Bestiary Update

The Keeper always has a few tricks up his sleeve… and once again, he’s got plenty of surprises in store.

More than a year after release, this new content update brings a fresh breeze into the labyrinth, giving you new ways to challenge the adventurer.

1. New monsters

With 25 new monsters of all levels, this update expands the Grimoire and introduces a wide variety of new strategies, synergies, and mechanics.

→ New starter monsters: a fire one, a water one, a plant one… which will you choose? (Sounds familiar?)

→ New support monsters: to heal or boost your other creatures.

→ New terribly powerful monsters… but also terribly hard to summon.

To avoid overcrowding the “Neutral Monsters” section of the Grimoire, new family filters have been added: Mole, Mercenary, and Pig families.

Until now, discovering monsters required you to stumble upon their placement conditions, summon them through Altars, or meet them in Story Mode.

Some of the new monsters have particularly demanding placement conditions and can’t always be obtained via Altars. So there’s now another way to expand your Grimoire: Keeper’s Keys.

Earn Keys by scoring high in your runs and use them to discover new monsters directly from the Grimoire!

2. Turrets

But that’s not all: the labyrinth now features an entirely new turret system.

Hard and costly to obtain, these structures allow you to attack the adventurer from outside the path, bringing a classic tower defense flavor to the heart of Maze Keeper.

Powerful but demanding, turrets require regular maintenance to stay operational.

Those who master them will find them to be a formidable asset.

3. Adjustments & Balance Changes

• Fear mechanic adjustments

Fear used to be far too powerful: when optimized, the adventurer’s damage per tile became excessive, while his Anger gauge stayed empty since deaths weren’t caused by monsters and since the adventurer killed the numerous ghosts that come back to life on the board.

→ Damage taken from tile effects now decreases each time the same tile is crossed. (-10% on the second pass, -20% on the third, etc.)

→ The adventurer now gains Anger when walking over the same tiles multiple times in a single turn. He doesn’t like being led around in circles!

• Movement XP

At high levels, the XP gained from movement became negligible compared to what was required to lvl up.

→ Movement XP now scales exponentially starting from level 20.

→ Moving backward after a Fear effect now also grants XP, increasing with the number of times the adventurer steps on the same tiles (just like Anger).

• Dynamic XP bonus

When the adventurer was far too weak to survive a labyrinth full of lava or archers, the pacing could become slow and repetitive. The phase of the game where you are not in any danger could then drag on, especially if the adventurer does not kill monsters for XP.

→ A new end-of-turn XP bonus now applies when the total potential damage (lava, projectiles, poison...) from the path exceeds the adventurer’s HP. The further behind he is, the faster he’ll catch up... until he’s strong enough to push through the maze again.

• Lava Extractor rework

The Lava Extractor allowed large lava lakes to appear far too quickly. But unlike lava puddles, lakes are intended to be obtained a little later in the game. Its effects now depend on the dragon it’s used on:

→ On the smallest dragon, it only creates lava puddles.

→ On the medium dragon, the effect remains unchanged: it forms a puddle, then a lake.

→ On the largest dragon, using it on a lake makes the lava spread to adjacent tiles.

Lava lakes are now harder to obtain early on, but will spread more easily later in the game.

• “Pack Up Tile” card rework

When returning a monster from the board to your stock, it can now be placed freely anywhere afterward. No more placement conditions required!

This “free placement” state is shown by the blue/green tint on the card.

It is now possible to move a large dragon only using this card.

/!\\ In Story Mode, monsters keep their free placement state for the duration of the stage only. In later stages, you’ll need to meet their requirements again.

• Energy cost of blocked attacks

To keep combat from dragging out when defense values are too high, attacks that deal no damage now gradually increase their energy cost until the fight ends.

• Combat initiative

The first strike is made by whoever has the higher Agility. Previously, lowering adventurer's energy could virtually reduce his Agility by up to 50%.

Now it can go as low as -90%, giving your monsters more chances to strike first when the adventurer grows dangerously strong.

4. Other new features

• Added a poison damage indicator next to the adventurer’s HP bar.

• Monsters shown in placement conditions/loot on the cards now appear as silhouettes if undiscovered.

• The “ How to Play ” tutorial has been reworked into four illustrated pages with more details, new tips and animations to better illustrate the explanations.

• Added a button in the adventurer’s bag to “Buy All” items if you have enough gold.

• Added x10 and x100 bet modes for the slot machine.

• Added a 4th, even faster game speed (selectable in-game only).

• Added visual variants for tile's walls and floors in the labyrinth.

• Added new music tracks.

5. Bug Fixes

• Story Mode objectives no longer visually reset when opening the traveling merchant’s shop.

• Damage types (lava, poison, projectiles) now display correctly when occurring simultaneously.

• Totem cards can no longer be used if a totem is already on an active Altar.

• Discounted cards from Toolboxes or Omniflasks no longer reset to their base price after resuming the game.

• Fixed an issue where monsters with 0 base max energy (like cocoons) didn’t apply their defense properly.

• Empty stock slots no longer appear on sale with a discount at the merchant.

• Certain buttons now respect the sound effect volume setting.

• “Spectral Return” totem sound no longer stacks: volume is now consistent even when many ghosts revive at once.

• Goldig count on the field now updates correctly when one is summoned outside the path via an Altar.

• The adventurer’s HP is no longer capped at 1,000,000.

• The reroll recovery from the Reroll Party card is no longer limited to 20.

If you’ve enjoyed the direction the game has taken over the past year through its major updates, and if you want to support my work, consider leaving a review! :)

The adventure is far from over, many new ideas are still on the way…

Until then, have fun in the maze!

Wæn