Ver 0.943a has the following changes. Please let me know of any new issues, I will fix.
[ BALANCE CHANGES ]
Prior to the Free shop, each character now starts with no equipment (except Debt Letter for Merchant).
The Free Shop now gives 2 shovels and 1 handle.
If you are playing on Depth 1, those 2 shovels will correspond to 2 of "starting shovels" on character select screen.
If you are playing on Depth 2+, 1 shovel will be from the "starting equipment" and 1 item will either be common or rare, depending on whether you made it to the Mushroom Forest in your last run.
The handle will either be a random common handle (including quests) or a guaranteed random common quest, depending on whether you made it to the Crystal Ribcage in your last run.
The starting equipment by default has a sell value of 0.
Chests now more likely to have Gacha. Default rates for gacha:
Common chests: 25% -> 50%. (Else, will drop a lava.)
Rare Chests: 50% -> 75%.
Ultra Rare Chests: 75% -> 85%.
Legendary Chests: 100% -> 100%, but now only Rare Gacha or above (no more common gacha from Legendary Chests).
[Note: Chest rarities still differ in other ways, distributions of gold, potion, charge, rocks, etc.]
Enemy Chests in the "Mines", aka the first 2 battles, now have 1 fewer lock (minimum 1 lock). Combined with the changes in the free shop, I hope it is slightly easier to unlock the chests early on, to give more experienced variation from run to run.
Flower Girl Depths have changed, in particular:
Depth 3 now removes the "+3 base strength" from her ability.
"No Red Cape" depth has been removed owing to the changes in Free Shop.
Other depths reordered (old Depth 3 -> Depth 4, etc).
Tower Rune has changed:
Before: "Drawn first and only once per battle."
Now: "Drawn only once per battle. End Battle: Upgrade lowest rarity shovel."
Clarifications: The end battle effect only takes place if the tower rune is still there at the end of the battle.
It targets the lowest rarity shovel that is not upgraded . For example, if you only have a base-level Legendary Shovel and an upgraded Common Shovel, it will upgrade the Legendary Shovel. If you have multiple shovels of the same rarity, it chooses randomly.
If the upgraded shovel has a quest, the quest disappears, as there is no level 3.
(*The Tower Rune is always still drawn first, but it just omits that fact.)
My apologies if this results in any bugs, I am still testing it somewhat as it's not trivial to accomplish the "goal" of keeping the tower rune around the entire battle.
"Red Cape" and its upgrade have changed:
Before: "Forge Gem: Gain 2 shield if enemies angry."
Now: "Forge Gem: Gain 1 shield. Gain 1 extra shield if enemies angry."
Upgrade: UNLOCK TO FIND OUT, mwhaha
"Purse" upgrade now slightly changed, to provide slightly more utility late in a run.
"Trowel" upgrade had a misaligned collision shape that would sometimes miss stuff on the bottom of the crate. This is now fixed and works more in line with expectations.
As promised in last patch notes, Enemies now "lock in" their attacks at the moment you click End Turn, they won't get angry or calm down as a result of their teammates actions (or other changes). Thank you to the anonymous playtester who let me know about this issue.
[ UI ]
The Purple Trigger "Tags" / outlines were misaligned for shovels that "grow" (e.g. Copper Knife on Flower Girl). This has now been fixed.
In the view book, when looking over previous runs, "Crate: " was missing. It is now fixed, including for your past runs (the crate information was not lost, just not displaying correctly).
If there are any oddities, please do let me know here or in the discussion forums or on discord, just the name of the item and I can look into it.
Minor changes to the timing of Shop Keep dialogue, due to player feedback. Will keep adjusting.
[ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ]
I want to thank all the players who have tried the demo and continue to give amazing feedback. Thanks to your comments, I've been able to focus on the painpoints players are experiencing. I will keep reading the comments daily.
Here are some feedback that resulted in changes. (Other feedback is absorbed and may result in future changes. I'm only so fast, sorry.)
"Not really getting enough handles or shovels to really make things interesting. It might be nice to have the starting shovels have some kind of quest to encourage you to keep them?"
Hopefully the new system with additional gacha from chests early on, and a handle early on, helps make things more interesting. (I believe this comment was after the player's first run, as usually a second run would have quest handles).
This echoed the sentiments of earlier playtesters, including Yän of https://yaen-games.itch.io/
"Without trying to be cruel - only the final boss made me worried if I could make it. I barely was aware of the enemies. Also the dialog boxes with the bearchest guy goes a little slow and seems to hang up a bit in stores at times?"
You are not alone! Hopefully the new free shop changes makes those early battles more challenging.
I also hope to implement a system in the next patch like "If you complete a run with 100 hp, unlock the next 2 depths." (Default is unlocking only one more depth.)
I tried decreasing the "hang up" time for dialog boxes by about 0.5 seconds, but will probably iterate further in this direction.
"Better/more clear item/effect explanations."
I'm going to keep iterating on the tag system, and may even introduce options in the UI menu to choose what level of "tags" you would like, as eventually players probably get a sense of Coin vs Gem, but might still be confused by the more one-off tags.
I'll keep polishing the Tooltip pop up windows too, sometimes the tag is so long it "spills over" across multiple lines. In some tool tips the font is irregular (a weakness of mine, sorry).
"Same boss should maybe not appear in both choices for the run. Maybe a third boss will be needed for full game?"
Ah sorry I forgot to reply to this one last time. Basically, each character has their own unique boss. For depth 1 you are forced to choose that boss. However, as long as you have completed depth 1 for at least 2 characters, depths 2+ feature a choice between 2 different bosses -- their "unique" boss and one other boss from one of the other characters for whom you've beaten depth 1. Thus, you can always start a run expecting a particular boss, but get some variation in case the battle modifier, depth modifier, or build warrants it.
Eventually I hope to be able to do multiple additional bosses, but I cannot promise at this time, sorry.
"[...] I also suggest that items are discovered in the book if you obtain them "indirectly", i.e. not purchasing the thing itself from the shop. I still technically don't have the "Unlucky" quest discovered in the book despite having obtained it as one of the free quest items at the start of my run several times."
Thank you, this was also one motivating aspect of the change. Now, since the handle is being manually equipped in the free shop, as opposed to indirectly equipped, it should always show up in the book.
I also am reflecting on your comments about the mirror-rune, and thinking on it daily and during my runs.
"Feedback button on main menu is bugged. Brings you to the settings menu instead of the run end screen I'm using to type this. Button in settings menu also just brings you to a different page of the settings menu."
Oops sorry I forgot this one. I should be able to fix it in the next patch. Thank you!