Sternly Worded Adventures News

This update will probably not feel as large as the changelog note makes it look. The notable changes are: a new arcade mode that (that isn't in the demo), some basic visual effects for attacks, 4 new items (3 of which are unlocks from the new arcarde), oh, and it also fixes the arcade giving you the achievements win or lose but not giving you the items. There were a lot of changes that wont really matter until future updates, like 14 new tile legends, only 5 of which get used this version, and the fact that it now secretly tracks what enemies you've seen.

One change that didn't fit nicely into the other sections was: The continue button on class selection screen now changes to 'not in demo' if you're in demo and selecting something other than the adventurer.

There is one known issue already:
If you go to the tiles/use page in your inventory without having seen combat that session.
>> You can just dip in and out of the arcade to fix it.
(This will be fixed in V40!)

[h2]Arcade:[/h2]

• New arcade challenge with achievements: Colourful language. Unavailable in the demo.
• Fixed the arcade challenges giving you the completion achievements win or lose.
• Fixed the arcade challenges not unlocking the items.
• Added item backdating if you actually completed arcade challenges while it was broken.

[h2]Overworld:[/h2]

• Fixed world being able to generate node blocks that aren't connected.
• Revealing a secret node now correctly reveals each road connecting to it in rare cases that there's more than one.
• Resting now slightly increments the hidden world progress tracker.

[h3]Events:[/h3]

• Some of the dying paladin event 'Tell them you'll rush back with aid' follow up events are slightly more time lenient.
• Fixed the 'village under attack' and other post-anomaly combat events causing the demo to skip the 'thank you for playing' end-screen and just quit.

[h3]Overworld UI:[/h3]

• Added the option to always show health and gold, instead of just when it's relevant to the node.
• Fixed player screen not showing blood count unless you click stats.
• Fixed crafting screen not showing you how much a craft you can't afford is.

[h3]Shops:[/h3]

• Shops rolling for random gear will now try again later for the same slot if there was nothing valid.
• Shops now have preview icons of previous and next screens so it's more obvious that they exist.
• The 'new' price on discounted items is now red if you still can't afford it.
• Fixed the stock/owned display not updating when you buy things.

[h2]Items:[/h2]

• The green worm idol now makes X, Y, and Z tiles you get spawn in Cooper Black rather than Open Sans.
• The books of fire and metal now consider wildcards when giving hints.
• The bookkeepers bassoon and bonnet no longer count wildcards as inherently matching without the clouded glass eye charm.
• Fixed the improved book of metal turning into the regular book of metal when used for a hint.
• Fixed the book of UwU permanently inflicting weakness to burn, toxin, or bleed.
• Fixed slime brooch not giving the player regen if they're bleeding.
• Fixed the letter blocks not accepting wildcards.

[h3]Item availability:[/h3]

• The endless potion bag can no longer give you cookies.
• The cultist can no longer get the rings of four- or eight-sight.
• Iron skin potions can now appear in the endless potion bag.
• Fixed the mortar and pestle never being available at the wizards tower shop.

[h3]Item descriptions:[/h3]

• Fixed the copper retort not telling you it also gives you access to the potion crafting screen.
• Reworded the safety matches description to indicate that the second half is passive.
• Reworded item descriptions to refer to 'combat' instead of 'adventures', except for in reference to 'preparation screens'.

[h3]Items UI:[/h3]

• Fixed ironskin potions not highlighting to show that they have a function outside of combat.
• Fixed the raven idol highlighting in between a new word being added to the stats and being removed from the word board.
• The item almanac now lists if an item is available from the endless potion bag.
• Item description footer text will now correctly scroll for texts longer than 3 lines.

[h3]New passives:[/h3]

• Schwa charm
• Schwarz schwa shawl

[h3]New gear:[/h3]

• Tongs
• Calcinatory

[h2]Combat:[/h2]

• Added visual effects to basic attacks.
• Fixed attack effect delay checking against the wrong value.
• Fixed a crash if you manage to create a 'valid' word entirely consisting of ephemeral tiles.
• Fixed the start of your turn clearing the damage estimation if you managed to inputting your word prior.

[h3]Combat UI:[/h3]

• Hitting escape while the keyboard is on-screen now behaves the same as backspace.
• Added blood display to postgame screen.
• Added passives to the pregame.
• Chests, shrines, and the anomaly no longer appear on pregame screens.
• Fixed tooltips remaining behind when hide-UI is called.
• Stats bar during combat no longer draws the individual words if they are off screen.

