Trawel News

v0.8.b_14 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_13 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default.
Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github.

World Attribute Contests have received several improvements, in rough order of importance:

1. Your success chance is displayed alongside the amount of stat you have and the difficulty you are rolling against. Previously this just displayed the name of the stat.
   
2. Locked objects (and potentially others in the future) have random modifiers that make certain stats easier or more difficult to use on that object, providing a tradeoff between putting all your stats in one attribute or spreading them out. Trapped Chambers already used a similar system.
   
3. Scaling has been modified to be a % of the attribute you would be expected to have if you leveled only that stat, resulting in a smoother curve as you face higher level challenges. Overall, lower intensity challenges have less severe difficulty scaling than before while higher intensity challenges have higher base difficulty than before.
   
4. Unknown Traps in Trapped Chambers are easier. Challenging Sky Cultist Leader's divinity is contested against their Clarity.
   

Records are a prototype run recording option under Settings, Character Settings. They are enabled per-character. Once enabled for a character, they will log the options you pick and the things you see in the world to a local text file. They are intended as a text-based alternative to a video recording, either for personal use or to send feedback.
While Records should be fully functional, it is unknown how much size they will take up over the average player run (not that I know what the average player run is like, hence this feature being made). You can disable recording, and create a new record file from the same option used to enable them. They are stored in the install folder.

If you wish to contribute a saved Record as feedback, you can upload it to your preferred file host and share a link on the steam or audiogames forums. Records are plaintext and contain only what your character saw through your run- feel free to examine them yourself.

• You can disable line separators and startup ASCII as an indicator option.
  
• You can disable the 'save complete' text along with the save file size message as an indicator option.
  
• Node Features with a living Boss display the type of boss when viewed from town, until they are slain.
  
• Treasure Beaches display the number of completed sections over the number of unlocked sections when viewed from town.
  

• Using the 'far flung' option in Docks bypasses encounter chances but costs money.
  
• Statue enemies have a flat 1x damage mult on all parts, and the 'Crumble' CondWound that deals 10% of the Max HP.
  
• Mimic enemies have the Bleedout CondWound on their tongue that deals 10% HP as bleeding damage.
  
• Additional fluff text for ashore locked chests in beaches.
  
• Various typo fixes.

Apologies for the delay, version 8 full release has had various internal pipeline issues, so posting the polish as a minor patch.

v0.8.b_13 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_12 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default.
Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github.

Polishing for the full version 8 release is continuing. The tutorials in this update are a step towards that, as well as many small bugfixes.[h2]Consequences[/h2]
Punishments have been divided up into more resolution locations.

• Wounded - Now sets body condition to half at start of battle. Cure at Doctor or District.
  
• Damaged - Repair at Blacksmith or Appraiser.
  
• Cursed - Lift at Enchanter, Oracle, Shaman (node event), or attuned Altar.
  
• Tired - Rest off in Tavern or Library (rented rooms).
  
• Burnout - Resolved at Wounded, Cursed, or Tired locations.
  
• Bees - Wash off in exploration water or Bathe in Tavern (rented room).

[h2]Graphical Settings[/h2]
The Graphical UI Tray configures autoscroll (now with speed settings), fancy mode, and the new volume sliders. You can close/reopen the UI tray with the hamburger menu button in the top left. It starts every boot open to draw attention and encourage configuring- it's really unobtrusive once closed.
[h2]NPCs[/h2]

• Wolves, Bears, Bats, Drudgers, and Ents have unique name generators as opposed to a one-token list. Stock Drudgers that get promoted will receive an honorific, not a title.
  
• Drudgers, Harpies, and other Sapient but non-personable creatures no longer have lootable meat.
  
• Exceptional Honored Drudgers can have captives and better rewards to loot.
  
• Dead NPCs seeking retribution have a wider range of intros, reducing the chance that they receive no power boost for their revenge.
  
• Lumberjacks always carry Wood.
  
• Dryads use a new armor type- Grown Wood. This is lootable.

[h2]Locations[/h2]

• As mentioned above, Oracles, Libraries, Districts, Appraisers, Altars, and Enchanters can resolve certain Punishments.
  
• Districts have a Heat system. Player characters that poke around too much will have services (attacking Crime Lord, healing, etc) denied until the Heat cools down.
  
• Altars accept more drawbanes. Monster organs (Bat Wings, Mimic Guts, Sinew) count as Meat. Sky accepts telescope, and non-Forest Forces accept Living Flames.
  
