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Books & Brains - v0.28.2

Summary

Books: Combined most multi-part books, added a couple of new ones and updated reading UI. Books can now also be read in main menu.

Enemy AI: Some enemies flee at low health and most healers now run next to the wounded target before casting the heal.

Other:
- Reward for 7. level is now chosen from 3 special buffs.
- Added dual-wielded swords & axes with new animations.
- Reduced beefiness of most tanky enemies.

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Books

Updated book UI and added a sound for page turning.

Books are no longer split across multiple levels, so their stories/lore should be much easier to follow.

Books can now also be read in main menu, though they are hidden until the chapter they’re in is reached.

Added a couple of new books and modified the contents of several existing ones.

Chapter 3 book (The Rangers) temporarily removed.

UI

Changed healing floating number color.

Skill descriptions: Mana, cooldown and cast time values are now colored light blue for values greater than zero and gray for others.

New skill icons:
- Summon ally
- Life drain / heal
- Hammer melee attack
- Axe melee attack
- Melee multi-attack
- Dash attack
- Homing missiles
- Boomerang projectile
- Wings
- Blinkstrike
- Pull

Player

Level 7 levelup reward is now chosen from these special buffs:
- Execute: Attacks exceeding 70% of remaining enemy hp deal +50% damage.
- Lunge: Land melee attacks from further away.
- Death drain: Increase health restored from kills by 40%.

Melee basic attack lunge range is slightly longer by default.

Enemy AI

Updated AI system to allow behaviours which temporarily override normal AI.
- Fleeing: Run away from player for a couple of seconds when at low health.
- Run to target -> use skill: Enemy runs to a target in order to cast an important skill on it (e.g. go heal an ally).

Enemies

Shield-using enemies: removed a 10% damage reduction modifier from shields and reduced max health from some of them.

Chapter 1:
Bandit Shield:
- Base movement speed increased
- Block is now an active ability used after taking damage. The buff slows movement speed.

Bandit Shooter: Flees at low health

Bandit Bruiser miniboss (p3&p4)
- Reduced max hp

Bandit Healer:
- Heal: Range reduced and the healer will now run to wounded targets in order to help them

Bandit Bruiser (p1 boss):
- Ground Pound: Projectiles launch from further away (so they won’t hit when player is standing near his flank)
- Phase 2 - Ground Slam: Added a short exhaustion after cast

Chapter 2:
Root Giant Tentacle (new encounter): A huge tentacle that summons more tentacles

Root Mage (new encounter): An immobile humanoid-ish Root creature summons tentacles and bombards the player with orbs

Root Slitherer: Flees at low health

Cult Initiate:
- Heal & Shadow Barrier: Range reduced & caster runs to wounded allies

Chapter 3:
Ogre Captain
- Tremors: Projectiles launch from further away (same as Bandit Bruiser)
- Dash attack: cast time slightly increased

Ogre Mage:
- Heal: Range reduced & caster runs to wounded allies

Chapter 4:
Dark Hound:
- Flees at low health

Other:
Champion of Youn:
- Encounter can trigger sooner.
- Can now be killed only once per playthrough.

Models & Animation

BF Sword: New textures

Crossbow: Improved fading between animations

Player character - new animations:
- Left-handed 1h attack
- Dual-wield stand
- Dual-wield spin
- Dual-wield heavy attack (using both weapons)
- Gun/crossbow stand

Items

Blessing of Mending:
- Changed passive particle effect
- Changed skill animation & effect

Crossbow:
- Shoot: Damage greatly increased, but cooldown increased to 5 seconds
- Reload (new 2. skill): Reset cooldown of Shoot.

Carapace Crossbow (new, available in Chapter 2):
- Skills similar to Crossbow, but with higher damage and slower casts.

Dwarven Axe (renamed to Berserker Axes)
- Added a second axe, changed animations to dual-wield and modified flavor text.
- Hack’n’Chop: cooldown and mana cost reduced, but no longer automatically stuns (the damage it deals is often enough to stun an enemy anyway)

Bloodrender (renamed to Bloodrenders)
- Is now dualwielded
- Bloodbath: cooldown increased, but the cooldown is now reduced by dealing damage. Radius also slightly increased.

Steel Claws:
- Modified trail particles, and the trails are now only visible when attacking.
- Leap attack: Leap begins earlier during the cast. Base mana cost reduced to 10. Trail color changed.

Younae:
- Deceiving Strike (new 2. ability): Long-ranged melee attack. Leap to optimal distance before attacking. (Distance is long enough to avoid most melee attacks, but the gap can be closed with the short leap that player melee basic attacks have).

Lighting & Effects

Reduced some lights:
- Reduced light from several effects&projectiles.
- Reduced player lighting outside inventory view.
- Reduced flashiness of player kill heal effect.

Added an effect for poise break (stun that happens by dealing enough damage).

Map

Chapter 1 - part 2:
- Reserve encounter: Reduced total enemies to 2.

Bugfixes

Leap attacks: Fixed a few of issues about them (including: leap can no longer end up behind target and melee basic attack leap is more consistent).

Summoning skills: Fixed bug where death of a summoned ally could greatly slow down the game until the next room was cleared if camera zoom on kill was enabled. Also disabled camera zoom on kill for summoned units (except for summoned bosses).