Update 1.36

Hello everyone! Big update today with lots of new content, talent reworks, balance tweaks and general improvements.

The big focus of this update was to finish the bosses for The Core, The Ice Caves, and The Sewers, continuing my slow march through the dungeon, finalizing all the content for the finished game. Along the way I did a bunch of balancing and tweaking to player attributes and talents, trying to get everything pretty close to how I'd like it for the final version. Of course lots of bug fixes, interface improvements and general clean up.

NEW-BOSSES:
All bosses have been given unique drops and at least 3 variations of their boss levels. The old end-levels have either been removed or have been reworked to be standard static levels that can generate anywhere.

• The Sewers - The Krakken: has a bunch of tentacles that act as independent monsters but move alongside the main body.
  
• The Sewers - The Slime King: has reworked mechanics where he will split himself repeatedly until killed.
  
• The Ice Caves – The Ice Giant King: basically just a massive melee/tank battle.
  
• The Ice Caves – The High Shaman: another massive fight but this time with Grax healing and hasting his allies.
  
• The Core – The Efreeti Lord: summons clouds of flames all around himself, launches powerful fire attacks and blinks away when threatened.
  
• The Core – The Lava Eel Queen: devastating ranged fire attacks.
  

USER-INTERFACE:
Cleaned up the HUD a bit so that everything fits better.

• Flattened the ability bar by reducing to 7 slots so that it fits evenly above the consumable bar.
  
• Since we lose an ability slot with this and there has been a longstanding issue of running out of ability slots, you can now remove abilities from your bar by picking them up and dropping them on the screen. You can add abilities to the bar by clicking on the associated talent to create a new icon. Though personally I never have an issue with the ability bar filling up, this at least provides the option to shuffle things around for those who like to build characters with tons of abilities.
  
• Added cleaner looking slots for melee and ranged weapons w/ associated damage text. Again mostly just lining everything up more evenly.
  
• Cleaned up the HP, MP, SP, Food and EXP bars so that they sit nicely at the top of the screen.
  
• The mouse over description of HP, MP and SP bars will now show their regeneration rate.
  
• The mouse over description of attributes will now show their total stat contribution while mousing over the [+] icon shows the incremental improvement.
  
• The Go-To menu now displays a
• icon next to the name of a level to indicate the presence of some interesting feature ex. Merchant. The details of the feature will be listed in the mouse over description. This just makes it so you don’t have to remember where a merchant or locked treasure room was.
  

ATTRIBUTES:
There are a number of goals here. Each point in an attribute should be useful to all builds i.e. you should always get some sort of noticeable improvement. An attribute should never be useless to a particular build (trying to not have dump stats here). An attribute should never feel REQUIRED i.e. you should be FORCED to put a bunch of points in an attribute. In general, I felt like STR was just a bit too good compared to the other attributes and was often required simply in order to wear equipment, even for pure spell casters.

• Strength: 4HP => 3HP per attribute point.
  
• Strength: the encumbrance of many armor pieces was slightly reduced. I don’t think that a character should feel forced to dump points in strength just to wear basic equipment. Of course heavy plate armor will still require an investment.
  
• Dexterity: you now gain +1 speed point per DEX though the recovery rate of speed was reduced a bit to compensate (still an overall buff to DEX). I really didn’t like the ½ point we had before. EVERY point should actually do something imo.
  
• Dexterity: reintroduced evasion as a general stat tied to dexterity which provides a small chance to dodge both projectile and melee attacks. This gives builds that don’t want to pour points into STR at least some defensive capacity. Of course, since evasion requires no equipment and applies to all damage types it should definitely be the 'weakest' of all defensive stats.
  
• Intelligence: 1MP => 2MP per attribute point. Casters just generally felt like they were much more difficult to play and a single point of intelligence just didn’t really feel impactful.
  

