Caves of Qud News

200.66

Live and drink, friends. If all goes well, you can expect Tomb of the Eaters to launch on the main branch next Friday (July 17th)!

Tomb-related notes:
Added two new cooking ingredients: crushed grave moss and compacted bone meal.
The mopango now have a signature dish.
You can now water ritual with Agyra.
Added cybernetic credit wedges to Omonporch and the Tomb.
Altered the behavior on the following item mods: colossal and padded.
Changed the names of the following item mods:

• 'colossal' to 'gigantic'
  
• 'hardened' to 'with electromagnetic shielding'
  
• 'co-processor' to 'with co-processor'
  
• 'normalizing' to 'nulling'
  

Changed the ANSI coloring and descriptions for several mods.
Added a distinctive tile to squares that are safe from the Bell of Rest.
Added particle text for when you acquire the tomb-tethered effect.
You may now find mopango pilgrms in the Stiltgrounds.
Gave Tam, Sixshrew, and Ezra a new sign tile.
The messaging for what industrial fans are blowing around is now less verbose.
Removed sultan sarcophagi and reliquaries from dynamic encounters.
Fixed a hagiographic typo.
Fixed several bugs around the [redacted] from [redacted].

General notes:
Added a new interaction menu command for companions, direct ability use, that allows you to forbid or permit your companions' use of their individual activated abilities.
Made high tier item mods more likely to appear on lower tier items.
Automove now ignores the hostility of dreadroots, young ivory, and lurking beth.
Overdosing on a blaze tonic no longer cools you down, and overdosing on hoarshrooms no longer warms you up.
Companions now heal while moving on the worldmap.
Chainguns are now heavy weapons.
Relics now have extra hit points.
The Barathrumites are now more forgiving of friendly fire during A Call to Arms.
Item-collecting arconauts and graverobbers no longer collect items when player-led or dominated.
The movement penalty from equipping heavy weapons now visibly alters your move speed and the weapon's description, rather than being an invisible modifier to action costs.
Pathfinding is now more willing to cross harmless liquids of wading depth (specifically, it'll try to go only one square out of its way to avoid them).
Some liquids pools now require you to confirm movement into them.
Some liquids now require you to confirm that you wish to drink them.
There is now an option that lets you turn off confirmation for both moving into and drinking dangerous liquids.
Cultist without bodies are less likely to become cult leaders.
Your turrets now allow you to deactivate and reactivate them regardless of your security clearance.
Hitting or firing at something with your missile weapon no longer makes it your target if it isn't hostile to you or if you already have a target.
Fix-It spray foam can now be applied to nearby objects.
Fix-It spray form now restores hit points to inanimate and inorganic objects.
Charging Strike now adds 1 to the maximum AV penalty that can be inflicted by Cleave.
Campfires, corpses, boulders, and furniture now block doors from closing.
Activation and deactivation messages now mention if an item in your possession is what's giving you clearance to perform that action.
Lase now gives a failure message when you try to use it and it's exhausted.
The priority of the Read action on books now depends on whether you have already read them.
Conveyor belts can no longer move force fields.
Status summary displays appended to the rules text of some items now appear in more places, too. Examples include "EMP", "unpowered", and "warming up".
Inventory actions are now (mostly) consistently alphabetized.
Displacer bracelets now only produce visual effects on visible creatures.
Equipment that uses multiple slots now prefers to use slots that are near each other.
Fixed a bug that made hoarshrooms fail to provide cold resistance.
Fixed a bug that broke a mechanism for inventory action hotkey resolution. This fixes a number of issues with duplicate inventory action hotkeys.
Fixed a bug that made temporal fugue clones leave ammo behind.
Fixed a bug that disabled Proselytize's cooldown and sometimes caused the effect to occur multiple times when using it via a Skillsoft implant.
Fixed a bug that made the names of some relics bleed pink.
Fixed a bug that prevented breathers from breathing.
Fixed an issue that caused some double-slot equipment to use only one slot.
Fixed some minor issues in goatfolk hero generation.
Fixed a bug that made Fasting Way and Mind Over Body cause different thirst rate modifiers than what appears in their descriptions.
Fixed some issues in the messages generated by drinking mixed liquids.
Fixed some bugs with phasing.
Fixed some issues with doubled-up input on the stage screen when the prerelease input manager is enabled.
Fixed some intermittent thread-safety bugs with text processing.
[modding] Normalized the parameter name for number of penetrations to "Penetrations" across several combat messages.

