Patch 1.3.0 is live!

"Bah, I'm a gladiator not a pest control service!" - The Gladiator, Swords and Sandals V

As part of this round of patches for all of the Swords and Sandals games ( eleven games to support now in total including spinoffs and remakes!), one of the games that needed the most love was Swords and Sandals V Redux. This game is by far the most complicated I've made (only Crusader Redux rivals it) and definitely one of the buggier games - RPGs so often are and this one had an incredibly convoluted development (both through the original and the remake!)

Anyway, this patch is long overdue and I hope it makes your dungeon crawling that little bit more enjoyable.

I haven't been able to squash every bug but I'm hoping many of the major ones no longer cause grief - but I'll be sure to monitor the discussions (and the Discord Channel) to try and keep on top of things. As with the other S&S games, this is by no means the last patch the game will ever get, so if I've missed something, I'll keep at it.

Please note, this patch is for the PC build only for now ( I need to source another Mac so I can recompile it!)

Cheers, Oliver Joyce Whiskeybarrel Studios

BUGFIXES

• Fixed up how items work in dungeon when you have a lot of items. You can now properly look through your items when tapping USE ITEM in the dungeon and choose the item you want ( instead of seeing nothing there - was a big bug )

• Fixed a bug where loot panels would spawn twice if tapping button fast

• Fixed a bug where Falcon Eyes skill used melee damage instead of ranged damage values

• Increased damage power of Winters Core per point spent on skill

• Fixed a bug where Children of the Malevolence left massive blood splats on screen

• Fixed up animation of spirit and shaman enemies

• Fixed a bug where the game forced you to start up in Fullscreen mode even after you had chosen Windowed mode.

• Fixed a bug where arenas sometimes scrolled past where they should and sky was visible behind

• Fixed some jittery camera bugs while in the arena

• Changed how elemental/magic resistance works. Spells that fail to hit now show a "MISS" icon (instead of RESIST). Successful spells damage is *reduced* by whatever your magic resistance is. (A fireball spell that hits for 200 damage against a character with 50% fire resist will only do 100 damage, for example)

• Enemies who have 100% resistance against you will show an IMMUNE icon still.

• Fixed a bug where enemies in dungeons did not rest when their essence reached zero

• Fixed a visual bug where your gladiator didn't appear at the top of the stairs in the Hypogeum intro

• Fixed a visual bug where Arena Champion battles were not centered and the characters were too large on screen

GAME IMPROVEMENTS / BALANCING

• Steam Achievements are now in the game, 151 in total!

• Damage to enemies now is cumulative. If an enemy has 25 armour and you do 100 damage, not only does the armour go down to 0, you also take an extra 75 points of damage. Previously if your armour reached zero in one attack, it absorbed the rest, so you couldn't one-shot enemies even if you were way more powerful. (This new way is how it works in classic and medieval)

• Added a shake screen if you one-shot your enemy.

• Changed how resistances work. Spells that fail to hit now show a "MISS" icon (instead of RESIST). Successful spells damage is *reduced* by whatever your resistance stat is. (A fireball spell that hits for 200 damage against a character with 50% fire resist will only do 100 damage, for example)

• The game now auto sorts your items better into groups so you won't see multiple icons for torches, potions etc.

• Reworked dungeon generation algorithm to ensure Levers do not spawn under dungeon guardians/bosses etc

• Also reworked spawn position algorithm for monsters and items.

• Gold rewards for rolling a 20 when resurrecting have been reduced to 50 gold + 25 gold per level

• All food costs have been reduced by 75%. Barn Eggs are more expensive.

• Gladiators now get 500 starting gold when starting in Dungeon Crawl

• Reduced the average character level of other gladiators in dungeons

• You now get XP for any gladiator/monster within 9 levels of your level ( previously was 5 levels )

• 1 in 100 chance of a dungeon level spawning a gladiator much higher level than you (beware!)

• The size of gladiators in dungeons no longer scales dramatically( characters with high strength / vitality previously got way too big to fit in doors visually)

• Priests now start with the Levitate ability

• You can now see which dungeon level you are on from the overlay panel in the top left

• Improved the tween in animation for arena champions as they enter the arena

• Changed the order in which artefacts can be discovered to: - McNess Ring of Avoid Traps (first dungeon) - Ring of Insomnia (second dungeon) - Ring of Nacho Theory(third dungeon) - Ring of Evermore (fourth dungeon)

• Made damage splat image popups smaller

• Removed knockback effect from Molten Death spell

• Reduced damage of enemies in all difficulties except normal

• Reduced max health of enemies in all difficulties except normal

• Magic Missile cooldown improves with each point spent on skill

• Removed error logging for most users as it throws up too many 'false flag' errors that do not affect the game but still show up in error reports

• Removed 'More S&S' button from Town

• Changed Sir Belgrave's appearance to make him look like an older knight. He was never meant to look like a Samurai but something got lost in translation with the original artist.

• Removed screen blur when opening chests (was creating texture memory issues)

• Added stunned/scared animations when enemy gladiators health reaches zero in the arena and before death

• Boosted the Lord of Sorrow's character level, armour and damage values