gogobee/gogobee_long_expedition_plan.md

Long Expeditions — multi-session plan

Goal: dungeon expeditions become real multi-day journeys (T1 ≈ 2 days → T5 ≈ 7 days). Player picks camp supplies at launch, then watches it play out. Camp pitch/break, elite engagement, and boss engagement all become autonomous. Foreground !camp / !fight survive as overrides, not the expected path.

1. Why the current shape is "too short"

Tier	Zones	Rooms	Real-time exit
T1	Goblin Warrens, Crypt Valdris	6–7	usually <1 calendar day
T2	Forest Shadows, Sunken Temple	7–8	usually 1 day
T3	Manor Blackspire, Underforge	7–9	1–2 days
T4	Underdark, Feywild Crossing	8–10 (×regions)	2–3 days
T5	Dragon's Lair, Abyss Portal	9–10 (×regions)	2–4 days

(Room counts from internal/plugin/dnd_zone.go:70-134; tier zones from memory project_expedition_difficulty.)

Because the autopilot walks ~3 rooms / 2h (expedition_autorun.go:43,53) and boss/elite stops are manual, a player who pays attention clears T1–T3 in an evening. Briefing/recap UTC ticks fire but rarely matter — the expedition is over before "day 2" ever lands.

2. Target shape

Tier	Target duration	New room budget (single-region)	Notes
T1	2 days	12–14	one autopilot-camp
T2	3 days	16–20	two camps
T3	4 days	22–26	three camps; threat starts to bite
T4	5–6 days	28–34 (split across 3–4 regions)	base camp emerges
T5	7 days	36–44 (split across 3–4 regions)	full siege/temporal pressure

(Numbers are first-draft anchors; class-balance sim drives the actual dial in D7.)

Duration is measured in expedition-days advanced by autopilot camp, not real-time UTC days. Each autopilot night-camp = day++. Real-time UTC still drives the morning briefing DM cadence, but day-count and supply burn become event-driven (camp = sleep = day++ = burn).

The autopilot decides:

• when to camp (and which camp type)
• whether to engage elites and bosses, or to camp first and retry
• whether to extract early on starvation/HP collapse

The player decides:

• supply pack purchases at launch (only meaningful pre-expedition choice)
• whether to override (!camp <kind>, !fight, !expedition extract)

3. Phasing

Built across multiple sessions; each phase ships independently with tests and a small DM-side feedback loop.

D1 — Length + room-count rework

Files: dnd_zone.go (per-zone Min/MaxRooms), dnd_expedition_region.go (multi-region region sizes), dnd_zone_run.go:generateRoomSequence (still terminates Entry → … → Elite → Boss, but with more Explorations). Work:

• Re-pitch Min/MaxRooms per zone to the table in §2.
• Multi-region zones: extend per-region room budgets so the total stays in band when summed.
• Keep the fixed Entry / Trap / Elite / Boss anchors; only Exploration count scales.
• Consider 2 traps + 2 elites for T4–T5 to break up the long middle (deferred decision — see §6).
• Update existing zone graphs in zone_graph_*.go for the new lengths. Auditing whether each zone has a hand-tuned graph or relies on the linear compiler is part of D1 scoping.

Exit criteria: expedition-sim shows mean-room-cleared per zone in the new band; no test fixtures hard-code old counts.

D2 — Autopilot camp scheduler

D2-a (shipped 2026-05-27): new expedition_autocamp.go with pure decideAutopilotCamp + pitchAutopilotCamp + dwell-window lifecycle (shouldSkipAutoRunForCamp, breakAutoCampIfDue). Wired into tryAutoRun: skip while inside minAutoCampDwell (4h), break + walk past it, post-walk scheduler pitches HP-low rest camps and region-boss base-camp waypoints. CampState gained AutoPitched so auto- vs player-pitched lifetimes diverge. Day rollover is still UTC-anchored; D2-b moves it event-anchored.

