===Changelog for V2=== 1. Remove dropping items; if you don't want it anymore, salvage it. 2. Using the explore command on the surface, will lead you to a stairwell leading into the sewer, and prompts the player to type "descend" to enter. 3. Added a chunk of code to the start of the game, prompting them if they are a new player or not. If you select yes, it will bring up the command list right away and then when finished reading it, you can, as per normal, type begin to start the game. 4. Updated command list, with additional information for exploring the surface and conditions for the descend command. 5. Added the gameplay tips into the game, and broke them up into beginner gameplay tips and advanced gameplay tips. I also updated the post here with a few new gameplay tips. 6. Added a new command, (storytime) that will give the player the basic story of the game. I intend to have this built into the tutorial later on, but for now you can view the story by typing this. 7. Introduced the magic protection stat. Reduces enemy spell damage based on 1/2 luck + shield enchantment + armor enchantment + shard of resistance. As spellcasters did the most damage, this is the only value that will mitigate the damage. Previously you had no mitigation and thus some foes could potentially one-shot you under the right conditions. Mind you, this is not a huge amount of mitigation, but something is better than nothing. 8. Implemented a new spellcasting system for casting combat spells. Command is = cast "spell" at "target" (replacing spell with the name of the spell and target with the enemy target). I implemented this system to see if players would prefer this method to casting a spell and this method would be technically easier for me to use to create and implement new spells into the game, and would be less error prone. I've found it is a more intuitive command than typing attack target and then the name of the spell, so I've decided to replace the combat spellcasting system with this one. It will also make it significantly easier to implement the 6th tier of spells that I've got planned for V2 release as well! 9. Added agility and vitality training to failing to avoid the traps from investigating points of interest. 10. Added luck training to failing to find any loot, period. 11. Your armor and shield enchantment bonuses will help to reduce damage suffered by traps, discovered while investigating points of interest. 12. Traps, activated via investigating a point of interest, will now tell you how much HP or MP you lost by triggering the trap. 13. Points of Interest, that can be investigated, are mentioned in the room description now! 14. When you enter a new room, you are told what the creature's current health is, to help you decide what form of attack to use against them, or to decide to flee from them. 15. Forgot to add Power Weapon I to purchaseable spells. It is now on the list. 16. Added in quite a few periods I missed, to make punctuation complete sentences. Whether they are grammatically correct however is another story altogether. 17. More advanced piercing spells, have higher spell penetration numbers as well! 18. Enchanting armor now applies +2 enchantment bonus per enchanting orb, to encourage players to enchant armor over exclusively enchanting a shield. 19. Modified buff durations to be longer. Minor spells used to give 10 rounds; now they give 30. Standard spells used to give 30 rounds; now they give 60. 20. Implemented monster magic protection based on 1/2 of their Resistance and Protection values added together. You will always do a minimum of 1 damage to them. 21. The spell, Power Weapon I now applies its bonus damage to backstabs. 22. Added the sixth tier of spells; Major Blessing, Major Regeneration, Piercing Cold, Inferno and Blizzard. 23. Added a new buffing spell; Force Shield I. This doubles damage of the bash and doubles applied penalties to opponents when you hit them with a shield bash. 24. Added a buff duration tracker, in the command "display info" -> "buffs". Here it will tell you how many rounds you have left and which spell of a specific type is active; as you can only have one spell of a specific type active (ie if you have minor blessing active and cast major blessing, it deactivates minor blessing and replaces it with major blessing) this can be helpful in figuring out what its values are as well. 25. Redid the surface area, and the look command provides useful information, when in the starting area. 26. Updated the command list with the new commands and modified the attack target code, so that it is now clear that you use the new spellcasting system over using it to cast spells. 27. Rebalanced the enemies. I found in my playtesting that, although enjoyable, the game lacked challenge. Thus I've rebalanced the enemies and the bosses to be a more significant challenge. In the future, I plan to balance monsters further by giving them special abilities, to force the player to adapt to the specific enemy, rather than have enemies just having bigger numbers. But for now, I've simply balanced the numbers better, to scale better as the player gains personal progression. I don't want difficulty to be overkill, but nor do I want it to be a cakewalk either. 28. Solved the critical error in spellcasting code. Turned out it was a simple typo in the syntax. Works now! 29. While analyzing my trap code, I noticed a logic error in the dodge roll to avoid the trap. Now properly uses your total dodge value, as is displayed in display info -> attributes. 30. Put in a system for when trap damage is reduced to 0 or less by your magical protections. You will get a different message when you successfully avoid all damage, or in cases where there is both MP and HP damage and you resist one damage type fully but not the other, you will get further messages. Basically, depending on the situation you will get an appropriate response. 31. Added total magical protection vs spell damage and vs trap damage in display info -> attributes. 32. Added a lot of line breaks where I thought the game needed them to aid readability and be able to logically separate different groups of messages! 33. When you go to sell a consumable, such as a healing potion, you are now told how many you have on hand. 34. When you go to enchant or enhance an item, you are told how many enchanting orbs or enhancement kits you have on hand at the time. 35. Introduced two new quality of life commands: buy "thing" and sell "thing". When you type buy or sell, the Celestial gives you a variety of options to choose from. If you know precisely what you want to get from the celestial, you can use this alternative command to do it. So if you wanted training, you would replace "thing" with "training" (as that would be the input the program would have looked for if you had used the buy -> training command). 36. Designed a "failsafe" system for race choice. If you fail to enter a correct race input, then when you are prompted to type "begin" (to begin the game), you will be prompted again for race input. As a large amount of the codebase is linked/coupled to race choice, including starting HP/MP, having no race would cause massive numbers of logic and runtime errors. Thus, this system should prevent that from happening by preventing you from proceeding into the game proper (via "begin" command) until you've chosen a race. 37. Designed a second "failsafe" system for boss loot choice. If you fail to enter a correct input, then you will take with you a "descriptor" Chaos Orb (ie smelly chaos orb, to indicate it came from the sewers) and you can decide later which artifact to take and once chosen, the orb will disappear. Previously, if you made the wrong input, you'd lose out on the artifact choice and thus this should ensure that players that defeat a boss, will always have the choice of artifact, even if they initially type in incorrect input. Alternatively a player may decide they don't want to choose immediately and then just take the orb and decide later. ===Changelog for V3=== 1. Moved spells around in the Spellbook, so that combat utility spells (ie the spell aid) come after non-combat spells (ie the spell heal). 2. Added 3 new spells: Analysis, Relocate, and Terrify. All three are cast via the "cast spell" command. Analysis is a buff, and while active you can use the new command "analyze target" and when you use this command the game will give you a detailed list of all their important statistics, to allow the player to make informed decisions. Relocate teleports you into a brand new room and prevents monster retaliation; this provides a valuable option for spellcasters that fail to kill a target in one hit, and don't think they can "flee from target" without getting hit. Terrify causes the creature to flee in terror, but you get no XP or loot from the creature; this can be used to chase a monster out of a room with a shrine or stairwell, to allow yourself to use it without having to fight the monster first; doesn't work on bosses though. 3. Added a new Rare Item; the tome of knowledge. Provides training for all your attributes. Grants more training than any other training manual or rare tome, but doesn't directly give an attribute point like a rare tome does. 4. Detected a rare edge case error with my "flee from target" command. Due to the redesign of my combat spellcasting code, I forgot to remove the first round condition after casting a spell. Thus, if you try to "flee from object" after casting spells in V2, you will always get away with the message "You sneak away without it noticing your presence." This error will be fixed in V3 Release. 5. Modified monster magic protection to be only 1/2 of their armor protection score, instead of 1/2 armor protection and 1/2 spell resistance. I found with testing the spellcaster playstyle this made creatures with both high armor protection and spell resistance values to be too difficult to kill (ie Chaos Primals). 6. When you perform a strike, overpower, or backstab, it mentions your weapon used in the attack. When you perform a shield bash, it mentions your shield used in the attack. 7. The enchantment bonus on your staff will now add to your spell penetration score. 8. Detected a logic error with spell penetration code. Found that the extra spell penetration from spells like Piercing Zap or Piercing Cold, wasn't been applied to the calculation. That has now been fixed. 9. Updated the alternative buy command, with a quality of life change, to allow purchasing a consumable directly, by simply typing one of these options (also mentioned in command list) = buy healing potion, buy mana potion, buy enchanting orb, or buy enhancement kit. 10. Enhancement kits now properly apply +2 bonus per kit to the staff. Just like they do with the other twohanded weapon, the greatsword. This is to help a spellcaster in a low mana situation when they have to rely on their staff and their wits to survive. 11. Added two new rare Shards: Shard of Endurance and Shard of Arcana. The shard of endurance raises maximum and current HP by 10 for each one found and increases total melee protection by 1. The shard of arcana raises maximum and current MP by 10 for each one found and increases total magic protection by 1. Both also increases trap protection by 1 for each shard type. 12. Fixed two logic errors in the Second Wind calculation (which is called when you either are dropped to 0 or less HP OR get XP drained to negative values at LV 1). Thanks leeor, for indirectly helping me find them! 13. Implemented a consistent "error message" when you try to buy something but lack the soul shards. It will tell you what your current number is and then the necessary number to have made the purchase. The only place this hasn't been applied to is purchasing spells; this is because I intend to refactor the "buy spells" code as there is a lot of redundancy and adding new spells is a chore for me. 14. In my monster rebalance, I forgot to apply those changes to the two bosses. That is now fixed. They are both quite scary now. 15. Added to my "analyze target" command. It will now display the type of attacks it performs, and what values you use to avoid the attack or mitigate the damage. It will also tell you if it is an experience/level drainer or a boss. 16. Made it so that bosses are increased in power (and XP given when killed) based on the number of Primal Chaos foes are killed. 17. Added another rare item; the rare lexicon. Finding it causes a variety of randomly picked spellbooks to appear. However, as per usual, if you have the spell already, you will get soul shards. So, when you get this rarity, you will either get a bunch of new spells, some spells and shards, or a lot of shards. The deeper you are the more spellbooks will be created. 18. Humans now properly start out with all first tier spells; thus in V3, they will start out with the spell Analysis. 