KeeperRL News

KeeperRL Alpha 34 is released! The update includes the addition of steeds, an overhaul of the Z-level system, and numerous quality-of-life improvements. Check out the patch notes below for more detailed information.

I’d like to thank everyone involved in crash testing this patch, sending bug reports and suggestions. Your help was invaluable!

If you would like to continue your saved game from Alpha 33, you can opt-in into the "Alpha 33 save compatibility" BETA branch under the game's properties in Library. Make sure to opt-out of the branch to go back to Alpha 34 when you're done!



[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

• New steeds mechanic, minions are automatically assigned steeds and mount them.
  
• Multiple stairs per level are allowed.
  
• Inter-level portals are allowed.
  
• Stairs can be removed.
  
• All Z-levels are aligned and stairs always lead straight up or down.
  
• Home base level has been made smaller in order to have the same size as all Z-levels.
  
• Simplified roof support mechanic that only requires ‘building interior’ to be designated.
  
• Automaton assembling now uses the same, simpler crafting logic as the morgue.
  
• All non-humanoids made from flesh can now be captured.
  
• Added a ‘resistant to capture’ trait to some bosses.
  
• Creatures won’t auto-equip infernite weapons without having fire resistance, player is warned when trying to equip.
  
• Animal pens now require an animal fence to be active.
  
• Wildlife respawns.
  

[h2]Content[/h2]

• Some villains and bosses receive their own special steeds.
  
• Some immigrants receive special attribute boosts related to riding steeds.
  
• Added ridable horses and warhorses to the white knight faction.
  
• Added hay piles for non-humanoids to eat at.
  
• Added an infinite carry capacity balsam to necromancer’s lab.
  
• Removed all beasts immigrants, must be captured in the wild now.
  
• Merge multi-weapon and extra arms balsams.
  
• New chicken and cow breeding techs.
  
• Added special enemies to some mountain tops.
  
• Added worship tech requirement to white knight priests.
  
• Gallows and beast cages moved to prison menu.
  
• Greenskins faction gets coffins to be able to recruit vampires.
  
• Djinn lamp moved to a new location.
  
• Leather equipment crafting no longer costs wood.
  
• Imps no longer have a speed buff.
  

[h2]UI[/h2]

• New menu for restricting equipment types for chosen minion groups.
  
• New moddable help system with images and links.
  
• Enlarging the minimap doesn’t block the rest of the UI.
  
• Item choice menu has an owner counter to improve clarity.
  
• Added a tooltip to the combat experience UI element.
  

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• Made possible to add new farm creatures.
  
• Added SameTribe creature predicate.
  
• Added Frequency predicate.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a retirement crash caused by a captured minion being tied to a phylactery.
  
• Disabling an activity will stop minion from doing it right now.
  
• It’s now impossible to set an activity that’s disabled.
  
• Enemies that are stunned or unable to move are not considered for danger warning or preventing the player from travelling.
  
• Master artisan’s bodyguards are fighters instead of civilians.
  
• Archwood bow crafting requires archery.
  
• Amulet of life saving is preferred to using the phylactery when killed by Death.
  
• Fixed retired dungeons search box.
  
• Unsecured prison tiles don’t increase prisoner quota.
  
• Fixed forge material tabs for automatons.
  
• Limited population increasing furniture can not be built over the limit.
  

The last post talked about some major gameplay changes coming in KeeperRL, but the upcoming Alpha 34 patch will also feature some nice, ordinary improvements to your everyday dungeon life.

[h2]Equipment restrictions[/h2]


A major annoyance experienced by probably every KeeperRL player was that equipment made for your front-line fighters would be grabbed by workers or low value minions, and you’d have to manually reassign everything. I’ve added a simple feature that should hopefully help with this, which is the option to restrict certain types of equipment for whole minion groups. So with a few clicks you’ll be able to stop all your zombies from equipping anything or tell your healers to only use wooden and leather stuff, and leave everything else to the fighters.

On a related note, I’ve also made AI not equip infernite weapons by default unless the creature has fire resistance. This is made in such a way that modders can set new, custom safeguards if their modded equipment can potentially hurt its owner.

[h2]Help system[/h2]


KeeperRL’s help tab has been a bit empty for a looong time, and I’ve finally decided to change this, especially that a number of mechanics in the game is routinely hard to understand for new players. I’ve created a simple and easy system to add pages that feature text, images and even links. I’ve used it to add a few short tutorials for things that people often ask about in the forums, and I’m planning to extend it with anything that is ever unclear. This is much easier than adding new tasks to the main tutorial, and also lets me keep it relatively short, which gets people more quickly in the game.

The added bonus is that the new help system is fully moddable, so modders can add their own tutorials or lore, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see entire mods just adding content to the help section. There is even an effort to port the wiki content to a mod. If you’d like to get involved in that, please get in touch with Soft Monster on discord.