D2-b (shipped 2026-05-27): event-anchored day rollover. dnd_expedition_cycle.go adds eventAnchoredCutoff + isEventAnchored, splits the briefing body into nightRolloverBurn + nightRolloverDrift (+ a convenience processNightCamp that runs both back-to-back). For expeditions started ≥ cutoff, deliverBriefing skips mutators and posts a re-engagement DM; if last_briefing_at is older than nightSafetyNet (28h) it force-fires processNightCamp so a stalled autopilot doesn't freeze the expedition. The autopilot scheduler grew a Night flag — decideAutopilotCamp sets it when time.Since(LastBriefingAt) ≥ nightCampWindow (16h); pitchAutopilotCamp then runs the burn → camp → rest → drift sequence in one pitch. Manual !camp <type> runs the same flow when it's the first camp since the last rollover. Legacy UTC-anchored expeditions (start_date < cutoff) keep the original mutator flow via the same staged helpers, preserving rest-before-drift ordering through processOvernightCamp. Tests fence cutoff to year 9999 in TestMain so existing legacy assertions stand; new tests exercise the night decision, night-pitch rollover, event-anchored skip, and safety-net force.

Files: new expedition_autocamp.go; hooks in expedition_autorun.go:tryAutoRun; reuse dnd_expedition_camp.go:campPitch / applyCampRest. Heuristics (in priority order):

1. Day-budget pacing — pitch when rooms-walked-this-day ≥ tier-specific day-room target. Standard if room cleared, rough if not.
2. Resource gates — pitch if HP < 35% of max, or supplies projected to cover <1 more day's burn (exp.Supplies.Current < exp.Supplies.DailyBurn * harshMod).
3. Post-elite breath — auto-pitch a standard camp in the cleared elite room.
4. Region boss cleared in multi-region zone — auto-pitch base camp at first eligible site.
5. Don't pitch when mid-fight, in a trap/boss room, in a fork-pending state, or already camped.

Auto-break already happens on move (autoBreakCampOnMove in dnd_expedition_camp.go:401). Autopilot just needs to not break a freshly-pitched camp by immediately walking on — gate by time.Since(camp.EstablishedAt) > minCampDwell (15min real-time? or simply: don't auto-walk while camped).

Day-rollover semantics change (decided event-anchored): today, day++ happens at the 06:00 UTC briefing (dnd_expedition_cycle.go:236). After D2, the autopilot night-camp pitch is the event that fires day++, supply burn, overnight rest, and threat drift — in one atomic rollover the camp scheduler triggers. The 06:00 UTC briefing tick survives only as a re-engagement DM anchor (and a safety net: if for some reason no camp pitched in N hours, force one). Concretely:

• Move the body of deliverBriefing (dnd_expedition_cycle.go:186-) into a processNightCamp(exp) helper called from the autopilot camp scheduler when it pitches a night camp (rough/standard/fortified — not mid-day breath stops).
• Distinguish "night camp" (advances day) from "rest stop" (doesn't). Heuristic: a camp pitched at the end of the day-budget room count is night; one pitched purely for HP/SU recovery mid-day is a rest stop. Both apply applyCampRest; only night also runs supply burn + day++ + threat drift.
• The existing UTC briefing ticker becomes: if last_briefing_at is older than ~20h and the user is active, post a "Day N — here's where you stand" re-engagement DM. It calls no mutators.
• Manual !camp <type> from the player still does what it does today (apply rest immediately) but also counts as a night camp if invoked with no other camp today — keep parity with the autopilot behavior so the override doesn't accidentally stall day advancement.

Migration: in-flight expeditions at deploy time keep their existing 06:00 UTC day++ until they end (fence by start_date). New expeditions use the event-anchored model.

Exit criteria: sim shows autopilot pitches the right kind of camp at the right room with no player input; supply economy still survives a 7-day T5.

D3 — Autonomous elite + boss engagement

Files: dnd_zone_cmd.go:497-535 (the prev==RoomElite / RoomBoss branch).

Shipped 2026-05-27. dnd_zone_cmd.go adds stopBossSafety + bossSafetyGate(uid, exp) (HP < 80%, supplies < daily burn, exhaustion ≥ 3 — the "active low status" interpretation). The elite/boss doorway branch drops the prev == RoomBoss || !compact carve-out: in compact mode bosses fall through to the same resolveCombatRoom path elites have used, after the gate clears. resolveCombatRoom selects monster + label + loot-drop by run.CurrentRoomType() so the same call site handles boss kills (zone.Boss bestiary, "👑 Boss — name down", boss-loot drop, elite-tier threat bump). Loss on auto-resolved boss falls through to the existing player-death narration / forceExtractExpeditionForRunLoss path — no special treatment.