19. Minor quality of life change; when you regenerate/rejuvenate HP/MP via shards, the amount gained is now bolded. 20. Overhauled the "look at Spellbook" command. Spells now display in [ ] the base effect of the spell. Then below it, it displays how much damage, health, or rounds it actually has if cast (the variables used to generate the number are the same as those used when you cast it, thus this number is representative of the spell that will be cast). Also, spell descriptions are uniformly consistent in how they are displayed based on the tier of the spell to aid readability and usefulness. 21. Fixed an edge case error with my method of cancelling actions, to prevent a monster retaliation. If you cancel a melee attack, it will properly unset the condition that prevents monster retaliation, however spellcasting doesn't reset it and thus the spell cannot be cast until the condition is reset (ie by following through with a melee attack will do it). This is fixed now in V3. 22. Added a new purchaseable item, the Elixir of Battle. These can be only bought at the store and cost 1000 soul shards a piece. They can be drunk in combat, without being retaliated against, and applies both Major Regeneration and Major Blessing for 90 rounds (and will deactivate other spells of the same type as per usual). They are great to have for boss fights in case your buffs deactivate mid-battle. When I add in Power Weapon II and Force Shield II, to the game, they will also be added to the elixir; these will be 7th tier spells and as 7th tier isn't created yet, that's why they aren't currently added. 23. Heavily overhauled and refactored the purchasing of spells via "buy spells" or "buy" and then "spells". All spells use a consistent theme for how they are displayed to the player. The desired input is bolded. And most of all, it is significantly easier for me to add new spells to the spell list, and be less error prone to boot! 24. Added another purchaseable item, the Elixir of Ambrosia. These can also be bought at the store and cost 1000 soul shards a piece. They full restore both your health and mana to your maximum values for both. They are situationally useful when at higher character levels, where the cost of one elixir of ambrosia, is less costly than drinking many healing/mana potions to fully restore your health and mana pools. 25. As suggested by both leeor and Hooman, I've made it so that Primal Chaos creatures cannot spawn on floor 1, and will instead spawn something else. On floor 2 and beyond you will encounter them though. This is so that new players don't get XP drained to death early on in the game. 26. Modified the trap code to have new messages based on how many times you have triggered the trap. Additionally, the trap will be more dangerous as you trigger more of them and suffer the negative consequences of them; if you dodge the trap, then the game considers that you have not triggered the trap and thus won't be more dangerous next time. Also, the severity of the trap will determine how much Agility and Vitality training you will receive as well. I also have a placeholder for the "traits system" that will be introduced in V4. 27. When investigating objects, you will occasionally find nothing and rarely something. Previously this used an entirely random chance roll to see if you got something. I've changed now to roll that takes into consideration the player's luck attribute, and thus as you have more luck, you will more often find something and less often find nothing. 28. When activating certain traps, you get attacked by a creature of sorts. Now, it will state that you attack it with your equipped weapon. A minor thing, but its something I thought would add an extra bit of flavor instead of stating, "you attack it with your weapon". This is also being put in because I plan on implementing unarmed combat into the game, which although dangerous, will allow you to train attributes faster when fighting unarmed; similarly for unarmored; neither system is implemented yet and plans are for them to be in V4. 29. Modified the status display to state "Offhand Used" instead of "Shield Used". In V4, I will attempt to implement dual-wielding weapons, and thus this is a placeholder for when I do that. 30. Implemented three new investigatables in the ruins (section 2) = Iron Maiden (replaces spider web), Pedestal (replaces crates), and Lecturn (replaces sacks). 31. Fixed a logic error with the "cast spell at target" that Vagabond pointed out. Will now properly cancel the action and display a message saying that that isn't a spell. 32. Fixed a logic error with my reflected damage code. If a creature takes sufficient reflected damage to kill it, it will now be properly killed, rather than be at -HP values and thus be alive for one more turn. This fix will ensure that it will properly die in this situation. 33. Implemented purchaseable armor or shield spikes. The damage they do are equal to your base armor protection/base shield protection + armor enchantment/shield enchantment. Any time a melee foe attacks you, they will take reflected damage. Armor or shield spikes cost 1000 SS. They can only be applied to actual armor and shields; ie leather/chainmail/platemail or round/kite/tower shields. Additionally, shield spikes increase shield bash damage to boot! 34. Fixed the missing quotation mark in display info -> commands for cast "spell" at "target"! 35. I've updated the "help" command to be much more useful and should help alleviate some problems players have. Includes a list of commonly used commands as well as commands to get additional info for basically anything that interests the player. Will be mentioned to the player at the start of the game to make them aware that typing "help" will help them out! If you think it could use more stuff, just ask and you shall receive! 36. Removed some leftover code from an old salvage system that is no longer needed. Salvage system should now work properly (I tested it to be sure). 37. Added a basic look at command for weapons, armors and shields. It provides very basic information at the moment. Later I intend to add to it, by explaining how its values affect your playstyle. 38. Improved the command "storytime" to make it easier to read the first part of the story. Also, I implemented the "start" to the improved storytime system, where after typing storytime the game will ask you if you want to know more on a specific topic. For now, the only new topic will be on the "Old Empire", to give the player a bit of backstory to what this Old Empire is. Later I'll add more to it with more topics to read. 39. The game at the start, will ask you for your character's name and then the game will tell you the name you typed. Flavor for now, but intend to use it later. 40. Updated elixirs, to state that you drink it immediately. 41. Using Total Dodge Roll for traps appears to have been a mistake (made it so in V2). Now, even the slow-moving dwarf in full platemail and dodge traps with ease. So, I reworked the calculation to determine the dodge roll, to make it a bit more believable. It will now properly subtract your shield protection value and your base weapon value, making it significantly harder for players with heavy equipment to make their dodge roll. 42. Added both name and race to your status display, on the righthand of the screen and below inventory. Minor flavor text for now. 43. Added at the start of the game, a game tip, that states that whenever you have a command that uses "target" you don't need to use the full name of the "target". ===Changelog for V3 Hotfix1=== 1. Reset SS to 300, from the debug value of 30,000. Forgot to reset by accident. 2. Added to shield bashes the descriptor "Spiked" if you shield had Shield Spikes at the time of bashing them. ===Changelog for V3 Hotfix2=== 1. Fixed some missing UI components when purchasing shield spikes; ie if you don't have a round shield in your inventory, it should tell you lack a round shield when trying to buy round shield spikes. Similarly, fixed the same missing UI components when buying armor spikes. 2. Bolded the number of, rare item, Shards you have of a specific type, to help them stand out. These can be viewed under "display info" -> "rares". 3. Found a critical error in my cancel action code for attacking targets. Wasn't properly unsetting, and thus the creature would never retaliate, no matter how many times you attacked it. It will be fixed in the Hotfix V3. 4. Fixed a syntax error in "display info" -> "rares". Shards of Arcana wasn't displaying how much magic/trap protection they actually gave. Fixed now. 5. Fixed a logic error with calculating shield spike or armor spike damage. Is now fixed. 6. Fixed a typo with Chaos Primals. Half of the time they would have = =, when it should have been only one =. This is now fixed. 7. Added a line break after using the "setup camp" command, to aid readability. 8. Fixed typos when you receive a Shard of Arcana or Shard of Endurance, to properly state that they increase your magic and trap protection by +1. It is now fixed. 9. Status display numbers, found on the right hand of the screen are now bolded! 10. Added floor level into status display numbers. Floor 0 is the surface, and there are 3 floors per section. Will have an added purpose probably later on via a spellcast. 11. Your chosen name will now be bolded. 12. Mentioned that dwarves are great pure melee, quicklings are great pure-assassin, and humans are great pure spellcasters at race selection. 13. Your chosen race will now be bolded. 14. The commands "storytime" and "help" are now mentioned at the start of the game. 15. In the "help" command, I've bolded some things to make them more easily stand out. The -> symbol basically means "then type". 16. When drinking a healing or mana potion, the game will tell you your current health / mana, and the number of healing / mana potions on hand. 17. When you want to use the faster "sell item" command, you now type: sell healing potion, sell mana potion, sell enchanting orb, or sell enhancement kit. 18. The bash penalty applied when successfully hitting with a bash, now properly applies the shield's enchantment bonus to the penalty. ===Changelog for V3 Hotfix3=== 1. Fixed a few logic errors in my shield bash code, that caused the -11 damage bug. (if you read this; thanks = mrangel) 2. Solved logic error when you dodge the spider to properly state your weapon used. 3. Solved logic error for times you activated the secret trap; was set at =3 when supposed to be >2 for the Boolean. 4. Solved logic error for Analysis spell buff; was using the conditional of a different spell that when it deactivated, caused this spell to spam the UI. 5. Added quite a few linebreaks to various places, to aid readability. 6. Bolded boss loot, and added some missing text for the loot descriptions. 7. Traps are significantly harder to dodge, as you delve deeper into the game. For quicklings, it probably won't make a huge difference, but for slow moving dwarves wearing heavy equipment... they have much more to worry about. 8. Primal Chaos foes now get an additional +1 to accuracy, dodge, and spell resistance for every primal chaos killed, to increase their challenge level, slightly. 9. Lecturns, found in the Ruins Section, will now properly disappear once investigated. 10. Bosses are significantly tougher now as you kill primal chaos foes; they gain 3x all stats, except for HP which they get 5x per primal chaos killed. However, they also get +300 XP added to their total per primal chaos killed, to make them more rewarding to defeat as well. 11. Implemented enemy armor penetration for Toughs, Quicks, and Melee Bosses. What it will do is reduce your temporary armor total to 0, and if it is below 0 it gets set to 0. So what this means is that those with low armor totals, won't notice a difference in damage suffered, but heavily armored characters, like my dwarf will. 12. Normal critters, Tough, Quick and Spellcaster has higher upper limits for their scaling once you reach Floor 2 or more. This should increase their challenge for dwarves. It won't affect humans as they hit the creature's spell resistance and won't adversely affect quicklings as they already get huge bonuses to hit and dodge chances, but will ensure that fights are challenging for the dwarf, rather than cakewalks. I want the game challenging for all players, but not overkill. By only touching their dodge and accuracy values it shouldn't negatively impact humans or quicklings too heavily. 13. Capitalized rare Tomes of Attribute/Knowledge. Also improved their effects to go with the fact that they are Rare items. ===Changelog for V4=== 1. Created the monsters for section 3 (Caverns) and section 4 (Dark Cathedral). 2. Created the bosses for section 3 (Warped Albino Great Wyrm) and section 4 (Warped Lich Queen). 3. Determined, but not yet implemented Boss loot for Warped Albino Great Wyrm and Warped Lich Queen. Implementing the loot will take a while. 