Halloween Mode, The Tomb & New Difficulty Settings! (Patch Notes 12)

Halloween Mode

Fellow dwarves! Glistenveld is getting spooky once again as Halloween Mode is now enabled!
With Halloween Mode enabled, you will experience the following changes to the game:

1. Atmosphere - The colour and atmosphere of levels have become a little spooky!
2. Pumpkins - You will find random pumpkins in each level. You can harvest these to get a tasty pumpkin stew, which dwarves will treat like meals!
3. Webs - You will find random webs which are sticky.
4. Bats - When you start a new skirmish mode game, you'll find a few more bats roaming the tunnels!
5. Bubbling waters and mist - Water has turned greenish and bubbles, and you will find mist emerging here and there.
6. Green blood - Units and creatures flash green when injured, instead of red.

As usual, seasonal modes can always be disabled in the options menu under Gameplay > Seasonal.

The Tomb

To help celebrate this spooky event, we have created a new map called: The Tomb! You can find it by going to New Game > Scenarios > The Tomb. Alongside this, we've just released a hefty new update to the game (patch notes below).

Patch Notes

It's been a while since the last update. This is mostly because we've been focused on chapter 2 content which, for the time being, must remain secret. However, we have finally reached a state where we can push out a new update, and boy is this a big one!

Features & Design Changes:

1. Difficulty Settings - The Dwarves of Glistenveld will now present you with difficulty options when you start a new game! The options are 'Dwarfling', 'Normal' and 'Veteran', and will impact the gameplay in every mode. Once in-game, you can change your difficulty setting at any time from the escape menu!
2. New Campaign Introduction - When playing a new campaign, after the cutscene, you will find yourself in a new level called 'Introduction'. This short -yet dramatic- level bridges the gap between the story in the cutscene and the first true level of the campaign: Fisher's Cove. This introduction is intended to give you a real sense of the goblin threat, and being on the run.
3. Escape Menu Hints - While in the escape menu, hints appear that remind you what each section of the UI is for and offers some tips related to them. You can turn this off in the options menu, under gameplay.
4. Farming Plots - An addition to an existing tech: Farming. With this tech unlocked, you'll now be able to place little signposts called farming plots which tell your foragers to automatically harvest roots and mushrooms in that area. It also tells allies to avoid gathering there! This should allow you to automate your farms and let your foragers get on with it by themselves.
5. Tech: Bed-rolls - A new tech in the tech tree that allows any unit to build bed-rolls. Bed-rolls differ from regular beds in a few ways. Bed-rolls are cheaper and single-use (they are destroyed after a full bar's rest), but can be built by any class. Lastly, a crafted bed-roll is not put in physical storage but exists only in the HUD. You can queue one of these in the Workbench to be built later on. Then when you do build it, it will appear in the builder's inventory as if they were already carrying it around. This allows you to build bed-rolls miles away from your base in a matter of seconds, perfect for an assault on a distant base!
6. Tech: Upgraded Hinges - A new tech in the tech tree that provides you with 'Iron Doors' and allows nearby ballistas to trigger one another. Iron doors are a more durable and flexible alternative to wooden doors. While wooden doors prevent enemies but allow allies through, iron doors are configurable and can be chosen to allow everyone, noone or only your units through.
7. Big-Picture UI - The little UI in the top-left now features 3 sections: dwarf count, claim count and schematic count. Each section is also a button. The dwarf count will open the dwarf-list; the claim count will select one of the claims you own; the schematic count will open up the tech tree, once you have built a tech table.
8. Crafting Instructions - You can now prioritise specific crafts by selecting an engineer and right clicking one of the buildings the craft will be performed at. That engineer will then perform the chosen craft before any other instruction, assuming they are able.
9. Building Attacked Notification - New notification that tells you when one of your buildings is under attack!
10. Bats - Bats will now level up over time, growing slightly in size and strength. Bats will also avoid any buildings that produce light, like monuments and lamp posts. Younger bats will now follow older bats around. Also fixed some issues with bats bunching up on single tiles.
11. Goblins - Higher level goblins now have a different colour outfit. Goblins have also been balanced to be stronger in combat at higher levels.
12. Attention Pop-ups - Now have a timeout and will disappear after a while. No longer keep reappearing once dismissed.
13. Hardy Trait - Dwarves with this new positive trait will have +1 defence and an additional block opportunity in combat.
14. Root-puller Ability - This has swapped places with Root-hugger and is now a level 2 ability. In theory, this ability will be more useful earlier on in the game, and root-hugger will be more useful later on. Existing saves will not reflect this changes.
15. Tutorials - Tutorials now feature a side-objective, to click all of the hint signs in each level. Also fixed various issues with tutorials, like edge-cases that can lead to confusing situations for the player.
16. Gather Instruction - Can now be used to pick up items strewn on the ground, in addition to foraging or fishing.
17. Green Mushrooms - These nasty mushrooms will now cause a chain-reaction when triggered! When stepped on, a green mushroom spawns gas around it, and triggers neighbouring mushrooms with the same effect. This gas drains the victim's hunger and will cause them to become frenzied from too much exposure. A frenzied unit will only return to normal once you knock some sense into them!
18. Multiple Unit UI - Now shows the unit's level, and provides individual rest and hold buttons for each unit you have selected.
19. Pressure Plates - Now craft 3 at a time, similar to tracks. This should speed up the process of assembling pressure plates where you want them.
20. Flintlock - This ability is finally implemented! Flintlock is an engineer's level 5 ability that allows them to fire a shot at an enemy before engaging in battle. The graphics are still missing some sprites however.

