Update 1.29 House Keeping

We have just passed the midpoint of development. A year and a half down and a year and a half to go! I think its a good time to do one of those 'house keeping' updates focused on clearing off as many bugs, crashes, easy fixes, small tweaks, balancing etc. So this will be one of those 'rolling' updates in which I'll be releasing multiple hot-fixes and just listing them sequentially in this announcement.

In terms of what comes after this update. The plan is to focus the rest of the year on implementing the most important new content I'd still like to get in the game. This will leave the entirety of 2026 to purely focus on user-interface, game modes, polishing, balancing, quality of life, art, music etc. I know there's already a ton of stuff piled up that fits into this 'polish' phase which is why I had planned right from the beginning of the project to devote a full third of development time to focus on it completely.

The content I still want to get through by years end:

• An entirely new zone for the Fortress/Palace tier giving us at least 3 zones for every zone pool.

• 3 x new bosses for Branch-II. This gives us at least 3 bosses for every zone. Of course the new Zone-3 would also need 3 bosses so... that's a lot of bosses to make. There are also plenty of older bosses that could use a rework but I'll save that for year 3.

• 2 x entirely new classes. An adventurer class is already planned for the 3rd with randomized starting talents. I'd also like to get something like 10-20 general 'classless' talents into the game. I've got quite a few of these already in my notes.

• At least 50 new Vault-of-Yendor levels. Mostly focusing on more unique and gimmicky things. We have a pretty solid general pool it would be good to have lots of rare but weird ones as well.

• A complete, ground up rebuild of the Yendor boss fight itself. Definitely need to rework the various phases we already have and I'd like to ideally have another 5 more for a total of 10 possible versions.

So its still a pretty substantial amount of work but I think it should be manageable. This will then give me an entire year to just focus on making everything as perfect and refined as possible.

UPDATE 1.29:

Duelist:

Plenty of discussion on the duelist in Discord. Still have some additional things to implement and try out. Our main goal here is to really focus the duelists kit around maximizing movement and multiple attacks rather than raw damage output. In my opinion, non of his abilities should individually deal a lot of damage.

Disengage:

• Disengage (Leap): moves 2 tiles backwards

Lunge:

• Lunge (Base): 4DMG => 2DMG. Not sure about this one since its Tier-2 but previously is had the same damage as Power-Strike which is odd to me.

• RemovedLunge (Damage)removed as I don't want him to even have the option of maxing damage with his core talents.

• Lunge (Fast): 2CD => 1CD. This replaces damage and probably lets him actually deal more damage over time but at expense of lining up attacks and speed points (perfect duelist gameplay).

Dash Attack:

• RemovedDash-Attack (Damage)removed with same reasoning as above.

• Dash-Attack (SP-Restore): restores 1SP for each enemy hit. Effectively gives duelist a 10CD restore SP ability. If this is too strong then this might be a good place to do 4DMG => 0DMG. So player is deciding to give up damage in exchange for more SP.

• Dash-Attack (Extended): 4Range => 6Range. Makes Dash-Attack an S-Tier movement ability. As long as you can hit at least one enemy you effectively have a 'blink' on cool-down.

• Dash-Attack (Fast): similar to lunge, this is effectively a way to get more damage but still playing into the duelists core theme of positioning and SP usage.

Strafe Attack:

Major changes here as the old Strafe-Attack was pretty wonky. I think the main problem with Strafe-Attack-1 was that almost no one actually played around it. It mostly just boiled down to: randomly deal some damage every few turns as you are otherwise moving. Strafe-Attack-2 was just broken in the sense that it invalidates the rest of Duelists kit by letting him transform ALL of his SP into a single turn nuke. Random brought the changes below up but I believe this was from a much larger discussion thread so thanks everyone who contributed!

• Strafe-Attack (Base): once per turn, the player will perform the old strafe-attack while sprinting with SP. So same mechanic but the player is intentionally performing the attack.

• The game now highlights the target you will attack when you hold shift to sprint. This changes based on where you are moving towards so you can actually predict and play around this.

• Strafe-Attack (Multi): 2 strafe attacks per turn. We can play with the number but this prevents it from becoming a single turn 'nuke'.

• Strafe-Attack (SP-Restore): restores 1SP on kill shot, effectively making the sprint free.

Precision:

• Elemental Penetration: all attacks ignore enemy resistance. Probably an S-Tier talent for any casters dealing with same element zones or enemies.

Bugs and Crashes:

Slowly working my way through the back log on these. This stuff is so funny. Sometimes its like a one line fix other times its a crazy deep dive into 5 different files tracing some mysterious exact 'stars align' condition. I'm one of those slightly crazy people that finds bug fixing strangely satisfying :P

• (Bug) Slow-Poison-Arrows (ex Spitting-Viper) will no longer apply poison damage if the player is Invulnerable. Let me know if there are other cases of detrimental status effects being applied while invulnerable.

• (Bug) Skeleton-Warden will not revive skeletons if he is dominated.

• (Bug) The Clockwork Sentry was spawning shredders even when not facing you. This was a fun one. Old legacy code still had the preset, randomized mob spawn tiles tagged with IDs. Sentry uses ID tagged tiles to determine if the player is in its LoS. So this was occurring when the player was standing on the now empty tile where a mob had spawned with the same ID as where the sentry was looking. Fun times :P

• (Bug) Slime Tank slimes will no longer give EXP (otherwise can be farmed infinitely).

