Dwelvers Beta v0.18.8.0 released - Improved fleeing and increased stability

Dear Dwelvers community,

This week I've fixed something I think many of you have been longing for. There have been a lot of comments on the suicidal Imps out there and that some of you want to slap them! Well, I feel for you! I noticed that instead of actually fleeing from battle they seemed to enjoy running straight into them.

[h2]Improved Fleeing[/h2]
So I sat down and tried to figure out what was actually wrong here and came up with the following.

• Imps could actually be called for help into battle (which is a big bug).
  
• When imps are fleeing they try to go straight to the Dark Mother room (meaning they could run straight through enemies wanting to get there).
  
• If the enemy is close to the location they are fleeing they flee to other rooms (still could flee straight through the enemies).
  
• If there are task like digging or transporting wounded they didn't care if there was enemies nearby or in their path.
  

So the improvements I've made is the following

• Imps have their own pathfinding when doing jobs, this pathfinding avoid enemies and is also used by scared creatures in general)
  
• Imps will not do a job that is close to an enemy or where the path to the job is blocked by an enemy.
  
• If the imps starts to flee it will use a pathfinding algorithm that seeks the safest location to flee to and at the same time avoid as many enemies as possible getting there.
  

The fleeing pathfinding algorithm to find the safest place is prioritized in the following order

1. Find a location that are out of sight from all nearby enemies.
   
2. Find a location that are as far away from the enemy that is chasing you as possible.
   
3. Find a location that is as close to the nearest player owned room as possible.
   
4. If all these criteria's are meet, then stay there until you are not afraid anymore.
   

So hopefully you will enjoy these smarter imps and if you'd like you can comment on the their new behavior here.

But I also know that big changes like this always brings some unexpected behavior, so please report any abnormality you may find here at the forum.

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Creatures getting stuck on surface
• Bug (18.7.0) - The next wave shows the party that is coming next, but in reality it shows the party that appeared the last time
• Bug (Beta 0.18.7.0): Skipping mission intro reveals entire map
• Bug (Beta 0.18.7.0): Wave timer stops when all portals are destroyed, but it's not greyed out and shows the wrong message
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Creature pathfinding on surface doesn't work too well
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Enemy arrow animation is...weird
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Creatures can't reach rally flag on surface of portal #3 in mission 3
• Bug (Beta 0.18.6.0): Very difficult to get into one particular impanzee room on Mission 8
• Bug or Feature? (Beta 0.18.7.0): Can't build roads along edge of the map
• Is it just me or is mission 6 exceptionally difficult early on compared to the previous ones?
• 18.0.5 - Enemies coming from waves will not try to find my dungeon again after destroying hostile objects in the vicinity
• Bug/Feature (Beta 0.18.7.0): Not enough coal in Mission 1
• Bug (Beta 0.18.6.0): Incorrect grammar in Achievements

Thank you all once again for playing and helping me make Dwelvers better than ever before!

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)