Update 1.38

Hello everyone!

Another big update today. Last time I mentioned I was ready to start working on completely reworking The Vault of Yendor and I figured that I'd spend the first week or two cleaning up some bits and pieces across the rest of the game. Well those bits and pieces sort of grew, as they always seem to do, and as the weeks turned into months I figured it would be better to just make this a big clean up and all around content update.

I had a bunch of help this time from a friend who's worked with me before (Zellyna on the Discord server). He did a ton of new vaults and levels, vastly increasing the amount of dungeon content in the game. So big shout out to him, we'll be continuing to work together for future updates as we wrap this project up.

I also want to give a big shout out to Random595 (also on Discord) who has recently posted some quite frankly insane challenge runs to YouTube. His 1HP challenge runs pretty much confirmed in my mind that he understands this game far better then I do, so be sure to check him out!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4zVFdgPe_3gJUCoW5-YP-Q

Now onto the update:


As with the previous updates a ton of new vaults and levels across all zones in the dungeon. Roughly half the time on this update was spent in this area so there's a lot to see here. In particular Colten added a lot of new unique special levels filling out a lot of zones that were previously missing anything of this sort.

Attribute Shrines:
An attribute shrine (STR, DEX or INT) will now always spawn somewhere in the lower parts of the dungeon allowing the player to buy attribute points. This provides another place to spend gold and gives the option of either maxing out your builds primary attribute or else quickly building up a secondary attribute. This may later be expanded to a larger set of shrines to various gods each granting different bonuses.

Merchant:

• The merchant will now often spawn in little side rooms. Mostly just looks neat.
  
• At least 2 merchants are now guaranteed to spawn in every game.
  
• When the merchant spawns in the wilderness zones, he will no longer spawn on the first level. This gives the player a bit more time to collect guild, and increases the chance that you can actually afford something when you meet him.
  

Portal Spawners:
The Dark Temple now has triggered spawners that teleport in monsters. This lets us setup more ambush type vaults with enemies coming from multiple directions. I'm always looking for more ways to setup fights where the enemies are not just coming from one direction.

Misc:

• Steam Vent no longer push the player (its just confusing)
  
• Library (with the free talent/talent point) should not spawn on Wilderness:1 (give the player more time to establish his base character).
  
• Drop-Walls and Monster-Zoos will never spawn on the first dungeon level reducing the chance of a level 1 death.
  
• Items dropping in later dungeon levels have a much higher chance of being enchanted. I'm trying to make sure that the player continues to get upgrades throughout the entire course of the game.
  

General:

• Added a hardcap to evasion at 75% (I thought this was already a thing?)
  
• Increase mana regen slightly (1 point) 5T => 4T. It was taking 30T to regen the 6MP required for a single spell which I feel is too long compared to cool-down talents. Obviously casters have a big pool of MP with which to quickly spam spells but this still felt a bit to long.
  
• Reduced the attribute requirements slightly on all talents (talent points should be easier to spend)
  
• Slightly slower exp XL:11-16 since it was easy to hit max level well before the end of game. I'd like the player to still hit max level before the goblet if performing a full dungeon clear.
  

Talents:

• Bear-Trap and Sleep-Bomb now have 10,5 turn cooldown (same as other cool-down talents)
  
• Bear-Traps replace simple objects like blood, vines, grass etc.
  
• Sneak-Attack changed to Precision which improves ALL critical hit damage with ALL damage-types. Since a sneak attack i.e. attacking an unaware enemy, causes a critical hit, this is just a flat out improvement in the sense that it does exactly what it did before plus a whole bunch more.
  
• Shield-Block improved 10%,20% => 20%,30%. It should be strictly better than Evasive since it is Tier-II and requires a shield
  
• Fortitude-II now gives twice as many HP as Rank-1
  
• Mental-Clarity-II now gives twice as many MP as Rank-1
  
• Cone-Of-Cold-II increases range instead of damage. I've made similar changes in the past, my thinking is that Magic-Power increases damage so Rank-2 should grant something you cannot otherwise improve.
  
