Project: Gorgon News

With this update, the Halloween event comes to an end. But there is a silver lining: it's cranberry season! Also look for special seasonal recipes (they can drop as loot scrolls) throughout the month.

There are also some balance changes in this update, mainly for Shield, Staff, and Cow. You can read on to get an understanding of the longer-term goals, or just jump to the sections on each specific skill.

The changes will require players to adapt a bit -- especially high-level players -- so for the next few weeks all the affected skills are much cheaper to Transmute. This will help you convert your equipment as needed. Remember to report any bugs you find with the in-game bug report button, and thank you for helping us make Project: Gorgon!


One of our near-term goals for combat is to make high-level fights last longer (both solo fights and group fights). Combat will be more strategic and frankly more fun when each fight lasts a few seconds longer to allow for more decisions. One of the problems with this plan is that currently, most players would die if they had to stand toe-to-toe with monsters for much longer than they do now. So in the future, we'll be experimenting with some new game mechanics to increase player survivability.

Before we make big systemic changes, though, we need to review the existing tools for survivability, namely skills, abilities, and treasure. So in this update, we aren't doing anything to actually lengthen combat yet. We're doing a review of the "tankiest" skills in the game: Staff, Shield, and Cow. (We'll look at other skills with defensive aspects, such as Unarmed, Ice Magic, and Deer, in a separate update.)

Some of Staff and Shield's abilities have been changed pretty dramatically to help support longer combats. We'll use Staff's ability "Blocking Stance" as an example of how we've changed things. This ability could be explained as: "for 10 seconds out of every 30, you don't take physical damage (slashing/crushing/piercing)". This ability was jaw-droppingly powerful... a third of the time. The rest of the time you just had to wait (or die). This ability could be really fun, but it wasn't a great fit for our plan to lengthen combat duration. And due to its extreme potency, there wasn't much for the ability's treasure to do: it was already so powerful that treasure couldn't go much further. Hence boring loot.

The new version of Blocking Stance has flat physical mitigation that lasts 30 seconds (meaning you can sustain it indefinitely), and the treasure effects are more directly beneficial to survival. We've tried to keep some of the ability's original "use it at just the right moment" flavor too by keeping 3 seconds of invincibility (instead of a whopping 10).

Two other combat abilities were similarly changed to work better in longer fights with less downtime: shield's Elemental Ward and staff's Deflective Spin. Beyond that, we've done a bunch of balance tuning-up for all three skills, buffing a bunch of treasure (and nerfing a few), adding some new treasure effects, and for the Shield skill, trying out a new combat ability. Some of these changes are a little experimental, in the "hmm, maybe this will be interesting, let's find out" kind of way. So we'll be awaiting your feedback.

These changes will definitely mess up high-level players' builds. So to help you get back up to speed, we've dramatically reduced the Transmutation costs for these skills for the next few weeks. Visit an Item Workbench to see the effective costs for your items.



Shield is intended to be a super-versatile survival skill, able to pair with all sorts of other skills to help keep you alive. One notable weakness was that it wasn't great at tanking Elite bosses, so we've added some new options to help you build for that job.

Bulwark Mode:
The ability "Vigorous Defense" has been completely replaced. New ability: "Bulwark Mode". This toggled ability reduces your damage output and sprint speed in exchange for damage mitigation. The highest version (at level 75) reduces your damage output by 50%, reduces sprint by 15%, and reduces all direct damage you take by 27%. It can be turned on and off at will with no Power cost.

• If you already knew Vigorous Defense, you now automatically know Bulwark Mode instead.
  
• Treasure change: "Vigorous Defense Restores +48 Power" => "While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 13 Armor per second"
  
• Treasure change: "Vigorous Defense boosts your Sprint Speed +7 for 15 seconds" => "While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 10 Power per second"
  
• New treasure (Legs): While Bulwark Mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 17 Health to you
  
• New treasure (Head, Main Hand): "While Bulwark Mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 26 Armor to you"
  

Elemental Ward:

• Changed the Elemental Ward ability to: "Reduces elemental damage (Fire, Cold, or Electricity) by 35 for 30 seconds, and for the first 3 seconds, provides complete immunity to elemental damage." [This is the level 75 version.]
  