• Features have a tutorial entry in the Glossary Manual.

[h2]Tutorials[/h2]
The Combat Tutorial, starting Story Tutorial, and Feature Tutorials have been streamlined and colorized.
When playing from the Terminal, you can press 't' to get a tutorial of your current Feature, if it has one, or the Combat Tutorial while in battle. You can still access these from the Manual using the Graphical. In a future update you will be able to use the shortcut from it.[h2]Misc[/h2]

• While playing a Cheating Save, you can disable out-of-battle Punishments by enabling it as a Game Setting in the Player Menu. Punishments will still be applied in battle (mostly Curse), but will not persist between battles.
  
• When playing from the Terminal, input 'i' to see the player's display and 'o' to see the opponent's display- which is already displayed visually in a the Graphical, giving the two more parity.
  

writing tutorials is the absolute worst, glad that's mostly over

v0.8.b_12 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_11 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default.
Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github.

This is planned to be the last major Beta before version 8's official release. Trawel v8b12 will (hopefully) go into a polishing stage for a couple updates, before a final v8 is put out. After, normal updates will resume again with v9 betas.


The new artstyle has made it in game! While currently the selection of armors, species, and weapons that have been implemented remains small, you can switch between the Legacy and modern art as a display option.
Unicorns have their own sounds, and Harpies' sounds have been patched.
The way which Music fades in and out has been changed. If you return to the old music track before it fully fades out, it will start to fade in again without switching. A tracker advances constantly which is determine where to start new tracks- this should spread out the listening time amongst all the different tracks
Dying applies a random Punishment effect, until you have all 4 Death Punishments. They are the same Punishments used in world attribute contests, so they can be cured using the existing systems. Fighting is still possible while under the effects of a Punishment, but each impairs your ability to survive, making on-level fights much more difficult.
Current Punishments being suffered remains in the 6th slot of the Player Menu, which has changed to 'Status', also including some non-item DrawBanes (Daylight, Blood, Wealth). The Raw Stats display has been moved to the Inventory sub-menu.

The following Punishments were used while dying:

• Wounded - Cure at Doctor. Suffer Bleed every Impactful attack taken.
  
• Curse - Cure at Doctor. Have 50% less MHP.
  
• Tired - Rest off at Inn. Halved dodge multiplier.
  
• Damaged - Repair at Blacksmith. Start battles with 50% armor condition.

Non-Defensive stats got removed from the Combat Summary to quickly allow the player to determine which attack is best given the state of the enemy. Examine received a major overhaul, allowing the player to separately display their own HP/Armor/Effects, Body Condition- as well as their Target's HP/Armor/Effects, Body Condition, and Stats/Attributes/Skills.
Debug Trawel joins Cheat Trawel in the new Extras set of gamemodes, which also contain the old prototype sidegames.
To try to discourage further real cheating, Trawel's own cheats have been expanded with more options to add XP/Aether/Currency/Time. The Manual is accessible while Cheating, and you can turn any save into a Cheating save (as well as enable/disable the story Tutorial) from the Player Menu -> Settings -> Game Settings. Cheating saves do not submit Leaderboards scores, Stats, or Achievements.

• new area! The Beach is a new Node Exploration set. Beaches have a large branching area that contains gated Dungeons and linear Caves. The Dungeons must be unlocked by slaying a randomly occurring encounter character, whose death will inform the player of which Beach has a new area for them to explore, intending to draw players in from across the map, or back afterwards so they witness the Beach Regrow (see the Regrowth fix).
  
• new behavior! Clarity can be used to unlock doors and chests, rounding out the usages of Attributes in exploration.
  
• new behavior! DrawBanes cap at 5 attraction/repelling for each type. Cloth hides Wealth, reducing the amount of Bandit ambushes when traveling. Wealth and Blood calculations have also been tweaked slightly to avoid scaling too quickly.
  
• fixed behavior! Node Features regrow their contents after being expended. Regrowth has received a larger balance pass as well this update. Now, what features are regrown into are fully weighted and more events are valid for both regrowth and to regrow into, and the time it takes to regrow has been made longer on average. Groves, Caves, and Beaches see the most change, Dungeons mostly see more guardposts, and Mines eventually dry up. Graveyards do not regrow at all, this has been intended.
  
• new behavior! The 'Casual' node event which is used in many Node types has been changed so that the Persons within can grow irritated with the player and attack them. Peaceful Persons were not affected.

• new behavior! Bosses and some minibosses now have tempered equipment, making them both more difficult but also more rewarding.
  