4. Added logic to prevent the logic error Hooman described. Also, modified the "look" command when in the start room, to produce a message that is useful for the player. While in the character generation room, the depth level (in status attributes on the right hand side of the screen) will state it is -1. When you reach the Capital City, it will read 0. I am very happy that this is now solved. Thanks Hooman for providing additional details; they helped a lot! 5. While preparing to do the room generation scripts for Section 3/4, I noticed a few logic errors in Ruins, Section 2, reset room scripts and fixed them. 6. Created room generation scripts for Section 3 and figured out what kind of investigatables there will be; these haven't been implemented yet, as investigatables take a while to implement. 7. Created room generation scripts for Section 4 and figured out what kind of investigatables there will be; these haven't been implemented yet. 8. Implemented modifications to the "flee from object" code. If you flee from a drainer or boss, then the next foe will always either be a Tough, Quick, or Spellcaster. This is here to hopefully cut down on the need to constantly flee, and not get a drainer five times in a row. 9. Completed boss retaliation code for Section 3 and 4. 10. Fixed a logic error in the Matriarch Aranae's retaliation code. Now should work properly. 11. Added floor messages for when descending/ascending in sections 3 and 4. ie "You are in the Caverns, floor 2." 12. Found, in my personal testing, that having Analysis set for 30 rounds was too short, and too annoying to keep recasting. It will now last for 90 rounds + staff enchantment. 13. Under "display info" -> "rares" you can find the boss loot you have acquired. However, if you defeated the boss, but didn't take any loot (and thus are carrying the Chaos Orb), then it would display a message here that wouldn't much sense. I have now fixed it, and it will tell you that you haven't chosen a reward yet from the correct Chaos Orb, and to choose one. 14. Greatly improved the effects granted by the Matriarch Aranae's boss loot. Should be highly desirable now for early game players, when you would encounter her. 15. Greatly improved the effects granted by the Titan Warchief's boss loot. Should make the choice of which item to take, quite difficult. 16. Turns out I forgot to fix the dodge skillfully out of the way of the spider, text bug. Fixed now. Turns out that there was a bug in the editor, because every time I would change it, and save the program, and then check back on it, it would reset to the bugged state. So I deleted the bugged code, and replaced it with fresh code and NOW it produces the message properly as I had intended it to. 17. Ran into writers block; but managed to get one investigatable (out of 3) finished for Section 3, the Tall Fungal Patch. 18. Ran into fresh writers block, but managed to get another investigatable implement for Section 3, the Deep Pool. Also, once I'm done with Section 3 and 4, I'll reorganize this changelog and shrink it down to... "Completed Section 3" as an example. 19. Italicized the spell cast, when you cast a spell. 20. Added spell descriptors to casting damaging combat spells. ie Inferno = You incinerate them... Some of the descriptors are a bit bland, but couldn't think of a good word. Will look into addressing them later. 21. Tried to refactor cast spell code. Realized my current way of doing things is better than my attempt at refactoring, so leaving cast spell alone for the time being. 22. Modified damage of the Corpse trap. Should be less lethal now at first level, at least for humans, and should be more dangerous deeper into the dungeon. 23. Capitalized attribute training manuals, and improved the floor depth level effect considerably, but left the base effect alone. 24. Made Enhancement kits drop more when found. As an enhancement kit is worth half of an enchanting orb and are only really useful to pure-melee, whereas the other two playstyles will use them sparingly or sell them. 25. Refactored looting spellbooks. Much easier for me to add new spellbooks to the loot lists now, and should also give a bit more SS to boot! 26. Added a small amount of luck training for anything looted. 27. Finally completed the third investigatable for the Caverns. They are hard to do, because its difficult to figure out the flow of how the player gets out of the trap. The other messages are fairly easy to do, but figuring out how a player would realistically get out of the trap is the hard part. I'll have to figure out a way to help myself with this issue for the three investigatables in the Dark Cathedral and beyond. 28. Quicklings will now start with the spell Analysis. 29. When receiving an attribute via training, that attribute will now be capitalized. 30. Found a logic error with my first round mechanic, while playing a quickling assassin. It is now fixed. 31. Found out, during personal testing, that 30 or 60 rounds for buff durations is too short, and it irked me to have to recast them every couple of minutes. So, they are now all 90 rounds of buff duration. 32. Used a consistent theme to how spells are displayed in the spellbook, even if you don't know the spell. Should aid readability a bit. 33. Fixed a typo in one of the sewer room generation scripts. I missed the word "from" in a floor descriptor that starts with "Its wet floors..." 34. Modified the calculation to determine if you succeed at a sneak attack. Should be significantly harder for creatures with high dodge scores (ie Quicks), but should also be easier for creatures with low dodge scores (ie Toughs). 35. Implemented boss loot for Section 3's boss; Albino Great Wyrm; the Albino Claw Pendant, Albino Horn Pendant, and Albino Scale Pendant. 36. Implemented a new major update to the storytime system. When you type storytime now, you will get a prompt asking you what you want to read today. It is broken up into three categories (may add more later): 1) backstory (this stores the backstory of the game and the characters), 2) journals (when you encounter adventurer corpses they will have a journal with them, until you have collected all the journals for that dungeon section, and will give additional lore for the players to read if they so desire to help the player get immersed into the world), 3) artifacts (when you defeat a boss, you will get some lore/backstory on the various artifact items, no matter which item you choose to take, to help you understand the origins of the items... a little bit at least). This should help to add quite a bit to the story! 37. Implemented the first boss's special ability. The Matriarch Aranae has a 25% chance (approximately) to dispel all your buffs on a successful hit. As a result, this should make the fight significantly challenging. Additionally, (when I implement it) the final boss will also have this ability, unless you kill the Matriarch Aranae. The final boss will work somewhat like the Hakaar fight in Zul'Gurub where as you defeat the bosses, the final boss is significantly easier to defeat. Each main boss will have a boss ability and will confer this ability to the final boss if you haven't defeated the boss of a particular section. Essentially, if you don't defeat each section boss, the final boss will be extremely difficult to kill. Gives more incentive to kill the bosses and should provide a level of challenge to the game as well! 38. Implemented a lot of new complex spell types. These are rejuvenation spells (rejuvenate mana per round), haste spells (have a chance for extra rounds, based on intellect, before enemy can react), and spell potency spells (increases spell damage, spell healing, spell duration, and spell penetration). Added these spells to tiers 1 to 7. 39. Implemented the 7th tier of spells = Ultra Healing, Ultra Aid, Power Weapon II, Force Shield II, Major Rejuvenation, Piercing Inferno, Disintergrate, and Meteor Swarm. 40. Implemented a major fix to my spell purchasing code and it works. 41. Refactored training code so that can keep training if so desire. 42. Updated Elixir of Battle with Force Shield II and Power Weapon II. 43. Implemented the Elixir of Concentration; like the Elixir of Battle, it costs 1000 Soul Shards, and provides buffs that spellcasters will love; applies Major Rejuvenation, Major Haste, and Spell Potency II for 90 rounds. 44. Implemented boss loot for section 4; The Mirror of Reflection, the Circlet of Knowledge, and the Cloak of Invisibility. 45. Implemented the first of three investigatables for Section 4; the Crematorium. 46. Implemented the other journals in the sewers. There are five journals to be found in the sewers, and you find one whenever you find an Adventurer's Corpse and investigate it. Should provide a bit of extra lore and immersion for players that want this stuff! 47. While working on the other two Section 4 interactables, I found and fixed a few, easy to miss, logic errors in some of my previous investigatables. 48. Implemented the second investigatable of Section 4; the Dark Altar. 49. Implemented the third investigatable of Section 4; the Ancient Grave. ===Changelog for V4 Hotfix1=== 1. Fixed a logic error with my spellcasting code, in regards to the Section 4 artifact, the Circlet of Knowledge. 2. Also, implemented a new quality of life system for both cast spell and cast spell at target. You can now recast the same spell over and over again! ===Changelog for V4 Hotfix2=== 1. Heavily refactored attack target code. 2. Heavily refactored cast spell code. 3. Heavily refactored cast spell at target code. 4. By refactoring these code chunks, I found and fixed numerous logic errors, that I missed previously. 5. Includes a superior method of allowing the player to recast the same spell / attack the same attack over and over again, that involves far less code duplication. ===Changelog for V4 Hotfix3=== 1. Created an ingenious way of getting around the whole "object" problem. Thus, in the next release (hotfix 3 or V5), commands will be shortened for attack object and flee from object, to simply attack or flee. I'll have to do some testing on spellcasting though, to see if I can get around the issues in it to reduce all spellcasting to simply cast spell. 2. The command "flee from object" is now "flee". 3. With a whole shit ton of work, bugfixing, and frustration, I've merged both spellcasting systems together. Now all you need to do is type cast spell (spell being whatever, like Arcane Zap). That was a pain to do, but it is done and all spell types work properly in the new system. Wow... 4. Increased amount of loot acquired by Drainers and Bosses, based on depth level in the Cataclysm of Chaos. 5. Refactored enemy death scripts to greatly reduce code redundancy. 6. Heavily refactored non-combat spellcasting. Makes it easier for me to add new spells and will ensure that if you reach insufficient mana to recast a spell, the game won't ask you if you want to recast it (as you can't because you wouldn't have the necessary mana) 7. Continued to refactor Spellcasting system. Added in logic to tell the player when a spell isn't a combat spell or noncombat spell (ie if you try casting Arcane Zap when no monster is around, it will tell you it is not a non-combat spell... as its a combat spell). Also will tell you if what you typed isn't a spell to begin with. Also will tell you if you don't know the spell yet. All the logic is in and working properly, and thus will likely not touch the spellcasting system again, in terms of refactoring. Its very elegant, efficient and effective now! 8. Found a logic error that prevented re-casting of spells in my new spellcasting system. Took me a while, but devised a solution and it works! 9. Found in my own internal tests of the game, that the cost to apply shield or armor spikes was too high. Reduced the cost from 1000 SS to 300 SS. 10. In the process of refactoring investigatables, to make it easier to add new ones, reduce code redundancy, and make it so that I can build extra features into the system much more easily... like a death check system. If you die, logically you shouldn't get loot. But if you live and second wind, then you should get loot. Unfortunately coding this into the old system was proving to be a headache. But in this new system I can easily add this death check into it. Will report back again when fully completed the refactor of the investigatables system. 