• (Bug) Stone Tuned armor will now correctly activate when adjacent to walls.

• (Bug) Circlet-Of-Wind has now been added to drop tables. I must have missed it at some point.

• (Bug) Manfred the Minotaur is now guaranteed to spawn even if his hatch is blocked when starting the fight. Will just flood to find the nearest open tile so that the fight is no unbeatable.

• (Bug) Hover Over Talent: bounding box was not correct. The description showed one talent but click choose the other.

• (Bug) Blink-Shroom (NPC) and Blink-Ally: the guy being blinked must now have clear LoS to the destination tile.

• Adjusted(Bug) Blink-Shroom (NPC) and Blink-Allynow uses path distance instead of standard line distance to get as close as possible to player. There was an edge case where you could have a wall separating you and he'd blink close to you but behind the wall which actually increased the distance he'd have to walk to get in range.

• (Bug) NPC onHit blink (think blink frogs) should work even when immobilized or stunned (its like an innate thing).

• (Bug) onHit blink for Iron-Imps is now set at 50% same as Blink-Frogs.

• (Bug) Fixed Palace-of-Shadow vault that had a wall on a glyph door. Wasn't even a bug. The vault literally had that tile placed there by mistake.

• (Bug) Reverted the delayed shout on enemies. Problem it was fixing was tiny. Causes more problems than its worth.

• (Bug) Fixed trees and stalagmite spawning on top of Ice-Statues in an Ice-Caves level.

• (Bug) Fire-Ball now longer allows you to target solid objects which would just eat the Fire-Ball. I assume I broke this when implementing some of the upgrades awhile back.

Misc Stuff:

• Added an 'Are you sure?' dialog popup when trying to esc/close the menu for Fairy level based enchantments. I really don't want to just give them Enchantment-Scrolls as they are guaranteed to be saved until end game at which point all Fairys will always have max enchanted equipment.

• Dominating an enemy will now make them shout to, and I quote Random595, "prevent ridiculous kidnapping strategies."

• Enemies knocked by Burst-of-Wind will also agro, again, to "prevent ridiculous kidnapping strategies." Random595: Tough on Crime 2025.

• Worked a bunch on The-Mess-Hall level generator from The-Orc-Fortress just adding a bunch of fun assets and text and stuff. Will be doing this alongside the debugging for various generators just to give myself a bit of a change of pace. The last Lore update included an incredible duct tape hack that has allowed me to use items that are flagged to never pick up as decoration. So I can put 'stuff' on tables, shelves, really anything. I can now stack at least 2 objects on top of each other without having to rewrite the whole tile/object system.

That's it for now. As I said at the top I'll be posting fairly regular hot-fixes to this announcement for the next few weeks as I try to make some progress on bugs-and-crashes. We are discussing some talent and class balancing as well right now in Discord so expect to see some more work on the Duelist and probably another class or two.

UPDATE 1.29.1 - New Block System:

Hello everyone! I've been sitting on the design for a fairly extensive defense rework for awhile now and I figured this would be a good time to try it out.

The Problem: Over time we have started to accumulate a mess of different defensive stats: protection, resistance, evasion, reflection, parry-melee, shield-block, ice-shield-hp, magic-shield-hp, strafe dodging, invulnerability etc. Now as a general rule I tend to dislike this sort of bloat on principle but the problems in go deeper:

1. Having so many different stats, flags and mechanics increases the complexity for new players. There's just so many things to learn about which mostly just boil down to: prevent or reduce incoming damage.

2. For experienced players it can be difficult to get a 'feel' for how much damage you are taking in fights. This is particularly bad with things like shield-block, parry-melee, evasion etc. because of the way they randomly, completely negate attacks. You can dodge, parry and block a few attacks and then suddenly take a heavy hit. This makes incoming damage feel very spikey and hard to predict.

3. For all the complexity inherent in this pile of stats, we don't really get much gameplay or tactics or even interesting character building out of it. As mentioned before, most of this just boils down to making the player more tanky. I highly doubt that players are drastically adjusting their play style based on subtle differences in 5 different defensive stats.

New Block System: To fix this I'm introducing a new major system to the game: Block Points. My hope is to collapse a number of different defensive stats into a single, universal system. A bunch of different talents and equipment can then interact with this system so we can still have a lot of complexity but... its all part of the same system.

Block Points are most commonly gained by wielding a shield. Currently all shields have had their protection removed and instead grant +1 Block Points. These points are displayed on the HUD as little shield icons and when the player is hit with melee or a projectile if he has a Block Point he will block the attack 100% of the time. Block points are consumed by blocking and will regen at a rate of 1BP per 5 turns (same as all other resources).

Stats that are currently being merged into this:

• AddedBlock Chancethe old % based stat is completely replaced with this new resource. Warrior talents that used to grant Block-Chance now add Block-Points. Upgrades can add additional effects that trigger when an attack is blocked.

• Ice-Shield-HP: simply grants +1 Block-Point instead of the old regenerating HP pool. This provides an option for weaker characters to still use Block-Points without the ENC of shields. Upgrades can also add additional triggered effects.

• Magic-Shield: Mace-of-Shielding and Staff-of-Shielding now grant +1 Block-Points and will recharge Block-Points when attacking (1 every 5 attacks).