TALENTS:

• Replaced the small library rooms (crystal chests w/ tomes) with a single ‘Tome-of-Knowledge’ object. I found that often times you really only want 1 of the talents in a tome and the other talent just becomes junk noise in your talent list. So the Tome of Knowledge simply lets you pick a single new talent from a list of 4. Has the added benefit that the interface lets you check what the talent actually does and what attribute requirements it has.
  
• I’ve generally reduced the cooldowns of many abilities. I would rather have slightly weaker abilities that the player can use more often rather than the old situation in which you’d get into a big fight, pop your first ability and 1-shot a monster, pop your second ability and 1-shot the next monster and then suddenly you’ve run out of interesting actions to take for a long time.
  
• Similar to the above point, I've set all magic abilities to just use a flat 6MP. First, this does the same as the cooldown reduction above i.e. the higher tier talents are a little weaker than before but can be used more frequently. This also simplifies a bit of the math the player needs to do in his head since you don't need to divide damage by mana to get a 'damage-per-mana'. Finally, the common case where you've run out of mana, and pass a few turns to regen just enough for one more spell, in this case you can choose from any of your spells. In general, spells should be different, and be useful in different situations, slight differences in mana cost should not be a major factor in determining what spell to cast.
  

WEAPON DAMAGE:
All weapons will now have a maximum damage of 2x their base (including enchantments).

First, this helps to balance the pretty substantial power gain in abilities from the cooldown and mana reduction changes above. Generally speaking, I'd like a lot of the players 'power' to be coming from the use of abilities rather than just spamming away w/ weapons. This also makes better weapons 'much' better. Previously all you'd get from an upgraded weapon was say +2 DMG. With these new changes you not only get the +2DMG but actually get +4 to your maximum possible damage which makes a pretty big difference in the later game. Finally this adds some clear breakpoints to character building where, once you've maxed out your current weapons damage, it makes sense to start spreading attribute points around a bit more until/if you find a better weapon.

DUELIST:
I’m trying a complete rework on the duelist so feedback here is appreciated. There were a number of issues that I’m trying to fix here:

1) The duelist was just brokenly OP pretty much from the very first level.
2) The duelist felt oddly tied to his rapier since it felt very odd to suddenly lose the ‘lunge’ attack when changing weapons.
3) The duelists would then sort of gain this ability back with his ‘lunge’ talent which is even odder and overlaps heavily with the charge ability.
4) The duelist talents all use DEX as a requisite and yet increasing DEX didn’t really feel like much of an improvement in itself.

So the idea behind this rework is to really tie duelist talents to speed points and make the duelist the basic ‘speed’ build while cleaning up the weird rapier/lunge progression. This should also feel like a bit of a nerf since, as mentioned above, the duelist was just absurdly over powered previously.

• The duelist no longer starts with a rapier, and rapier type weapons have been removed from the game.
  
• Instead, the duelists 2nd tier talent ‘Lunge’ now provides the intrinsic ability to lunge with any melee weapon. This way the duelist gains the ability to lunge and then keeps it for the remainder of the game, even when switching weapons.
  
• Both lunge and disengage now use 1 speed point instead of working on cool-downs and do not end your turn when used. This effectively makes duelist abilities an improved ‘sprint’. Increasing your DEX in order to gain more speed points now provides an immediate and obvious benefit.
  
• Weapon shield was removed as a talent since it overlaps with the warriors Shield Wall and has been replaced with a Dash Attack which allows you to hit multiple enemies in a line, consuming speed points and not ending your turn.
  
• At Rank-2, all of the duelists abilities will not consume a speed point when dealing kill shots.
  

MERCHANT:

• Leather and cloth armor are now quite a bit cheaper (I’ll be taking a closer look at all item prices in the future to make the merchant a bit more useful).
  
• The merchant now stocks 4 consumables and 4 pieces of equipment. Should help to guarantee at least a few useful things each time you encounter him.
  
• The merchant now splits his inventory into consumables and equipment to improve clarity.
  
• Added special tables to the merchant that he uses occasionally rather then just a random assortment of equipment. Stuff like selling all 4 leather armor pieces or each of the elemental rings.
  