• Treasure change: "Elemental Ward mitigates 45% of all Poison damage for 10 seconds" => "Elemental Ward mitigates +54 Darkness damage for 30 seconds"
  
• Treasure change: "Elemental Ward mitigates 45% of all Trauma damage for 10 seconds" => "Elemental Ward mitigates +55 direct Trauma damage for 30 seconds"
  
• New treasure (Chest, Ring): "Elemental Ward mitigates +32 elemental damage (Fire, Cold, and Electricity) for 30 seconds"
  

Other Treasure Changes

• "All types of shield Bash attacks restore 16 armor" => 21 armor
  
• "Stunning Bash deals X Trauma damage over 12 seconds" did not apply to Emergency Bash, but now does
  
• "Finish It Restores 62 Health" => this treasure effect was bugged and did not work. Also, healing changed from 62 to 68 (@ level 80)
  
• "Disrupting Bash deals +40% damage and taunts +460" => "Disrupting Bash causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage"
  
• "Infuriating Bash generates no Rage and lowers Rage by 725" => "Infuriating Bash reduces the Power cost of melee attacks by 10 for 6 seconds"
  
• "Direct Acid Mitigation +24 and Indirect Acid Mitigation +4 while Shield skill active" => "Max Armor +36, Direct Acid Mitigation +24, and Indirect Acid Mitigation +4 while Shield skill active"
  
• New treasure effect (Feet): "All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all slashing, crushing, and piercing damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times
  
• New treasure effect (Hands): "All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all direct nature, darkness, demonic, and acid damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times
  
• New treasure effect (Chest, Legs): "Fight Me You Fools deals +18% damage and restores 96 Health over 8 seconds"
  

Staff is another extremely defense-oriented combat skill. It was already pretty good at that role, although its Elite-tanking options were a little limited. As explained above, the skill's two signature defensive abilities, Deflective Spin and Blocking Stance, were heavily revised. This will take some getting used to, but will hopefully end up being more fun in the long run. (With good gear, of course! These abilities now benefit more directly from their treasure.)

Deflective Spin

• Ability Change: At max level the protective buff changed to 13% universal mitigation for 15 seconds. Base damage increased.
  
• Treasure: "Deflective Spin heals 108 Health over 60 seconds" => 270 health over 15 seconds
  
• Treasure: "If you have less than half of your Health remaining, Deflective Spin heals you for 31% of your Max Health" => "Deflective Spin restores 66 Health instantly and provides +50 Mitigation from all Elite attacks for 15 seconds"
  
• Treasure: "Deflective Spin restores 54 Power after a 20 second delay" => "Deflective Spin costs -9 Power and mitigates +11 damage from each attack for 15 seconds"
  
• New Treasure: (Ring): "Deflective Spin gives you +18% Projectile Evasion for 15 seconds"
  

Blocking Stance

• Ability changes: "For the next 10 seconds, you suffer no physical damage" => "Reduces any physical damage you suffer for 30 seconds, and for the first 3 seconds you are immune to physical damage" (base ability @ level 77 mitigates +34 slashing/crushing/piercing from regular enemies, and +68 more against Elites). Ability cost increased.
  
• Changed Treasure: "Blocking Stance restores 50 Power to you" => "Blocking Stance costs -16 Power and mitigates +10% of physical damage from Elite attackers for 30 seconds"
  
• Changed Treasure: "For 30 seconds after using Blocking Stance, your Mentalism Base Damage is +14.5%" => "Blocking Stance boosts your Psychic Damage +6.75% for 30 seconds"
  
• Changed Treasure: "Blocking Stance boosts your Direct Cold Damage +19.5% for 30 seconds" => "Blocking Stance boosts your Cold Damage +6.75% for 30 seconds"
  
• New Treasure: (Head, Necklace): "Blocking Stance mitigates +12 physical damage (Crushing, Slashing, Piercing) for 30 seconds. Against Elite enemies, mitigates +24 more."
  