Benefits:

• We collapse a number of different stats into a single universal system. We can then have different talents and equipment effect this system so you can actually build a character that specializes in blocking.

• Because you are 100% guaranteed to block when you have block points, more experienced players can play around this system. Intentionally taking hits when they have Block-Points available and playing more carefully while they are regenerating.

• For newer players or at lower difficulty levels, the system still just boils down to: reduce incoming damage, even if you are not paying attention to it or playing around it, you still get the benefits.

Future Change: Parry Melee: Parry-Melee is the most obvious candidate to get removed. I think each blade weapon should simply be designed to do something unique. They don't all need this shared stat that doesn't exist anywhere else. I do absolutely think some weapons should be 'defensive' weapons but this should either be part of a more general, unified system, or else be completely unique to that weapon.

Future Change: Evasion: Evasion is a more extreme option to remove that I think actually has a lot of benefits. First, as a defensive stat, it has the problem of making damage very spikey. Dodging a few attacks and then having one land is jarring and difficult to get a feel for.

Its also not the sort of thing that the player ever really plays around. No one adjusts their playstyle specifically to take advantage of high evasion beyond just: I guess I'm tankier. We already have Speed-Points which simulate the arch-type of an agile fighter dodging attacks instead of face tanking them.

With Block-Points being quite tightly tied to Strength I think the removal of Evasion as a stat in general, and from DEX specifically makes our 3 Attributes really nicely distinct. You no longer get this little bit of extra defense from taking DEX, rather your using the Speed-Points to avoid damage entirely.

Future Changes: Summary: If both Parry-Melee and Evasion are both dropped and Block-Points are integrated throughout talents and equipment we will have cut the number of defensive stats down to a very nice tight grouping:

• Hit Points: the most basic defensive stat.

• Block Points: the most effective and predictable form of defense. You can build a whole character around this and totally adjust your playstyle to maximize the advantage.

• Protection and Resistance: clean and straightforward mitigation against each damage type.

• Reflection: I do think that this deserves to exist as having high reflection does actually change the way the player approaches all ranged enemies.

Furthermore we will have defined Strength as being THE defensive attribute.

Update Changes: These are the actual changes that have been implemented so far besides just adding the new system:

• RemovedShield-Wallremoved

• Shield-Block: moved to Tier-2 and grants +1 Block-Points while wielding a shield. I'll be looking for 3-4 interesting upgrades that can trigger off of blocking.

• RemovedRecovery (speed)removed

• Recovery (Block): restores all Block-Points

• RemovedShields-Up (Buff)removed

• Shields-Up (Block): restores 1 Block-Point when used

• Shield-of-Ice: +1 Block-Point

• Shield-of-Ice (Slow): Blocked melee attacks will slow the attacker for 5T.

• Shield-of-Ice (Reflective): Blocked projectiles will be reflected back at the attacker.

• All shields now grant +1 Block Point instead of Protection.

• Increase shield ENC by one to highlight that Block is a STR thing

• Staff-of-Shielding: +1Block-Point and 5 attacks to regen a Block-Point

• Mace-of-Shielding: +1Block-Point and 5 attacks to regen a Block-Point

• Mace-of-Shielding: 9DMG => 7DMG

• Shield-of-Guard: stand still for 3T to regen a block point

• Shield Of Celtius: slows enemies for 5T, same as Shield-of-Ice upgrade, but we should come up with something else for this.

UPDATE 1.29.2 - More Block System:

Got lots of very helpful feedback and encouragement on Discord so we're going full steam ahead on the new Block-Point system. In my mind, this had initially started as just a small change to how Block-Chance works but its looking more and more like this has the makings of an entire major sub-system similar to how Speed-Points evolved over time. This is going to take a whole lot of work, balancing and integration but I think over all its going to be a massive improvement to the game. It manages the rare feat of reducing pointless complexity and unpredictability while also drastically increasing actual, meaningful, tactical complexity.

My current goal with balancing is to:

• Maintain the clarity and predictability of the current Block-Point system while making sure its not totally overpowered.

• Generally integrate it with more of the game systems. Block-Points should not be this one off, niche system but rather should be a core part of the entire game.

Monsters:

I think the best initial way to try to counteract the power of Block-Points is not to muddy up the system with weird rules (yet), but rather to make the rest of the game acknowledge their existence. The easiest way to do this is to begin tuning some monsters to specifically counter characters with high Block-Points. I think this is incredibly neat as it gives us a new, previously nonexistent, orthogonal axis on which to design enemies. We can now have an entire sub-category of monsters that are specifically Block-Point counters.

My hope is that we can maintain the elegance of the current Block-Point system while introducing a new, interesting tactical layer. Groups of enemies can now include: dudes I really want to block vs dudes I really DONT want to block because they will burst down my Block-Points. This opens up all sorts of neat movement, timing and positioning where you intentionally try to take certain attacks on your Block-Points while avoiding other attacks.

• All archers CD:1 => CD:0, DMG:MLOW => DMG:LOW. This is a very neat change imo as it suddenly differentiates the archer sub-class from all other ranged enemies. For a non Block-Point build, this is barely a change at all. There is some nuance but overall the average damage per turn is about the same. For builds focused on Block-Points however, archers suddenly become this incredibly annoying threat that rapidly breaks your Block-Points with pathetically weak attacks.