• Merchant now clears out the stuff you sell him when you leave the level to avoid bloat and improve clarity.
  

MISC:

• Whole bunch of slight tweaks and adjustments to enemy cool-downs (generally they attack a bit faster).
  
• A bunch of tweaks to duration of enemy summons, clouds and detrimental status effects (generally they don’t last as long).
  
• Javelins and Chakrams will now take advantage of the players range damage bonus.
  
• Summoning items like Wand of Blades and Rat Pipes now scaled based on the players magic power bringing them in line with all other evokables.
  

BUGS-AND-CRASHES:

• Solid walls are being broken by overlapping vaults (results in halls breaking solidWalls)
  
• Bee hive vault: enemies won't path around (they should go around if the clear path is less than half as long as the blocked path)
  
• The Drachnid Web Bow had description added in 1.35.5 but still sells for 1 gold
  
• Robe of Cryomancy boosts the damage of Staff of Storms
  
• Ogres (and anyone slowed) can now reach fountains/switches on the diagonal
  
• When an ally is pulled by a tentacle terror, he leaves sparkles
  
• When the only thing left to explore is terrain with stuff on it you won't go that way and it'll just say partially explored.
  
• Fire Crosses, Storm Cross, Ice Bombs etc. should not spawn on water or lava
  
• Dialog menu w/ 4 options does not align correctly (ex UD:1-4 discovered)
  
• Chakram is blocked by ice (convert ice to a simple status effect and remove from clouds)
  
• Allies should follow you when falling down a pit trap (same as they do when usings stairs or falling down big pits)
  
• Hidden pit traps could drop you into locations with no clear path to the stairs (now using same code as normal pits)
  
• Game crashes if you have too many allied NPCs and nowhere to put them (flood limit 5 => 10)
  
• Torches spawning on the inside of generic drop wall rooms and visible through the wall
  
• Strafe attack may need attackDelay again (you have an ally hasting you)
  
• Scroll of teleportation does not work in Frost-Giant-King-02 (not pathing through portal)
  
• Projectiles are not disapearing after range (dodging)
  
• Netted leaves me stunned for multiple turns
  

As always, I'll be spending the next week debugging and tweaking in response to feedback so please let me know what you guys think or if there's any issues. After that, we're really getting into the home stretch here. I've got another update planned handling bosses in The Crypt, The Arcane Tower and The Iron Forge, then another update to rework Yendor and add some bosses there as well (its getting a bit anti-climactic atm). After those two updates its really just a lot of cleanup and auxiliary stuff like achievements, better record keeping, maybe an online leaderboard etc.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed the crash when selecting staves in acquirement menu.
  
• Teleportation will no longer place the player on tiles near gas traps (it previously considered them safe as long as the gas was not currently spread there).
  
• Fixed Corrupted Ent (and other bosses) spawning in random levels w/o their special vaults.
  
• Auto attack (tab and q for ranged) no longer tries to target nearby but unattackable targets (example behind a closed gate).
  
• GOTO travel now works in the Arcane Tower when traveling through portals.
  
• Cloud now save correctly when leaving and reloading a level (how did this take so long...)
  
• Fixed clouds actually lasting 1 turn less than their talent description indicated.
  
• Charge will no longer try to pass you through immobile allies resulting in a crash. I didn't even think this was possible due to domination not working on immobile enemies but the reported case was w/ a dominated demonologist summoning a hell portal which was both immobile and considered your ally.
  
• Fixed: GOTO menu could be opened multiple times and had to be closed multiple times.
  
• Using freeze on an empty tile was using mana and generating a bunch of error text with no effect.
  
• Added prices for Molten Forged Staff and a number of other itmes
  

User Interface:

• Locked doors in boss rooms will now indicate in their desc that they will unlock on the bosses death.
  
• Fixed desc of Recovery (was overwritten by Second Wind)
  
• Fixed buttons in many menus remaining clicked (visually) when closing and reopening the menu.
  