The walk loop (dnd_expedition_cmd.go:717) only breaks at the elite/boss doorway when !compact; compact lets the next iteration auto-resolve. stopBossSafety is excluded from the rooms-walked tally and its autopilotFooter returns "" — res.final already carries the held-back line.

When the gate trips, tryAutoRun calls pitchBossSafetyCamp(exp) (new in expedition_autocamp.go): force-pitches Standard (or Rough fallback) regardless of decideAutopilotCamp's HP threshold or its RoomBoss room-type block, with the same Night event-anchored rollover handling. Dwell expires → next tick retries the boss. Foreground !fight and foreground !expedition run are unchanged: both still stop at the boss doorway for the player who wants to watch. Sim path is unaffected — stopBossSafety falls into expedition_sim.go's default branch (tick-a-day, retry next walk).

Open question: do we want a "set autopilot off" toggle for players who actively want to play the boss themselves? My take: default-on, single-flag per expedition (autopilot_engage) settable at start or via !expedition autopilot off. Defer until D3 lands and we see how it reads.

Exit criteria: sim runs a full T5 expedition launch → boss kill with zero player commands besides !expedition start.

D4 — DM volume + day surfaces

The big risk: a 7-day T5 with autopilot walking, camping, fighting elites, and killing bosses will spam DMs unless we bundle. The user has already pushed back on recap chatter (feedback_skip_recaps).

D4-a (shipped 2026-05-27): autopilot DM bundling. expedition_autorun.go:tryAutoRun now drops per-tick auto-walk DMs in compact mode. New surface rules:

• Fork / death / run-complete still DM the walk stream — interactive + climax beats.
• A Night=true camp pitch flushes the day as an end-of-day digest (renderEndOfDayDigest in new expedition_autorun_digest.go) followed by the camp block.
• Boss-safety camp pitch gets a short "holding before the boss" header + camp block (walk stream dropped).
• Non-night auto-camp (mid-day rest / base-camp waypoint) surfaces the camp block by itself.
• Everything else — uneventful walks, preflight pauses, harvest interrupts — goes silent. Each successful background walk now logs a walk entry (appendExpeditionLog(... "walk" ...)) so the digest can count rooms walked from structured logs (the raw r.stream narration is no longer persisted across ticks). Digest groups counts of walk/harvest/interrupt and inlines threat/milestone/narrative lines for the prior day (dayExpeditionLog helper). maybeAutoCamp + pitchBossSafetyCamp now return the autoCampDecision so tryAutoRun can branch on dec.Night.

D4-b (shipped 2026-05-27): morning re-engagement DM anchored to user activity, not 06:00 UTC. fireExpeditionBriefings now skips event-anchored expeditions whose last_activity is older than today's 06:00 UTC threshold (and we're still inside nightSafetyNet — stalled-autopilot force-fires still win). New maybeDeliverDeferredBriefing runs at the top of AdventurePlugin.OnMessage on every inbound message in any room: it stamps last_activity (so the next ticker pass sees the player as present, even from non-bot chatter) and posts the deferred briefing if one is owed (CAS-gated by today's 06:00 threshold; pre-06:00 lazy fires are suppressed to avoid double-emit with the ticker sweep that follows). Day-1 inbounds don't trigger a briefing before the first night camp has happened.

Remaining work:

• TwinBee voice + no-recap copy pass on the digest once the shape settles.

Exit criteria: a 7-day T5 produces ≤ 10 DMs across the whole expedition (1 launch + 6 end-of-day + 1 boss + 1 run-complete + 1 emergency).