Other

• Lunge: ability's internal "power category" was increased, increasing Power cost, base damage, and potency of treasure effects. (All Lunge treasure was affected at least slightly; for brevity only significant changes are listed here)
  
• "Lunge hits all enemies within 5 meters, but deals -8% damage and reuse timer is +2 seconds" => "Lunge hits all enemies within 7 meters and deals +175 damage to health and armor, but reuse timer is +2 seconds"
  
• "Lunge deals +121 armor damage" => "Lunge causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage"
  
• "Double Hit costs -16 Power and makes the target 10% more vulnerable to Slashing for 15 seconds" => "Double Hit costs -16 Power and makes the target 10% more vulnerable to direct Fire and Cold damage for 8 seconds"
  
• Smash, Double Hit, and Heed The Stick Damage +69 => +125
  
• "Pin boosts Core Attack and Nice Attack Damage +68 for 7 seconds" => +98 for 15 seconds
  
• "Phoenix Strike deals +36% Fire damage to melee attackers, and ability reuse timer is -7 seconds" => +36 becomes +41%
  
• Headcracker and Strategic Thrust deal +16% damage and reuse timer is -1 second => +22%
  
• "Lunge deals +39% damage to health and armor" => +43%
  

No huge changes here, but some new treasure. Many of these are mix-and-match tools for tanking high-level Elite enemies. Since Cow is a true "tank" skill, properly prepared Cow players should obviously be able to tank Elite monsters... but we also recognize that not all cattle dream of leading a herd into battle. So we've tried to combine the new Elite-specific buffs with buffs that are useful for solo play.

For technical reasons (to avoid "breaking" any existing equipment), some treasure effects had to be shuffled around a bit, e.g. treasure that lowered an ability's Power cost may have switched to a different slot. So your existing equipment may have unexpected buffs. (But at least they won't be marked as Legacy Items.) Remember that Cow gear can be Transmuted cheaply for the next few weeks!

• "Chew Cud increases your mitigation versus all attacks by Elites +14 for 10 seconds" => now +34. Also, this treasure effect was bugged and did not work before
  
• "Tough Hoof has a 66% chance to deal +86% damage and taunt +800" => "Tough Hoof costs -26 Power and mitigates +11% of all Elite attacks for 8 seconds"
  
• "Tough Hoof deals +51% damage and taunts +800" => "Tough Hoof deals +51% damage and reuse timer is -1 second"
  
• "Cow's Bash restores 33 Power to you" => "Cow's Bash deals +80 damage, taunts +800, and reuse timer is -1 second"
  
• "Indirect Nature Damage +40% when skill Cow active" => "Indirect Nature Damage and Indirect Trauma Damage +40% when skill Cow active"
  
• "Deadly Emission Deals +255 Nature damage over 10 seconds and Taunts +400" => 255 to 415
  
• "You regenerate +20 Health per tick (every 5 seconds, in and out of combat) while Cow skill active" => "While Cow skill is active, you regenerate +32 Health every 5 seconds and resist +16 damage from Elite Crushing, Slashing, or Piercing attacks"
  
• New treasure (Feet): "Cow's Bash costs -33 Power"
  
• New treasure (off-hand): "Deadly Emission Deals +170 Nature damage over 10 seconds and reduces targets' next attack by 35%"
  
• New treasure (ring): "Clobbering Hoof deals +35% damage and if target is Elite, reduces their attack damage 10% for 10 seconds"
  
• New treasure (chest, hands): "Max Power +31 and Vulnerability to Elite Damage -8% when Cow skill active"
  
• New treasure (hands): "Tough Hoof deals +132 damage and taunts +950"
  

Rabbit isn't a tanky skill, so this is a bit off-focus for the rest of the skill changes, but there's a rabbit-themed live event coming up soon, so we've made some changes to make high-level builds a little more fun and impressive, whether combined with Unarmed or Ice Magic.

