Mercenary Update

This update adds 1 new class, 5 new units, implements a new shop leveling system, a few QoL features and lots of bug fixes.

Mercenaries

Added the mercenary class:

Mercenaries (2, 4): +10/20% chance for enemies to drop gold on death

Added 5 new mercenary units:

• Miner (tier 1 mercenary) - picking up gold releases 4 homing projectiles that deal X damage, Lv.3 effect: release 8 homing projectiles instead and they pierce twice

• Merchant (tier 2 mercenary) - gain +1 interest for every 10 gold, Lv.3 effect: your first item reroll is always free

• Usurer (tier 3 mercenary, curser, voider) - curses 3 nearby enemies indefinitely with debt, dealing X damage over time, Lv.3 effect: if the same enemy is cursed 3 times it takes 50X damage

• Gambler (tier 3 mercenary, sorcerer) - deal 2X damage to a single random enemy where X is how much gold you have, Lv.3 effect: 60/40/20% chance to cast the attack 2/3/4 times

• Thief (tier 4 mercenary, rogue) - throws a knife that deals 2X damage and chains 5 times, Lv.3 effect - if the knife crits it deals 10X damage, chains 10 times and grants 1 gold

Shop

The shop can now be leveled up. Increasing the shop's XP by 1 costs 5 gold, and different shop levels have different XP requirements before advancing to the next level. There are a total of 5 shop levels and each level has different probabilities for the tiers of units that will spawn when rerolling:

This means that on shop Lv.1, rerolling will produce a tier 1 unit 70% of the time, a tier 2 unit 20% of the time, and a tier 3 unit 10% of the time. Every 2 levels one XP point is automatically granted, so even if you don't level it up manually it'll still level up on its own eventually.

This change is meant to give more focus to builds. Now if you want to rush for a mostly tier 4 build you can, as long as you're willing to spend the gold early (and potentially die due to being too weak) to do so. Similarly, if you want to make sure you get a tier 2 unit to level 3, then you can simply level the shop up to the level with the best odds for tier 2 units and then stay there for as long as possible, for instance.

Item, unit and balance changes

• Sorcerer items: the items "Awakening", "Chronomancy" and "Divine Punishment" now also work with sorcerers. This is a bandaid fix as sorcerers have no items yet.

• RemovedLauncherremoved from the game
• AdjustedJesternumber of projectiles released by enemies on death changed to 4 (from 3)
• AdjustedLv.25 bossdecreased movement speed as it was too fast and sometimes felt unfair

• Headbutters: they're now less likely to kill secondary units after bouncing on a first unit, this should decrease the amount of times they snipe multiple units at once

QoL

• Free item reroll: the very first item reroll (on level 3) is now always free.

• Mouse follow mode: now the snake can be controlled with the mouse, making the game entirely playable with the mouse only.

• AddedHidden cursornow the cursor is hidden during battle, unless mouse follow mode is enabled.

• Gold reward after battle: now gold is rewarded right after battle rather than on the shop. This makes rerolling items easier and more consistent.

• RemovedEnd screen restart buttonremoved the restart button from the game's final screen. Now that players can increase or decreased their new game plus levels at will this button didn't serve any purpose and people were clicking it by mistake.
• AddedVisuals for tank attackthe tank's attack now has a visual effect added to it. This should make it more obvious when he has attacked and when he's about to attack too.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash when too many illusions would be spawned in short succession

• Fixed a bug where enemy critters would sometimes be immortal

• Fixed a rare crash involving broken enemy critter state

• Fixed text for several units going outside the screen

• Fixed a crash when hovering over the Lich in the shop due to playing with a save from before the sorcerer update

• Fixed a crash when warden's force field would spawn on top of enemies

• Fixed a crash when a volcano would spawn on top of enemies

• Fixed a crash when a pet would spawn on top of enemies

• Fixed a bug where the maximum number of units would be wrong on certain conditions

• Fixed a crash when clicking too fast after unpausing the game

• Fixed and improved unit highlighting when hovering over classes

• Fixed Lv.3 plague doctor moving all his created areas with him

• Fixed a bug where quitting on level 2 would go back to level 1

Next week's update

The next update will focus on revamping the game's items. This will range from changing existing items, adding new ones, as well as possibly adding new game mechanics related to items. If you have any ideas related to this make a thread on the forums and post your suggestions! Despite not replying to everything, I'm reading all threads and taking everything into consideration.

Thanks for playing and I hope you have fun with this week's update!