• Arrow-Storm: archers attack twice per turn. This is the first time that such a mechanic has ever made sense. With the damage reduction above this doesn't change much for non Block-Point builds as, again, the damage per turn is essentially unchanged. Same as above however, Arrow-Storm suddenly becomes this Block-Point hard counter that specialized builds suddenly need to worry about.

• Arrow-Storm: 100CD => 10CD. Previously this was essentially a one time ability. Now it is a constant thing they can cycle. Become immobile and burst down shields. Again with their tiny chip damage this doesn't really effect characters not stacking Block-Points.

• AddedOrc-Archeradded Arrow-Storm. Will be looking for other archers to add this to. We can now have archers w/ Arrow-Storm to break Block-Points, archers with Slow-Projectiles to force player movement, and archers with Sniper-Mode as actual dangerous damage dealers.

• Double Attack: some melee monsters now attack twice per turn with reduced damage. Similar to the archer changes, I'm excited that we suddenly have this new sub-class of monsters that would not have made sense previously. The damage has been adjusted to mostly keep things consistent turn per turn but these guys are suddenly twice as dangerous to Block-Point builds.

  • Dervish-Raider: DMG:MED => DMG:MLOW

  • Pirate-Duelist: DMG:MED => DMG:MLOW

  • Dark-Elf-Warrior: DMG:MED => DMG:MLOW

  • Drachnid-Warrior: DMG:MED => DMG:MLOW

  • Clockwork-Shredder: DMG:MLOW => DMG:LOW (Brutal melee hard counter)

  • Vortices: DMG:MHIGH => DMG:MED (Also brutal melee hard counter)

• Salamander Lancer: spear attack. Their sprite has a spear and we need more instances of spear attacks so they don't come as such a surprise. Its quite interesting imo that we now have a variety of different sub-classes of just basic melee monsters to design around.

• Froglok Warrior: spear attack. Same as above. I think this is the earliest introduction to this type of enemy attack.

Mechanics:

• Block-Points now restore on level ups.

• Added Block-Shrooms which restore 5 Block-Points. Any Block-Points past your max will be added as Temp-Block-Points (a new mechanic). 5 Block-Points is probably too strong (3 is likely the sweet spot).

• Temp-Block-Points will fade one by one every 5T. We can play with having other equipment or talents interact with this system later on.

• Invuln-Shrooms are now gold color. So that we can use the white shrooms for Block-Shrooms.

• Block does not work when unstable or immobile. A overall nerf to Block-Points while helping tie the system into overall terrain tactics and positioning.

• Damage-Shields now trigger on Block. Another interesting consequence of this system is that it might actually now be viable to run builds with huge Damage-Shields that WANT to take hits.

Items and Equipment:

• Parry-Melee has been replaced with +1Block-Point on all swords. I'm not sure if I ultimately want all swords to have this stat or if this will be restricted to some smaller sub-set of 'defensive' weapons but in one fell swoop we have completely eliminated an entire niche, unpredictable stat from the game.

• Swift-Blade: 10% Evasion => +2SP

• Mirror-Robe: 10%Evasion, 10%Reflection => 20% Reflection

• Dancing-Slippers: 1DEX, 10%Evasion => 1DEX, 1SP

• Fish-Scale-Robe: 40%Evasion in water => not unstable in water

• Ring-of-Blocking: 1Block-Point

• Robe-of-Shielding: 6MP, Spirit-Shield => 3MP, 1Block-Point

• Added Hat, Gloves, Shoes of Shielding: 1Block-Point.

• Blood-Stringer: 8DMG, 1Melee-Life-Tap => 6DMG, 2Melee-Life-Tap. Need some feedback on how to balance Melee-Life-Tap but the plan is to restrict it to weapons only and give them the Poison-Weapon treatment. Keep reducing the damage while increasing the Life-Tap until we end up with weapons that are just distinctly unique.

• Soul-Reaper: 10DMG, 2Melee-Life-Tap => 8DMG, 3Melee-Life-Tap

• Scythe-of-Reaping: 13DMG, 3Melee-Life-Tap => 11DMG, 4Melee-Life-Tap

• Duelists-Gloves: now cause the player to riposte (melee attack) on all Blocks.

• Rapiers: all rapier type weapons now innately riposte on blocks. 10DMG => 8DMG.

User Interface:

• Recolor HP to white if you have 1 Block-Point. Still will need to workout better ways to prominently show Block-Points but this is a good start.

• Block-Shields UI are slightly larger and the dark ones are darker.

• Block-Points added to character menu replacing Evasion.

• Enemy HP also shows as white if they have Block-Points. Currently they can get them from Block-Shrooms but later on we will likely use this same mechanic on some enemies as well. Again we will need a better UI element to show this.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed crash with Mace-of-Shielding and Staff-of-Shielding

UPDATE 1.29.3 - Bunch of Stuff:

User Interface:

• Expanded the size of the talent panel in the character menu so that long talent names, like Dirge-of-Destruction, do not overlap with the upgrade buttons.

• Implemented VanquishFXs suggestion for a new equipment layout that looks MUCH nicer.

• When upgrading an ability talent only the stats that change will show. This is cleaner, more readable and fixes a number of instances of text overflowing with long descriptions.

• Fixed long talent names like Dirge-of-Destruction spilling over in in Tome-of-Knowledge window.

• Block-Point usage is now counted in Game-Stats

• Getting hit while invulnerable will not longer count as a 'hit' in Game-Stats

• Shield-Block talent now notes that it only works with a shield equipped.