• Shields-Up-II now also reflects projectiles.
  
• Melee-Mastery-II completely removes damage cap on melee weapons. Melee-Mastery was always sort of sub-optimal since it was so easy to hit the damage cap with strength alone. This quite definitively makes melee weapons the highest damage weapons which makes up for their lack of range. Consider that ranged characters can often get 3-4 shots off before an enemy gets into melee range.
  
• Charge will no longer end the players turn when used (the same as all other quick moves). There was some odd interaction here where if you crushed an enemy against a wall it was still your turn but otherwise your turn ended and you'd get smacked. So now charge just works like other quick moves and does not end the players turn.
  

Items:

• Enchantment scrolls will provide a larger bonus on larger stats (stuff like 10+ HP items)
  
• Potion of Amnesia should be cheap (make it easy to switch abilities)
  
• Food should restore speed points
  
• Amulet of Spirit shielding should just be made a ring (Ring of Spirit Shielding)
  
• NEW: Ring of Harmony 8HP, 4MP
  
• NEW: Ring of Resistance +10% to all resistance
  
• NEW: Boots of Dexterity
  
• Circlet of Knowledge +6MP => +2INT (now have STR gloves, DEX boots and INT helm)
  
• Goblin Battle Staff Magic-Power:10% => Intelligence:1 (nice to give some early attributes)
  

Elite Monsters:

• All elite enemies should have extra health (making them like little mini-bosses)
  
• Tough elites should have a lot more HP x1.5 => x2.0
  
• Strong elites were not actually adding melee damage to their attacks. This is now fixed.
  

Monster Abilities:

• Walls of fire are now longer (5) but do not wrap around the player. I didn't like how it so massively restricted your movement.
  
• Bullfrogs now trample
  
• All imps now fire single elemental slow projectiles (makes the arcane tower unique with lots of dodging).
  
• War Engines now trample the player
  
• Air-Strike replaces Burst-Of-Wind on monsters so that they don't kill their allies quite so much
  
• The Demonologist Major-Boss now summons Hell-Portals quickly when engaged rather than a zone wide effect.
  
• Hell-Portals now count down and then summon 4 imps all at once.
  
• Bombs thrown by the Clockwork Bombers will now replace scrap, oil, blood etc. It was often the case that they couldn't even use their ability due to the clutter on the ground.
  
• Clockwork bombers now have a basic cannon ball projectile attack since its still quite easy to back them into a position in which they cannot throw their bombs.
  
• The Drachnid Queen now has Discord and a stronger arrow attack
  
• The Corrupted Ent now has a melee attack and vine whip that pulls the player in.
  
• Corrupted Druids now heal their allies.
  

Monster Balance:
Most of this is part of the general, ongoing theme, of reducing cool-downs to more closely match the length of fights. If you've missed the last few updates, I did a bunch of tests that confirmed that the vast majority of fights take well under 10T which was the sort of default, no brain cool-down I was using originally for most enemy abilities. Since I want enemies to actually use their abilities more than once in a fight, I've been gradually reducing cool-downs across the board.

• Spider nests spawn faster CD8 => CD5
  
• Bee Hives spawn faster CD8 => CD5 and spawn 3 Bees instead of 2
  
• Sun Flowers attack faster CD4 => CD2
  
• Dire Wolf Cage spawn faster 8CD => 5CD
  
• Demonologist Boss faster throw ice CD:4 => CD:2
  
• Orc berserkers has more HP
  
• Orc-Chaos-Knight is now XL:12 (same as Arcane-Archer)
  
• Ogre Shaman major boss has faster shoot rate
  
• Gnoll Shaman major boss has faster shoot rate
  
• Gnoll Shaman major boss has group heal instead of single heal
  
• All Group-Heals changed from 0.75HP/10T => 0.5HP => 5T
  
• Knock-Back-Cannon-Ball chance 0.25% => 0.50% (turrets, war-engines, clockwork bombers)
  
• Giant leaches now have more HP and damage and no longer spawn in big swarms. The Sewers already have a good swarm enemy with the plague rats.
  
