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Migrating from 5.x to 6.0.0

6.0.0 changes two things that need action, plus adds a large set of new features. Everyone should re-sync their compendium. Only people who hand-write their own statblocks need to touch any YAML.

1. Re-sync your compendium

The compendium now downloads from a different, newer source. When you update the plugin, your old "release tag" setting is automatically cleared, since it pointed at a release from the old source and wouldn't resolve against the new one.

What to do: open Settings → Draw Steel Elements, then click Sync compendium (this also works as a command-palette command of the same name).

If you already have a compendium folder from before 6.0.0, the first sync asks whether to move that old folder to the trash or keep it in place — either choice is safe. Files you keep are never overwritten or deleted, and anything moved to the trash is recoverable through Obsidian like any other deleted file.

2. Update your own statblock YAML (only if you hand-write ds-sb / ds-statblock blocks)

If you write your own creatures in ds-sb or ds-statblock code blocks, two keys were renamed:

Old key New key(s)
roles: role: + organization:
ancestry: keywords:

Old blocks keep working through the whole 6.x series — the plugin still reads roles:/ancestry: and sorts them into organization:/role: / keywords: for you, with a warning logged to Obsidian's developer console — but support is removed in 7.0.0, so it's worth updating them now. If a block has both an old and a new key for the same value, the new key always wins.

Before:

roles:
  - Horde
  - Controller
ancestry:
  - Goblin
  - Humanoid

After:

organization: Horde
role: Controller
keywords:
  - Goblin
  - Humanoid

What's new in 6.0.0, at a glance

  • Hero suite — a full hero sheet (ds-hero) in one block: stamina with recoveries, heroic resource, surges, conditions, and clickable abilities with dice rolling. Also available as standalone trackers for heroic resource, surges, conditions, and a shared party-wide hero token pool.
  • Compendium reference cards — new card types for kits, conditions, treasures, ancestries, cultures, careers, classes, titles, perks, complications, and general rules, plus a fuzzy search-and-insert command to find and drop in any compendium entry without leaving the editor.
  • GM subsystems — an Encounter Builder that computes live EV/budget from your synced compendium, plus trackers for montages, downtime projects, and party-level victories/renown/wealth.
  • Malice panel and per-turn action checklist in the initiative tracker — see Initiative Tracker.
  • Draw Steel sidebar — pin any tracker to a persistent panel in Obsidian's right sidebar so it survives navigating between notes; see Pinning to the Sidebar for the "send to sidebar" commands.
  • scc.v1: links now resolve everywhere — in compendium notes, inside element text, and as references — checking your local compendium first, with an optional fallback to steelcompendium.io.

See the changelog for the full list of 6.0.0 changes.