• Life Tap and Life Spike will no longer popup +HP if the player is already at full HP. This is in order to reduce some unnecessary battle spam.
  

Bugs and Crashes:

• Polearms will now allow you to target the more distant of 2 lined up enemies. Previously you had to target the one in front of you and the polearm would 'strike through'. Basically an interface improvement with no changes to the underlying mechanics.
  
• You can now use Charge on enemies when you are in a dust or steam cloud.
  
• Changed one of the Ice Caves boss vaults that had the rune room hidden behind drop walls (definitely was a design mistake to hide the thing).
  
• Corrupted Ent (and other immobile enemies) will no longer attempt to flee combat.
  
• Cyclone strike will no longer hit allies or fire pots.
  
• Berserk enemies will no longer ignore evasion.
  
• Fixed a bug when lunging w/ a polearm that would put the player into a wall.
  
• Fixed a bug w/ using multiple potions of amnesia not correctly removing abilities from the hot bar.
  
• Fixed a level-up bug that would put the players speed points speed points over max when performing a Disengage kill shot.
  
• Cyclone strike will now correctly trigger weapon special effects like poison
  
• Fixed Spear + Lunge giving the 'dangerous terrain' message when used over traps or flaming clouds.
  
• Dominating an enemy that has charmed you will remove the charm.
  
• Boss monsters that blink allies will no longer blink water enemies (like eels) onto land.
  
• Dominating a boss will now cause his boss door to open. Note that I'm strongly considering disabling dominate on all the major branch end bosses in the game. Considering that Vault of Yendor will eventually have some kind of final boss, it doesn't make sense that you could just dominate him and win the game.
  
• Fixed an issue where leveling up in the middle of a sequence of Shields Up counter attacks would stop the rest of the counter attacks. The Level-Up dialog will now wait until its the players turn before popping up.
  

Balance:

• Potions of healing and mana are now cheaper than resistance / power potions.
  
• Orbs of fire, spectral swords, hell portals ect. (summoned stuff) will no longer grant lifetap heals when killed.
  
• Potion of Amnesia will no longer drop in the very early game (doesn't really make sense here).
  
• Orc Archery Captain will now drop a compound bow (previously had no loot).
  

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed an issue w/ non-symmetric LoS where enemies could shoot at you but you could not shoot back at certain angles.
  
• Roots from the Corrupted Ent will no longer flee
  
• Sprint will now show pathing over dangerous terrain (it will always show the shortest path). For example sprinting across multiple tiles of lava can now be done with a single click.
  

Balance:

• Slightly increased the time it takes to consume food. I feel like food should never really be an issue unless your doing something really ridiculous.
  
• Guaranteed a merchant spawn in Orc Fortress / Dark Temple. I think its important to have at least one guaranteed merchant somewhere in the world.
  
• Adjusted enemy projectile range to match the players slightly reduced range.
  

Interface:

• Interface text like HP/MP will now appear above clouds.
  
• Level-up dialog will only be delayed when using Shields-Up. The slight delay almost immediately began to annoy me. Are there any other abilities anyone can think of that might need this delay?
  
• Fixed a bunch of names and descriptions.
  
• Explosion radius of goblin bombs will now display when moused over (same as fire pots)
  
• When the player is unstable he is unable to dodge (this has always been the case). Previously this was setting the players evasion to 0 so if you checked your stats while unstable you would see your evasion reading 0% which can be confusing. So now your evasion stat doesn't change but your character simply wont dodge (this is indicated in the mouse over description of the 'unstable' status effect.
  

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed Dominate ability not respecting the maxCharms restriction.
  
• Removed the Charm item catagory from acquirement menu since these are not currently being used (they don't drop anywhere normally). Still considering whether these should be included, reworked, removed etc.
  
• Fixed a crash (soft lock) that occurs when you try to use the stairs in the same turn that an enemy completes their 'slow charge' i.e. hits a wall or another enemy.
  