Fixes & Improvements:

1. Notifications - Notifications for short-term or less significant events have a timeout and will remove themselves after a period of time. Also fixed issues with certain notifications not popping up.
2. Held Units - Units will now equip items even while held. Held warriors will no longer attack enemies on sight, unless they are adjacent. Holding a unit will only cancel their move if it wasn't directly issued by the player.
3. Moving Units - When issued a move by the player, units should no longer give up on their target when they get in each other's way.
4. Single-button Mode - Now named 'One-button mode' has undergone a few improvements, including certain cases where a vehicle couldn't be selected or moved, and gathering roots/fish required multiple clicks on touch screens.
5. Crafting - Engineers should no longer double-up on resources needed to craft something. Engineers should now take into account the resources they're holding when starting a craft or assembly, particularly for walls and bridges. Engineers will now try to build in order of distance from the target, which should make assembling tracks a little less chaotic.
6. Buildings - The colour of the HP bar now corresponds with its clan colour, as with units.
7. Stealing - You can no longer pick up an ally's building item while it's being assembled.
8. Steam Achievements - Some achievements weren't being validated at the appropriate times in the game.
9. Barrel-riding - Fixed a few bugs, one involving the pathfinder going through land to reach the target, one where loading a game with a unit in a barrel would cause issues with movement. Also you could drive them with no unit in them.
10. Ambient SFX - Ambient sounds will now play even before the source is revealed in the fog-of-war.
11. Ally/Enemy AI - Made more intelligent and aggressive when an enemy is sighted or one of their buildings is under attack, (more refinement might be necessary). An AI's 'give-up' threshold has been modified and made more intelligent, which should stop most AI-related FPS drops in the game.
12. Warrens - Should now be destroyed when their tile is mined by an AI team, as it would be by the player.
13. Caverns Mode v0.44 - Enemies would sometimes spawn with reduced HP. Tunnels should be guaranteed to spawn after exploring enough. Some quests have been made a bit clearer. New cave featuring mobbit warrens!
14. Skirmish Mode - Fixed bugs involving the 'choose spawn' option. Also Dwarf AI in this particular mode were inclined to stand around like lemons. You can now choose spiders as one of the occupants of caves.
15. Campaign Levels - All levels in the campaign have received small or significant updates. BridgeItLake now features an obvious schematic. SmuggleMeTimbers received improvements for conquest route, and the chest contents changed to contain gems.
16. Minimap - Clicking the minimap should now correctly move the camera to where you've clicked.
17. UI Flickers/Updates - Fixed some issues with flickering UI and issues with UI not updating icons correctly.
18. HUD Items - Items that are not stored physically but in your HUD should now show correctly when loading a saved game.
19. Placement Hints - Always on for heavily restricted placements. 'Remove instruction' only shows hints where instructions are present.

We'll also be releasing a blog post soon, so stay tuned for that. Until the next update, Happy Halloween!