• Mummys never flee (undead should never flee)
  

• Cold duration is now proportional to damage taken mitigated by cold resistance. Taking 1DMG at 100HP should not slow you for 5 turns.
  
• Tomes do not immediately add talents (click them to add talents or sell them)
  
• Sneak attack crits (attacking an unaware enemy) now work with ALL damage-types. This makes stealth more generally useful for all character types since you can, for example, get some massive group clearing crits with something like a fire ball. Add the new Precision talent which improves ALL crit damage for even more destruction.
  
• Teleport trap will unagro enemies (just like teleport scroll)
  
• Drop walls now reveal the entire area when they explode (just a visual thing).
  
• Reward rooms now reveal the entire area when first spotted. This stops the annoying case where you can't see some of the corners behind a locked gate.
  
• Poison gas vents cycle faster and the gas fades faster. No more spamming wait to get past them. This is part of the same line of reasoning of many recent changes where cool-downs and durations have been reduced to more closely match the actual length of standard fights.
  
• Cone-Of-Cold now breaks Walls-Of-Fire
  
• Cone-Of-Cold (and other freezing spells) now creates ice on water even if there was blood on the water (just destroys the blood).
  
• When an enemy goes to sleep he will lose berserk
  
• When an enemy goes to sleep he will stop constricting you
  
• When an enemy goes to sleep he will stop casting fire storm
  

• Space bar (or whatever key you have bound to 'accept' will now close the level up message box.
  
• Indicate the max value for reflection, resistance and evasion on mouse over
  
• Dominate Ability mouse over desc now indicates how many allies you have
  
• Equipment comparison now shows attribute changes
  
• Wand of draining was previously showing targeting on allies even though it did not effect them.
  
• Scroll of fear will not show targeting on immune enemies
  
• Pop-up text counting down when levitating over a pit to make it clear that you are about to fall.
  
• Show Win/Loss and win % on main character select screen
  
• Changed default movement controls to WASD. Doesn't effect anyone with custom key bindings but this is likely what new players will reach for first. This is how I've been playing the game for a few years now, relying mostly on WASD movement with the occasional click for diagonal movement when I need it. If I could start all over again from scratch (or you know, for the next game), I would balance the entire game around orthogonal only movement so that WASD would work completely. Considering that numpads are becoming increasingly rare (neither of my keyboards have them), and WASD is basically the universal movement control scheme, I'd like to move in this direction in the future.
  

Did a bunch of little improvements and cleanups that I'm not going to bother listing but I did spend an ENTIRE DAY making nice little corners tiles for pools of water and other liquids so damnit I'm listing it here!

• Made nice little corner tiles for pools of water.
  

Totally worth it...

• Heartwood Bow was creating vines on water when the water was covered by ice.
  
• Summon rats was going through 1 thick wall
  
• Slime King rune door was opening when one one was still left alive.
  
• Shock was spreading over water when the water was covered in ice.
  
• Auto range attack will not attack enemies through smoke even though you could still click to attack
  
• Don't show sprint targeting in unexplored space
  
• Diagonal steps should count as slightly more in A* pathfinding code. Sort of a funny result of having diagonal and orthogonal movement both take one turn. The player would sometimes zig up or down a tile when traveling in a straight line since technically the paths are the same length. Making the pathfinder count diagonal steps as slightly more expensive fixes this problem.
  
• The player will no longer stop Go-To-Zone traveling when passing through portals.
  
• Netting enemies now agros them
  
• Slimes were giving too much EXP considering that a single slime splits into a dozen small ones.
  
• Discord could not be shot through clouds of smoke even though its a perfectly clear path
  
• Burst-of-Flame could not be shot through clouds of smoke even though its a perfectly clear path
  
• Cannon turrets had no duration on throw bomb. I think this was left in from some previous debugging and was quite disgusting to deal with.
  
• Charging enemy when put to sleep will no longer continue charging as soon as it wakes up
  
• Falling through pit trap on a 4th floor will no longer drop you into the boss vault.
  