• Fixed clouds spreading uncontrollably when leaving the level and returning (it def does look cool and will keep it in mind for future tweaks to talents).
  
• Lunging an enemy to death and gaining a level will no longer put speed points above max.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurs when descending a level while casting a spell. Not sure how this actually occurs in game (could replicate only w/ console commands). It results in a whole slew of bugs that have been reported where the tiles in the next level are all messed up (set in their default state), the stairs don't connect correctly, the game crashes after a few steps etc.
  
• Fixed Drachnid Queens vault having broken walls.
  
• Cyclone strike will now trigger damage shields.
  
• In the Demonologist boss level, the summoned imp portals will now stop the player from moving on the turn they are summoned. Previously you could zip right past them and the game would only pause a few turns later when the imp is actually summoned.
  

Balance:

• Poison statues are now immune to poison gas (they summon it themselves).
  
• Adjusted the stats on Lockjaw Hide Vest to differentiate from Noxious Armor and make it comparable to the Bear Hide Cloak in The Ice Caves.
  
• Reversed the damage balance on staves and bows. The basic balance is now: Melee is highest damage/lowest range, staves are mid damage/mid range, and bows are now low damage/high range. Did a quick play through with a ranger and he's still overpowered as ever even w/ the slight reduction of damage. This should give casters a bit more of a fighting chance and make staves a bit more desirable for other chars.
  

User Interface:

• Continuing to fiddle w/ sprint pathing. It will now compare the safe path to the unsafe path and use the safe path if its the same length (or shorter) than the unsafe path. From my testing this seems to take care of most of the accidental clicks on mushrooms. Will be continuing to play with this until it feels right so feedback here is appreciated.
  
• Added descriptions indicating the use of CTRL to unsafe move to lava tiles, toxic tiles, traps etc. anything that triggers the the 'dangerous terrain' message.
  

Bugs and Crashes:

• Drop walls triggered by switches were not actually triggering the walls (when switch is used in place of a chest).
  
• Fixed: Charge + Lunge was always triggering lunge on the last step of the charge using a speed point.
  
• Merchant will no longer buy your runes since this can result in a soft lock when he clears his inventory.
  
• Fixed: unable to sprint while standing ON dangerous terrain ex. lava.
  
• Fixed: unable to sprint ONTO dangerous terrain ex. lava.
  
• Fixed: dominate was not reducing max MP.
  
• Fixed: scroll of dominate was counting towards your max talent based dominate cap.
  
• Summon skeleton and Dominate talents will reduce your max MP at same time as they reduce your current MP (there was a bit of visual lag on the MP bar).
  
• Increased the size of many of the entrance rooms to bosses since descending with a ton of allies was causing a crash b/c no room to place them.
  
• As a last resort, if the game is unable to place allies when descending levels, it will just delete them rather than crashing the game.
  

Bugs and Crashes:

• Charge w/ spear was behaving oddly since the impact was applied at the max range of the spear and the player then moved into position. This caused all sorts of odd movement patterns that did not follow the indicated path. Changed this so that charging w/ a spear only impacts at standard melee range.
  
• Fixed: If you have Strafe Attack 2 and you use two or more Sprint Points at once, you will only make one attack with a ranged weapon. But, if you break up that movement, using only one Sprint Point at a time to cover the same distance, you will attack every time if all other Strafe Attack criteria are met.
  
• Fixed: You can charge things you cant see. Sit in a dust cloud and you can charge things completely hidden in the fog.
  
• Fixed: You click to use stairs. Enemies get one turn to act before you descend. You are trampled off the stairs. Next time you walk across stairs it pulls you down.
  
• Fixed: Dash Attack through a Hell Hound (likely any blinking enemy) leaves an invisible enemy on the tile after it blinks.
  
• Fixed: Knockbacks, tramples etc. will no longer trigger the players strafe attack.
  
• Cyclone strike will now trigger critical sneak attacks on unaware enemies.