No this isn't the long awaited for rebalance of items. I rewrote the way fighting worked in a very major way behind the scenes. From your point of view the things to notice are that now you can see everyones battles until 30 seconds after the monster that was being battled is dead. It no longer disappears right away and even sticks around if you leave the room.
A second thing to notice, is that if you have fight text on your screen you'll have 2 rows of buttons. This is to make it so you can fight without scrolling if you wish. I plan to change the way text is shown as I get good ideas on how to do so while still allowing you to fight cooperatively and assist each other.
In the background an insane amount has changed and very little of the fighting code was not touched. Framework has been laid for the updates that will continue to come to the fighting system. Each one will probably be at least as major as this one.