[h2]Status:[/h2]

• Permanent status decay can now have magnitudes of effectiveness.
• Fixed 'temporary' status weakness being permanent. (Only affected the book of UwU).
• Fixed toxin damage estimations against enemies with toxin armour implying they're going to heal off of it.
• Fixed a typo in the tooltip for enemy burn.

[h2]Enemies:[/h2]

• Moved enemy data to separate files.
• Skeletons now have bleed decay 5x faster than normal instead of 2x.
• Spiders now have toxin decay 4x faster than normal instead of 2x.
• Fixed the slime idle animation resetting half way through.

[h2]Tiles:[/h2]

• Added new tile legend/ligatures: GH, CK, ER, UN, ION, RE, ST, EST, ß, restricted wildcards for [AEIOU] and [AEIOUY], and X Y and Z but in Cooper Black.
• Fixed default number and ! tiles being considered wooden.
• Fixed ephemeral tiles being counted as part of a valid incantation for the vowel movement and four-heal spells.

[h2]Definitions:[/h2]

• Added the word definition when you win a shrine, and to the shrine stats display.
• Added definitions for the vowel movement and UwU spell incantations.
• Fixed definitions with nested templates not having all templates formatted.
• Fixed the definition of calcine.

[h2]Words:[/h2]

• Fixed 17-21 length letter words breaking UI elements. 22+ letter words still do.
• Added calcine- and derived terms to the fire dictionary.
• Added boom, booms, and grill and derived terms to the fire dictionary.
• Added derived terms of orthoped- to the bones dictionary.
• Added safehouse, safehouses, fusebox, fuseboxes, catgirl and catgirls.
• Added clog and clogs to the wood dictionary.
• Added a bunch of words to the specific dictionaries that were form-of- and inflection-of- words of words already in them.
  • ~450 curses
  • ~340 bones
  • ~390 woods
  • ~220 metals
  • ~300 fires

Hate to need to do another hotfix so soon, but I can't knowingly leave unavoidable crashes in the wild.

[h3]Combat:[/h3]

• Fixed combat at special locations crashing when you get to the end.
  
• Fixed the arcade pregame screen lying about the enemies you'll encounter. Most notably on the wood challenge.
  
• Fixed damage estimations not correctly calculating if status is going to kill an enemy.
  
• Status effects on dead enemies now decay 5x faster than normal.
  

[h3]Items:[/h3]

• Tiles generated by the infinitives gauntlet can now be affected by the targe and the heal staves.
  
• Fixed the adrenaline shot clearing some non-0-scoring wildcards.
  
• Adrenaline shot description now refers to 'combat' instead of 'adventure', and gives a message when you try to use it when it'd do nothing.
  

[h3]Words:[/h3]

• Fixed a crash if you input 'send'.
  
• Added safeword and derived terms to the dictionary.
  
• Added mercurize and derived terms to metal dictionary.
  
• Added sap and derived terms to wood dictionary.
  

[h3]Fire dictionary:[/h3]

• cautery and 11 other derived terms.
  
• burner, reburn and derived terms.
  
• brand and derived terms.
  

[h3]Achievements:[/h3]

• Fixed a typo in the 'Capitol' achievement description.
  
• Fixed an error in the 'Mathematical' achievement description, stating it required more than 3 enemies, when it accepted 3.
  
• Fixed some slightly pedantic missing apostrophes in the 'A source of magical knowledge' and 'Healing hands' achievement descriptions.
  

[h3]Crafting:[/h3]

• Fixed crafting UI messages for persistent craft overlapping with headings.
  
• Moved craft gold cost indicator onto the button like other costs.
  

[h3]Interface:[/h3]

• Typing a character that isn't a letter or punctuation will no longer select wildcards. (This also fixes pressing item shortcuts selecting wildcards, and said wildcards being given invalid undisplayed number values instead of letters.)
  
• Fixed player health estimation not accounting for bleed weak.
  
• Fixed the game getting stuck in an infinite loop if you backspace during the submit animation.
  
• [h3]Animations:[/h3]
  
• Fixed characters without cast animations that use attack animations as a fallback not waiting for the animation to progress before doing the effect.
  
• Fixed occasional single frame animation stutters when a characters animation state is changed.
  

[h3]Items:[/h3]

• Fixed vowel movement spells not letting you submit with wildcarded submissions without the clouded glass eye charm.
  
