Update 0.89: Player Respawning, New Axe Spell, Developer Announcement, & More!

Uploaded build 0.89.25 to default branch

Discord:

To stay up to date on what we're actively working on, feel free to join our Discord, where we post regular development updates in our #development-updates channel, and often we pop in chat to chat with players or answer questions!

https://discord.gg/bUPT3bT7hk

Developer Update:

We are excited to announce that we are now working on Cave Crawlers full-time to get us moving faster towards the full release, version 1.0! This means that we will be putting out updates at a significantly faster pace compared to the past couple of years of development.

With this announcement, we want to update the community with some of our plans for the future of Cave Crawlers.

Version 1.0/Full Release

We are planning to have 1.0 finished by the end of the year. 1.0 does not mean we are done with developing Cave Crawlers, but simply means we have completed the core gameplay loop and have a complete experience for the 3 core biomes. Below is a partial list of planned features for, or in the updates leading up to 1.0.

• Graphics/Art Update

• Mining

• Bow Rework & Crossbows

• Shields

• Looping Biomes

• UI Refresh

• Localization/Translation

• Questlines & Task Rework

• Fix long-standing critical bugs

• Floor 1-10 DLC Biome

• More event rooms & minibosses

• More perks, achievements, & prestige rewards

• More Legendary weapons & loot

• Loot & expertise balancing

DLC Biomes

Alongside the release of 1.0, we will be releasing the game's first purchasable DLC biome. This biome will be a jungle/plant-focused biome with all new rooms to explore, enemies to slay, a unique biome boss, and a new gameplay mechanic, Fishing.

This DLC will be an optional replacement for floors 1-10. We will share more details on what comes with the DLC biome and how it will function as we start to develop it later this year.

Summarized Patch Notes:

Player Respawning:

• Added new event room, "Statue of the Fallen" that has a buildable dwarf statue. Finding and placing all the carryable pieces onto the statue will revive the player who has been dead the longest. Can only be found in Dwarven Caves and Crystal Caverns.

This event room only spawns when a player is dead, and has a very high spawn chance on Easy mode.

Easy Mode Changes:

• Removed the DC parkour climbing room and spike jump room from spawning on Easy mode.

• Reduced the spawn chance of multiple DC spike rooms from spawning on Easy mode.

We reduced the spawn chance of spike rooms on Easy mode to help prevent early 1-shot deaths to new players. Much of this update focuses not only on improving the core of Cave Crawlers but also on giving new players a better first-time experience when trying the game.

Axe Expertise Tree Update:

• Added new axe offensive spell Flurry of Blows: Swing your axe wildly, striking a random mob in front of you, dealing 200% weapon damage 4 times. Hitting the same mob halves the damage of your next hit. These attacks cannot critically strike. 25 second cooldown.

• Updated and added several axe expertise talents, adjusted mostly the latter half of the tree's connections and talent positions.

The changes and additions to the axe tree are primarily targeted at making hatchets more viable, along with making late tree talent choices more impactful.

• Detailed changes can be found below!

Detailed Patch Notes:

Environment:

• Added new event room, "Statue of the Fallen" that has a buildable dwarf statue. Finding and placing all the carryable pieces onto the statue will revive the player who has been dead the longest. This event room only spawns when a player is dead and has a very high spawn chance on Easy mode. Can only be found in Dwarven Caves and Crystal Caverns.

• Added new molten spiraling caverns room.

• Added an epic loot spawn in the center of Ruins of Dun Algath event room.

• Added additional items to existing valuable loot spawn in Heroes' Rest event room, and added an additional potion spawn point.

• Added a potion and epic equipment loot spawn to Ancient Ruins molten collapse event room.

• The large text pop-up for room and biome names now smoothly moves into place when multiple are preset.

• Removed bat spawns from multiple crystal caverns mineshaft rooms.

• Removed the DC parkour climbing room and spike jump room from spawning on Easy mode.

• Reduced the spawn chance of multiple DC spike rooms from spawning on Easy mode.

Expertise:

Axe:

• Added new axe offensive spell Flurry of Blows: Swing your axe wildly, striking a random mob in front of you, dealing 200% weapon damage 4 times. Hitting the same mob halves the damage of your next hit. These attacks cannot critically strike. 25 second cooldown.

• Added new axe expertise Improved Flurry of Blows: While using a hatchet, double ALL of your damage dealt during Flurry of Blows.

• Added new axe expertise Butcher’s Dance: Dealing bleed damage increases your damage for a short duration.

• Reworked Intensify Fury: Chance on hit to increase axe damage.

• Increased Devastating Blows critical strike chance from 10->12%, increased proc chance from 8->10%.

• Changed Renewed Stamina to also proc when casting the spell Flurry of Blows.

• Changed Back It Up Terry knockback from 3->4 per point, reduced max points from 3->2.

• Changed Berserker base cooldown from 10-> 4 seconds, increased cooldown per point from 2->8.

• Changed Reacher cooldown from 9->10 seconds, reduced buff duration per point from 3.5->3 seconds.

• Changed Long Arms to require full points in Back It Up Terry to be reached.

• Changed Battleaxe Specialist to no longer require max points in any talents to reach.

• Changed Iron Resolve to work with all axes, instead of just battle axes.