• new behavior! Many NPC Jobs now have starting Archetypes, which makes them prefer certain builds that go with their equipment. Creatures can no longer learn new Archetypes, causing non-Person enemies (Wolves, Bears, Bats, etc) to be restricted to Feats valid for their starting Feat Types, meaning they won't become potion brewers/armor specialists/etc.
  
• new behavior! NPCs that spawn with stronger abilities more consistently spawn with more World Currency and Bonus Drawbanes to loot.

Many Steam Achievements have been tweaked and added, as Trawel has evolved, certain behaviors have become more niche as there are more things to do, while other areas of the game were lacking. Effort has also been made to roughly categorize the achievements to make finding the ones you don't have easier, and the difficultly tiers have been updated to reflect how hard they are to complete in modern Trawel.
This brings the total Achievement Count to 38.

Once more, the internals of Trawel have been shifted around. The most significant player-facing result of such is that Trawel now requires Java 21 instead of Java 8. The Eclipse Termium version bundled with the game should work with your OS. Another end result is that the first save/load each time you open Trawel is slightly longer, further saves/loads after Trawel 'warms up' should be the old speed, or faster.

v0.8.b_11 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_10h3 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default.
Report issues and bugs in the steam forums or Audiogames.
[h2]Wound Adjustments[/h2]
Wounds are the additional effects tied to attacks. Previously, wound effects displayed alongside the hit or miss text. In this update, they were moved to combat notes, and several (such as Bleed and all bonus damage wounds) had text added to them indicating how many stacks/damage was applied to that wound.
Wounds have also been buffed in intensity to give them more impact in fights, and some new ones were added in a reshuffling to try to tie damage types into stronger identities. Sharp had most of its debilitations removed, focusing on increased damage, damage over time, and empowering further attacks you make. Pierce had its (lackluster) increased damage wounds removed and the bleed chance reduced, but was given impairing wounds and the ability to damage armor. Blunt and the Elemental wounds remain mixed, as there wasn't an obvious strong identity to give them yet, but they benefit from the increased intensity as well.
[h2]Materials and Magic Stances[/h2]
Magic Stances have been buffed to be around the strength of an Iron weapon, and several of their attacks have been given bonus on-hit effects. They are still worse than a normal weapon, since Iron isn't a very good material, so in the future it will be determined if they need more bonus add-on effects or more damage. For now, they are useful when you outlevel your weapons, but lackluster if you're keeping a leveled good material weapon on hand.

High end armor materials had nerfs to bring them more on par with each other:

• Mythril had its base resist reduced from 15 to 14. It remains easily enchantable and with solid all around resists.
  
• Adamantine had its base resist lowered from 20 to 16, but its sharp and pierce resist raised from 1.1x to 1.2x. The enchantment rating was also reduced, from 1.5x to 1x.
  
• Sunsteel is now allowed to generate for armors. It is not enchantable (because it is steel), but has 16 base resist. This makes it better than Mythril without considering enchantments, as the other high end materials tend to not have full resistance to all physical damage types.
  
• Solar Gold had its blunt resist increased from 1.2x to 1.3x. It still has poor resists in general but a very high 3x enchant.

[h2]World QoL[/h2]
Curse has been removed from the skills most Person can obtain. This should reduce trips to the Doctor, which previously were excessive since killing or getting killed by random NPCs could result in a Curse. Some bosses still have the ability to Curse you.
Feat Fragments no longer take up DrawBane space, and the default DrawBane bag size has been increased from 3 to 5, with the Big Bag skill increasing it further to 8.
[h2]Skills, Feats, Archetypes[/h2]
This list only includes new Skills, Feats, and Archetypes, but existing Archetypes, Feats, and Perks had their skills shuffled around to accommodate the new additions and provide more coherent flavor where applicable using the new Skills.[h3]Archetypes[/h3]

• Rune Blade: Grants Runesmith and Runic Blast.
  
• Cut Throat: Grants Open Vein, Deadly Aim, and Quick Start.
  
• Comestible Critic: Grants Chef, Big Bag, Bulk, and Potion Brewer.

[h3]Feats[/h3]

• Heavyweight: Grants Big Bag and Bulk.
  
• Swift: Grants Aggress Parry and Blitz.
  
• Cocooned: Grants Salvage and Living Armor.