• Fixed submissions involving the clouded glass eye charm ignoring keyboard input suggestions.
  
• Carbon copy now clears the word board after submitting.
  
• Fixed ironskin potion hover effect estimation always showing 8 regardless of fill level.
  
• Fixed the book of UWU not working with wildcards.
  
• Fixed the refresh button tooltip not respecting gold web charm derived items.
  
• Fixed a typo in the description of the gold web charm derived items.
  
• Non-word based spells now show the submission word on the cast selections screen.
  
• The copper retort now uses item crafting data rather than hardcoded data to decide what to do with potions.
  
• Fixed the black label courage potion setting enemies burn status to 10 instead of adding 10.
  
• Fixed damage estimations with curse of greed incorrectly implying it'll heal you when it wont.
  
• Fixed ligature tiles with no defined material that visually default to wood not being counted as wooden for effects, and scoring nothing except contributing to length multiplier.
  
• Fixed the gilded pommel not working.
  

[h3]Charm of explosions:[/h3]

• Fixed crashing the game on use.
  
• Fixed effect happening before use animation finishes.
  
• Fixed hurting enemies with immunity.
  
• Fixed a typo in the fail tooltip if you try to activate when the enemy has burn immunity.
  

[h3]4-heal spell:[/h3]

• Fixed triggering off 4 letter wildcarded inputs that could have matched but were specified by the player to be not-that.
  
• Fixed not allowing 4 of a ligature tile.
  
• Fixed the submit-4 bonus effects not working with wildcards.
  

[h3]Words:[/h3]

• Corrected the definition of dividivi and added it to the trees dictionary.
  
• Added wristbones to both the regular and bones dictionary.
  
• Added various spellings of leukaemia, leukemic, and crown to the bones dictionary.
  
• Added broiler, broilers, broilings, coaled, flamelike, flamy, sinter, sintered, sinters, sintering, and sinterings to the fire dictionary.
  

[h3]What happened?[/h3]
Okay, so the story: while V35 was briefly available on Steam, there was a bug where the game would immediately give you all but one achievements then crash. The why is kinda interesting, or at least I think it is; first what happened is the achievement sync function went through each achievement asked Steam if you already had it, the return value for which gives you two boolean values, one for "hello, yes you have reached API, and that is a real achievement", and a second for "yes, you have that achievement", due to a miscommunication between me and the documentation, I missed the memo that there were two return values, and interpreted "yes that is real" with "yes you have that", consequently having it try and give you all achievements. Try. Hence the all-but-one-then-crash. The second part of this was that the progress tracker function for the last achievement wasn't set up for being authoritatively told "give this achievement"; the function expected to be given an index number and to decide for itself if it should award it or not, but was instead given `true`, used that as a key in its data tracking table, and finally when the serializer came to save that, it crashed because something other than a number or string was used as a key. I could have said serializer gracefully handle that situation, but if that situation ever comes up then something has gone wrong and it really should throw an exception. Hence "Oops! All Achievements" followed by a crash.

Why didn't this come up in testing? Because the achievements hadn't been published at that time, so the return value on the get was a single false for "that's not a real thing". I was holding off on publishing them because I'd added them to the demo thinking I was in the main game, and I both wasn't sure if I could delete them after publishing, since not all of them are achievable on the demo, although you can get them on the main game then have it sync them back on the demo, and I didn't want to delete any before publishing because I wanted to see if there was an easy way to copy them to the main game. There wasn't.

[h3]Anyway, the actual changes:[/h3]

Achievements:

• Fixed a crash on the Steam version because the progress tracking function for the 'all quit quotes' achievement couldn't handle being told what to do.
  
• Fixed accidentally giving the player all achievements except the one for 'all quit quotes' on Steam.
  
• Added achievement backdating.

Items & crafting:

• Added grab/drop/gain sound effects to some leathery items.
  
• Added grab/drop/gain sound effects to the heavy tile bag items.
  
• Added character sprites for halfling, adventurer, woodsman, warrior, demonkin, assassin, and paladin wearing boots.
  
• Potion craft amounts now also show if only 1 non-full item is in the craft bar, instead of waiting for a valid craft of 2 or more items.
  
• Potion craft data is now part of item data rather than hard coded in the crafting UI.
  
• Split the items list document into multiple dynamically loaded documents.

Those last two are basically only important for modding support.

Minesweeper:
This has no real business being a part of the game, since I made it because I was bored and to torture test the button object code, but:

• Minesweeper now guarantees a 0 on first press.
  