• Ability change: Carrot Power: Base chance to consume carrot changed from 33% to 10%. Tweaked wording to make it clear that Rabbit Treats act as Carrots for purposes of this ability
  
• Ability change: "Bun Fu Blitz" is renamed "Bun Fu Kick", and is now considered a kick for purposes of effects that boost kicks. ("Thump" also continues to be a kick.)
  
• Treasure change: "Bun-Fu Blast deals Cold damage (instead of Psychic). Reuse timer is -1 second and damage is +68" => "Bun-Fu Blast deals Cold damage (instead of Psychic), and Ice Magic attacks boost the damage of Bun-Fu Blast by 16% for 60 seconds (max 20 stacks)"
  
• Treasure change: "Carrot Power restores 144 Health after a 12 second delay" => 240 health after an 8-second delay
  
• Treasure change: "Carrot Power boosts the damage from all kicks +124 for 10 seconds" => +192
  
• Treasure change: "Bun-Fu Strike deals Cold damage (instead of Crushing) and deals +112 damage " => additional feature: "... and hastens the reset timer of Bun Fu Blast by 2 seconds"
  
• New treasure effect (Chest): "Love Tap boosts your Melee Evasion +11.5% for 15 seconds"
  
• Rabbit gear can be transmuted cheaply at Item Workbenches for the next few weeks
  

Just bug-fixes this time around. The fox's treasure tables aren't completely full yet, so there's room to add more special treasure effects, but we haven't decided what yet. (Perhaps we'll add tools to synergize with another skill... what skill pairing would you like to see?)

• treasure that boosted Paradox Trot only lasted for a maximum of 20 seconds (not 60 as intended)
  
• treasure that boosted the stats of summoned Trick Foxes did not work
  
• "Blur Step provides +N% Burst Evasion for 20 seconds, and Paradox Trot boosts Sprint Speed +1": this treasure effect is available on two item slots, but having both did not stack
  
• "Blur Step provides +N% Ranged Evasion for 20 seconds, and Paradox Trot boosts Sprint Speed +1": this treasure effect is available on two item slots, but having both did not stack
  

These crafted garments triggered too often and have been toned down. (This is actually a reversion of a buff from a while back. Nimble gear isn't intended for tanking, and the shorter reset times ended up being too good.)

• Crafted Nimble Coat: Every 15 (or 12) seconds, automatically Evade the first Melee attack aimed at you => triggers every 30 (or 25) seconds
  
• Crafted Nimble Pants: Every 15 (or 12) seconds, automatically Evade the first Ranged attack aimed at you => triggers every 30 (or 25) seconds
  
• Crafted Nimble Shoes: Every 15 (or 12) seconds, automatically Evade the first Burst attack aimed at you => triggers every 30 (or 25) seconds
  

Certain abilities prevent a monster from shouting for help. For instance, if you mesmerize a monster, it does not call for backup. A handful of crowd-control abilities have this feature, and a few surprising abilities have it also. We've been considering how this feature might evolve in the future, and suddenly realized this info wasn't actually visible in-game anywhere. So it is now!

The following abilities now indicate that they prevent the target from shouting for help. Remember that this is only a display change; these abilities already did this.

• Unarmed: Front Kick, Barrage, Hip Throw, Claw Barrage
  
• Fire Magic: Defensive Burst
  
• Psychology: Tell Me About Your Mother, Cause Terror
  
• Pig: Pig Punt, Squeal, Harmlessness
  
• Deer: Deer Bash
  
• Cow: Cow Bash
  
• Staff: Redirect, Suppress
  
• Necromancy: Deathgaze
  
• Archery: Snare Arrow
  
• Spider: Gripjaw, Terrifying Bite
  
• Shield: Stunning Bash, Emergency Bash
  
• Hammer: Leaping Smash
  
• Ice Magic: Freeze Solid
  
• Bard: Entrancing Lullaby
  
• Rabbit: Play Dead, Love Tap
  
• Miscellaneous: Horrifying Screech, Visage of Kajich
  

A few other abilities gain this power from treasure effects, namely Werewolf's Sanguine Fangs and Knife Fighting's Marking Cut. In those cases, it was already displayed.