[h3]Skills[/h3]
A few new skill groupings were created. Crit Skills have been expanded from just Deadly Aim to a set of skills that reward high accuracy attacks. The trigger for crit-ing has been increased from 2x roll to 3x roll. Miasma replaces most of the skill gaps caused by Curse being removed from the default skillset. It focuses on Clarity contests to apply Miasma, which each skill has a trigger for applying and a boost against enemies already inflicting with it. Some skills that repair/boost Armor have also been added, which can put your armor over 100% just like the Armor Tuning skill has always been able to. Elemental Effect Skills have been expanded. The 'mantic' series now has a 90% combined chance (up from 75% combined) to replace a failed wound roll with the elemental wound type they correspond with, which combos with the Boost line that causes a bonus effect whenever you apply an Elemental wound, from dealing Elemental damage or aforementioned 'mantic' skills.

• Fetid Fumes: When Attacked: Force a contested Clarity check at half Clarity to apply Miasma. Attackers already inflicted with Miasma suffer a -10% hit roll.
  
• Fever Strike: On Attack: Force a contested Clarity check to apply two stacks of Miasma. When targeting opponents already suffering from Miasma with physical attacks, deal +10% damage as Decay damage.
  
• No Quarter: Combines Twinned Takedown and old Press Advantage. On Kill: Gain Takedown effect and two stacks of Advantage. Takedown applies Knockout on hit once.
  
• Bulk: +5% Strength as MHP.
  
• Big Bag: Gain 3 Drawbane slots, for a total of 8.
  
• Press Advantage: On Any Crit: Gain one stack of advantage.
  
• Runic Blast: On Impact Crit: Apply a wound of the elemental on-hit enchantment.
  
• Open Vein: On Impact Crit: Apply Hemorrhage to prevent Bleed stacks from healing, if already Hemorrhage, apply Bleed.
  
• Aggress Parry: On Any Crit: Grants a compounding 1.2x dodge roll against one attack.
  
• Living Armor: On Armor Block: Boost your armor by +8% flat.
  
• Salvage: On Impactful Crit: Boost your armor by +12% flat.
  
• Chef: Hearty potions have double sips and apply a Padded stack on Sip.
  
• Ignite Boost: On Elemental Wound: Gain a compounding 1.2x dodge roll against one attack.
  
• Frost Boost: On Elemental Wound: Boost armor by +10% flat.
  
• Elec Boost: On Elemental Wound: Add 4 instants to target's action.
  

[h2]Misc World Additions[/h2]

• Locked Doors are now an attribute contest that applies Burnout on fail instead of always succeeding. You can use Dexterity or Strength.
  
• Sky Cults were added to Mountains.
  
• Bumpers (random encounters) can steal currency from you, so Bandits on the road are still a threat even if Curse has been removed from their ability set.
  
• Rubies are more common from chests while Emeralds are more common from veins.
  You get free Rubies after leaving a Node Exploration Feature, after killing a boss.

[h2]Graphical Only[/h2]
Total Deaths, Total Duel Wins, and Total Levelups have been added as leaderboards.
Trying to input an invalid number will now restore the previous prompt instead of forcing you to use the number keys to input a correct number.
Pressing Escape or Y/Triangle on controller will attempt to back out of 10 menus, as with the terminal input that does the same.

v0.8.b_10 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_9 (patch notes here) had been pushed to default a few day ago.
Report issues and bugs in the steam forums or Audiogames.
[h2]Roll Punishments[/h2]
Previously, the only Effects that lasted outside of battle were Curse and Bees. Now, Burnout, Damaged, and Tired join the party in an attempt to add meaning to Attribute Contests and other out of battle actions, such as the existing event in Mountains where you try to survive a rockslide. If you fail the event you attempt, you will suffer a punishment Effect and Burnout, which will make further attempts harder or block them entirely in some cases- until you cure Burnout by resting at an Inn or going to a Doctor. The actual punishment effects will hinder your combat potential- Burnout exists so you don't keep spamming the events now that you are already under the penalty for them.

While this system applies to a few existing places, including the aforementioned rockslide, there have been Trapped Treasure Chambers added to Mines and Dungeons. These treasure chambers all have an attribute which is used to try to detect traps, and 2 to 4 traps. If you can beat all the traps in a row, you'll gain access to the loot within. If you fail, well, that counts as detecting the trap, but you'll have to recover from Burnout to try again. If you fail to detect a trap, you will be forced to try to complete a random trap, detecting it either way if you didn't already know about it. Completing traps doesn't turn them off- but detecting traps through any means makes them much much easier.
[h2]Display Improvements[/h2]

• new colors! Damage Types have their own colors.
  