11. Got some assistance on the Quest forums, and figured out a method to update the title bar with the player's current location. So if you are in Ruins, Floor 3, the title bar will state it. And if you return to the surface, it will state "The Old Empire's Capital City" which is what it starts out as. 12. Completed the logical processes and flow for investigatables, and tested it out. Found a few logic errors in my new process and fixed them. Currently its only applies to a single trap (for testing purposes) and now I just need to add all the other existing traps to the new system and then it will be done. Made a few changes to the new system as well. For starters, every basic option has two loot options. If you make your luck roll, then you get the most loot and if it is a trap, you get an attribute potion; however if it is a trap, and you don't make your luck roll, then you don't get an attribute potion. I'll post again once I have all my traps put into the new system. Should make it significantly easier for myself to also put in new investigatables, and thus I might just add a few more investigatables to each section to increase variety as a result. Though, probably not for V5 as I have enough things to get done... in particular a massive amount of lore. 13. Made it so that you will get a much greater amount of training for agility, vitality and luck, when investigating objects, based on how deep you are in the dungeon and how many times you've activated the trap. If you dodge the trap or take no damage from the trap, it will temporarily increase trap activations to provide the extra training, but will be removed after adding the extra training to not affect the total number of times you've taken damage from the trap. The total number of times you've taken damage, determines when you will get negative traits, which is why it will be a temporary change. 14. While testing out my new investigatable system that I'm working on, I found a few logic errors in my Second Wind code (activated when brought to 0 or less HP OR 0 or less XP at Level 1), and fixed them. 15. Implemented all of section one's investigatables in the new system. Traps in general, are much more dangerous, but won't one-shot a fresh character. However, they get significantly deadlier the deeper you go. But, with that said, the rewards for interacting with investigatables has been greatly increased. Thus the risk has been increased, but the rewards have matched that increase. I wanted players to investigate these objects, and feel rewarded for doing so, but also wanted the decision to check these objects to have a certain level of risk attached so that a player may decide to avoid one type of investigatable, but go for other ones. Will now work to add the other sections investigatables to the new system; shouldn't take me too long, as I've worked out all of the various bugs in the system. 16. Implemented four new Attribute Elixirs. Elixir of the Warrior (+2 STR/VIT), Elixir of the Assassin (+2 AGL/PER), Elixir of the Mage (+2 INT/WIL), and Elixir of the Adventurer (+1 ALL including Luck). Found off drainers or rarely off a survived trap. 17. While adding the elixirs, noticed I missed capitalizing the attribute names. Fixed for V5. 18. Made it so that you earn luck training a bit faster, when doing any form of looting of items. 19. Added the Tome of Experience, that grants a large amount of experience for gaining character levels. 20. Added Section two's investigatables to the new system. 21. Refactored the attack code for Overpower and Strike. Going to be likely much more difficult to do the same for Backstab or Shield Bash though, but I'll see if it can be done. 22. Refactored the enemy attack code for Toughs and Quicks, to greatly reduce code redundancy. 23. Found logic errors in my new spellcasting and player attack system, concerning death checking scripts. Should now be fixed. 24. Refactored the enemy attack code for Spellcasters, Drainers and Bosses... and this really reduces code redundancy! 25. Made it so that you gain training faster in other forms of activities faster, based on depth level. So should notice an increase in training speed as you go deeper! 26. Added Section 3's investigatables to the new system. 27. Added Section 4's investigatables to the new system. 28. I don't know how I missed it, but there is a syntax error with the Spell Ultra Healing (lvl 7) that prevents any 7th level spell from being purchased. Is fixed for V5. 29. A logic error with Major Haste was found, that prevented its casting and I fixed for V5. 30. Found several major errors in my turn script that manages many of the buffs. I've fixed them all, and will be in a hotfix.... with all the current stuff for V5. I'm very sorry for failing to test the new buffs. ===Changelog for V5=== 1. Refactored Look at Spellbook code. Will make it easier to add new spells to it and reduces code redundancy somewhat. 2. Added a bit of XP buffer when you second wind from XP drain. If you have the Ward of the Deathless, you get 500 XP buffer; if you don't have it, you only get 200 XP buffer. This is to hopefully prevent getting XP drained to death the following round. 3. Refactored shield bash code. Also, added a new shield attack, called Shield Slam. Does more damage and has a higher penalty than bash, but is much less likely to hit the target. 4. Added spells Ascend and Descend. These are noncombat spells and allow you to go up or down a floor without needing a stairwell. Situationally useful spells. 5. Found and fixed a syntax error with Bracers of Leech for shield attacks. 6. Refactored stealth attack code, so that I can add new stealth attacks in the future and reduced code redundancy a bit at the same time. 7. Implemented item renaming; can rename your weapon, shield and armor. The renamed item has no impact on actual stats, just on how the player wants to view their item. So, if their base item is the longsword, they could rename it to, Greatsword, but as the base item is a longsword and not a greatsword, it will only be a greatsword in name, not in function... want a greatsword, buy and equip it. Makes it so that if you want to roleplay a specific character, you can now more easily do so... like if you wanted to play as a Paladin wielding a warhammer... well, now you can! 8. Started the first iteration of monster descriptions. Monster descriptions will be fairly basic for the first iteration... as there is a total of 80 monsters and 4 bosses. I plan to return to them later and make them well more descriptive, but something is better than nothing for the first iteration. 9. Now the custom names of weapons and shields will be stated when you perform attacks, shield attacks, and when interacting with some mini-creatures from traps. 10. Refactored monster spawn script, to make it easier to add new monsters and greatly reduce code redundancy. Flee code still works in the refactor. 11. Found a logic error in shield attack code, that improperly called all shield attacks "bash". This is now fixed. 12. Renaming an item now properly shows the renamed item in your inventory. And to rename it again, you just type in the new name of the item. So if you rename the Longsword to say, a Chainsword, then to rename that, you'd type rename Chainsword. 13. Refactored buy command to reduce redundancy and prevent me from continuing to make logic errors whenever I modify my buy command code. ie the fact that if you use buy -> shields they properly state 300 cost but if you use buy shields it states 1000 cost. This way I won't have these errors anymore... and yet fixed this logic error too! 14. If you have shield spikes on, they are now bolded in shield bash/slam attacks. 15. Fixed a logic error for RareItemsRoll; should be RareItemsLootRoll. Fixed in V5. 16. Performing a shield attack, will also eliminate any defense you'd get from the shield for that round, whether you hit or not. This is to make it so that shield attacks are situationally useful, rather than always better than one-handed melee weapons. 17. Changed spell selection from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, to just 1, 2, 3; thanks for the suggestion Hooman! NOTE: Many of the V5 changes that were meant for V5, ended up in HotFix3 for V4. ===Changelog for V5, Hotfix 1=== 1. Forgot to add the new renaming system to the command list. Now fixed! 2. Logic error in Boss Warped Matriarch Aranea, where I misspelled Aranea as Aranae. Now fixed! 3. Fixed retaliation damage for enemy spellcasters; will now only apply retaliation damage if you have the appropriate artifact; melee will normally take Spike damage though. 4. Fixed the attack/cast again code to not ask you if you want to do it again, if the creature dies, such as by taking sufficient retaliation damage to kill itself. 5. After fixing a specific logic error for Shield attacks, I noticed that Shield attacks were missing a lot of logic. Not sure if I missed them or the program deleted my code (it has done that on the rare occasion... or I'm super forgetful... I dunno... weird stuff has happened with my codebase), but I've added all the necessary code that should have been there and should now be properly fixed! 6. Bolded attribute names for when you get training from the Celestial. 7. Removed healing potion, mana potion, enchanting orb, and enhancement kit from the loot lists. 8. Greatly increased the amount of soul shards found, to compensate with the above removal. Reasoning: I've found that getting massive numbers of orbs and kits, and other rarities makes these things not feel very rare anymore, but just commonplace. With the increase in SS though, you should be able to still purchase orbs and kits readily, or you can choose to spend those needed SS on other things like spells. If there is a huge outcry over this, I'll revert the change. 9. Added line breaks in several places for enchanting or enhancing items. 10. Added line break after taking damage from traps. 11. Removed messages when you regenerate or rejuvenate HP/MP from Shards, as I found these messages clutter up the interface and make it difficult to read the important stuff! 12. Made it so that when there are no investigatables in the room anymore, the message that posts that a shrine/stairwell is here posts far less often, to clutter the interface less. 13. Turns out #12 failed to work, and I haven't come up with a solution yet on how to fix it. ===Changelog for V6=== 1. After quite a while, of fiddling with different ways to do it, I've implemented the beginning of the bad traits system. For the current version of it, bad traits will prevent investigation of specific investigatables. ie Arachnophobia, prevents you from interacting with webs. The current negative traits will be = Arachnophobia (arachnids), Aichmophobia (sharps), Mycophobia (mushrooms), Ophidiophobia (snakes), and Xylophobia (wood). You will acquire them by triggering a specific trap at least 3 times, and you can remove bad traits by drinking an Elixir of Ambrosia; you'll get the trait again if you trigger the same trap again though, so keep that in mind. 2. Added the first combat penalty for a bad trait; Arachnophobia. If you have this bad trait and fight the Sewers Boss, Giant Tarantula, Giant Scorpion, Aranea, Primal Chaos Scorpion or the Primal Chaos Tarantula, you will suffer a -25 penalty to dodge, accuracy and spell resistance, to imply that the creature absolutely terrifies you, resulting you doing less than rational things to avoid it or try to kill it faster. Thus, if you want to fight these things without the penalty, you'll have to quaff an Elixir of Ambrosia. Will work on the other added negative traits now. 3. Added monster types to the game. Currently, they are only used by the trait system to apply negative trait effects, but may get used in some other fashion later. 4. Made a made-up word (as I cannot find an actual name for it) for fear of mechanical traps and constructs/automatons = Construcophobia. If someone knows of an actual term I'll gladly replace it. Used to avoid the secret trap and automatons encountered in Section 4 (instead of Aichmophobia as it doesn't fit all that well). 5. Modified the crates investigatable. Made it into a hidden rats nest, and thus when you destroy it safely, rats will flee in all directions. When you trigger the trap, the stack of crates collapses on you, but also releases a horde of angry rats on you that will bite you anywhere they can reach. Thus, instead of getting a phobia of wood from crates, you will get a phobia of rats from the crates. Rat phobia = Murophobia 6. Remade some creatures to better fit into phobias, so that each creature encountered will be attached to a phobia of some kind. Creature types currently are = Arachnid, Rodent, Snake, Dragon, Undead, Construct, Humanoid, Mushroom, and Insectoid. 7. Updated Analyze Target command (analysis spell) to include creature type. It will tell you what type the creature is. Also, noticed I failed to update it with the bosses in section 3 and section 4, so that is now fixed as well. 8. Created another made up word; Dracophobia, the fear of dragons and lesser dragons. 9. Added Anthropophobia, the fear of humanoids; technically it is fear of humans, but as Minotaurs, Orcs, Ogres, and Goatmen, are sufficiently human-like, I'm going to use it. If anyone has a suggestion for an alternative, I'll take it. 10. Added Entomophobia, the fear or insects and insectoids. 