200.65

Tomb-related notes:

• Polished and bugfixed [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted].
  
• Changed the Bell of Rest timer from 200 to 300 rounds.
  
• Gave the Life and Death Gates descriptions and much more HP.
  
• Tweaked the crypt reliquary loot tables.
  
• Reduced crypt ferret DV.
  
• Added more hagiographs.
  

General notes:

• Added a new command to attack the nearest hostile target in melee (Shift-A by default). If there are any hostiles adjacent to you, this command attacks the one that appears easiest to kill. Otherwise, it pathfinds one step toward the easiest-appearing visible hostile.
  
• Equipped items and items in your inventory no longer take on your temperature directly.
  
• Ashes are now categorized as corpses.
  
• Factory arms now respect phase and flight.
  
• Pulse field magnets ripping equipment off your body is now messaged via a popup.
  
• The menu for entering a local map from the worldmap was reworked for clarity.
  
• Hitting escape when you're asked for a character name during character creation now returns you to the character summary screen.
  
• Added caves music to trembling dunes underground.
  
• Fixed a bug that made reloading multiple magazine-loaded firearms behave strangely.
  
• Fixed a bug that set Face as goatfolk's primary attack limb.
  
• Fixed some cases where you would attempt to enter an occupied tile when entering a local map from the world map.
  
• Fixed music not playing properly after loading a game.
  
• Fixed an error when generating linear cannon relics.
  
• Fixed some (but not all) issues with world seeds.
  
• Fixed the background color of the trash sprite.
  
• [modding] Die rolls can now be specified as follows: "1d6[foo]", "2d4[bar]", etc, where 'foo' and 'bar' are arbitrary names of randomizer channels. The die roll will source its pseudorandomness from the channel specified; this produces a consistent series of results for a given channel name and world seed.
  
• [modding] Conversation choices now support fields IfHavePart and IfNotHavePart that make the choice conditional on whether the specified part is present on the player.
  
• [modding] The tag or string property ForceAnimatable now overrides an object animation's current walls-and-tables-only check.
  
• [modding] Bodies.xml now supports a BodyType attribute on anatomy elements that allows override of the body part type to use for the central body (normally "Body").
  
• [modding] Added an AfterGameLoaded event.
  
• [modding] Added default behavior for when a modded quest doesn't specify a hagiograph.
  

200.57

Tomb notes:

• Finished the bugfixing and polish work in the crypts.
  
• Added a new liquid: brain brine.
  
• [redacted]
  

General notes:

• Occasionally, upon gaining a level, completing a quest, performing the water ritual, or defeating a legendary foe, you may now become inspired to name one of your items.
  
• The swimming confirmation message is now toggleable via the option in the Prompts menu.
  
• Reputation change messages now include your new reputation and inform you if the faction's overall attitude toward you has changed.
  
• The reputation changes incurred by violating the water ritual are now displayed in a single message.
  
• You can now add notes to items in your inventory and equipment. The notes appear in the item's short description.
  
• A given attack can now only have a block attempt performed with one shield. The limit on the number of attacks per turn that can be blocked is now per-shield; if you have multiple shields equipped, you will attempt to block a given attack using the best shield that you can presently use.
  
• You can no longer shield block while frozen, paralyzed, burrowed, or otherwise unable to freely move your limbs.
  
• Baetyls no longer care about differently-colored display names in the items they request.
  
• The fill action on liquid containers can now be used on any container that is not full, not just empty containers.
  
• You now prefer to autouse liquids that aren't stored in functional containers like liquid-cooled firearms.
  
• Becoming famished now interrupts autoact.
  