• Players receive new bonus levels in Cooking by reaching level 70 in Gardening, level 49 in Knife Fighting, level 30 in Shamanic Infusion, level 35 in Alchemy, and level 60 in Skinning
  
• Tweaked cow porkpie hat visual positioning
  
• Removed physics collision from some deployable candles
  
• Fixed significant framerate drop in Serbule and Serbule Hills during certain hours of the morning, when the camera was facing certain directions. (The "fix" involves making the sun not cast shadows too early in the morning. It's not exactly an elegant or permanent fix, but it'll do for now. The "real" fix will probably involve replacing the sky system again.)
  
• The Ilmari Desert has undergone graphical renovation. This is mainly a test of a new system for terrain decoration. Theoretically, you should have about the same framerate as before, even though the desert now has thousands more decorative elements (mainly boulders, but also clumps of trees, grass, etc.)
  
• Fixed bug with certain Graphics Settings sliders that incorrectly rounded a fractional number to the nearest whole number, even if that made the value invalid. E.g. when a slider was supposed to have a minimum value of 0.1, it got rounded to 0.0. (You can still type in "invalid" numbers manually, but they will be capped to the intended min/max the next time you move the slider.)
  

The Halloween event is live! This year it's much longer than before. If you encounter problems with any of the new quests, please remember to bug-report them.

• We've modestly increased the Power cost of most abilities. (We'll use level 80 abilities as examples since the changes are most noticeable at high level.) A typical high-damage level 80 ability costs 4 or 5 more Power than before. E.g. Barrage 7's cost changed from 48 to 52. A few abilities (ones in the highest "Power tier", an internal measurement) were increased more dramatically. Most dramatic is probably "You Were Adopted 6": its cost changed from 90 to 110 Power.
  
• We've revised how quickly bosses respawn. Most bosses now respawn 5-10 minutes faster, with an average speed up of seven minutes. The exact change depends on how complex the boss's scripting is, and how easily we could revise things to be faster (without having to re-engineer the whole encounter). If you run into problems with this new respawn rate, please report them. (An example problem is if the boss's sidekicks respawn much faster or slower than the boss themselves.) NOTE: one of the ways we sped up boss respawns is by hastening the rate at which their corpses decay. Most boss corpses decay 2 minutes sooner than before.

• Added lighting to Hogan's Basement
  
• Added lighting to Goblin Dungeon
  
• Treasure bug fix: giant bat Sonic Burst combo effect accidentally also boosted Giant Bat Base Damage for 10 seconds (which comes from a different combo)
  
• Tweaked cow eyeballs
  
• Nishika in Rahu has new hangouts that can teach you how to turn mountains of cheap meat into small amounts of low-quality animal fat
  
• Tweaked spawn density in Hogan's Basement
  
• Slightly tweaked game performance in some dungeons

Bug fixes/tweaks:

• Fixed a bug that disabled several framerate optimizations (such as Culling Distance Multiplier)
  
• Fixed label problem on candles: they said they lasted 45 minutes, but actually last 90
  
• Fixed bug that let you place 2 buffing candles at once (this is mainly a sanity-check mechanism since players can only have one candle buff at a time anyway)
  
• Fixed bug that let you place 6 decorative tealights instead of 5 (which was wildly exploitable)
  
• Ultashk now demands Filthy Animal Fat instead of Candle Stumps to get past his gate
  
• Some rats had gained the ability to fly; this is fixed
  
• Winter Court Frostmakers didn't advance quests requiring you to kill Winter Court troops in the Fae Realm
  
• Made Fae Ensigns' consoles opaque for purposes of line-of-sight checks (which also means they can't shoot through them)
  
