The beta for our latest feature arc, the Moon Stair, is here. Big picture, this arc includes the last late-game region, a new quest in the main questline, significant updates to the new UI, all new sound effects, and many, many gameplay changes. Everything is quite functional, but -- per usual -- it is subject to change and will get additional polish over the next several weeks.
If you'd like to help us test it, right-click on Caves of Qud in Steam, select Properties, click the Betas tab, and switch to the 'beta' branch. Note: previous saves won't be compatible with this beta. Check out this thread if you want to post your feedback, or get access to a debug wish to fast-forward to the new quest.
Here are the patch notes, with the usual caveat that some small changes may be missing.
Live and drink!
NEW QUEST IN THE MAIN QUESTLINE
- There is now a new quest after returning from the Tomb of the Eaters. Talk to Barathrum in his study to learn more.
- Added a new system for the creation of [redacted] in support of this quest.
NEW LATE-GAME REGION
- Added the last late-game region: the Moon Stair
- Added new creatures: zero jell, unimax, dawning ape, n-dimensional starshell, dreamcrungle, monad, and dream wren.
- Added a new village-like location -- Chavvah, the Tree of Life -- with several new NPCs.
- Added a new side quest at Chavvah.
- Added psychic biomes, limited to the Moon Stair.
UI
- Added a new Pixel Perfect mode, which forces zoom to snap to a perfect multiple of the pixel art. You can toggle it in the General options menu.
- Added a new Docked mode that locks the combat log, nearby items list, and minimap. You can toggle it in the General options menu.
- Added new UI for target pickers.
- Added new UI for examining things with the Look function.
- Added a new target reticle for some contexts.
- The information bar when using the look/target pickers is now at the top of the screen.
- The ability bar is now fully functional.
- Added a new UI for the Options screen.
- Added a new UI for the High Scores screen.
- Added a new UI for the Help screen.
- Added tooltips and highlights to attributes with bonuses during character creation.
- You can now look at who you're talking to from the conversation UI.
- Added binds for page up and page down.
- Removed option to show tooltips when looking. It's now always works this way when the modern UI is enabled.
- Tooltips shown by mouseclick now hide when keyboard or joystick buttons are pressed (please report any tooltips that do not behave this way).
- Added a tooltip to the window layout lock button
- Look now is now bound to left stick button by default in the modern input manager.
- After firing a ranged weapon, your target for future shots is now more reliably what you shot at instead of what you hit.
- Added two options for filtering the nearby items list to only takeable items and only items in the current tile (Options > Overlay UI > enable Show overlay nearby objects list). When both are enabled, the behavior approximates the legacy UI "only show contents of the current cell" option.
- Refactored the imposter system for visual effects. This fixes many bugs where visual effect artifacts remained on the screen improperly.
- Removed code and unused bits of Overlay UI that have been replaced with the Modern UI.
SOUNDS & MUSIC
- We're in the process of adding all new sound effects to the game. Several hundred have already been added. More to come.
- Added ambient environmental sounds. For now: to Joppa, the salt marsh, and subterranean caves. More to come.
- Added a new toggle and volume slider for ambient sounds to the General options menu.
- Added a new music track in the Moon Stair.
NEW THINGS
- Added new cybernetic implants: grounding shunts and social coprocessor.
- Added new items: palladium weave tabard, dazzle cheek, psychodyne helmet, black mote, and stasis casque.
- Added a new liquid: warm static.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
- We made some balance tweaks to the attributes of merchants.
- Stiltground merchants are now higher level and have more Willpower.
- Legendary merchants are now leveled appropriately for the difficulty tier their workshops are found in.
- More kinds of merchants now have hired guards.
- Adjusted the number of hired guards for several kinds of merchants.
- We changed how the item mod 'gigantic' works and classified some creatures as 'colossal'.
- The following creatures are classified as colossal: salt kraken, star kraken, great saltback, great magma crab, Rodanis Y, chrome pyramid, and [redacted].
- Colossal creatures can no longer wear non-gigantic gear.
- Non-colossal creatures can no longer wear gigantic gear, with the exception of gigantic weapons, which can be wielded in twice the number of hands they normally take to wield.
- Most types of items can now be gigantic.
- Gigantic weapons deal additional damage and may have other effects, depending on the weapon class.
- Gigantic vessels now store twice as much liquid.
- Gigantic grenades have double the radius.
- Gigantic gems and precious nuggets have 5x the trade value.
- Gigantic energy cells have twice the energy capacity.
- Swarm racks are now gigantic and no longer occupy back or arm slots.
- The Quantum Jitters defect is now worth 4 points.
- Svardym are no longer considered a sultanate faction.
- There is now a teleport gate in the rusted archway.
- You can no longer trade with creatures who are engaged in melee combat.
- Having an adjacent inanimate object as a target no longer counts as being engaged in melee combat.
- Robots with the Wings module can no longer fly while EMP'd.
- Set the region tier of the Six Day Stilt to 2.
- Krakens who have a party leader no longer wander in the characteristic kraken style.
- Item-based bonuses to throwing range are now functional on geomagnetic discs.
- Cheap credit wedges are now excluded from dynamic encounters.
MISCELLANEOUS
- Autoget can now unload weapons and empty liquid containers.
- Campfires and torch sconces are now avoided to a much lesser degree by pathfinding.
- Sometimes pilgrims you encounter are now lost. You can give them directions.
- Teleport gates are now points of interest.
- All creatures with proper names who are not player companions are now considered points of interest.
- Artifact functionality that displays status indications in item descriptions, such as (nonfunctional) or (unpowered), no longer does so in context of tinkering item descriptions.
BUGFIXES
- Fixed a bug that prevented legendary creatures from awarding extra XP in some contexts.
- Fixed a bug that caused legendary creatures to have too little XP for their level.
- Relic missile weapons with the vibro effect now get any penetration bonuses they may have applied on top of the vibro effect.
- Fixed a bug that caused armor categorized as Clothing to auto-equip as held in hand rather than worn.
- Fixed a bug in pathfinding that caused occasional mishaps, in particular inexplicable penchants for walking through fractus.
- Fixed a grammar error in some messages resulting from you decapitating your companion.
- Legendary villagers no longer sometimes erroneously have two names.
DEBUG & MODDING
- When using the debug option 'Show quickstart option during character generation, pressing the keybind now only works on the first screen.
- Autoget is now handled with the AutoexploreObjectEvent. Set E.Want = true and E.FromAdjacent = "Autoget". Users of the AutoexploreObjectEvent should now check the AutogetOnlyMode flag. You should only return "Autoget" (or equivalent) actions when this flag is true.
- Moved MenuOption class from XRL.CharacterBuilds.UI to the XRL.UI.Framework namespace.
- Removed old character code entries (Code="ab") from Mutations.xml, Subtypes.xml, and Genotypes.xml. Also removed the properties XRL.MutationEntry.MutationCode, XRL.SubtypeEntry.Code, and XRL.GenotypeEntry.Code.
- The ModManager UI has an additional tag for loaded mods which have Harmony Patches.
- Fixed overriding color palette in Display.txt
- Added some helper methods to make color string templates easier: Markup.Color(color, text) and StringBuilder.AddColored(color, text)
- ObjectBlueprints.xml now logs errors when setting a parameter that does not exist, or if the value can not be parsed.