D5 — Supplies economics retune

D5-a (shipped 2026-05-27): per-tier pack caps. dnd_expedition_supplies.go retires the global SupplyPackStandardMax/SupplyPackDeluxeMax constants in favor of supplyPackCaps(tier) (std, dlx int) — T1/T2: (2,1); T3: (3,1) unchanged; T4: (5,1); T5: (7,2). SupplyPurchase.Validate is now Validate(tier ZoneTier); both call sites (!expedition start, !resume) pass the resolved zone's tier. The cap clears DailyBurn(raw) × intendedDays × 1.3 for every tier under the §2 target durations even with harsh×3 layered on top, so a player who wants to buy for the long shape can. DailyBurn / harsh-multiplier / phase5BDailyBurnRatePct are unchanged here — they're a D7 lever, alongside the sim work that should unblock empirical baselining. The help text now describes the cap as "scales by zone tier"; the holiday +1 standard pack still bypasses the cap on purpose (it's a freebie on top).

Note: the original "Empirical (sim-driven)" path was blocked: under D2-b event-anchored expeditions, SimRunner.TickDay calls deliverBriefing → deliverBriefingEventAnchored, which reads time.Now().UTC() for its safety-net check, so synthetic ticks never advance CurrentDay and DaysAtEnd stays at 0. Re-baselining off real day-counts requires teaching the sim to drive the event-anchored rollover (D7).

D5-b (shipped 2026-05-27): "Pick your loadout" preset prompt at launch. !expedition start <zone> with no pack arg now DMs a Lean / Balanced / Heavy menu (sized per zone tier via new loadoutPurchase(tier, SupplyLoadout) in dnd_expedition_supplies.go); player replies with !expedition start <zone> lean|balanced|heavy (short forms l/b/h also work). !resume got the same treatment. Raw Ns Md syntax remains the advanced override — resolveLoadoutOrParse in dnd_expedition_cmd.go tries a single-token preset first, falls back to parseSupplyArgs. Heavy always equals supplyPackCaps (the D5-a harsh×3 ceiling); Lean covers intended days at raw burn; Balanced sits between. parseSupplyArgs("") still returns 1 standard for any tier — it's no longer reachable from !expedition start (the empty path is intercepted to prompt), but the 1s default is preserved so future callers don't get surprise zero-pack purchases. Help text updated; two existing scenario tests now pass lean explicitly, three new tests cover preset resolution + the prompt-vs-start guard.

D5-c (shipped 2026-05-27): Ranger forage wired against the new caps. Audit found SupplyForageMaxSU = 4 defined in dnd_expedition_supplies.go since Phase 12 E1b but never referenced — ForagedToday was only ever reset to false, never set to true, so the §4.2 "Ranger, WIS DC 12, 1d4 SU/day" perk had never actually granted supplies. New helper applyRangerForage(e, c, rng) rolls 1d4 SU once per day for Ranger characters, headroom-capped against Supplies.Max so a Heavy loadout doesn't overflow its purchased ceiling; non-Rangers and post-roll repeats are no-ops. Fires at the top of nightRolloverBurn (before the daily burn) so the +SU lands on today's bag and a "forage" log entry flows into the end-of-day digest via a new renderEndOfDayDigest case. No DC roll — accessibility over crunch (feedback_accessibility_over_dnd_crunch); the DC-12 gate would've added a fail case with no upside given the new headroom. Average +2.5 SU/day off a Ranger is a quiet Lean-loadout cushion (~1 extra day of T5 late-stage burn over a 7-day run), not a Heavy multiplier. Tests cover ranger-grants, non-ranger no-op, repeat-day no-op, headroom-cap, full-bag-still-stamps-flag, nil-safety.

Remaining work (D5-d+):

• DailyBurn / phase5BDailyBurnRatePct revisit once D7 sim measures real elapsed-day counts.

Exit criteria: balanced loadout completes intended-duration expedition in ≥ 85% of sim runs without starvation extraction.

D6 — Player-facing surface cleanup

D6 (shipped 2026-05-27): player-facing copy now matches the autopilot-first reality.