[h2]Automaton crafting[/h2]


The Necromancer update featured a new, sleek UI for adding upgrades to crafted undead, and I realized that it mostly duplicates the automaton assembling system. Since the latter is rather complicated and cumbersome, I decided to remove it, and adapt the new crafting upgrades UI instead. The added bonus is that you can now easily schedule production of identical automatons en masse, which wasn’t possible before. As far as I can tell, all functionality has been replicated, except automaton paints, which I can add back in the future if there is popular demand (I’ve never used them personally).

[h2]Animal farming[/h2]


I’ve made some changes to pigsties to make them fully moddable, and added constructing animal fence as a requirement for them to operate. Using this opportunity, I’ve extended the farming mechanic to chickens and cows, which are new farming tiers used for increasing your max population. Not a huge change, but hey – this is not a farming simulator! At least not yet :).

An unofficial Alpha 34 build is out on the BETA branch. Check it out if you're an experienced player and want an early glimpse of all the new stuff!

Please post your feedback in the comments below.

If you are new to KeeperRL, it is strongly recommended that to stick to the official Alpha 33 patch for now, as this build is very unstable, and the tutorial doesn't work at the moment.

Please also note that until the patch is officially released, the save file format may change at any moment, and you saves may be lost. (although I'll do my best to avoid this).

To opt into the build, please go into the game's properties, BETA tab, and choose the "dev" branch.

When creating KeeperRL I took a lot of inspiration from Nethack, and one of my memories from playing this classic roguelike was riding a tamed dragon to victory. I think steeds are a necessary component of a rich medieval fantasy world, and they bring a lot both in terms realism as well as opportunities for interesting combat mechanics (as I found out when playing Nethack). So it was only a matter of time before they made it into KeeperRL.

Well, the time has come! At the basic level the implementation is simple, and steeds are represented graphically by drawing the steed and the rider sprites slightly overlapping. Not all combinations look as good as the necromancer riding a bone dragon, shown below, but I don’t want to dwell too much on looks as it’s the game mechanics that are important in KeeperRL.



The rider inherits all movement traits from their steed, which is necessary for us to be able to ride our dragons over lava! Other than being stuck under the rider, the steed makes full use of its AI and abilities, fighting enemies and casting spells as you move around.

When we look at steeds from a base management point of view, the space of possibilities opens up, and we need to consider such topics as obtaining steeds, assigning them to riders, and the rules of when riders should mount and dismount their steeds. I wanted to avoid burdening players with a lot micromanagement, so most of the decisions will happen automatically. At the minimum, you’ll simply to recruit some horses, wolves or bats, and you’ll see your minions in saddles on your next incursion or your imps riding bats to cross water bodies.



To make it easier to obtain steeds, the game now allows capturing most non-humanoid creatures (as long as they’re not made of fire or other elusive material). I recommend catching some bats or rabbits for your imps to ride! I’ve also added a few unique, high-value steeds that you’ll find if you explore your map a bit.

It’s not obvious to me when minions should dismount their steeds, as from a mechanical point of view there is no downside to riding them everywhere, even in their own quarters. To keep some realism, your fighters will always dismount when entering the base. But what if there is an attack, should they hop back on? Perhaps a better solution will emerge with some more playtesting and player feedback.

The base-building department of KeeperRL is also getting a big update, with the availability of building and digging upwards. Level topography becomes three-dimensional, and most of previous limitations are removed, for example you can now build multiple stairs per level and even inter-level portals! Judging from my own play sessions, base-building has become much more sandboxy, and I’ve personally played with such ideas as mountainside castles or a series of towers connected by portals.



To make these changes possible, I had to shrink the base map a bit and remove some content from the ground level. This is not a bad change since there is a lot of content now spread across z-levels anyway, so there was little reason to keep a lot of enemies and resource patches on level 0. Thanks to this change all z-levels can be aligned now and staircases lead straight down, instead of to the middle of the next level. It’s very possible that I’ll add a setting to use bigger base maps in the future, as it’s mostly an issue of RAM requirements.

I also simplified roof support mechanics a lot by removing the requirement of supporting walls. Now it’s enough to designate a building interior area, and the game will consider that area roofed for the sake of building furniture or adding another floor (let’s assume that there are tiny pillars holding the roof if no wall was added). Roof support was pretty confusing for new players, and with building “up” added, even I had often trouble with figuring out why some tiles aren’t roofed. I’m therefore very happy about this change.

The Alpha 34 update is getting close to being finished, and you can expect a testing build being available on Steam pretty soon. I’ll also write another blog post about some new quality-of-life and modding features that are coming along in this patch. 2022 is looking bright :).