Patch Notes 25.44 - Fenix, Model Switching, Pricing Update

Hey Friends,

We’re excited to announce major upgrades to our subscription plans. Beginning today, the premium narration model previously available to Legend subscribers will now become the default model across all plans. We are also expanding context block limits, at no extra cost until December 1st.

To support this, we’ll be updating our subscription prices to $19.95 / $29.95 / $39.95, effective December 1st. That means you’ll enjoy these upgrades immediately at no additional cost until then. Once the price increase goes into effect, we’re also going to be giving subscribers additional monthly credits each month which can be spent on premium image generation and even bigger narration models (coming soon!).

We know price changes aren’t easy, and this wasn’t a decision we made lightly. Our subscription prices have stayed the same since launch, even as we’ve added more and more features: unlimited image generation, world-building tools, TTS, memories, lore pages, improved models, and more. These features have gradually raised our costs, and we’ve had to make tradeoffs in quality to keep prices low. We’re now at the point where further cuts would impact quality too much and hamper what we can do in future product development. Even at this new price, we believe we continue to offer more value than anyone else. This change allows us to continue to make Friends & Fables even better and bring even more value to your experience.

Model Switching + Model Names

A long requested feature, we are now allowing you to switch Franz’s narration model. To start, we are only making two models available - both of which are already in use, we’re just giving them names now.

Finch is the primary model we have been using for Starter and Pro plans, and is the primary model that has been in use the last few months. Fenix is the premium narration model that has only been available to Legend subscribers. Finch is faster than Fenix, but Fenix is still pretty fast and is much better at instruction following and handling additional context. We will be adding more models to choose from in the future!

Please note the narration model only applies to generating Franz’s narration messages. It does not apply to things like the research step or combat.

Fenix for all

We’ve made the decision that Fenix should be the baseline standard of quality for all paid plans. Since we released it to Legend, we’ve seen many players go from being frustrated and wanting to cancel their subscriptions to being really happy with Franz.

Here are a few of the things Legend players have said in our Discord about Fenix:

• Yeah, this is WAY better. I’ve been playing around with it and haven’t had to rewrite a single message. We finally have proper narration in this game. There was a version in the past where Franz could handle backstories and characters pretty well, but what we had recently was just bad. This premium model is by far the best we’ve had here so far, and I’m very satisfied.

• Premium Ai narration is 🔥

• Very short use of the Legend system. The narration does seem a lot better on my end. Instantly the narrative is changed/was noticeable and the new narrative was much better in my eyes in terms of giving a better feel message to message. I even got thru 3-5 messages without wanting to really edit anything which was nice.

We know a higher quality narration model won’t fix everything, but we’ve seen it dramatically improve the experience for players, especially when it comes to narrative cohesion, instruction following, common sense, and logic. This model is over 2x more expensive than the previous narration model, but we think it’s worth it. Effective today, all subscription plans have access to this model and will be using it by default.

Other Plan Changes

Context Block Limit Increases

Each plan is also getting a bump in context block character limits outlined below.

Credit Grants + Spending Credits

Over the next month, we’re going to be rolling out some features for players to spend their hard earned credits. The first two features we’re planning on rolling out are premium image generation and premium narration models (even bigger models than Fenix). This is still in the works so we won’t say too much about it yet, but the important thing to know is that plans will also be receiving credits each month to spend on these new features.

Price Increase

As stated above, the new prices ($USD) for the plans will be:

• Starter: $19.95 monthly / $199.50 annual

• Pro: $29.95 monthly / $299.50 annual

• Legend: $39.95 monthly / $399.50 annual

These prices will not go into effect until December 1st. On that date, the prices will change for new subscribers and any existing subscribers will get the price update on new invoices after December 1st. If your renewal day is the 8th, you would pay the existing price on Nov 8th, and pay the new price on Dec 8th. Annual subscriptions purchased prior to December 1st will be honored at the previous price until their next invoice renewal.

We totally understand that a price increase is not usually something to get excited about, but we hope that you’ll find the quality improvements to be worth it! You’ll have a month to see for yourself, and in that time we’re going to continue delivering improvements to the platform, QoL updates, and roll out new ways to spend your earned credits.