• expeditionHelpText rewritten around the loop "pick a zone → pick a loadout → !expedition run watches it play out"; commands grouped into Run an expedition / Mid-expedition / Overrides with a one-line shape paragraph at the top.
• !camp and !fight were already absent from the primary !expedition help; both are now explicitly listed under Overrides and framed as "autopilot covers these — only reach for them if you want manual control." campHelpText itself opens with the same override framing so a player who types !camp lands on the right mental model.
• expeditionCmdStatusImpl (default !expedition status) now leads with Day X / ~Y expected (driven by new expeditionTargetDays(tier ZoneTier) in dnd_expedition_supplies.go — T1=2 → T5=7, the §2 anchor table), adds a Rooms: N / Total in this region line under the region marker (sourced from getActiveZoneRun(...).CurrentRoom/TotalRooms), and appends a Recent: block with the last 3 log entries (summary fallback to flavor). Supplies and threat lines unchanged; the --debug view is untouched.
• No new public command surface, no schema change, no test churn (no existing test asserted on the rewritten strings); full go test ./... green.

D7 — Sim + class re-baseline

D7-a (shipped 2026-05-27): SimRunner.TickDay now drives event-anchored expeditions. expedition_sim.go short-circuits when isEventAnchored(exp) is true: instead of calling deliverBriefing (whose deliverBriefingEventAnchored branch reads time.Now().UTC() and would never trip the safety-net under synthetic ticks), it runs nightRolloverBurn → optional applyCampRest(Standard) if affordable (Rough fallback, skipped on low-SU) → nightRolloverDrift(briefAt). Mirrors pitchAutopilotCamp with Night=true. Production paths untouched. New expedition_sim_test.go covers (i) 3 ticks advancing day 1→4 with supply burn + stamped LastBriefingAt, and (ii) the low-SU branch where the rest is skipped but burn/drift still fire. Unblocks D5-d empirical re-baseline of phase5BDailyBurnRatePct and the class corpus re-run.

D7-b (shipped 2026-05-27): SimRunner.RunExpedition now drives the production camp scheduler under a synthetic clock (simWalkInterval = autoRunCooldown, 2h per walk). After every soft-stop walk it calls maybeAutoCamp(exp, simNow); stopBossSafety routes to pitchBossSafetyCamp(exp, simNow). The helpers (applyAutoCamp / applyAutoCampBossSafety) advance simNow past minAutoCampDwell (4h) and break the auto-pitched camp via breakAutoCampIfDue so the next walk proceeds. maybeAutoCamp, pitchAutopilotCamp, and pitchBossSafetyCamp gained a now time.Time parameter (the only prod caller, tryAutoRun, still passes time.Now().UTC()). Effect: HP-low mid-day rests, multi-region base-camp waypoints, Night-camp rollovers, and boss-safety holds all fire under the sim — the D7-a tickEventAnchoredRollover shortcut is no longer used by RunExpedition (kept on TickDay for tests + the pre-cutoff legacy path). Coverage in expedition_sim_test.go: Night-camp day advance, HP-low mid-day rest, boss-safety force-pitch, no-op when neither trigger fires.

D7-c (shipped 2026-05-27): cmd/expedition-sim gained a -days N flag — when set, RunExpedition exits with Outcome="day_capped" after the Nth synthetic day rollover; 0 (default) is unbounded and only the existing -cap walk safety net applies. SimResult gained DaySnapshots []SimDaySnapshot ({Day, HPCurrent, HPMax, Supplies, Threat, Rooms}), captured at expedition start (Day 0), after every applyAutoCamp/applyAutoCampBossSafety Night-camp rollover, and one final end-of-run entry (reads getExpedition(mostRecentExpeditionID(...)) when the row already extracted so closed runs still close their trajectory). RunExpedition signature picked up the maxDays int parameter; sole caller is the CLI. Coverage: TestSimRunner_CaptureDaySnapshot_PopulatesFields exercises the helper in isolation (HP from the live character row, SU/threat/day from the live expedition, Rooms from res.Rooms). Unblocks empirical D5-d retune of phase5BDailyBurnRatePct against per-day SU draws.

