DA_RL A More Interesting Dungeon is out now!

Hello everyone! A new major update for DA_RL has been released! Called "A More Interesting Dungeon" this update aims to make the dungeons of DA_RL more interesting to explore and more hazardous. Below is the patch notes and I hope you have fun with DA_RL 6.0

New Post-Process Shaders

This is probably the flashiest addition in the update. There are now six post-process effects you can toggle independently from Options - Display. Stack them, mix them, find a look you like.

• ASCII Filter - Renders the screen using smaller ASCII characters, so the ASCII is made of more ASCII.

• Palette Mode - Recolors the whole game. GameBoy, inferno, and a few others.

• Film Effect - Animated grain, occasional scratch lines, a warm sepia pull. Makes it feel old.

• Hallucination - Kicks in while you are hallucinating. Things get weird.

• Nightmare - Creeps in when your HP gets low. You will notice it.

Dungeon Generation

Cave Floors Deeper floors now generate as organic caves instead of rectangular rooms. The algorithm uses cellular automata - basically the same idea as Conway's Game of Life but repurposed as a map generator. The result is caves that feel like actual caves, with tight corridors and irregular walls. The deeper you go, the denser the cave gets. A few small rectangular chambers are carved into each cave floor to break up the monotony. Vault Rooms Vault rooms can now appear on any floor. Each vault is locked, themed, stocked with relevant loot, and guarded. There are eight vault themes - Generic, Armory, Prison, Library, Forge, Crypt, Alchemist, and Treasury - and they unlock at different depths, so finding a Treasury vault on floor 3 is not going to happen. Floor Hazard Tiles

This is a big one. Several new hazard tile types have been added that can change how you approach parts of a floor.

• Oil Slick - Coats you in flammable oil.

• Ice Sheet - Chance to slip and lose a turn. Sliding into a wall hurts.

• Poison Bog - Wading though it makes you poisoned.

• Murky Water - Wading through alerts sleeping enemies nearby and slows you down.

• Deep Water - Every step costs an extra turn to wade through.

• Acid Pool - Damages you per step and corrodes your equipped armor. Armor reduced to zero defense is gone.

• Void Rift - Teleports you to a random explored tile the moment you step on it.

Pillars Large rooms now sometimes generate stone pillars that block movement and line of sight. Two patterns: corner clusters or colonnades down the center.

Room Shapes Rooms are no longer always perfect rectangles. Corners get clipped, notched, or rounded, which makes the dungeon feel less like a grid of boxes.

Loop Tunnels After rooms are placed, extra tunnels are carved between non-adjacent rooms. This breaks the linear room chain and creates shortcuts and alternate routes.

Encounter Rooms A portion of rooms now have a high-intensity encounter layered on top of normal spawns. Could be a swarm of the same enemy type, an ambush, or a small group of tough monsters guarding extra loot. You will know when you walk into one.

Rubble Rubble clusters now appear on floors. They block movement but can be broken down by attacking them.

Steam post image A fully explored cave, found on floors 6-10 caves become more cramped the further down you go

Steam post image A new Vault room, filled with traps and treasure.

New Weapons and Armor

Several new weapons and armor pieces have been added to the loot pool.

New weapons: Spear, War Pick, Katana, Halberd.

New armor: Banded Armor, Archmage Robes.

They are spread across different floors and stat profiles so they slot into builds that did not have great options before.

New Items

A large batch of new items across every category. Five new potions, three new wands, four new scrolls, several new spellbooks, three new rings, and five new foods. A few of the new spellbooks have effects you do not want. Identify before reading when you can. Also, wands, spells, and spellbooks now all require a certain level of intelligence to use.

Steam post image New food like the mushroom and magic berry now litter the floors, along with lots of new items

Corpse Eating

Eating a monster's remains now does more than fill you up. The effect depends on what kind of creature it was - bats and flying things tend to give haste, vampires have something to do with sight, elementals vary, and some corpses are just bad ideas. Most corpses still just give nutrition. Experiment carefully.

Religion - New Boons and Punishments

Each god has received new boons and a unique punishment. Prayer tiers now pull from a pool of effects instead of always granting the same one, so it feels less predictable. Every god also has their own punishment now instead of a shared generic curse.

• Ferrus - New combat boons including weapon enchantment and a berserker mode. Punishment involves your weapon.

• Arcanus - New magic boons including floor-wide identification and wand recharging. Punishment cuts off your spellcasting.

• Umbra - New shadow boons including Shadow Step and revealing secret doors. Punishment forces you visible.

• Luminos - New boons including an area confusion effect and an item blessing. Punishment drops your vision to almost nothing.

• Sylvan - New nature boons including enemy rooting and a beast companion. Punishment poisons you and turns a beast hostile.

Steam post image Gods now give you more information on what they like you to do

Quality of Life

Items Here Display

Standing on a tile with items now shows their names in the top right of the screen. No more guessing what you are standing on.

Auto-Explore

Press O to automatically walk toward the nearest unexplored tile. Cancels when an enemy enters your view, you take damage, or the floor is fully mapped. Rebindable in Options. Worth noting - you do seem to get hungrier when using it, so keep an eye on your food.

Auto-Travel to Stairs

Press U (or Shift+,) to travel to the nearest discovered up stairs.

Press J (or Shift+.) to travel to the nearest discovered down stairs.

Both rebindable. A confirmation popup gives you a chance to cancel before you commit.

Bug Fixes

• Saving and reloading mid-floor was wiping the floor's kill and damage counters, which could incorrectly award achievements on the next floor transition even if you had been fighting.

• Lots of other small fixes and polish throughout.

• Did you know that I never added in the ammo to the spawn pools, I didn't until today, so that's fixed

• Fixed some UI scaling issues.

Hey everyone! Thanks for the support on DA_RL lately. I've noticed a little uptick in purchases and wishlists and it really does mean a lot. This update took longer than I expected, partly because I am moving soon, but also because the scope kept growing as I added things. As always I did a lot of bug testing but I can never catch everything, so if you run into something broken please submit a bug report here: https://forms.gle/t8dwro8DpdD2wojJ9 and don't forget to shoot me any feedback if you have any. An official feedback post can be found in the discussion area.

Also a big thanks to qwert_44643 who logged around 20 hours last week and gave me a ton of useful feedback. That kind of playtesting is genuinely helpful!

As always I hope you have fun with this update and hope you stick around for the next one! If you are enjoying the game, consider leaving a review it really helps me out a lot!