• Fixed a bug with the regen rate of trolls that made the amount of HP they regen actually max out at some odd range (I think around 60HP) and then actually decrease as you gained more hp. It was as insane as it sounds. They now correctly have double regen rate as indicated in their race description.
  
• Resting for HP was resting far to long. It was not taking into account improved regen rates.
  
• Added a max range on webs. After missing the player they were flying across the entire level.
  
• Charging an enemy at the edge of a pit w/o levitate will not take the final step onto the pit causing you to fall down.
  
• When auto traveling to the stairs if the player hit a teleport trap he would then do some funny sliding through walls thing and continue to the stairs.
  
• Traps and vents should not spawn next to each other
  
• Dominated allies will never run
  

Alright, that about wraps it up. Next time The Vault of Yendor for real this time! I cringe every time I reach it since its so primitive compared to the rest of the dungeon now.

Thanks as always for everyone's support, feedback and the positive steam reviews (we passed 300! weee!). Will be spending the next week or so doing hot-fixes as per tradition :P

Update 1.38.1 - Saturday August-07-2021:
- Fixed goblet not spawning on some of the the last levels.
- Fixed level-gen crash (there was a note mentioning food and totally messed up tiles if you reloaded)
- Fixed crash w/ a level in The-Upper-Dungeon where clicking the Tome-Of-Knowledge resulted in a crash.

Update 1.38.2 - Wednesday August-11-2021:
- Fixed a Slow-Explore crash when playing Ogre in The-Iron-Forge near conveyor belts.
- Fixed a crash in The-Iron-Forge when poison clouds (or any clouds) were cast atop a steam vent. Game would crash when the steam tried to come out.
- Fixed some messed up platform walls in a few vaults/levels.

Update 1.38.3 - Friday August-13-2021:
- Fixed some inaccessible vaults that were being placed in the wall in The-Sunless-Desert
- Fixed shrines either allowing you to buy points past your natural cap or not allowing you to buy points when you were not at your cap. It was not checking your race/class bonuses.
- Fixed a whole host of level-gen crashes in The-Orc-Fortress. This took an absurd amount of time (10+ hours) just to isolate and replicate. What I finally found was that a few vaults were off by one in the map file and so they had open floor tiles on their edges. When these were placed up against the map edge a number of different crashes could occur. So after all that time spent isolating this damn crash the solution was... to move the vaults over by one tile. Programmers will understand the mix of pain/euphoria :P
- While holding an item on the cursor both the talent and attribute upgrade buttons will now be hidden.
- The spell Discord was incorrectly requiring clear LoS. This has now been fixed.
- Fixed a bunch more messed up platform wall tiles. I believe I caught them all this time.

Update 1.38.4 - Saturday August-14-2021:
BALANCE:
- Weapon-Mastery-II changed to only increase damage cap to 3x base damage (still found it very strong during testing).
- Charge-II has its range reduced from 6 => 5. I found that 6 is so close to the max LoS range that you very rarely have to even maneuver to get into charge range.
- Mummy race is now immune to poison and poison gas.
- Levitate now completely negates the effects of conveyor belts.

BUGS_AND_CRASHES:
- Traps will no longer be placed adjacent to conveyor belts.
- Fixed an odd bug where enemies near a Tome-Of-Knowledge were treated as if they were in your LoS even when far away.
- Fixed some odd pathfinding behavior where enemies would step back and forth, never attacking. This ones been an issue for awhile now.

Update 1.38.5 - Monday August-16-2021:
- Removed some debug text that was spamming the console.
- Dominated tentacle spitters will now move in toxic waste.
- Fixed a bunch of issues with charge. Clicking after charging was causing you to charge again. Any type of quick move (including lunge) was causing the game to stop ticking turns. This was also causing the cooldowns to not tick and a few other oddities that were reported.

Update 1.38.6 - Tuesday August-17-2021:
- Shock was targetable and would spread on stuff like Arcane-Arrows and Orbs-Of-Fire.
- You could press Slow-Explore key while charging and it would halt the charge.
- NPC Necromancers were reviving the boss skeletons, which would then drop copies of their unique item.