• Some Fae Ensigns were unable to hear calls for help
  
• Fae Ensigns are more susceptible to mesmerisation
  
• Coldfeather is a bit tougher
  
• Captain Evergloam is a bit tougher
  
• Fixed some more treasure buffs that kept working after switching combat skills
  
• Fixed coloring on named grimalkin "Hissy" and "Chopjaw" (this is a temp patch until animal genetics are enabled, at which point each instance of these creatures will have a slightly different color chosen by their genetics; for now their coloration is always max-intensity)
  
• Improved the new "Alarmer" behavior, which is used by Captain Evergloam (and entourage), as well as by security aboard the Wintertide. (Creatures with this behavior will have "Alarmer" listed in their portrait tags when selected.) Previously, Alarmers called for help whenever they used an ability. Now, they call for help as soon as they enter combat and every 4 seconds during combat, except when stunned, mezzed, or feared. (Note that this change makes Fearing an Alarmer creature very dangerous: they won't actually shout for help while fleeing, but they will shout as soon as they return to normal combat. So watch out for that.)
  
• Changed which animals can drop animal fat. (The intent is that mammalian-type animals will drop fat as an organ.) Some creatures such as bees and dinosaurs were dropping fat, and no longer are. Other creatures such as fae bears and entourage panthers did not drop fat, and now do. A few creatures have changed what type of fat they drop. (The type of fat is based on the level and the general role of the creature; meat animals such as cows, goats, and deer will have the best fat drops for their level.)
  

The main feature of this update doesn't need a lot of patch notes: there's two new dungeons to explore! One is a group dungeon that can be reached from the Fae Realm. The other is a solo experience inside Hogan's Keep (which will require you to be on good terms with Hogan to get in). There's also a new skill that can be learned in one of them.

We plan to do a little bit more with each dungeon (decorations, a few lore notes, side quests, etc.), but these are ready for you to test! We're particularly interested in feedback regarding problems with dungeon flow or monster difficulty (too easy/too hard).



The Autumn Resistance is looking for mighty heroes who are willing to work for Councils. Each day there's a different high-level group dungeon available from the local Aurest leader, who can be found in the casino (usually near the bar).

To speak with Lady Alethina, you'll need to be famous enough for her to have heard of you (Notoriety 25), and have two combat skills level 50+. And on some days, the daily mission has a higher level requirement than 50.

There are 7 different Aurest missions (so far). Each day a new mission is chosen randomly, leaving out the ones that ran the past four days. So you won't see the same quest too quickly in a row.


We've remade the "Goblin Dungeon" (under Castle Eltibule) with a new art set. The original dungeon was just too ugly: it was made during pre-alpha with placeholder art, and the textures were too low-res to be saved.

But we didn't want to make a NEW dungeon, we wanted to keep the old dungeon! So this is actually a replica of the old dungeon's layout. It uses approximately the same spawns, loot, monsters, etc. just with different dungeon art.

The old dungeon was unfurnished, so this replica is too. We'll definitely be fixing that, but first we want to make sure everything still works, more or less as it did before. If it doesn't, please let us know.

• Animal Handling pets have reduced health and armor (not very noticeable at low level, but reduced by 20-40% at level 80, depending on the specific pet)
  
• Significantly nerfed the damage of Elite and Boss monsters (by about 70-120 damage per attack, for level 80s).
  
  
  • (But note that their Rage attacks weren't nerfed! They deal approximately the same damage as before.)

Manticores are involved in one of the new Aurest missions, and have been refactored for that purpose.

• Nerfed the hell out of manticores' stats
  
• Nerfed loot also
  
• Changed respawn rate to be more typical (to make it plausible for a group of level 55s, say, to farm them)
  
• Hegemonic Storage Keys drop much more often, although the amount of loot from the hegemonic chests is reduced a bit

• Fixed animation issue with golems that made them seem to blip around as they walked
  
• Fixed animation issue with trolls that made them keep running when they should have stopped
  
• Frost Hippogriffs, which were previously just blue versions of regular Hippogriffs, now have more distinctive attacks
  
• Solving the vault puzzle in a War Cache now also gives out 1-4 sacks of Councils, as well as a random piece of gear as before
  
• Emotes like /wave and /cry now have a different message when you have something selected, versus when you have nothing selected
  
• Added "/thank" and "/cheer" emotes (which just perform a waving animation for now)
  
• You can no longer butcher Striga for meat (because they are sentient)
  
• Fixed display issue that caused all Elite/Boss monsters to have the Thick Armor descriptor. (This wasn't technically a bug, because all Elites do get some thick armor automatically. But this made it impossible to differentiate typical elites from elites that have a LOT of thick armor. Now only the thickest elites are so labeled.)
  
