The Interface Update is Live!

Our first promised "sweeping improvements" update to Blasted Fortress is now live. The patch notes are fairly extensive; some balancing has been done this month as well as some cool reconfiguring of current systems. The size of this patch is 15.2 MB. If you haven't received the update yet, you can either restart Steam or verify the integrity of the game files and it should force the update.

Update 1.16 (January 27th, 2015)

• The Interface Update is here!

• Every single GUI element in the entire game has been remade. Too many visual details to note; see for yourself!

• Voodoo spells are no longer purchased individually per shot. All spells now draw from a brand new mana pool; the pool is filled by spending Talismans. This means you can fill your mana pool and decide on the fly which spells you want to cast with it.

• All voodoo spells are now on separate cooldown periods. Casting one spell doesn't disable the others. Wield your new power responsibly!

• AddedNew ammunitionSpirit Orb! Spirit Orbs are fairly expensive and powerful new ammunition. They are also the very first Community Item; you must follow the Blasted Fortress community via Steam to unlock them. Spirit Orbs will phase through the first obstacle encountered, becoming ghostly until it has room to corporealize again without becoming stuck.

• Roughly doubled the amount of experience required to gain a Talisman, but also roughly doubled the experience gained from jobs taken off the Job Board. This is to make jobs more important as well as to balance the fact that the new mana pool system and unlinked magic cooldowns will give you a greater edge in battle.

• You can now create as many maps as you like in the map editor without the custom map list vanishing off the bottom of the screen.

• The charge bar that indicates your cannon's power level has been removed/reimagined and is now a gold ring around your crosshairs.

• The Juju Pot has been renamed to the Scrying Vessel. It still provides an entry point to fight beasts. All beasts now cost 10 Talismans to locate and battle. The interface for this has changed to buttons that are either enabled or disabled based on the Talismans you have. Improvements to beast battles themselves are being worked on for the content update. Stay tuned!

• Minor artistic changes to certain home base assets and other environmental sprites.

• Female tribe members look more like females and all tribe members now have vastly improved lighting to eliminate the cardboard cutout look.

• Stone blocks now have a 75% reduction in fire ticks, up from 50%. Fire is very ineffective against stone now as it should be.

• Jobs from the Job Board can now appear as being x3 as well as normal and x2.

• Deleting your save file is a more involved process. No more accidents!

• Added a global statistics window to the main menu. You can see all sorts of global Steam stats here as well as your own personal statistics.

• Through some sort of ancient black magic and/or breakthroughs in futuristic technology, we've made it so that you can click on the ladder to leave the Vault. Sorry we never did it sooner!

Important: The interface update required us to re-hook pretty much everything. Although much testing was done, if you notice any bugs, please report them and they'll be hotfixed ASAP.