• Creatures that are fleeing no longer count as visible hostiles.
  
• Creatures that try to keep their distance from the player now only count as visible hostiles at close range.
  
• Grenades are no longer destroyed before hitting the ground when thrown into a tile with acid gas.
  
• Flashbang grenades now affect a circular area instead of a square.
  
• Glowmoths can now use their gaze attack at point blank range.
  
• Baetyls no longer care about taking small amounts of damage, but they become... significantly irritated... by larger amounts.
  
• Only creatures who are able to engage in combat and can move their limbs now count for the purposes of preventing charge and causing missile weapons to fire wildly.
  
• Missile weapons that use spray fire ammo (shotguns, pumps, point-defense drones, and flamethrowers) now indicate in their short description that they aren't subject to firing wildly when multiple enemies are adjacent.
  
• Bows now display their loaded arrows' penetration and damage value.
  
• Made weapon class display, strength cap, and accuracy information the color of rules text.
  
• Creatures now go prone if they can when they fall asleep for any reason, not just when they voluntarily go to sleep on a bed.
  
• Equipped objects now match the temperature of the object they're equipped on.
  
• Made most organic items leave behind ashes when they burn up.
  
• Ashes no longer catch fire.
  
• Village outskirts now properly have above and belowground features.
  
• When you run out of water while traveling, you now receive a message and a chance to stop rather than only getting notified when you become life-threateningly dehydrated.
  
• The Bleeding effect is now described differently for creatures that do not have blood.
  
• The environmental item picker now refreshes when a taken action changes the list of items displayed, such as when an item is broken off a stack.
  
• The visual effects for being frozen, slowed due to temperature, or on fire now have higher visual priority.
  
• The Tinkering screen bit locker now displays the glyph for each bit type of bit next to its name.
  
• The Spindle negotiation menu now uses alphabetic hotkeys rather than numeric in order to prevent numpad-based selection accidents.
  
• Objects that are cloned while phased now properly assume their normal phase.
  
• Relics and extradimensional missile weapons now occasionally generate as armor-negating.
  
• Graftek-granted stat changes now count as permanent in all the usual ways.
  
• Added damage and penetration displays to thrown weapons.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some non-blood-having creatures to bleed blood.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused simply targeting a creature to make it hostile.
  
• Fixed some bugs that caused several sensory effects to fail to detect walk-walking creatures.
  
• Fixed linear cannon penetration display.
  
• Fixed some issues that caused you to retain your marked target after using a special shot.
  
• Fixed a bug where pouring into a container you are emptying took the current contents of the container into account even though they were being emptied.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused missile weapons to display a damage message even when the damage was prevented.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused autoexplore to fail to seek out the secret-bearing mural in the village of Ezra.
  
• Fixed a bug with phase web animation.
  
• Prevented some rare corner cases where objects were destroyed multiple times.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the 'show effects' menu to improperly linger beneath other windows when opened and closed.
  
• [modding] Effects may now whitelist themselves for most deep copy operations by overriding allowCopyOnNoEffectDeepCopy and returning true.
  

200.55

Tomb-related notes:

• Did some bugfixing, polish, and performance work on the crypt levels of the Tomb of the Eaters. More to come next week.

General notes:

• Added some new recoilers.
  
• Added a new command to autoattack your current target in melee: Ctrl-A by default. When autoattacking, you pathfind toward your target if necessary and attempt to melee attack them. All the conditions that interrupt automove also interrupt autoattack, with one exception: if your target is the only hostile in sight, their presence does not interrupt you.
  
• Added a new "Ignored Keys" keybind. Keys bound to this entry are completely ignored. (This is useful for reserving a push-to-talk or screenshot key, for example.)
  
• Renamed human child to woodsprog.
  
• Linear cannons can be tinkered now.
  
• You can now path through locked doors when you're carrying the appropriate key card.
  
• You now get a message when you try to swap places with a non-hostile creature but can't for some reason.
  
• Losing sight of your target now interrupts automove.
  
• NPCs are now less avoidant of slime pools.
  