D7-d (shipped 2026-05-27): class corpus re-run + D5-d retune decision. First fixed a sim regression expedition_sim.go introduced by D5-b — bare expedition start <zone> now returns the loadout prompt instead of outfitting, so the sim was halting before persisting any expedition; harness now passes the heavy preset. Corpus: sim_results/d7d_corpus.jsonl (n=100 × 10 classes × 5 zones × L10 = 5000 runs, heavy preset, -cap 300). Analysis: sim_results/d7d_analyze.py. Writeup: sim_results/d7d_findings.md. Key reads: (i) leaderboard mirrors project_j2_sim_artifact — martials 78–82%, casters 21–42%, ~40pp cluster gap unchanged by long-expedition mechanics; (ii) bard/cleric trailers not relieved by autopilot camp pacing — cleric actually regressed at L10 (21% vs J2b L12 39%) on spell-pool richness, J3-territory; (iii) T3 hits target 4-day duration (median 3), T4 hits 5–6 days (median 5), T5 hits 5 of 7 (only 21 clears); (iv) D5-d retune: no change. phase5BDailyBurnRatePct=50 + per-tier DailyBurn stay as-is — heavy-preset cleared runs end with 78–98% SU remaining; supply economy is not a binding constraint and players lose to HP zero, not starvation. New memory entry: project_d7d_baseline.

Remaining work (D7-e+): none scheduled; long-expedition mechanics are at v1. Future tuning rides on the J3 caster sim-picker work below (split out of the long-expedition track).

8. J3 caster-picker rework (next session)

Why split out: D7-d corpus confirmed the martial/caster gap is class-roster + sim-picker driven, not autopilot/burn/pacing driven. Long-expedition mechanics are settled; the trailer fix lives in the sim picker, not the expedition shell.

D8-a (shipped 2026-05-27, this session): quick data-layer cleanup. Bard L1 prepared list gained thunderwave; L2 gained heat_metal. Cleric L1 gained inflict_wounds. shatter overlay Classes broadened to mage/bard/sorcerer (overlay was already unioning via mergeClassList, so this is defensive). New simPickSpiritualWeapon runs before simPickSpell in simPickCombatAction: cleric with an L2 slot + spiritual_weapon prepared + sess.Statuses.BuffSpiritProc == 0 opens the fight with it, picking up the existing spiritWeaponStrike per-round bonus-action attack. Measured impact (L10, n=100/zone, heavy preset): cleric 21.0 → 23.2% (+2.2pp), bard 34.2 → 32.8% (within noise). T3+ wall unchanged — the data fixes are correct but the picker math is what's binding. Files touched: internal/plugin/dnd_spells_data.go:192, internal/plugin/dnd_spells.go:822,881,884, internal/plugin/expedition_sim.go:simPickCombatAction + new simPickSpiritualWeapon. All green.

D8-b (implemented 2026-05-27, inert — see D8-prereq below): sim picker upcasting. simPickSpell (internal/plugin/expedition_sim.go:933) now enumerates one candidate per available slot ≥ native for every prepared damage spell, scored via spellExpectedDamage(sp, slotLevel, c.Level). Cantrips contribute a single slot-0 candidate. Tie-break: highest slot first, then highest expDmg. When the winning slot exceeds the spell's native level, the picker returns "<id> --upcast N" so parseCombatCast upcasts in the engine. Build + tests green.

Measured impact: nothing. d8b corpus (sim_results/d8b_corpus.jsonl, same matrix as d7d) lands every class within ±1.5pp of the d7d baseline — bard −1.0, cleric −0.4, mage −1.2, sorcerer +1.4, warlock −0.8, druid +0.6, martials ±0.2. Pure noise band. Expected bard +5–10pp / mage+sorcerer+warlock +2–8pp never materialized.

Root cause (discovered post-corpus, this session): simPickSpell is dead code in the current sim path. Commit 68ed8e7 ("Long expeditions D3: compact autopilot auto-resolves boss rooms") added a !compact gate at dnd_expedition_cmd.go:810 so compact autopilot inline-resolves boss/elite rooms via resolveCombatRoom → runZoneCombat → SimulateCombat instead of returning stopBoss/stopElite for autoResolveCombat to handle. The sim uses compact=true (expedition_sim.go:433), so autoResolveCombat — the only caller of simPickCombatAction/simPickSpell — never fires. Verified empirically: a stderr-traced simPickSpell produced zero hits across full bard/cleric L10 runs.