• Status-Effect (Slow): use blue S glyph

• Status-Effect (Confusion): use purple C glyph

Monsters:

• Did a bunch of behind the scenes refactoring to unify all regen timers (they were the same anyway). Unified all NPCs regeneration on the same 5T player tick and adjusted numbers accordingly.

• Fire-Lizard: HP:MED => HP:MLOW. These guys are assholes and don't deserve to be MED HP lol.

• AdjustedWhip-AttackChanged to just a standard range attack with a different animation. Added second ability: Whip-Pull that does a full pull to adjacent (same as frog tongues). I prefer NPCs to have bigger, more impactful abilities like this rather then messing with you position a bit every turn.

• Confusion now disables the players Block-Points.

• King-of-Thieves: Arrow 0CD => 1CD (otherwise he will never move to melee)

• AddedIce-Giant-Kingnow has 2BPs. Random595 has a list of more bosses that should be given BPs. There are probably a number of existing or new standard monsters that should use them as well.

• All Ice-Giants and King: no longer slide on ice. I think Random suggested this cause he's a big softy and doesn't like seeing Ice-Giant-King being bullied but we now have flag we can set on any other monster if needed.

• Argox (Goblin-Boss): 1BP and lower HP. Helps to introduce the Block-Points on monsters early in the game.

• AdjustedGoblin-Archer2DMG => 1DMG. Him and the following NPCs had hard coded damage values that were not changed with the recent damage reduction to archers.

• The-Rat-Piper: 5DMG => 4DMG

• Froglok-Archer: 3DMG => 2DMG

Talents:

As suggested by Random595 changed some of the level based talent unlocks:

• Tier2 (Upgrade): XL:10 => XL:9

• Tier3 (Base): XL:10 => XL:9

• Tier3 (Upgrade): XL:15 => XL:13

Items:

• RemovedAssassins-Bladeremoved block points. I think we essentially have a class of 'daggers' now that don't use Block-Points. They were already not added to Serpent-Fang and Blood-Stinger.

• +1DMG to all two handed weapons. No idea if this is enough to offset the new, more powerful shields.

Bugs and Crashes (Block):

• Fixed: once you took Shield-of-Ice (Reflection) then every ranged attack was getting reflected without using Block-Points.

• Block now works on: Stone-Punch, Extendo-Punch, Whip-Attack, Mud-Golem-Balls, Arcane-Arrows.

• Temp-Block-Points are now correctly cleared on player and NPCs when restarting game.

• Staff-of-Shielding: +1BP (had it set incorrectly to +1MP)

• Removing a shield will now reduce your current Block-Points.

• Enemy ranged attack that hits you while invulnerable will not trigger or use Block

• Attacking an unagroed enemy who blocks your first attack will now agro him.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed Ranked-Modifer (Innate-Regen) I don't think it was working at all.

• War-Train: stunning any module will cause the whole train not to move (same as how freeze works). This stops it from breaking up.

• War-Train: you can now fire Life-Spikes over destroyed carts.

• War-Train: Bombs and Sleep-Bombs will now correctly 'land' on destroyed carts instead of poofing.

• Portal-Loops level type in Vault-of-Yendor will now correctly spawn stairs.

• Fixed Swamp-Fungoid and Fire-Lizard (anything with bolt-attack). They had an exact angle/walls where they could not attack but would not advance.

• Fixed Block-Point text showing up on menu screen.

UPDATE 1.29.4 - Block Changes and Enchantment:

Major Stuff:

• Sprinting or using a speed point will disable block for the next turn. This nerfs block a bit and sets up a nice anti-synergy between BP and SP that can still be played around. From a UI perspective it works nicely as SP does not end your turn so the player can visibly see their Block-Points get disabled before ending their turn.

• A new enchantment system (see below).

• Removed some code that caused Charge, Disengage, and Killing-Strikes to be significantly more common on the first Tome-of-Knowledge. Resulted in Warriors almost always getting access to Charge right away.

Enchantment Changes:

I've been holding onto this one for awhile as I had intended to do it as part of a general item/equipment rework that will take place sometime in the future. Adding Block-Points however means that the basic system needs to get implemented now even if the full rework will come later.

Put simply this is finishing what we started a year ago with all items now only being enchantable once. The reason this needs to go in right now is to prevent double enchanted shields from giving +3BP which is quite OP for a single item. As mentioned above there is more I have planned for this but generally speaking the choice to enchant an item should provide a fairly large bonus that is consistent across all items regardless of the number of stats.

Generally speaking items that only have a single stat will now get a larger bonus to that single stat. This balances them with items with multi stats which have bonus to each stat. Weapons are also having their damaged raised by +2 instead of +1 for a single enchantment.

I'm not ready to do the full item/equipment rework yet which has a bunch of parts but in general I've already removed some stats (mostly incidental resistance) that would dilute the power of the enchantments. Its my hope to eventually have more items that are just 1-2 powerful stats or else a totally unique special ability/effect (raised by enchantment). So most items become more specific, and enchanting them just further boosts that specificity.

WEAPONS:

• Soul-Reaper: redrawn as a dagger with no Block-Points.

• Inferno-Blade, Lightning-Forged-Staff, Glacier-Forged-Staff, Molten-Forged-Staff, Necrotic-Staff have all had resistance removed so that enchantment can boost their damage by +2 rather than spreading out.