• Changed the way heirlooms gifted during the Spindle negotiation are generated and made their types respect the text in Heirlooms of Qud.
  
• Elevator and door switches can now be flipped via the interaction menu.
  
• Space-time vortices and rifts are no longer be pushed by forces like explosions.
  
• The AV bestowed by the Quills mutation now returns to the max value when your quills regenerate.
  
• You can now properly access help from the main menu with '?'.
  
• Visiting the waterlogged tunnel no longer counts as visiting Red Rock.
  
• If you are stuck and adjacent to a deep pool, you only receive the swimming confirmation message the first time you try to move into the pool.
  
• Fixed a bad interaction when the snapjaw who wields Stopsvalinn generates as a villager.
  
• Numpad '/' now shows and hides the prerelease stage message log.
  
• Tables no longer change their tile when you remove and return the same object.
  
• Removed the small per turn time delay while asleep.
  
• Fixed several issues that caused gas-generating creatures to not be immune to their own gas.
  
• Fixed some rare situations where the player didn't get a turn immediately following a game load.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused illuminated books to not have their display names altered.
  
• Fixed a bug in the way graffiti displayed on tombstones.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused reloading a linear cannon to always reload the energy cell instead of its slugs.
  
• Fixed a rare exception in the Multihorns mutation that prevented saved games from loading.
  
• Fixed a typo in soul curd's description.
  
• [modding] Enabled anonymous access to workshop content.
  
• [modding] The starting location selector is no longer shown if a genotype or subtype has a defined starting location.

200.52

Tomb-related notes

• We made several gameplay and polish enhancements to the cherubim.
  
  • Cherubim are now better protected against missile weapons and freezing attacks.
    
  • Revamped cherubim stats and natural weapons.
    
  • Learned cherubim now properly discharge clockwork beetles.
    
  • Added descriptions.
    
  • Added cherubim to dynamic encounters.
    
  • Gave cherubim appropriate ASCII glyphs.
    
• Gave appropriate names and descriptions to carved stone and gilded marble from the various periods of the sultanate.
  
• Added descriptions for mural endcaps and mural medians.
  

General notes:

• We made some changes to sparking baetyl rewards.
  
  • Item rewards are now much better.
    
  • Item rewards now scale with both the baetyl's zone difficulty and the tier of the demanded item.
    
  • Reduced the maximum number of demanded items to six.
    
• Baetyls asking for Templar phylacteries no longer ask for the phylacteries of specific people.
  
• Trees are now stronger and tougher.
  
• Attacking into a frozen zone now thaws it. This is most relevant when attacking up or down stairs.
  
• Removing energy cells from owned items now angers their owners.
  
• You can now pour into equipped liquid containers.
  
• When selecting a container to pour a liquid into, containers that already contain that liquid now appear at the top of the list.
  
• Smart use on environmental liquid pools and liquid containers now opens the interaction menu rather than going directly into the pour-into-container action.
  
• Cleaning yourself using liquid from an owned vessel now potentially angers its owners.
  
• Gave the following objects better ASCII glyphs: sultan shrines, Asphodel, Asphodelytes, walkways, various vessels, and yawning gap.
  
• Made some improvements to creature pathfinding.
  
• Rebekah's tombstone no longer shows up in dynamic contexts.
  
• Fix-It spray foam and other applicators, when unidentified, no longer reveal themselves when you back out of an interaction.
  
• The water ritual can no longer be used to obtain unlimited cybernetics credit wedges.
  
• Shank now respects phase and flight.
  
• Sheba Hagadias will no longer lay mines if a miner or deploy turrets if a turret tinker.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some village tinkers to not be members of their village's faction.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused companions to take steps in the wrong order when trying to follow their leader.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused one-shotting a creature to fail to trigger hostility in the creature's nearby allies.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused camel bladders to fail to negate the weight of the liquid in them when worn.
  
• Fixed some bugs in water ritual option coloring.
  
• Fixed a bug in tiling of liquid pools as they change size.
  
• Fixed a bug that made snapjaw forts, starapple farms, and pig farms not generate properly in village outskirts.