• new colors! Feature Service Usage have colors for free services, aether services, world currency services, both currencies, and special payment; to ease understanding menus. Quest Board areas also have a distinct color.
  
• new colors! Inward/Outward have their own colors, and the already present colors for interacting options now use more prominent colors.
  
• color usage! Results now use the Fail/Pass/Warn/Error colors more frequently.
  
• usage tweak! In some cases interrupting colors will try to revert to the prior color instead of blank white.
  
  1. Nodes revert to the visit indicator color instead of uncolored when their names include special colors, such as veins of ore/gems and plants.
     
  2. Weapons and Armor revert to the prior color after displaying their material colors.
• bugfix! Time passing now correcting gives Background Color at night again.
  

[h2]Bumper/Reaction Rounding Out[/h2]
Bumpers react to your Drawbanes, but are in a weird spot in that not every factor that would attract or repel creatures (such as the sunlight not being great for vampires) being an inventory item or trait of your character.

• bugfix! Bumpers rolling code was formerly bugged which made them much rarer than they were intended to be under most circumstances.
  
• new behavior! Daytime now discourages Vampires from showing up, and some other monsters to a much lesser extent.
  
• new behavior! World Currencys now attracts bandits and pirates.
  
• tweaked behavior! Removed most level requirements. These were intended to prevent farming bumpers at low levels, but it was meaningless since 'low level' is relative.
  
• tweaked rewards! Hunters in more locations award Amber when beaten, to allow it to be collected outside of Quests.
  
• new deathcheaters! While not standard bumpers, Deathcheaters got more primal types to complement mountain Oreads- there are now Forest, Grove, Breeze, Fountain, and Sea druids, named after various Nymphs of greek myth.
  

[h2]Quests[/h2]

• tweaked behavior! Cleanse quests now work almost universally on Persons independent of their location, with a few exceptions for units that respawn near a boss/higher level enemy. No matter where a bandit or Wolf is, you'll get credit for the kill now!
  
• new targets! Drudger, Fell, Monster, and Animal have been added as Cleanse quest types. Animals include Bears, Wolves, Bats, Unicorns, etc; while Monsters are more intelligent creatures who are hostile to civilization, such as Harpies, Drudgers, and Vampires. Fell currently only includes Fell Reavers, which are also Monsters.
  
• new targets! Witch Hut Collect Quests now target more Drawbanes.
  

[h2]Currency Usage[/h2]
The game split World Currency and Aether a while back to try to make looting more interesting. The core concept of having different sources be better at different loot, and prevent the player from accumulating effectively infinite amounts of money from mass melting equipment, fell flat for a few reasons. Firstly, you could convert from Aether to World Currency anyway at the Enchanter. Secondly, since Aether was still so easy to get large amounts of, this moved the gameplay to just selling it through the Enchanter as an extra hoop.
To attempt to fix this, World Currency and Aether have been fully decoupled, and you can't convert at stores anymore either. However, all equipment is now sold through Aether instead of convertible World Currency. This means that Aether, which you mostly get from looting equipment, can be used to buy and upgrade equipment, while World Currency, which you get in small amounts from fights and large amounts from world actions, is mostly used for world actions.
The addition of Trapped Treasure Vaults is another way to get World Currency, which will make it more interesting to get in larger amounts normally.
[h2]Misc[/h2]

• fast-travel! With your Map you can take the route presented in the Compass to any town you've been to before. This is equivalent to doing the inputs listed on the Compass yourself, so any combat or social encounters on the roads/seas will remain.
  
• tweaked behavior! The first node in a Node Exploration Feature will not start with forced combat, and the first few layers will have less/no chance for certain loot and 'obstacle' enemy groups.
  
• tweaked behavior! Owning an Inn ensures you don't have to rent a room- you own the entire thing, after all.
  
• bugfix! Mines didn't weight their contents properly. They weighted it and then randomly selected from a node between 1 and the content they rolled.
  
• bugfix! Turning in Feat Fragments in a library will no longer destroy your other drawbanes as well.
  
• bugfix! log.txt will include an error stacktrace, not just the error message.
  
• tweaked behavior! Deadly Aim now is a damage multiplier instead of scaling on attack time, so it should stay viable at higher levels.
  
• bugfix! Graveyard now behaves better when you have nightvision.
  
• bugfix! Donating Lots to the town for Community Stalls no longer crashes the game next time time passes.
  

Sorry for the months-long wait for news, I got sick again, dragon out o7