• RemovedBlade-of-Energyremoved the bonus MP as the BP is already very strong.

• Staff-of-Flowing-Thought => Staff-of-Thought-Theft which charges after 5 attacks to restore mana. I want to try to keep weapon effects/stats more obviously offensively focused.

• Spirit-Bow: MP-Tap on hit => same 5 attack charge to mana restore. I think its more impactful to build this up, hold it, and then use it when needed rather than having tiny bits of mana trickle in.

ARMOR:

In many cases trying out very strong, impactful, single stat items with big enchantment bonus.

• Rotting-Shroud: 3HP-Regen, 16HP => 4HP-Regen (pure HP-Regen, Enchanted: 6HP-Regen)

• Blazing-Cloak: 6DS, 30%rFire => 8DS (pure DS, Enchanted: 12DS)

• Robe-of-Flowing-Mana: 12MP, manaTap => 2MP-Regen (pure MP-Regen, Enchanted: 4MP-Regen)

• Ring-of-Inferno/Thunder: DS/Resist => 6DS (Pure DS, Enchanted: 10DS)

• Ring-of-Blood: 4Life-Tap, 16HP => 4Life-Tap (Pure Life-Tap, Enchanted: 6Life-Tap)

• Robe, Hat, Gloves, Shoes of Wizardry: Drop the INT (Pure resistance)

• Heavy-Brass-Armor: Prot,STR,rFire => Block, STR (S-Tier Block Armor, Fits Click-Clock theme)

• Crown-of-Slime: 1INT, 8DS, 40%rToxic => 1INT, 8DS (DS is already much stronger with block)

• Rings-of-Shielding: Protection, Resist => Block-Points, Resist (More block sources)

User Interface:

• Food-Points: note that you will begin taking damage at 0Food.

• Fixed: "sort of sort of" in Yendor dialog.

• Fixed: Cusion => Cushion and one of them was named: Crystal-Shards

• Use blue sprint tiles for Disengage, Lunge, Dash-Attack, Charge

• Enemy status line: Large/Small, Fast/Slow

• Shrooms count as 'dangerous' for trolls

• Upgrade passive talent: only show changing stats

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed: a War-Engine tramples you and kills itself on your DS would result in a 'ghost' tile that blocked movement.

• Slippery on ice check was reversed.

• Console error message on clicking empty enchantment slots

• Transference table has an ice giant sprite

UPDATE 1.29.5 - Block Changes and Enchantment:

Responding to a bunch of feedback on enchantment changes.

Enchantment Changes:

• Added INT back to wizardry armor

• Robe-of-Flowing-Mana: 12MP (18MP enchanted). Making it the single best MP source in game.

• Fixed enchantment on assassins bow.

• Spirit-Bow: restore-MP 12MP => 6MP otherwise its nearly a full MP restore with AP.

• Rings-of-Shielding: reverted to protection instead of block.

• Dropped Block-Points from swords which will now be a generic weapon type carried by their unique effect.

  • Broad-Sword: 10DMG => 12DMG

  • Two-Hand-Sword: 14DMG => 16DMG (best in game)

  • Based on feedback the magic Tier-3 swords were already strong enough, even with no block/parry.

• Heavy-Brass-Armor: STR, Block => Protection, Block. Makes them the best defensive armor in game. Just raw defense for their heavy weight.

• AdjustedArmor-of-Shieldingchanged sprites to plate armor, made it heavy. 90% of sources of Block-Points should be heavy with few exceptions.

Bugs and Crashes:

• NPC Fire-Storm will expand and create fire over low barriers.

• Blink-Shrooms should still work for player when confused.

• Moved invulnerability tick to start of turn. Will now protect against Power-Strike, Smite etc on the last turn.

• Ranked modifier: Super-Speed will not be applied to slow projectiles: Arcane-Arrows, Orb-of-Fire etc.

• Berserker-Axe: was not working at all. It was supposed to be using standard rage mechanic but broke at some point. Definitely OP but we've got a thread up right now discussing changes to rage that should encompass this. For now 14DMG => 12DMG. Can nerf it further and let it get carried purely by its rage bonus if needed.

• Enchanted items were giving NAN encumbrance when equipped.

Thoughts on Block:

I'm preparing to move on from block for now and let the changes simmer for awhile before fiddling with stuff some more. Overall I'm quite pleased with the changes. Compared to the mess of unpredictable % based, all or nothing stats we had I think its a much cleaner, more predictable system. Obviously we will continue to tune it and incorporate it into more of the game over time but for now there are other things to deal with. Its good I think sometimes to just let a system sit for awhile so we all have more experience with it before changing things.

BLOCK FOCUSED BUILDS: I believe that high STR, high defense, block focused builds absolutely should feel like they can face tank a lot of attacks. This is the entire arch-type of a tank build. IMO its a feature not a problem if a character built around being a massive tank feels... well tanky. That's basically the entire point. So high block-points allowing a player to take minimal damage is totally fine in the same way that high SP allowing a character to avoid most damage is fine. Just different arch-types.

BLOCK IS A STRENGTH THING: Since I want block to be strong when stacked then one of the counters to this is simply that its hard for most characters to stack block. A lot of the changes in this update are removing Block-Points from light armor and rings. Block should come predominantly from heavy armor and shields. Only characters with some strength investment should be able to utilize block points and only characters with heavy strength investment should be able to get enough points to be able to truly face tank. I want block to be strong but this should be balanced by making it a trade off with other stats.