• Improved the numbering visibility and icons on minesweeper.
  
• Added the ability to click numbers to select each adjacent unflagged tile.

Misc:

• Fixed the anomaly cutscene buzz sound effects potentially starting from an arbitrary pitch in the cycle.
  
• Fixed spell colour not actually getting applied to spell particle effects.
  
• Updated the bronze tile colour on the logo on the credits.
  
• Platform specific options are now greyed out when inappropriate.
  
• Added vapour and related words to the fire words dictionary, to match vapor.

Here is a MASSIVE update to the demo! The main thing I was tackling ended up being a involved in a bit of tangled central logic and I kept procrastinating on it and doing other things. That being reworking what happens with pressing the submit button specifically with regards to spells, which ended up involving how wildcards are handled, and turn phases, animation tracking, and a bunch more.

[h2]PATCH NOTES[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]

• Engine upgraded from LÖVE 11.4 to LÖVE 11.5. (Except for appimage, which had an export bug I couldn't handle in time).
  
• Added the option to configure the mean adventure length (Abridged: 3 enemies, Complete: 12, Extended: 24)
  
• Warrior unlock criteria changed from pressing continue on the postgame screen to making it to the post game screen after killing an enemy.
  
• Reworked the options screen into tabs.
  
• Changed the options screen quit button into a quit to main menu button.
  
• You can now get to the stats page from the minesweeper page by clicking the time and mine count buttons.
  
• Slight optimisation to legal move check.
  
• Shops where you can't sell now have a view inventory button.
  
• You are no longer prevented from using items before the first adventure.
  
• ! and number tiles now fall off the bottom of the board instead of disappearing.
  
• Did a cosmetic overhaul of the almanac and made the back buttons on its sub-pages pages more consistent.
  
• Dead enemies will now continue releasing status particles, except bleed, for a while after they died.
  
• Upcoming tile preview has been moved above the tileboard instead of below it.
  
• Dictionary page now has key functions, backspace; copy; paste, on press instead of release.
  
• Eulogising a character from the new-game menu now shows you the eulogy and any other callback screens before taking you to a new game.
  
• Added a quote before taking you into a game when starting a new game without eulogising a different character.
  
• Eulogy screens no longer have the 'current player' left corner health and money stats.
  
• Reworked player attack damage phases so things look less out of sequence.
  
• Added a UI so you can choose what and if to cast a spell as, if it would apply for multiple books.
  
• Added an option to skip the cast-as screen if it'd only show regular attack and one spell.
  
• Submitting a word now has it yeet off in the direction of the enemy instead of just pop out of existence.
  
• Reduced the maximum frame delay to 0.1 seconds.
  
• Added achievements.
  
• Added the option to hide in-game achievement notifications.
  
• Added a preparation screen to adventures.
  
• Added real tiles to the title screen logo.
  
• Added a credit to the title screen logo when it shows the correct game name.
  
• Added gear visualisations to character creation page.
  
• Added new skeleton names.
  
• Added the option to ignore the first tap when buying and using items with touch controls.
  
• Added a bunch of diacritic and other character support.
  
• Fixed a crash on the character select screen if an item selected as a boon was used in a persistent craft.
  
• Fixed a crash if you mouse over the empty slot during the item give animation.
  
• Fixed a crash when combining the voiceless rough stone charm with any item that can generate non-standard H tiles.
  
• It now gives gold borders if there's no defined "better" material.
  
• Fixed RPG tutorial button showing when the rest of the UI hides.
  
• Fixed the equipped UI if you had more slots than there were rows. (15+)
  
• This change also makes them no longer look stretched at some item counts.
  
• Fixed some icons on minesweeper.
  
• Fixed tile tooltips potentially getting stuck on board clear.
  
• Fixed the player overworld sprite swapping to the raft graphic when just near water.
  
• Fixed passives UI floating down the screen on narrower resolutions.
  
• Fixed boon and curse selections only getting saved if you back out of the character creator menu.
  
• Fixed enemy attack estimates persisting after they attack.
  
• Fixed arcade gold listing double the correct value on the player stats.
  
• Fixed classes with potion drink animations doing it with any item use.
  
• Fixed options button hiding on the main menu with the option to hide it in game.
  
• Fixed mouse press on the item almanac not halting flick-scroll velocity.
  
• Fixed setting the heart:bar ratio to 0 breaking the player screen and the stats screen.
  