• Recipe for Forensic Analysis Kit now requires a higher-quality first aid kit
  
• Tweaked Qatik's Casino Excursion quests to actually require you to pick up the items requested
  
• "Labyrinth" dungeon tweaks: entrance is easier, Asterion is nerfed a bit, final maze has a somewhat more reasonable monster distribution, added a map
  
• Laura Neth now accepts work orders from animals
  
• Fixed bug with treasure generation on Fairy Dirks
  
• The emergency-exit portal at the bottom of the Wolf Den dungeon could not be selected (except at a very odd angle)
  
• Fixed a bunch of ability buffs that could persist even after the caster switched combat skills. In some cases this could be exploited by rapidly switching loadouts to gain the benefits from more than two combat skills at once. We've fixed many of these type of bugs, although we're still rooting them out of nooks and crannies of the game and some probably still remain. Please report them! It is never intentional for you to keep the benefits from a combat skill that's no longer active.
  
• Fixed a few abilities and treasure effects that boosted Movement Speed when they were supposed to boost Sprint Speed. (The difference is that Movement Speed also boosts fly/swim speed, and prevents roots/slows from being as effective.)
  
• Moderately increased the cash value of higher-level magic items. (Only applies to newly-generated weapons.)
  
• Fox Outpost defense crystals no longer shoot foxes on sight (other fox tweaks to come, just didn't fit in this update!)

This is a minor update in terms of new stuff, but it's a major update internally -- after a lot of work, we've upgraded to the latest LTS Unity version! With luck, you'll notice better performance. (And a heartfelt thanks to the brave Beta Testers who helped us make this work!)

In terms of new content, there's a new animal form for experienced players to discover. It can be found deep in a cave in Kur. (We consider this the "preview edition" of this new animal form; all mechanics are implemented, and most of the treasure, but not much in the way of NPC interactions yet.) We also want to remind players to always take warnings in item descriptions seriously!


We're using a new version of the Unity engine. It performs better for most hardware configurations. (Benefits will vary based on your hardware and OS.)

Because a lot of the graphics settings changed subtly, we decided to wipe all game settings. So you'll need to reconfigure everything! We apologize for the inconvenience -- it shouldn't happen again for at least a year (when the next LTS stable Unity engine is released).

Important Files:

• The filename of the game's settings file has changed. It used to be GorgonConfig.txt. For new versions of the game, it's GorgonSettings.txt.
  
• Previously, the game's log was saved to a file named output_log.txt on Windows. That file is now Player.log. This is the log that we usually request when debugging.
  
• In Windows, both of these files can be found at: C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\LocalLow\Elder Game\Project Gorgon
  

SphereCull: The SphereCull "special setting" has been promoted to a regular setting. It is now shown as a checkbox on the Graphics setting window. By default, spherical culling is turned on; to turn it off, uncheck that checkbox. (Typing SphereCull in the special settings window no longer does anything.)

3D window viewport size: The rarely-useful "3D window viewport size" settings (there were four separate sliders for x, y, width and height) have been demoted to Special Settings. To set these values, go to the Special Settings window and add, e.g. 3DWindowX=0.25 to make the camera not render on the left-most 25% of your screen. (See the in-game Special Settings help for more information.)

• Another attempt to tame the Settings window's complexity: the features of the GUI section are now broken up into sub-sections that can be expanded or collapsed.
  