This rewrites the picker-era retrospective. J2's baseline_j2a_v2_all10.jsonl (bard 40%, cleric 39%) was measured before D3, with the picker live. d7d's L10 baseline (bard 34%, cleric 21%) was measured after D3, with the picker disconnected — that ~6–18pp drop is the post-D3 caster regression, not "long-expedition mechanics didn't help casters" as the d7d writeup framed it. D8-a's "+2.2pp cleric" was also noise (1σ ≈ 1.8pp on n=500).

D8-prereq (TODO next session, blocks D8-b/c): re-wire the sim to the turn-based path. Option 1 from the discovery write-up: add a sim-only flag (e.g. SimRunner.turnBasedBossFights = true, or a third compact mode) so runAutopilotWalk returns stopBoss/stopElite for the sim even though it's running compact — production stays compact-inline. Then autoResolveCombat fires for sim boss/elite rooms, simPickSpell (with D8-b upcasting) drives those fights, and we can finally measure the picker's real lift.

• Touch: probably a third arg to runAutopilotWalk or an s.P.simMode flag the dnd_expedition_cmd reads alongside compact. Be careful — the inline-resolve path also runs harvest, loot, threat; if we surface stopBoss/stopElite earlier, those bookkeeping steps still need to happen at the right moment. Probably simplest: split compact into compactRendering (keep) and compactCombatInline (sim turns this off).
• Validation: re-run the d7d/d8b matrix. Acceptance: casters move materially (bard/mage/sorcerer/warlock into the 40–60% band at T1–T3 like the J2 baseline). If they don't, D8-b's expDmg model is wrong and we need a deeper rework, not just rewiring.

D8-b/c are deferred until the prereq lands. D8-b code stays in-tree (it's correct, just inert today, and will turn on as soon as the wire reconnects).

• Touch: simPickSpell in internal/plugin/expedition_sim.go (~line 903). For each prepared damage spell, instead of one candidate at sp.Level, enumerate candidates at every available slot level ≥ sp.Level where a slot is open. Use spellExpectedDamage(sp, slotLevel, c.Level) for the upcast scaling — that helper already exists and handles the "+1 die per slot above native" pattern in rollSpellDamageDice (internal/plugin/dnd_spell_combat.go:387-418).
• Tie-break still: highest slot first (preserve high-slot supremacy), then highest expDmg. But now a bard at L10 with shatter can spend its L5 slot on shatter@L5 = 6d8 ≈ 27 instead of leaving it un-spent.
• Risk: an upcasted L1 might out-score a native-L2 in the picker. That's actually probably correct (the picker is supposed to find max damage). But also enables warlock/ranger regressions — gate via simMartialFirstClass like the cast branch already does.
• Validation: re-run the L10 d7d-style corpus (/tmp/exp-sim -matrix -classes <10 classes> -levels 10 -zones <5 zones> -runs 100 -cap 300). Compare against sim_results/d7d_corpus.jsonl. Expected: bard +5–10pp, mage/sorcerer/warlock +2–8pp. Martials unchanged (gated). Cleric small bump (already has high-level damage spells available).

D8-c (TODO next session): concentration-damage modeling. heat_metal, spirit_guardians, spike_growth, call_lightning, flaming_sphere, cloud_of_daggers, etc. are scored once by spellExpectedDamage as if they were a single-shot, but their value is N rounds of repetition while concentration holds. The picker therefore under-ranks them — bard's heat_metal (2d8 concentration) loses to shatter (3d8 one-shot) on every L2 pick, even though heat_metal in real play deals 2d8 × ~4 rounds = 32 vs shatter's 13.5.

• Touch: spellExpectedDamage in internal/plugin/dnd_spell_combat.go (or wherever it lives — verify). Add a concentration multiplier: if sp.Concentration && sp.Effect ∈ {DamageAuto, DamageSave} and damage dice present, multiply expDmg by an "expected concentration rounds" factor. Conservative start: 3 rounds (short of a real fight-length estimate, but big enough to flip the picker).
• Risk: this also boosts druid (call_lightning, flaming_sphere) and cleric (spirit_guardians). That's desired — those are exactly the under-played identity spells. Don't multiplier-boost EffectDamageAttack (single-target attack-roll spells aren't typically concentration; hex-style cases are handled by mods, not the picker).
• Subtle gotcha: casting a new concentration spell drops the old one. Picker is stateless (one decision per turn) so it can't easily know "I'm already concentrating on X." Acceptable v1: let it overwrite — sim noise will eat the rare double-cast. Stateful version: read sess.Statuses for an active concentration marker; defer.
• Validation: same corpus + diff against D8-b.

