolted, Shivering.
• Added new Skills: Life Mage, Armor Mage, Belly, Deadly Aim, Potion Chugger.
• Added new Feats: Glutton, Shaman.
• Combat attack notes are now a separate option from combat debug, and on by default.
• The Expanded Bag now lets you melt items within it into Aether, either from the Player Menu or when looting if your Expanded Bag is full.
• Added Simplified attack display type that displays hit roll, total delay, and total damage.