BLOCK HAS COUNTERS: Another way I plan to counteract the strength of Block is simply to have more enemies that counter it. Multi-attacks, shield breaking attacks that remove 2 Block-Points, various effects that disable Block etc. I think it creates a more interesting game if certain enemies unique counter block and are therefore more dangerous for block-point focused builds. These should be common enough that they are not this once every few run exception. They should be just a standard part of the game.

ROUGH HIERARCHY: This is very similar to an old discussion we had on relative attribute point value. IMO when taken to the extreme with highly specialized builds: STR (Block-Points) < INT (abilities) <= DEX (Speed-Points). The difference doesn't need to be extreme but definitely a build that is just face tanking everything takes less skill and player input than a character using speed points. So at the extreme end we should strive to make sure Block is no too OP so that face-tanking becomes the meta.

UPDATE 1.29.6 - Mostly Bug Fixes:

Load Optimization:

Parsing all the vault data and packaging it with the game data greatly increases the games startup time. Please let me know if you notice anything odd with generation as this was a pretty big behind the scenes change.

Block Points:

• Added a shield breaking animation on the character. White when you have BP remaining, red when you just lost your last BP.

• You will no longer regen a BP if you blocked that turn. It looks odd, as if you blocked but did not lose a point and imo Block can handle a slight nerf like this.

• Enemy telegraphed attacks take destroy 2 Block-Points: Power-Strike, Cleave, Lunge,

• Critical hits now destroy 2 Block-Points.

• You can block when unstable or immobile again. This has been replaced with the above double crit mechanic.

Dash Attack:

Was looking at a bunch of odd bugs with Dash Attack pathing. Most of them were not actually 'bugs' but were rather just the odd way that Dash Attack handled its paths. I've decided to change Dash-Attack to be a pure bolt targeted ability i.e. exact same targeting as Lightning-Bolt. You will pass through all tiles in the bolt and land on the final tile. Very straight forward.

• It has a perfectly consistent path in all directions regardless of terrain, traps, shrooms etc.

• You can only use it if the path is clear of static obstacles. Previously it would weave around stuff.

• You can only use it if the path has at least one enemy

I think for Dash-Attack this is def the way to go. Thematically we could say that Dash-Attack is the character dashing in a straight line, with the bolt representing this straight line. No weaving or dodging. This removes any confusion or debate in terms of what should or should not be dodged or alter the path. There is one path and it is the bolt path. If the bolt path is blocked or you don't want to run over some terrain or traps then that's left up to the player to decide.

I think Lunge should probably work this way as well i.e. there is no hidden adjustment or micro path finding. Use the exact same bolt path and you either have a valid lunge path or you don't. Again if stuff is in the way that's up to the player. I think having the exact same, predictable bolt path used in multiple abilities is very good as players will eventually just sort of memorize its shape at various ranges.

A larger question would be should charge work like this as well? Charge deals decent damage when crunching, is a knock back but more importantly its a beast of a movement ability. The way it weaves around obstacles, zig-zags, dodges traps etc. all for the cost of a single SP... I'm wondering what peoples thoughts are on also making charge use this standard bolt targeting.

We will of course balance/rebalance these talents if needed to offset the lack of freedom this more restrictive targeting demands but I think overall its a good thing. Makes the abilities have very consistent, very understandable targeting. No secret pathfinding layer where we can argue exactly how it should work. It also forces players to actually use standard SP to perform wonky zig-zag moves instead of just 1SP to charge or Dash-Attack.

User Interface:

• Centered the talent/attribute title on the character menu

• As per Modern_Major_Generals suggestion the page scroll on talent panel has been moved to bottom where you would naturally look when you exceed the page limit (seriously 17 isn't enough for you lol?).

• Added a slight pause and bounce before enemy Swoop and Scuttle to make it more readable.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed a bunch of spelling and grammar fixes.

• Ring-of-Resistance will now enchant properly

• Dusty-Arcane-Tome can now be enchanted

• Fixed: when you have run out of levitation because of unstable terrain. Moving onto a pit would make you immediately jump down.

• Charge will not path over pits if you are out of levitation

• Bunch of sprinting weirdness when hovering over pit at 1 Levi. You should always be able to sprint as it does not end turn.

• Yendors dialog will now randomizes properly. Previously it was only doing so when exiting and relaunching game.

• Fixed crash when descending with Clockwork-Armorer + Clockwork-Shield (he didn't come with you).

• Clockwork-Armorer is no longer immobile when his shield is up, he simply does not step. So you can swap position with him. He has an odd movement where his shield basically drags him but previously this was implemented with Immobile which meant if you dominated him you would not be able to swap with him.

• Fixed incorrect water frames in Crypt Grave-Yard

• Centaur is unable to sprint across unstable 'steps' (the non zone line ones)

• Fixed crash in Danger-School: Restless Remains 2

• Toxic Waste will now extinguish ignite

• Dash-Attack with Spear-of-Discord will not pause game for each animation

• Slow now prevents enemy movement abilities: Swoop, Lunge, Rocket-Punch, Fast-Charge, Scuttle, Jump

• Fixed a level gen crash "Uncaught Cannot create FloorItem, tileIndex already occupied".