11. Added Necrophobia, the fear of dead things and objects associated with the dead; ie graves, tombstones, crematoriums, etc... 12. Added negative combat penalties for each type of phobia when fighting each enemy type. 13. Construcophobia now applies to Pedestal and Iron Maiden interactables. 14. Anthropophobia now applies to Lecturn, Deep Pool, and Dark Altar interactables. 15. Dracophobia now applies to Animal Carcass interactable. 16. Mycophobia now applies to Tall Fungal Patch interactable. 17. Necrophobia now applies to Crematorium and Ancient Grave interactables. 18. All traps encountered on the third time+ will apply a negative trait; the same trait that is used to prevent you from interacting with it. So if you got the secret door trap three times, it would be Construcophobia. If you cured it with Ambrosia, but encountered the trap again, you will get it again. 19. If a creature lands the death blow, but you Second Wind, you will get a phobia of that creature from the near death experience. So if a Giant Tarantula, reduces you to 0 or less HP, and you second wind, you will acquire the negative trait Arachnophobia. Applies to both death by wounds and death by XP drain, so if a Primal Chaos Tarantula drained you to below 0 XP at LV 1, and you Second Winded, then you would also get Arachnophobia from them. 20. I've managed to workaround my writers block, temporarily for adding more journal entries. Modified entry 5 for sewers, to change from Elf to Human. As there aren't elves in this universe, I figured I should change it to human for consistency sake. 21. Added two new journal entries for Ruins. Working on adding the next few entries to Ruins as well. 22. Added three new journal entries for Ruins. Ruins is complete... now to do Caverns and Dark Cathedral. 23. Tested to make sure bad traits are being applied at the appropriate moment and then removed when fighting a creature that doesn't belong to your phobia(s). Everything is working as intended! If you have Arachnophobia, as an example, you will properly get a penalty when fighting an Aranea, but if you encounter a Giant Mantis, you will no longer have the penalty. However, if you have Entomophobia, the fear of insects, then it will properly tell you that your specific fear kicks in. 24. Typing "look" in the dungeon proper, will re-show you the room description now. I might use this for something more in the future. 25. Added two new backstory entries, found under "Old Empire", one discussing why it was called the Empire of the Fallen, and another giving some more backstory on the Old King. 26. Found and fixed a logic error with the Matriarch Aranea's dispel boss ability, and fixed it. 27. While implementing the boss ability for the Titan Warchief, I found a few logic errors in the attack code and spellcasting code and fixed them. Most of them were edge cases that were very hard to spot, but as I had to carefully implement it's boss ability, I caught them. 28. Implemented the Titan Warchief boss ability. On any attack that it does, that deals damage, it leeches 25% of that damage dealt, and restores their own health. Additionally, any damage the player does, will have 25% of it reflected back at them. So, if you sneak attack it, for 400 damage, you will take 100 damage. The final boss will have a more powerful version of this ability if you don't kill the Titan Warchief beforehand. 29. Found a logic error in enemy spell retaliation script. It always assumed that you had bashed the target. Fixed it now so that it only performs the bash retaliation, if you bashed them. 30. Implemented Lich Queen's boss ability. You have a 33% chance of having your damage dealing spells of being reflected back at you, resulting in you taking the full damage of the spell, minus your magic protection value. The final boss will have a much nastier version of this effect, if you don't kill the Lich Queen beforehand. 31. Found a logic error in combat spellcasting code, where you do damage to the target. Was not properly applying 1/2 monster protection score for their magic protection. Fixed now. 32. Implemented Albino Great Wyrm's boss ability. They have 25% more armor penetration and 25% more protection (and thus more magic protection). The final boss will have greater armor penetration and protection if you haven't killed the Albino Great Wyrm beforehand. 33. It appears that when I refactored the code base, I introduced many of the logic errors that I found today. I'll try to be more diligent with my coding when I do any future refactors. 34. Implemented the time system. Time is found with your status attributes, under floor number. You start with 1,000 turns to complete the game. Every Primal Chaos monster killed adds +100 turns and every Chaos Warped boss adds +400 turns. If you run out of turns (0 or less), you will lose the game with the message that the Chaos God escaped from the Cataclysm of Chaos. If the amounts of turns awarded are too high, and thus remove the time consequence for a player's actions, I'll reduce them; however if I don't provide sufficient turns, I'll likely increase the base number of 1,000. So if anyone has feedback on this, I'd appreciate it. Time passes for each round, so keep in mind that doing multiple purchases from the Celestial will cost you in terms of time. 35. Implemented 3 positive traits: Immortal, Trap Sense and Treasure Hunter. Currently, you can only buy them from the Celestial under "traits" for 5,000 soul shards each. Yes that may appear to be very costly, but I do intend to implement later a way to acquire these traits, without spending soul shards. Just haven't done so yet. 36. Fixed a logic error with death by traps. Now properly ends the game. 37. Started implementing the ambience system. Every 30 seconds, an ambience/ambient event occurs. They are generally harmless, unless the ambient event triggers one of your phobias. If you are in combat, you will recoil in terror from your phobia, and the enemy will get to attack you, as you drop your guard. If you aren't in combat, nothing bad will happen. There will be 3 phobia events per section and 3 events that are completely harmless and just add a bit of fluff. 38. Finished the first iteration of ambience for each section. Will likely add more / improve upon it later, but it is good enough for now to provide some variety in ambience/ambient events. 39. While implementing the new interactable for the insect phobia, found a few logic errors in the removal of section 3/4 interactables, after you have investigated them. Now fixed. 40. Implemented the Wasp Hive for section 1, sewers. It will apply Entomophobia if you trigger the trap at least 3 times. Now there is a trap for each phobia. ===Changelog for V6, Hotfix 1=== 1. Implemented the first "special room": a unique room for the Boss Matriarch Aranea, that can only be discovered while the boss is alive, and provides a unique, and specially tailored, room description, to make the boss room stand out. If it works how I'm hoping it will, then I'll implement something similar for the other bosses. Made it so that you will encounter the boss when entering the 3rd floor, or exploring the 3rd floor. As per usual, if you flee from it, you won't get it immediately again, but will once you kill the quick/tough/spells and hit explore. 2. Noticed I failed to fix the problem with the spellcasting system for V6, requesting to recast a spell when you've killed the target. Now is fixed, and will release a hotfix soon. 3. It appears that by adding in a custom look at command, for producing monster descriptions and room descriptions, it has broken the functionality for look at spellbook and look at satchel. Turned look at spellbook to read spellbook. Turned look at satchel to search satchel. Annoying, but what can you do. 4. Found a UI error with spellcasting damage. Will now properly show the correct amount of damage done. 5. Found logic errors with Warchief boss abilities, and fixed them. 6. Added line break before an ambience event occurs, so that they are easier to read. 7. Typo in an ambience event. Was written as raw mean, when it should have been raw meat. 8. Hopefully, partially fixed the spam of Points of Interest, when there are none left anymore. 9. Didn't fully implement the Wasp Hive; knew I missed something. Will now properly be cleared from the room, if you didn't investigate it before leaving. 10. Refactored a small portion of my Exploration script to reduce code redundancy. 11. Modified and simplified the flee code, to make adding new bosses less error prone. When you flee any kind of monster, you will always find a Quick/Tough/Spellcaster, even if you fled from one previously. 12. Added specially tailored boss rooms for the other bosses. 13. Fixed a typo with the Deep Pool interactable; was stating glittery objects in the water, when it was supposed to mention glittery objects on a mini island; is now fixed. 14. Modified command list for commands look at spellbook and look at satchel, changed to the new read spellbook and search satchel. ===Changelog for V6, Hotfix 2=== 1. Fixed a few logic errors in my melee attack system. 2. Fixed a logic error in my Ascend code, that improperly produces a room when returning to the Capital City. 3. Modified character creation, so that if you have played before, you can just type in your desired race and then your name, and the game will automatically put you into the game proper. If you make a mistake, as usual, typing "begin" will fix your mistakes. If you are a new player, then you will get the full character creation, which is what it was before this hotfix. 4. Rewrote the wasp hive encounter, to fix some grammatical issues and modified the trap, to be more immersive! Hopefully! ===Changelog for V6, Hotfix 3=== 1. Greatly increased the challenge of monsters the deeper you go. If anyone finds it too difficult, I'll reduce it a bit. Got feedback that the game is too easy, what with all the skill training, rare items, and boss loot, so wanted to keep the challenge consistent as you get farther into the game. Again, if I've overdone it, I'll reduce it a bit... or give you more progression. I've found that playing as a Warrior type starting off is slightly more challenging, and I actually prefer to now buy shield/armor spikes instead of Minor Blessing now, as whenever an enemy hits me, they'll take damage. 2. Fixed a rare edge case error with the spellcasting system. If you accidently miss-type a spell name, it will tell you that it isn't a spell, and aborts it. Unfortunately, it wasn't clearing the flag that is used to abort the casting. That is now fixed. 3. Modified the ambience system. Instead of a timer, it posts in two locations now; 1 when you first generate the room and 1 when you kill the monster. If anyone thinks it is still too often or the placement isn't ideal, I appreciate the feedback! 4. Modified the investigate object code so that you cannot get a generic investigatable. If it isn't proper text, it will tell you that the text isn't correct. If it correct text, but the investigatable isn't present, it will tell you it isn't present. 5. Solved the error with the Iron Maiden. Apparently, it didn't like my "no..." in quotation marks, as it assumed it was supposed to be " + variablename + ". Changed it to 'no...' and doesn't give me any more problems. ===Changelog for V7=== 1. Implemented the first debuff; Bleeding. Bleeding deals HP damage for a certain number of rounds, heavily influenced by depth level and player Vitality attribute. 2. Implemented two new debuffs; Poison and Concussion. Poison deals both HP and MP damage and Concussion deals MP damage, both are affected by depth level and Vitality. 3. Elixirs of Ambrosia will remove all debuffs. Removed the requirement to have less than maximum HP and MP, so that you can use an Ambrosia at full health/mana to remove Phobias and Debuffs. Formatted the text for readability and made it known that Ambrosia cures these things, before you drink one. 4. If a monster hits and deals damage to you (if they hit but fail to penetrate your armor, you won't get a debuff), they will also apply a debuff as well, depending on Monster Type. Arachnids, Mushrooms, and Snakes apply Poison. Constructs, Humanoids, and Undead apply Concussion. Insectoids, Dragons, and Rodents apply Bleeding. This should make combat quite a bit more challenging. I also intend to create a new spell (Curing) that will remove these debuffs, that has a combat version and a non-combat version of the spell... I just haven't made it yet. 5. If the monster is a Primal Chaos or a Boss, they will apply a much more potent and more dangerous Poison, Bleeding, or Concussion debuff. Keep that in mind when fighting them! So, as an example, a Primal Chaos Aranea or the Chaos Warped Matriarch Aranea, if they hit you will apply a much deadlier Poison debuff. 