Darkness Descends: Pacing and Difficulty Update

Overview

This update adds new difficulty settings and major changes to balance and pacing, particularly over the first 60 days of gameplay. Future updates will focus on the mid-game economy, improvements to combat, the Underschool, and helping Mages move more quickly around the school.

• The new Pressure setting controls the arrival of threats to Mages and the school itself. Different Pressure settings allow different Event types and have different pacing. Pressure also controls how rapidly the Fog advances.
• The Relaxed Pressure setting is now more relaxed than before. Relentless is now MUCH more aggressive. There is also now a new Balanced pressure setting that is in between.
• The new Challenge options affect general difficulty, including Starting Staff, Starting Research, Combat, Conviction, and the Conviction effects of the Fog.
• Randomize Keywords For Room Types is now independent of other options and can be enabled in any mode.
• Iron Mage Save Mode is a new option that lets you opt into restrictions that make it more difficult to reload to avoid negative situations.

Existing Save Compatibility

• Existing saves default to Pressure: Relaxed and Challenge: Hopeful Horizons. This is intentionally a low pressure and low challenge setting, even if you had harder settings on previously. Many effects have changed, so this gives you a chance to get a sense of the update before taking on the difficulty levels.
• You may modify Difficulty settings for an existing game using the Escape menu at any time. A popup will offer to take you there when you load a save from before this update.
• When you save a game that is older than this version, we will make a backup so you can return to it if needed.
• Active Events will be cancelled because many have changed in their pacing and how they work.

Notable Changes

• Arcane Scroll gates in Research have been completely removed, as have Arcane Scrolls.
• Death Saves have been removed from the game. Mages reduced to zero HP are now “At Death’s Door” and must be transported to a Medical Bed for a Revive ritual before their timer expires and they die permanently.
• Trauma lasts much less time. There are now new forms of Trauma with different kinds of effects, not just Conviction penalties.
• There are new Events and most existing Events have been updated. Poltergeists now appear from Rifts that can be battled before the Poltergeist even arrives.
• All natural Iron sources are now in the Underschool. Some iron can be mined before doing any battles.
• Medical beds now cost less Iron.
• The new Nurse's Office Room has simple requirements and speeds up healing, but impacts Conviction negatively.
• Mana Burst is the new Human faction power. Each cast, in or out of combat, has a chance of costing no mana.
• The Underschool is now opened by the first Repel Fog ritual at the beginning of the game.

Other Balance Changes

• Repair speed now scales with Mage skill.
• Gremlins and Oozes will focus on attacking targets with prior damage.
• Poltergeists that can’t find a target may begin to breaking Wall blocks.
• Doors not attached to walls do not provide luxury.
• Early Spine and Stone biome Underschool battles now always drop Iron.
• Deeper Stone biome rooms are guaranteed to drop Sculptstone.
• Malice Crystals are no longer destroyed by the Fog. You can repel fog to reveal them if they are covered.
• Losing or fleeing an Invasion battle will no longer end the Invasion.

QoL

• Many Events will now auto-pause the game to give an opportunity to react. This behavior can be modified in Settings under Gameplay.
• Resources are now counted differently for the UI and for deliveries to help prevent situations where Rituals or other tasks in progress have their resources grabbed by a different Task.
• You can now hover items in the Resources panel to see what resources are currently in use. This helps to show why the Resources pane might show 0 of a resource, but you can still see it in the world.
• The "No Research Selected" alert no longer displays if all research is complete.
• Enemy combat spell descriptions explain if a spell is AoE or not.
• There's now a button for Aid tasks that can be use to disable rescuing Death's Door, Cursebound, and Bound mages.
• During initial Staff selection, you can specify the wand type for a Mage.
• Mages actively eating will finish their meal even if their scheduled eating time ends. Half-eaten meals are now dropped instead of destroyed if Eating is interrupted by a Direct Order, Break, or other immediate Task.
• Improved the alerts about invalid ladder placement in many cases where the placement was valid.
• Added action buttons to toggle Tasks for Filling Medical Beds and Tending Plots and Planters.
• Added control over animation speed during Battles.
• The right-click selection buttons now try to stay on screen when activated.
• Improved targeting visuals for combat to be more clear when drawing over lava.
• Incoming Rain and Thunderstorms now link to information about Rain/Thunderstorms.

Fixes

• Fix for delivery issues when some of the ingredients you want have Move errands on them.
• Don't display healing info on medical beds until the character is IN the bed.
• Filth no longer shows up as "None" on multiselect.
• Fix not being able to place ladders in some cases where it should be possible.
• Fix for some statuses showing up in the event feed more than once.
• Don't show a 99 skill requirement for cleaning.
• Fix direct orders not being available for Students in some cases where they should be, like Recreation.
• Fix typos and improper terms used on a number of Statuses
• Fix ritual positions for Funeral ritual to avoid character overlaps.
• Fix Mage pathing issues when the space they used to get into a bed is no longer a valid place to stand.
• Fix for Skill Cap Medallions not always working properly.
• Fix the way that Shrinks are counted for the Resources panel.
• Fix typo in New Student Conviction bonus hover.
• Fix up the smaller conviction bar when a Mage is selected so the pointers are more accurate.
• Change status effects that say "may not" to "cannot", to make it more clear that Mages are unable to do the thing.
• Fix not being able to click on roof confirmation UI when it is over a room invasion UI.
• Fix to some combat icons showing a value when they should not.
• Fix for a case where the Ritual UI can be superimposed on the Combat UI.
• Fix for missing divider line on Recreation need bar.
• Fix some spell impact audio not playing.
• Fix all duration-without-status badges to explicitly state that the days must be consecutive.
• Fix 'Saw a Gremlin' and 'Saw an Ooze' statuses being incorrectly applied in some cases.
• Fix ritual animations starting on game load when they should not.