Hello everyone! We're now live! Feels weird pressing the release button since I've got a feature todo list that's 1000s of items long and growing, but I guess that's the point of early access. Will be pretty much immediately going right back into development so expect daily updates.
I'd say the game is currently at about the 40% complete stage as of this first release so there is an enormous amount of content, balancing and polish coming down the line. I'm planning on spending the first month or so mostly just working on new content since we were in a polishing freeze for so long prior to the web release. Obviously bugs and crashes will be taking priority so please report anything that goes wrong and I'll try to fix it ASAP.
Updates compared to the web release:
A lot of my time was spent just getting the game to run on the desktop but I wanted to get some new content done as well for people coming from the web versions.
DUNGEON LAYOUT:
- Iron Fortress moved to tier 3 to spread out the zones a bit more
LEVEL GENERATION:
- Extended the cave level generators so that they can spawn vaults within them. This is currently just used for a few aesthetic vaults and a challenge vault in the desert but will be very useful in the future.
- Cactus's can occasionally spawn in the sunless desert in order to add a bit more color. I'm planning on extending the knock back mechanics to deal damage when you knock back enemies into walls and stuff like cactus and spikes should deal more damage in this case.
- Pine trees can spawn occasionally in the ice caves (adds a bit more color). This is also the start of what I'd call sub-zoning, so slowly adding stuff so that some ice cave levels are alpine forest like and then adding unique enemies, items, objects etc to such a sub-zone in order to get some variety even within a single zone.
- Added a new generator to The Dark Temple that generates temple like levels.
- Added a new generator to The Iron Fortress that generates lava forge type levels.
- These will eventually be extended to have unique content within them.
- Steam vents will spawn on some Iron Fortress levels which knock characters back when they activate and block line of sight.
- Toxic water added to sewers
- Vault of Yendor can now spawn lava.
- New unique generator added to Upper Dungeon
NPCS:
- Added Licky Toads, Chameleons and Tentacle Terrors with the ability to tongue/tentacle pull the player towards them. Will be adding a playable frog race soon with same ability as a talent.
- Added Iron Imps to the Arcane Tower
- Monsters behind glyph doors will no longer wait 2 turns before acting after the door is opened.
- Rare cave bears that spawn in Upper Dungeon and can berserk.
NEW TALENTS:
- War Cry (barbarian): Fills your rage meter, stuns nearby enemies and alerts all NPCs in a wide radius as to your position.
- Head Shot: allows ranged attacks to sneak attack.
- Disengage: deals high damage and backs off a step. Killing an enemy with this talent will have no cool down.
- Lunge: like a short range charge but dealing more damage. Killing an enemy with this talent will have no cool down.
NEW CLASS: DUELIST
- A melee character focused on movement, strafing and kill strikes.
- Still missing a few talents but has Disengage, Lunge + general talents.
- Will only reduce his short cool downs when taking steps.
- Starts with a rapier which will deal crit hits when stepping into range.
- This class is forking off from the barbarian who will be reworked a bit.
RACES:
- Races have been enabled though they are still in a rough stage and need a lot of work. I'd like to have each race have its own set of 2-3 talents that are added to your classes talents at the start of the game.
NEW RACE: GARGOYLE:
- A special challenge class
- No natural hp/mp regen but his attunement to the earth will fully restore him each time he descends to a new dungeon level.
- Permanently flying
- Stone Skin Talent: increases natural protection.
ITEMS:
- Rapier: deals crit hits when stepping into range.
- Crystal Breastplate: reflection
- Elemental Robes: grant associated resistance
- Spikes Shield: damages enemies that melee attack you
- Charm of blinking changed to wand of blinking. I'd like to avoid infinite blinks since they tend to break a lot of the existing content and planned future content.
- Changed wand of draining to a unique AoE spell that immediately drains health from enemies around you. Trying to give the wands and charms their own unique spells separate from talents.
STATIC LEVELS_AND_VAULTS:
- 10 more static levels (hand made).
- 2 more configurations for the Vault of Yendor last level.
- A bunch of vaults added to sewers.
- 10 difficult vaults added to Vault of Yendor
- 5 new special challenge vaults in various zones.
LONG COOL DOWNS:
- Barbarians and duelist will tick cooldowns that are larger than 100 normally.
- There was the issue that barbarians paradoxically could not make use of the berserk talent due to its long cool down.
- I'm considering changing these long cool downs to refresh only when the character gains a level or possibly when he descends to a new dungeon level.
BALANCE:
- As a note, pretty much all balance is subject to constant change and iteration.
- Capped skills at 10 to reduce guaranteed power growth along a single dimension (most apparent with casters easily getting huge hit point pools).
- Will be planning to move more of the power into items, talents and attributes, with skills playing more of a secondary role.
- All mages start with generic Magic Mastery talent instead of their specialized ones (which still exist and can drop). This is to help them more readily make use of spells from different schools.
- Power shot and tunnel shot now work with staves. I'm trying to get all talents to be at least somewhat useful for all characters.
- Shock Spell has had its max spread range capped as it was pretty insanely overpowered. Will also show the targeting correctly when aiming it.
- Equipment (non-stackable, non-consumable) spawned in standard chests and on the floor will try to never double drop. This should help mitigate the RNG somewhat by at least not giving you doubles of stuff you don't want.
- Crystal Chest rooms are now more common in order to give the player more chances to make choices regarding their equipment.
- Pit traps (but not big pits) will try to drop the player into a semi-safe position (approximately 10 tiles from the nearest enemy). This is to avoid cheap instant deaths falling into hoards.