6. If you trigger a trap (first time triggered is debuff free) twice, or more, you will receive a greater debuff (Poison, Bleeding, and Concussion are considered lesser debuffs) which is particularly nasty. They provide two negative effects; one passive and one timed. Diseases apply a -15 penalty to Strength and Vitality, passively. Plagues apply a -15 penalty to Agility and Perception, passively. Curses apply a -15 penalty to Intellect and Willpower, passively. You have 100 rounds to cure these afflictions, otherwise they will permanently drain attributes by 5. You can cure these afflictions with Elixirs of Ambrosia, as well as a 9th level spell called Restoration/Revival (which won't be implemented for at least 1 gameplay release as I have enough on my plate for this release). If the timer elapses, drainage will occur and then the timer will reset. Thus it is important to get these cured as quickly as possible. 7. All traps will also apply lesser debuffs on the any trap activation. As an example, the Spider Web or Wasp Hive will apply Poison, while the Crate Rodents apply Bleeding. This should make traps significantly more dangerous. So... even if you take no damage from the trap itself, you'll still have to contend with the lesser and greater debuffs. 8. Implemented round mechanics to recast / attack again, systems. Thus if you are poisoned, you will properly take poison damage each attack again you perform. Time and buff durations will decrease as expected. Also, regeneration and rejuvenation effects from spells or shards will also take effect... so its not all bad. 9. Changed Wasp Hive trap, wording from Poison to Venom, to reflect the fact that you aren't getting poisoned when it stabs you with it's stinger. Changed as I think it would be confusing if you got the Bleeding debuff when it says you had poison burning your skin. 10. Made it so that lesser foes (Quick, Tough, and Spells) have a low percentage chance of applying a lesser debuff, based on depth level AND your luck attribute. Primals have a greater chance at applying lesser debuffs, while bosses almost always apply lesser debuffs on damage. Changed because I found that playing as a Dwarf warrior type against a Quick at level 1, resulting in me bleeding to death, twice, (second winded twice) before I managed to kill it and thus don't want the debuff always applied by lesser foes. I want the game challenging, but not overkill. 11. Improved readability of text when using the command "search satchel". 12. Improved readability of text when using the command "read spellbook". Also, fixed a typo with the combat spell cost formula; didn't properly state that spell cost is determined by Armor Protection AND Shield Protection; now it does. 13. Modified Aid-Type spells (combat versions of Heal-Type spells) so that they heal more HP than the non-combat versions as follows (Minor = 4*LV, Standard = 16*LV, Major = 28*LV, Ultra = 40*LV). The reasons for this change are as follows: A) The cost to cast combat versions are generally much higher than noncombat versions. B) With the new debuffs, you'll be suffering damage much more often now... even when the enemy fails to hit you that combat round. C) Most of the time, enemies will hit for more damage than you could heal, and thus you'd be in a losing situation where you wouldn't be able to out-heal each round compared to damage received. 14. Modified phobias so that the penalties they apply are worse the deeper you get based on (3*Current Floor level + 25). 15. All traps have the chance to have higher damage than before, but aren't guaranteed. (ie it rolls for +damage, and I increased maximum possible roll without touching the minimum). Won't have much impact on the early stages of gameplay, but later on, traps will be quite nasty. 16. Increased the dodge requirement to avoid traps by a little bit, so that traps remain consistently hard to avoid the deeper you go. 17. Added two new spells; Panacea and Remedy (Remedy is the combat version of Panacea). Panacea removes all lesser debuffs; poison, bleeding and concussion. These are 3rd level spells, so not to terribly costly to buy with SS or to cast either. This means that you can either remove lesser debuffs by waiting for the duration to run out, drink an elixir of ambrosia or cast one of these spells. 18. Fixed a typo with disintergrate spell. Had it listed as disintegrate in one spot, but all others as disintergrate. Technically that is misspelled, so um... probably will fix the spelling later when I go to add 8th tier spells. But it is consistent now at least, as disintergrate. 19. Fixed a major chunk of logic errors missed, because well, no one has gotten to Section 3 and beyond. Neither section's traps were being increased and thus never could encounter the greater debuffs from them or phobias either. That is now fixed. 20. Instead of posting a line for each time you find Soul Shards, they are now tallied up into a single grand total at the end of the looting, with the total SS found bolded, for readability. 21. Added and removed a few linebreaks to aid readability in areas where ambience messages appear. 22. Added the you find a shrine/stairwell to the room description (it is still bolded) rather than be on a separate line. 23. Bolding and encapsulating with parentheses, the interactable text, typed in with investigate object. Eventually I'll likely move the entire points of interest and investigating to just the room description, but it won't be for this release. But, doing this like this for now to aid readability when the game generates the room description. 24. Added linebreak above player retaliation damage (ie enemy attacks you and takes armor spike damage) to aid readability. 25. Found in personal testing that the player is not getting the desired level of soul shards yet, after removing enchanting orbs and enhancement kits from the looting system. Added an additional system to bring this value up to the expected amount that I wanted it to be at. 26. Added two new Positive Traits = Thrill Seeker and Hardiness. If you have Thrill Seeker, and dodge a trap or take no damage from a trap, you will reduce it's severity by 1, to a minimum of 0; severity determines damage, difficulty at dodging, and when you get greater debuffs or phobias. Hardiness makes it less likely that an enemy will apply a lesser debuff and will reduce the duration of a lesser debuff acquired from any source. 27. Added a UI addition that tells the player approximately how wounded the enemy is based on their percent HP of their maximum HP. Intend to add further stuff to this later, to help spruce up the combat a bit. 28. Bolded floor level, when you ascend or descend a floor, to aid readability. 29. Due to the increase in initial starting difficulty for new players and the number of different ways you can easily lose HP or MP, all new characters will start with 3 healing potions and 3 mana potions, to aid their initial survival of the game. I found that without them, you can fairly easily run into a situation where a monster nearly kills you but applies a lesser debuff and that ends up killing you. So with the potions, you can hopefully avoid cheap, unfair deaths in this manner. 30. Capitalized a few attributes that I missed, when you train an attribute. Not sure how I missed it before, but anywho, now is fixed. 31. Bolded the message you go up a floor OR you go down a floor. 32. Bolded maximum HP/MP and number of potions on hand for all drinkables, to aid readability. 33. Lowered the cost of Enchanting Orbs to 400 SS and Enhancement Kits for 200 SS, to keep in line with the increase in challenge. Their sell cost is half of their buy cost as well. 34. Modified Setup Camp command. If you aren't at a shrine you earn (5+Player LV)*Floor LV to both HP and MP, as well made some text more easily readable. 35. When you investigate an object, the room description will be updated stating you have thoroughly investigated it. Can see the room description by typing "look". 36. Turned the flee command into a function call. You can now when prompted to attack the target again or cast a spell again, if you would prefer to flee instead. Choosing flee, activates the new flee function call. Why would one want this? Well, I found in my personal testing that when you suffer a lesser debuff, you will get hit with another round of the debuff before you can type in the flee command, so this allows you to temporarily avoid that. 37. Figured out how I will do the monster description system. Once I've fully completed it (likely tomorrow it will be done), I'll release V7. 38. Continuing to work on monster descriptions. The monster description will be shown when you first encounter the monster, but you can always look at it later, by typing "look at monster". Each monster will have a slightly randomized color scheme (it will always be a specific color, ie orange, but the kind of orange will be different) and have a random unique feature (ie the rodent has a pink tail covered in slime and grime). I may add further randomization in the future, but for now, with 80 enemies (each having a unique basic physical description) it'll just be this much randomization. I'll keep at it. 39. Renamed a few creatures, where appropriate to give a better creature encounter; ie renamed Giant Snake, to Giant Cobra. 40. Quicks and Toughs for Sections 1 and 2 are done for monster descriptions. 41. Spellcasts for sections 1 and 2 are done as well as Boss descriptions. 42. Drainers for sections 1 and 2 are done; about half-way done. 43. I'm seeing some problems with my monster description system, so I'm going to address them in V8, rather than delay V7 further. Monster descriptions are implemented for Section 1 and 2, and as players haven't gotten past Section 2 yet, I feel its safe to release V7 now and work on the issues surrounding monster descriptions in V8. ===Changelog for V7, Hotfix 1=== 1. Fixed a logic error that bolded too much of the recast spell text. 2. Added a linebreak between the monster description and it's current health messages. 3. Found out that I was missing quite a few linebreaks with my traps, between lesser debuff application and loot found. Now fixed. 4. Added a linebreak in "look"; this reproduces the room description. 5. Greatly simplified the DOT messages for each lesser debuff, to reduce the amount of useless text the player has to read. 6. Reworded total soul shards found message, to improve clarity and ease of reading. 7. Renamed the spell Panacea to Curing. I want to use Panacea for the 9th level spell name, as it would be more appropriate (as Panacea is defined as a cure all, and the ninth level spell will cure all; hence the change) 8. Properly spelled disintegrate now, in all the places it needed to be spelled properly in. 9. Bolded a lot of the loot names (ie Shard of Arcana), to help them stand out better, when you loot them. 10. Created a large, separate, text file with features that aren't crucial to the game, but could be implemented after I complete the necessary features. These are "feature creep" style features, that I wouldn't mind implementing if I still had the motivation to work on the game, after it is completed, but I'm finding that trying to implement them now, is just delaying the release too much. So, I want to try to complete the features listed for each coming release and thus make V10 the final beta release. 11. Eliminated a hard to find linebreak issue that caused double linebreaks, where I had only intended for a single linebreak. This occurred between the hit that killed the monster and ambience message produced. 12. Eliminated the other hard to find linebreak issue that caused double linebreaks, where I had only intended for a single linebreak. This occurred between the application of the lesser debuff and the damage the player suffered. 13. Underlined and capitalized you are poisoned/bleeding/concussed, to aid readability. 14. Solved the line break issue that caused double linebreaks when purchasing spells. ===Changelog for V7, Hotfix 2=== 1. Addressed triple line break issue. 2. Addressed double round effect issue. 3. Addressed second wind line breaks issue. 4. Addressed haste line break issue. 5. Changed some it's to its as appropriate. 6. Made sure all lore is accessible. 7. Fixed some typos. 8. Addressed a major logic issue in Spellcasting System that allowed a dead creature to attack you. ===Changelog for V8=== 1. Added two new items = Curing Potion and Elixir of Cure-All. Curing potions cost 100 SS and remove all lesser debuffs. Elixirs of Cure-All cost 500 SS and removes all lesser/greater debuffs. You start with 3 Curing Potions. Should help to reduce early game deaths and provide an alternative way to handle debuffs while in combat, that don't involve drinking an Elixir of Ambrosia. 2. Added boss entry and artifact entries for Section 2, Ruins. 3. Added boss entry and artifact entries for Section 3, Caverns. 