• Added the ability to set the color of different types of overhead labels. (Experimental)
  
• Fixed bug where resizing a game panel or window would not persist in its new size after restarting the game.
  
• Fixed bug where talking in Party chat while not in a Party would go to the Global channel. (This now displays an error message instead.)
  
• Fixed bug where chat tabs would switch to speaking on Global channel after switching to a new area.
  
• The game now saves the channel you want to talk on as part of its settings, so it will remember them when restarting the game (as long as you were speaking on a channel that is actually received in that room -- this is a safety precaution).
  
• When you click the chat-channel-chooser button to pick which channel you're talking in, the listing shows only the channels that are actually displayed in that tab.
  (Well, actually the other channels are still displayed, in a special sub-listing, because we didn't want to remove old functionality without feedback. So! Do you use the sub-listing to speak in a channel that isn't displayed in the active tab? If so, why? Would you be sad if it went away? Let us know!)
  

If you're only actively using one of your two combat skills, you no longer get a "bonus" of XP in your active skill. Let's step back and explain how XP is earned: basically, if the monster is worth 100% of its XP, each of your two skills get 50% of that... but if one of the skills hasn't been actively used within a minute, it doesn't earn anything. (That behavior is unchanged.)

Previously, half of that thrown-away XP was added to the first skill's earned XP as a bonus. But this code was easily abusable by pet classes, and the only thing we really wanted to keep from this setup was the "double-bar trick". So now, we just explicitly support that trick:

If you really just want to level a single skill, you can assign both skill bars to the same skill. When both your bars are for the same skill, that skill earns 75% of the monster's total XP instead of only 50%. (This behavior is unchanged, we're just documenting it.)

• Monsters toughened up! All monsters beyond level 2 have a bit more health and deal a bit more damage. (More tweaks and random encounters are still in the works.)
  
• Fixed several events with missing messages (where it would just say "null" instead of a message).
  
• Fixed golem encounter bug that could lead to fighting a fairy instead of a golem.
  
• The "skillcode" column on the leaderboard now encodes chosen perks. (Not retroactive for existing leaderboard entries.)
  

• Treasure effect "Warning Jolt restores X Armor and taunts +Y" restored Health instead of Armor.
  
• Treasure effect "Warning Jolt restores X Power and attack range is increased 5 meters" restored Health instead of Power.
  
• Treasure: "Deadly Emission Damage +X and Reuse Timer -1 second" didn't correctly shorten the reuse timer.
  
• Treasure: "Barrage and Headbutt ignite the target, ..." did not work for the Claw Barrage variant of Barrage.
  
• Some treasure effects that buff kicks did not apply to rabbits' "Thump" or spiders' "Infinite Legs".
  
• Priest treasure change: "Direct Fire Damage +35 while Priest skill active" => now +100.
  
• Necromancy: new off-hand treasure effect: "Death's Hold causes target to take +9% damage from Darkness for 15 seconds"
  

• Added a new animal form. It can be discovered deep in a cave in Kur.
  
• Kelim required only level 50 to unlock 60-70 Gardening; he now requires level 60.
  
• The notoriety message for defeating Betra the Cold incorrectly referred to her as Murdebok the Valiant.
  
• Yogzi has recipes for a few missing skill belts.
  
• Backfat now charges the usual royal jelly fee for first aid techniques.
  
• Pets now follow closer to their owners.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented pet grimalkin from being summoned by animal handlers.
  
• Undead creatures are now 50% vulnerable to Darkness damage (instead of 0%). This applies to pets as well as monsters.
  
• Spider's "Insidious Illusion" reset time changed from 1 hour to 20 minutes.
  
• Werewolf quests from the Altar of Norala now abort right after the full moon ends (instead of aborting right before the next full moon, as they did before).
  
• Alchemy: several "Max Health +N" potions had too short of a duration and were fixed to last 1 hour.
  
• "Toxin Resistance Potion" is now considered a resistance potion for gifting purposes.
  
• "Steroid Drink" is now considered a max-health potion, not a restorative potion, for purposes of gifting.