UPDATE 1.29.7 - Final Mini Update:

I'm going to be moving on to implementing another set of 3 bosses this month so this will be the final mini update for the time being. The block point mechanic seems to be in a pretty decent place now so we'll let it simmer for awhile and return to it at a later date once all the implications are more clear.

The plan with the bosses will be to do the same thing we did last time. I'll post an update once I have something to test with the bosses in Danger-School courses and we can all test them out, discuss balance or changes etc.

I've got bosses planned for Click-Clock-Keep and The-Crypt and the 3rd boss will be a rework or replacement of some existing boss. Likely candidates: Ice-Caves Priest, Arcane-Tower (both bosses), Click-Clock (turret guy). Depending on how quickly I get these done I might try for a 4th replacement as well. Pretty sure I managed 4 bosses in the last 1 month update, so fingers crossed.

Battle Frenzy:

A stripped down implementation based on a suggestion by Random595. The intention is really to encourage the Barbarian (or any class taking the talent) to play in a very aggressive, even reckless playstyle. Soaking up hits and being greedy with getting kills to sustain a high damage output. Because it doesn't continue to scale like old Battle-Frenzy there is no danger of absurd run away numbers.

From my own testing it feels slightly under powered with the current numbers but we'll see what everyone else thinks.

• You gain 1 point of rage every time you take damage or kill an enemy. This encourages an aggressive, even reckless playstyle which contrasts nicely with the Warriors defensive castle play style. Rage by itself has no effect beyond building up to Berserk.

• You lose 1 point of rage every turn you do not gain it i.e. do not take damage, do not kill an enemy.

• Reach 10 Rage causes you to go Berserk for 5 turns.

• Berserk causes you to deal 30% more damage with all attacks and abilities. This is a new stat type in the engine that might get applied to other talents/equipment. A flat damage modifier.

• Battle-Frenzy (Sustain): taking damage or killing enemies sustains Berserk i.e. does not cause the duration to tick down. Encourages an even more reckless playstyle, staying in the thick of things to sustain that high damage output.

• Battle-Frenzy (Fast): Berserk will trigger at 6 Rage allowing you to activate it much quicker in a battle.

• Battle-Frenzy (Power): the 'boring' option which raises the damage multiplier from 30% => 40%. If this damageMultiplier stat ends up getting used on other talents/equipment then this Power upgrade would apply across the board allowing for some synergy.

• Berserker-Axe: gain 1 rage per melee attack, triggering Berserk as normal. This works regardless of whether you have Battle-Frenzy or not.

• War-Cry: now adds a flat 2 rage on activation and agros all enemies in a 1.5 x shout range radius.

Lightning Bolt (Arc):

Upgrade for Lightning-Bolt suggested awhile back by BrightShadow that I've been sitting on for awhile (cause the implementation was a mess). Intended to be a more versatile and interesting replacement for Lightning-Bolt (Short Damage).

• You can select each tile in the path of the lightning bolt, allowing you to bend it around barriers and tag enemies not in a straight line.

• Each tile shock deals a base damage of 5.

• Clicking on the already selected end point will dump the remaining damage into that tile.

• Targeting at 4 range will just fire the bolt immediately as a normal (weaker) lightning bolt.

Some interesting results of this:

• From a damage perspective it is inferior at long ranges, basically the inverse of Lightning-Bolt (Charging). The flexibility in targeting partially makes up for this.

• The real strength comes from the dumping of damage at shorter ranges which is why it is a possible replacement for Lightning-Bolt (Short-Damage).

• The extreme case is dumping the damage directly in front of you i.e. 1 tile range. This gives a full 20DMG on that single tile which is probably the highest spell based single target damage. This is slightly better than Lightning-Bolt (Short-Damage) which had damage at the tip of 18DMG.

Talents:

• Athletics (Regen): 2SP => 0SP (we remove the SP bonus in exchange for the regen time). I believe Random suggested this to offset the massive regen jump from 1SP => 2SP.

• Fortitude (Regen): gives the player an actual base regen rate of 2HP per 5 turns. Modern_General I believe tihs was Modern_General who suggested this one.

Mechanics:

• Changed the Healing-Cap on enemies to only apply to regeneration which was the original intention of this change. This means that enemy healers can now endlessly, fully heal their allies making them a significant high priority target.

• Reverted the change to Block-Points where they would not regen on a turn you block.

• Slow-Projectiles now move 3 tiles, the same as Slow-Charging enemies. Keeps everything nice and consistent.

Items:

• Gi-of-Flowing-Thought: Can be enchanted to restore 2MP per SP. Happened to be in this part of the code base so implemented the change. Later on I'm intending for pretty much every item, even those with odd effects like this to be enchantable.

User Interface:

• Auto-Explore will now take you to closed Glyph-Doors after exploring the rest of the level.

• Added death messages for: Extendo-Punch, Whip-Attack, Mud-Ball, Arcane-Arrow (and other Slow-Projectiles), Tornado-Suck.

• Mousing over Slow-Charging enemies will show the path of their next moves.

• Slow-Charging enemies will display a C glyph.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Temp BP was no moving the other status effect text down.

• Bosses in Zone-2 were spawning in the open instead of in their vaults.

• Enemies will maintain their facing when saving/reloading the game.

• Fixed turns stopping when the player jumps down a pit.

• Fixed Blink-Ally working on ballistas, the goblet shield, immobile enemies in general.

• Fixed charge smoke trails which were using messed up frames.