4. Added boss entry and artifact entries for Section 4, Dark Cathedral. Now to do the Journal Entries for Section 3 and 4, and I'll be caught up on lore! 5. Introduced two new options to Cast Spell again / Attack again systems. You can now drink a potion or an elixir. The reason for this is that if you acquire a lesser debuff, normally you would get nailed with the negative effect twice, before you could cure it. Now, by having these options, you will only get the negative effect once, if you choose to drink a curing potion. Can be also situationally useful with drinking elixirs or potions. 6. Decided on the new system for how journals will be provided to the player. You will learn them by talking to the Celestial, once you've either killed sufficient numbers of primal chaos creatures (in general) or unlock all entries once you kill the boss. 7. Since I am ahead of my planned schedule, I figured I would implement a few things to spruce up combat a bit more. For melee combat, you will have a randomly chosen attack verb and attack adverb, to make each individual attack feel a bit more unique. Additionally, whatever is the chosen attack verb, will produce a unique death message for the creature; for example = attack verb (slicing); "Slicing with your WEAPON, you disembowel the MONSTER, and their innards fall to the floor in a bloody pile; killing the MONSTER." There will also be unique death messages for spells or for damage retaliation (ie armor spikes), thus if the last damage dealt to the monster was your armor spikes, then it would give a unique message for that. There are a variety of other things I could do for combat, but I don't want to allow too much feature creep and thus disrupt my schedule. 8. Fixed a variety of typos and logic errors in the Sneak Attack system. 9. Implemented the combat spruce up in Standard, Shield, and Sneak attack systems; now to finish off the special death messages for spellcasting. 10. Finished off implementing the special death messages for spellcasting. 11. Modified the purchase training system. Now you can spend individual soul shards and earn 2 xp per soul shard spent. Thus, if you spend 250 soul shards, you'd earn 500 XP in your chosen attribute. This makes it easier to top off attributes that need like 50 or less XP, and allows you to empty your wallet after spending SS on other things, and you have say 77 SS left over; now you can spend it. 12. Made it so that you will encounter more Primal Chaos monsters, as you kill more of them and as you delve deeper. As these are minions of the final boss, and as the final boss doesn't want to be defeated, it makes sense to me that as you kill more of its minions, it will send more of them at you, but the new ones will be more powerful than the last. However, if you flee from a Primal Chaos, you will as per normal, get a Tough, Quick or Spellcaster. So if you don't want to fight it, you don't have to. As these creatures also give the greatest challenge (other than bosses) I'd want the player to find more of them as they delve deeper into the dungeon and as you kill more of them. 13. There will be a very low chance of acquiring a second attribute elixir from a trap or primal chaos creature, if your luck and number of primals killed is quite high, to further reward risk-takers. 14. Disabled Compass and Places/Objects as these aren't used much for this game. Thanks Hooman for pointing out where to find them! 15. Heavily refactored and redesigned monster description system, and it should now be in a form that I like and will be descriptive, retaining a lot of the information from the old system, while adding some new stuff as well! Working on implementing it now. 16. Ran into a few problems with the new monster description system, and addressed them. I've now tested all of the features as needed, and can now fully implement the new system as I intended. Hopefully will have all the new monster descriptions in by tomorrow. The new system should greatly improve immersion, and thus it will be worth the extra bit of wait and frustration I've had in figuring it out. 17. The new monster description system is working flawlessly and is really improving immersion a lot. I hope users enjoy the new changes as much as I am! 18. Fixed a logic error with my Treasure Hunter trait, that was improperly and always applying a huge bonus to loot rolls. 19. Created all the monster descriptions for Section 1, with the new system. I doubt I'll have all the monsters in the new system, if I intend to have the next release out for Wednesday Night (Nov 8). 20. Updated both Section 1 and Section 2 bosses to the new monster description system. 21. There is about a 25% chance that a room when created, will have no monster present. ===Changelog for V8, Hotfix 1=== 1. Setup the new lore system for Section 3 and 4s lore entries, in "request lore". Now to do them! 2. Removed an extra line break that would appear after a monsters current HP is = XX. 3. Added a line break after casting a noncombat spell, like minor healing or minor blessing. 4. Solved a double line break issue where sometimes an extra linebreak would appear between damage a creature suffered from retaliation damage (ie Armor Spikes) and then death that occurred from retaliation damage. 5. In retaliation damage messages, there used to be a = equals sign. It has now been removed, as it looked out of place; a remnant of its first iteration. 6. Made it so that if you get an empty room, that you can now explore as normal; was previously only allowing you to flee. 7. Made it so that if you get an empty room, that you cannot flee; also if you kill the monster in the room, you cannot flee. 8. Addressed a variety of typos in monster death messages. 9. Changed it's to its for Section 3 room generation scripts. 10. Changed it's to its for Section 4 room generation scripts. 11. Modified character creation for new players, to reflect the same process as returning players; asks for race first and THEN your name. 12. Modified character creation for new players, further. Removed the command list, text dump, so that new players don't have to read a ton of text. Stated that typing in "help" will however get help, and introduce the player to the most used commands and how to get access to the command list. 13. Added a line break after the message "This room lacks any monsters!" to aid readability. 14. Created three testing profiles, to provide a head start and to start later on in the game. To access these testing profiles, when prompted for your name, type in (verbatim and case sensitive) = Testing1 OR Testing2 OR Testing3. Testing1 starts you in the Ruins, LV 1. Testing2 starts you in the Caverns, LV 1. Testing3 starts you in Dark Cathedral, LV 1. You get a bunch of Soul Shards, Experience Points, and Increased Attributes. They may not be balanced, but it will allow anyone who wants to test later parts of the game, to be able to do so without spending hours to get there legitimately. 15. Introduced new code to automatically level the player multiple times, if they have sufficient XP. Part of its purpose is to fully level up testing characters, but bosses when killed, also give a massive amount of XP, so it is able to solve that problem as well. 16. Testing characters are a bit hacky, and thus the room you start in will lack a room description. But, after that, it will play as the game as normal. Also, forgot to mention that you are given the opportunity to rename your character to something more appropriate than Testing1 or something. 17. Added temporary monsters for Section 2, 3 and 4, and will replace them with the actual monsters for that section as I go along. So, if you do test Section 3 / 4, just understand that for now it will have Section 1s monsters as a holdover as I transfer the monsters from the old system to the new system. I doubt I'll have Section 3 / 4 ready for Hotfix 1, so just mentioning this now in advance. 18. I'm adding only a small number of monsters to Section 2 for the time being. This is so that I can release the hotfix sooner; there will be three different kinds of toughs, quicks, spellcasters, and drainers, to offer a small variety, in the meantime. I'll update the section later with more critters to play with probably during V9. I plan to have hotfix 1 out tomorrow (Nov 11) 19. Added in a few creatures for each type in Section 2. I'll address monster descriptions further in V9. This is a bandaid solution for now. ===Changelog for V8, Hotfix 2=== Changes in V8, Hotfix 2: 1. I've decided upon reorganizing monsters to have more consistency, and less quantity over quality, based on the section. Section 1 (Spiders, Insects, and Rats); Section 2 (Humanoids, Oozes, and Snakes); Section 3 (Dragons, Fungi, and Reptiles); Section 4 (Mindless Undead, Constructs, and Controllers of Undead). This will make some monsters more commonly found and make sections more immersive. I hope. 2. Reorganized new character creation for new players; missed a few things that I had wanted for Hotfix 1. 3. I found in my personal testing that sometimes during combat it would be difficult to determine where one round ended and another began. So, I've implemented a basic "round end" system, right before the game asks to attack or cast a spell at a target again. 4. If you are a returning player, and want to use a debug profile to start off later in the game, it will tell you what you must type to activate one, now. This is only for returning players; new players can still type in a debug profile, but only if they know of what they are called beforehand. 5. Fixed a bug with when fleeing a monster. If the monster killed you, it would improperly generate a new room. That has now been fixed, and thus should only generate a room if the player survives the monsters attack. 6. Created a basic room with a shrine, for testing profiles, so that you have quick access to the Celestial to spend your soul shards when starting out a testing profile. 7. Working on the tutorial for the game, as it will be needed for a polished beta release, if I'm to show it off to a company like GOG. Modified character creation for "new" players to ask the player if they wish to do the tutorial OR skip it and go to character creation. The tutorial will have you play as Darak, a Quickling, and after the tutorial is completed, you will get to choose your preferred race and name. 8. Working on adding new type of lore to the game; Bestiary entries. 9. Section 1 monsters are now complete. Also created a checklist of things that need doing, before I release the polished beta to GOG. 10. Started work on the tutorial. 11. Made it now possible to ascend or descend stairwells when in combat. If it is the first round, or you acquire the first round again by casting Invisibility, then you can climb up or down a stairwell without a fight. If you have alerted the monster of your presence, then you must try to get away without getting hit. Either way, you will be considered "fled" from the monster and thus the next enemy you face cannot be a Primal Chaos or Boss. This gives players more options for dealing with foes. 12. Modified various calculations. Stealth checks no longer are affected by weapon damage. Spell resistance no longer benefits from shield protection. Total dodge doesn't benefit from shield protection anymore but is instead subtracted from it. Total Dodge now is equal to trap dodge, and thus there is now only one dodge variable. Also, working on a "calculations" section of display info that explains how each number in "attributes" is calculated and what calculation uses the total bonus as well, to help player make better decisions. 13. Fixed a bug in the spellcasting code, where it applied the bonus from temporary effects (ie Blessing) and from the staff enchantment bonus, twice. 14. Reorganized this changelog, to remove extra and pointless entries related to Tutorial or Monster Descriptions. 15. Fixed a logic error with the Hive investigatable; wasn't having its times variable updated; this controls how dangerous a trap is and the negative effects of interacting with it. 16. Greatly simplified how trap damage is calculated; the reason for this change is that I was reading over the formula for calculating trap damage, as I need it for a calculation entry in Display Info, and felt it was too complicated to figure out the damage number. 17. Fixed a few logic errors with Greater Debuffs, using the incorrect variables, and mentioned in the text popup that they can be cured with either Ambrosia or Cure-Alls. 18. Added a new system, called Fortitude Saves. These are used to avoid acquiring Lesser and Greater debuffs. If you succeed at resisting an effect, then you'll get a message stating you avoiding acquiring said debuff. However, you will need to have high Vitality in order to succeed at this. 19. Created a basic pickpocketing system, for stealthy characters. Uses the same formulae for determining a sneak attack. If successful, you acquire their loot without fighting them; the exception is bosses, who cannot be pickpocketed. If you fail, you alert them, losing first round advantage, and they attack you. Also if successful, you do not get double the loot if you kill the creature; once pickpocketed, it has no more loot. Should provide an additional option for stealthy characters. 