• Changed Swift Cleave Icon.

• Removed talent text pop-up for Honor Guard proc.

• Added a new axe expertise icon.

• Moved several axe expertise talents around tree, adjusted connections between talents.

Items:

• Adjusted Everburning Spark floor spawn range, reworked item effect: Dealing fire damage has a 15% chance to increase your damage by 1 for 4 seconds.

• Adjusted Tiny Pizza Slice floor spawn range, removed item effect cooldown, reduced movement speed from 100->50%.

• Adjusted Azureshadow Blade floor spawn range.

• Adjusted Holy Light floor spawn range.

• Changed Ranger's Cloak crit damage from 30->100, changed max stacks from 0->1.

• Changed Slime-covered Sheath to affect all weapons, not just daggers.

• Increased Forgotten Miner's Helmet threat from 0->17.

• Increased Crown of Thunder threat from 0->5.

• Increased Bloodstone Pendant max stacks from 3->4.

• Reworked Mithril Glaive item proc: Dodging an attack increases your critical strike damage by 100% for 10 seconds. 5 second cooldown.

• Reduced Crystal Necklace spell haste from 100->10%, reworked item proc effect: Drinking a potion increases your spell haste by 25% for 15 seconds. 30 second cooldown.

• Reworked Strange Sword item proc: Blocking an attack increases your damage with swords by 25% for 10 seconds. 5 second cooldown.

• Reworked Tarnished Hero's Blade item proc: Having over 25% block increases your attack damage by 2.

• Changed Fiery Waraxe item proc to include Flurry of Blows.

• Added broadsword item type to Goliath Greatsword.

Misc Additions & Changes:

Important Additions:

• Added functionality for Carryable Interactables, which must be held in your hands. Holding the drop key will charge up and throw as normal. Your player will dynamically hold the object with his hands based on its size.

• The "Spell Haste" stat now reduces all spell cooldowns.

• Changed version number to have sectioned release, update, and patch values: release.update.patch (ex: 0.89.6)

• If the client is unexpectedly closed, your player is no longer extracted, but saved as if he slept at the start of the floor.

• Added Ko-fi skin "Red Plaid Shirt" for the month of June.

Volacno:

• Changed some implementation, and added multiple logs and failsafes to attempt to fix Lava Wyrms not spawning during the Volacno fight.

• Majorly increased how fast you can climb Volacno's arm ladders.

Perk Balancing:

• Changed Crawler's Will perk desc to be shorter and easier to read: "When all players are down, revive with 1 health and 3 seconds of immunity. Activates once per run. Does not stack: if multiple players have this perk, one is randomly chosen."

• AdjustedChanged Healthy Gambler perk"Max health is increased by 3, but mob attacks have a 35% chance to deal 1 additional damage."

Misc Changes:

• Mobs rotate more smoothly now for joinees.

• If you have all talents in your main menu tree maxed out, the "Unused Talent Points" button on the main menu will no longer be shown.

• Changed player spectating revive info text to hint at the Statue of the Fallen.

• Added info on how frequently revive rooms (Statue of the Fallen) spawn in each difficulty description.

• Moved Spell Haste to be below Knockback in the stats panel.

• Fine-tuned easy, normal, and hard difficulty descriptions.

• Added color to spell type text in the spell hover tooltip.

• When a player revives, they will now chant.

• Added an open and close sound to the campfire UI.

• When multiple created players spawn, only one will play a creation voiceline.

• Sped up player camera syncing rotation during spectating.

• Items now collide with the Dead, and Ignore Player layers.

• Changed /roll chat command to display the max possible roll value.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed Adventurer's Hat not working.

• Fixed getting stuck when climbing between Volacno's lower arm and shoulder sometimes.

• Fixed not being able to walk on Volacno's shoulder while he's moving.

• Fixed joinees teleporting to the center of the room when dismounting from Volacno's shoulder.

• Fixed items like potions being used as soon as you press E on them, instead of holding E, when you have a full inventory.

• Fixed a potion spawn clipping into floor of Ambushed Supply Route

• Fixed joinees not being able to trigger the Ambushed Supply Route room sometimes.

• Fixed Basic Training task not increasing from torch kills.

• Fixed being able to spawn on floor 1 using a race condition.

• Fixed being able to start with an invalid player (one who is joining a public lobby with a saved character, or one who has a different seed than the room seed).

• Fixed being able to spam the start button, generating duplicate networked objects.

• Fixed torches showing all fire states at once on equip.

• Fixed Storm Smash Hit Chance being incorrectly rolled in corruption mode.

• Fixed the players mouse being unlocked when respawned.

• Fixed the 6 possible player creation voicelines not playing when a newly created dwarf is spawned in.

• Fixed certain spider spawns in spider nest causing spiders to spawn stuck in terrain.

• Fixed another possible error during an altar sacrifice, stopping the sacrificing player from being able to stand up.

• Fixed stolen mimic items returning with physics enabled, causing them to go through walls sometimes.

• Fixed clicking on a locked perk opening the Steam overlay when it is awarded by a prestige reward.

• Fixed Magical Beads cast sound not playing for other players.

• Fixed broken bottle debuff being rolled in corruption mode.

• Fixed Berserker axe expertise proccing when another player was struck by a mob, instead of you.