Sequence: D8-b first (bigger lever, no model assumption), measure, then D8-c (smaller lever, more assumption-laden). Both together should close ~10–15pp of the martial/caster gap if the model is right.

Open questions for D8:

1. Should D8-b upcast aggressively (every available slot considered) or conservatively (only the next slot above native)? Aggressive is closer to optimal play; conservative is safer if the engine's +1 die per slot heuristic over- or under-scales for specific spells.
2. D8-c concentration-rounds factor: 3 fixed, or scale with tier (longer fights at T4/T5)? Fixed is simpler; tier-scaled is more correct.
3. Cleric T3+ cliff (0% manor onward) likely needs more than picker fixes — could be (a) HP scaling (cleric loses to enemy damage), (b) AC scaling (gets hit too often), (c) heal-consumable threshold too low. Worth a separate diagnostic pass after D8-b/c land.

4. Cross-cutting risks

• Existing in-flight expeditions at deploy time. Either fence by start_date (old expeditions finish under old rules) or write a one-shot migration that retunes their room counts. Lean: fence — these are typically <2 days.
• The 24h zone-run inactivity timeout (dnd_zone_run.go:254) — must be raised, or the autopilot must self-poke last_action_at per tick. With multi-day expeditions, a quiet stretch overnight is now expected.
• Idle reaper (commit 0f72484, see expedition_autorun.go references) — already holds streak on autopilot; verify it tolerates 5-day expeditions.
• Babysit perk — BabysitSafeRest already upgrades Standard → Fortified at rest (dnd_expedition_camp.go:241-245); confirm interaction with autopilot picking Standard (no change needed; the upgrade fires inside applyCampRest).
• Multi-region travel still unwired in autopilot (memory project_multiregion_travel_unwired). For T4/T5 to actually take 5–7 days, autopilot must auto-advance regions on region-clear. D2/D3 covers this implicitly but call it out — likely a small dedicated commit.
• Pet arrival (memory project_pet_event_reachability) — emergence seam is at run-complete; longer expedition just delays the roll, no code change needed.
• Twinbee voice + secret NPC buffs (memories feedback_twinbee_voice, feedback_npc_buffs_are_secret) — none of the new copy can break these.

5. Schema impact

Likely none. Existing columns cover it:

• current_day → autopilot increments via advanceExpeditionDay.
• camp_json, supplies_json, region_state, threat_* already in place.
• One possible new column: expected_days int (set at launch from zone tier + loadout) so status/end-of-day DMs can render "Day 3/5". Cheaper to derive than store — defer.

6. Open questions for next session

1. Day-advance semantics — decided 2026-05-27: event-anchored. day++ fires on autopilot camp-pitch (autopilot night-camp = sleep = day burn + briefing). UTC clock becomes a re-engagement-DM anchor only, not a state mutator. See §3-D2 for implementation impact.
2. Boss autopilot default: always-on, opt-out, or opt-in? My lean: always-on with a per-expedition opt-out flag; revisit after D3 reads.
3. Per-tier room counts: the table in §2 is a starting point. Worth a sim pass before D1 commits — or fine to ship a guess and refine in D7?
4. Extra anchor rooms: T4/T5 with one elite + one trap may feel thin spread over 30+ rooms. Add a second elite mid-zone, or rely on multi-region + patrols + threat for variety?
5. Mobile/AFK friendliness: should the autopilot-DM cadence aim for "1 DM per real-time evening" regardless of room count, or "1 DM per in-game day" (which could be hours apart if the player set the pacing fast)?

7. Sequence

D1 → D2 → D3 (independent of D4/D5) → D5 → D4 → D6 → D7.

D2 and D3 can land in either order; D4 needs the volume problem to be real (so after D2/D3 at minimum). D5 wants D1's new lengths but can run in parallel with D2/D3. D7 always last.

Estimated sessions: 5–7. D2 and D5 are the biggest single-session chunks.