And now comes one of the biggest mechanics changes the game has yet seen: Hunger! As you are probably aware, many (many) roguelikes have your poor hero bastard wasting away due to starvation and etc.
In another move towards the true meaning of Christmas, er... Roguelike, Equin: The Lantern now boasts some rather interesting changes for ye all:
ADDITIONS
In this example screenshot above, please notice the new green HUD gauge under the XP and Hit Streak ones. Here's the new Hunger meter. The more full it is, the less hungry you are. The hunger meter depletes over time whenever you take a step or wait a turn. It goes down pretty slowly however you shouldn't neglect it.
When it is depleted, you begin to starve to death. This is exactly as fun as it sounds!
While starving, you will lose 1 HP per step until you turn actual dead. To prevent this, I have made it so every existing piece of food in the game will fill your hunger gauge to a certain degree. Not only will this add some more challenge to the game, it also ups the importance of many items which were previously deemed borderline throwaways. Even the lowly set of grapes now hold importance to the seasoned adventurer!
To help you, eating dungeons flowers and (later, possibly) bones on the ground will also fill your hunger meter some.
But wait, there's more??
- New player battle action: SLEEP. Do you hate how some enemies can put you to sleep and wail on you? Now, you have the opportunity to do the same! Enemies who are put to sleep do so for several rounds. The exact forumla for success is: Put enemy to sleep chance = Int(MAG * 2.5) +5% There's no special enemy defense for this, so the spell has a chance to work vs. bosses and champs too. The spell requires 5 STM to cast, which is quite a bargin. NOTE: Petrified & Sleep status can't exist at the same time, so if an enemy's got one of these statuses then the other one will automatically fail.
- New Item: Tome (Sleep). The crafty Wizard gets another book thrown into the mix, that allows him to cast the above mentioned Sleep spell.
- Tome (Sleep) was added to the Wizard Shop pool. It costs $2000.
- There's some code in the game where you will always get a minor rune on floor 16, if you haven't already found one. No sense in having that 5th equipment slot go to waste, right?
- There's a new page on the Tutorial section concerning the hunger mechanic.
- Started page 24 of the Items Found Log. So far it just has the Sleep Tome on it.
CHANGES
- The Hunting Bow now gains the new 'Carve' modifier (like the Hunting Knife) at a slightly lesser chance to work at 3% per kill. If successful you'll gain some Fresh Meat from your defeated foe.
- Icebox Floor events double the hunger rate for your character. Must be all that shivering.
- Fish Bones will now give Cultists positive benefits like the other rotten food in the game do.
- The Gorgon Club can no longer be equipped by the Thief. It's Warrior / Cleric only.
- Every food item in the game now fills your hunger gauge to some degree. For the exact info, please refer to the updated ETL Items Spreadsheet linked to below.
- Resting at a campfire fills your hunger gauge to full. As if these weren't good enough before!
- Renting a room at a Guild also fills your hunger gauge to full. Bed & Breakfast or something like that.
- The indoor buildings screen looks a bit better now. Shadows and all that. Trust me it looks better haha.
- The Nightblade sword gained the Sleep effect in battle (lost Dodge)
- The King's Scepter gained the Sleep effect in battle also.
- The tutorial page that mentions the items now reflects the proper total of 461.
FIXES
None this time!
IMPORTANT STUFF, GUYS!
Usually all of my updates don't harm your progress or saves or anything like that however with the addition of the hunger mechanic that's not the case. If you have an existing save file your guy will be automatically starving once you load your game to continue (sorry, there's no way I can work around this).
Any new game of course will work just fine with a full belly. I thought it important to mention this now.
The spreadsheet has also been udpated to reflect today's changes:
The Official Spreadsheet of Equin: The Lantern's items
http://www.dxfgames.com/ETL_ITEMLIST2018.xlsx
So there we go! I think that's enough for at least a few days!
Goodnight and have fun!
-Del_Duio