• The Heart:bar slider now shows you a representation of the max number of hearts.
  
• Fixed health bar width calculations always assuming display was in hearts not a bar.

[h3]Crafting changes:[/h3]

• Added section headings to the crafting screen.
  
• Changed the example potions in the crafting tutorial.
  
• Fixed large health potions not being highlighted in crafting.
  
• Fixed the crafting screen showing 'no recipes' if you used up all recipes, left, and came back with more in the same session.
  
• Sealed potions are no longer barred from crafting, just from the first slot, along with the fragile potion.
  
• The crafting 'result' for consolidating potions now has a more indicative icon.
  
• Added fill and max fill level indicators to potion crafting.
  
• Fixed ironskin potions not being combinable.
  
• Fixed refreshing water bottles not being combinable.
  
• Hints changes:
  
• Fixed a crash if a hinted word wasn't in the main dictionary.
  
• Added support for hints involving 3 letter tiles.
  
• Hints now prioritise common 7 letter words if available.
  
• Using the hint button with no valid moves now gives you a warning instead of forcing a refresh.
  
• Wildcard & ligature changes:
  
• Fixed special material tiles affected by the lisp curse losing the ligature data and becoming 'th' tiles instead of thorn tiles.
  
• Burning ligatures now have a special tooltip explaining both of those things.
  
• Reworked how the game handles wildcards and ligatures when typing to feel more natural.
  
• Added an onscreen keyboard to pick the letter when selecting a wildcard without using a physical keyboard.
  
• Added a letter representation to wildcards with temp-defined letters.
  
• Wildcards now count for effects that previously excluded them.
  
• Basic wildcard tiles now better explain their points noncontributions.
  
• Refresh changes:
  
• Clarified language for 'refill' vs 'refresh' in item descriptions.
  
• Refresh button no longer naturally clears unselectable tiles, instead letting them fall to the bottom.
  
• Refresh now does the 'pop' animation like when exploding.

[h3]Item changes:[/h3]

• Blood is now stored like gold instead of as an item.
  
• Added a particle effect when draining blood from an enemy.
  
• Added a sound effect when gaining or dragging around some items.
  
• The bloodstained gold heart necklace now has a status icon instead of highlighting.
  
• Remove the word 'tiles' from the vowel movement item descriptions, since they care about letters and can be cast with AE and OE ligatures.
  
• The raven idol can now be unlocked by submitting RAVEN.
  
• Fixed the raven idol mentioning tiles when really it cares about letters.
  
• Fixed the blank locket not highlighting when you have a word with wildcards in.
  
• Changed the descriptions of numerous items that referenced excluding or accepting wildcards.
  
• The bronze bonsai now lists that the tiles are worth 25% more than wood.
  
• The voiceless rough stone charm is now more explicit about how much better scoring the tiles are.
  
• The tiles produced by the infinitives gauntlet (and components) are now effected by the bronze bonsai and curse of wood.
  
• Refreshing water now says 'cumulative', so people (hopefully) realise it stacks.
  
• Refreshing water now also makes the next refresh clear unselectable tiles.
  
• Using the crystal ball or insight potion with no valid moves no longer forces a refresh, and instead gives you a fail message.
  
• Changed the description of the potion of clueless wisdom such that it more accurately describes the effect.
  
• The foresight, eight-sight, dodeceyes rings, and cultist and mage passives now reveal expected enemies during adventure preparation.
  
• Fixed the werewolf medallion not correctly overwriting tiles that would have otherwise been bronzed wood from the bonsai.
  
• Clarified the language in the descriptions of the 4-of items, so it's clearer what they check for.
  
• Added icons to tiles showing the effect that created them, applies to:
  (Infinitives gauntlet and its components; Staff of the dragon and its components; Staff of the unicorn and its components; Werewolf dagger and its components; Wild trinket & blank locket; Jade idol & things it crafts into; Bloodstained gold heart necklace & things it crafts into; Monstrous jade idol; Targe; Serpentine dagger; Pyrite cookie; Vowel movement spells; Profane book)
  
• Added icons to tiles showing effect that modified them, applies to:
  (Amnesia; Gilded pommel & things it crafts into; Gold leaf potion; Cursed I-patch; Thorny lisp; Voiceless rough stone charm; Wild ruby & things it crafts into; Antiserum)

[h3]Definition changes:[/h3]

• Fixed instances of pre-escaped " characters also escaping the escape character in definitions.
  
• Fixed instances of unclosed