20. You can now investigate objects with creatures in the room, provided you are stealthy enough and don't activate a trap. If you attempt to investigate an object while a monster is in the room, you must succeed first at a stealth check; if you fail, you lose first round advantage but you don't get attacked; but you also aren't able to investigate the object then until you regain first round (such as by casting Invisibility). Then, as long as you don't get the trap, whether you dodge it or get hit by it doesn't matter, you will be able to grab the loot and the creature will be none the wiser; if you do activate the trap, then you'll lose first round advantage, but you will still loot the investigatable. Should provide an additional option for stealthy players. 21. Fixed a logic error in the flee code, for when you flee in the first round. Should now properly generate a new room. 22. Since I've made it possible to ascend or descend in combat, these options are now added to the "attack again" or "cast again" functions. 23. Bolded damage dealt by your melee attacks, to aid visibility. 24. Bolded maximum health of new monsters encountered, to aid visibility. 25. Hopefully solved the linebreak issue found in investigatables when you trigger the trap. Hopefully. Or I might have only fixed one out of several. Will have to check on this later. ===Changelog for V8, Hotfix 3=== 1. Planned out the rest of the tutorial, and figured out what parts of the tutorial will need to cover what. Sections of the tutorial that need doing are: The Store, Emvironment Exploration, Everything Monsters, Warrior Play, Spellcaster Play, Stealth Play, and finally Round Mechanics. 2. Planned out how Bestiary entries will be implemented. You can acquire entries by one of two ways; either buy them from the Celestial, or use the spell Analysis, and analyze a target. Once you have unlocked all 5 entries (one for each creature type; sewers has Rodents, Insects, and Spiders and one for Spirits (spellcasters) and one for Corrupted Spirits (primals)), you will unlock the 6th entry, which is for the boss, which will allow you to plan ahead on how you will try to take it down. Unlocking the Boss entry will also apply a minor trait, that will make it so that you can Setup Camp away from a shrine, and not get attacked (normally you would). 3. Planned out how I will distribute lore entries. You will find one-off journals, on adventurer corpse investigatables or you can buy them off the Celestial for a modest fee. You will find surviving character journals (Erika, Baldor, Artemis) rarely at shrines, or you can buy them off the Celestial for a fee. You will still, as per normal, unlock information on the boss and boss loot, when you kill the boss. 4. Implemented a new inventory item, called the Bestiary. It will store all your Bestiary entries that you collect. You utilize it by the command "study bestiary". Bestiary information will include both common physical traits of the creature (ie appearance or diet), as well as their actual gameplay stats (ie what their range is for maximum health or damage dealt) 5. Changed how Bestiary entries will work. You will unlock them based on encounter type (tough, quick, spells, primals). The bestiary will also give typical stats of the creature based on your current floor. If the creature you are fighting is the same encounter type as the one you are looking up, you will instead be able to find out what the current creatures stats are. Thus, the analysis spell is only needed to initially unlock the entry and isn't required once you do have the entry. 6. Completed the sewers bestiary; the first iteration of it will only have mechanical, statistic information. The actual lore entries will come later. 7. You can now purchase lore from the Celestial, by typing in "buy" and then choosing "lore" or by typing "buy bestiary entry" or "buy dead journal" or "buy living journal", with the alternative buying command. Dead journals, are from dead adventurers and cost 100 soul shards each. Living journals, are written by either Baldor, Erika, or Artemis, which are recurring characters through the game and cost 300 soul shards each. Bestiary entries, will unlock stats for the creatures and if you purchase all four of them, you will unlock the boss entry. Haven't set up yet the alternative way of acquiring these lore entries. 8. Added a new inventory item, the Journal. It will store all your collected journal entries and you can read journal entries by typing "read journal". The "storytime" command will be used exclusively for backstory or side information, such as boss story details or artifact story details. 9. All the available entries for purchase for the polished beta, are now purchaseable. I'll have basic entries for Bestiary for all 4 sections, and have the journals for section 1 and 2. 10. Added three new phobias; Blennophobia (fear of slimes/oozes), Herpetophobia (fear of reptiles), and Cultiophobia (fear of cultists and the occult). I haven't created traps for them, but will be adding new monsters with those types in Sections 2 to 4. 11. Rewritten the three recurring character journals, for the Sewers. Recurring characters will have their journals split up into three sections; personal thoughts, personal focuses, and closing remarks. Personal thoughts, will act as a short story of their thoughts and personal events, that occurred to them in the current section. Personal focuses, are things that they focus on and provide insights into; Baldor is interested in enemies and interesting loot he has found; Artemis is interested in investigatable objects and adventurers that he observes (most die); Erika is interested in history, environmental details, and explanations of oddities she encounters. Closing remarks, are what they are about to do next. I hope users enjoy the rewritten stories, as these offer a fair bit more targeted lore and helps to build on each character and make them feel more alive and realistic. 12. You can now find living character journals at every shrine, 25% of the time, once you've defeated the monster. 13. Modified the adventurers corpse investigatable, so that you can only one of the three dead adventurer journals, instead of the live recurring character journals. 14. Can now acquire Bestiary entries by using the Analysis spell... then the "analyze monster" command. If you have the entry already, you won't get a message, but if you didn't have it, you will be told you unlocked a new Bestiary entry. 15. Deprecated the Request Lore command; as you get the lore in different ways now, there is no point in having this command any more. 16. Fixed a typo in the tutorial; in the Unequip Command, it should read as salvage item, rather than sell item. You can only salvage weapons, armors, or shields, not sell them! 17. Deprecated the Sell commands. Back in an earlier build where you would get tons of random consumables, the Sell command was worthwhile, but now, it isn't; any resources you collect, you aren't likely to want to get rid of as everything is so much more useful now. Salvage however will remain! 18. Completed the store portion of the tutorial. Next section of the tutorial, is Exploration! Also, added using the Bestiary and Journal into the inventory portion of the Tutorial and moved the explanation of Enhancement/Enchanting items from the Satchel portion of the Inventory Tutorial, to item enhancing in the Store portion of the Tutorial. 19. Found a newly implemented error with my investigate object code, and fixed it. Apparently forgot to add logic for when there is no monster in the room. 20. Modified setup camp command. There is now a 50% chance of encountering a wandering monster over a 100% chance that it was previously, when camping not at a shrine. Also, there is a 10 round time cost for setting up camp, so use it wisely, unless you intend to run out of time. 21. Completed the Exploration portion of the Tutorial. Now onto monsters, technically next. However, I intend to complete Section 2s Monster Descriptions first, and then release Hotfix 3, to get the new stuff out to players. So, next thing I'm working is S2 Monster Descriptions. 22. Completed Section 2s Monster Descriptions. Monsters are Minotaur, Oozeling, Giant Crocodile (Toughs), Goatman, Slimeball, Giant Lizard (Quicks), Possessed Goatman/Slimeball/Lizard (Spells), and Primal Chaos Minotaur/Oozeling/Crocodile (Primals). === Changelog for V8, Hotfix 4 === 1. Forgot to make the Ruins Bestiary entries accessible in the Journal, if you had unlocked them. Now fixed! 2. I clearly haven't updated Look at Monster command lately, as it was using the old system. I've updated it now with the new system and using it will tell you the creatures current HP as well. 3. If I am to make my pre-Christmas polished beta date, I'll have to forgo doing all the extra lore. I will have Section 1s lore, as well as Backstory/Artifact lore in the game, so it should be sufficient for the beta. 4. Ughhhhhhh. I'm done the Tutorial now. Also ran into a few game-breaking bugs in the process and have determined that the way I was doing the tutorial, doesn't agree with my combat or spellcasting systems. Thus, I've had to do a huge wall of text... and a whole lot of apologizing in the post as well. I will look into why the game doesn't like the tutorial later, but now I have Monster Descriptions for Sections 3/4 to do and resolve these new game breaking bugs I've found. 5. Tried going through the Tutorial, and ran into a few problems. Will address them, and get back to you all, when I've been able to personally go through the entire tutorial without issues. 6. Fixed a bug with the health system of fresh monsters. Should now properly have full health when encountered. 7. There is a problem with "look at monster" so I changed it to "observe monster". Dunno what the issue is, but I don't have time to figure it out either, and the observe monster works just fine, so yah... 8. This program is going to give me an aneurism. Everything that could go wrong, is going wrong. The logic isn't acceptable to the program... then it wouldn't compile. Now, I'm left with a 3 page long wall of text for the last part of the tutorial. I managed to finally get through the entire tutorial, and oh boy is it ever bad, but honestly, its the best I could do in the limited time with the program having constant issues, for no apparent reason. GAHHH! Well, the first iteration of the tutorial is completed. I'll look into revamping it in V9, but it will have to do for now for the polished release for V8. Now, I need to finish up the Monster Descriptions and do a bughunt, before I release. 9. Updated the Help command, to have up to date information in it. ie changed attack target to just attack... as it is just attack now. 10. I augmented the "testing profiles" with better starter equipment. You will now start with a lot more healing, mana, and curing potions; as well you will start with some cure-alls and a small number of elixir of ambrosia. I'll take a look into further augmenting them if necessary! 11. Added Bestiary sections for each section of the game. Note, the actual lore isn't present yet, only the game statistic information! 12. The three added monster types (Reptile, Ooze, and Cultist) all now apply lesser debuffs of some kind. Reptiles apply bleed, Oozes apply poison, and Cultists apply concussion. 13. Updated the Command List, to include anything I forgot to mention for Hotfix 2 or Hotfix 3. 14. Replaced the Section 1 ambience message "Purple Feces" with one about a dessicated creature falling off a spider web. 15. I believe I fixed the "0 poison damage, -1 rounds" left bug Hooman mentioned. I created code that will only display a message if you have greater than 0 rounds remaining. As when the code executes, it will reduce the rounds by 1, that means you must always have at least 1 round remaining for any damage message to appear. If for some reason you have 0 or less rounds of the debuff, the code will not execute and instead will just turn off the debuff. This way it ensures that the logic only executes when you have 1 or more rounds remaining and any weird behaviour is prevented, such as weird interactions with different parts of the codebase. 16. I added all the various ways to cure bleeding, poison, or concussion, in the message that pops up when you get an effect. So those are Curing and Remedy spells, Curing Potion, Elixir of Cure-All, and Elixir of Ambrosia. 17. Modified some ambience messages, to remove some old things that are no longer accurate; ie the wailing of an orc child in section 2. Also, renamed it's to its, where appropriate so that it's actually means it is. 18. Fixed a few typos in the Backstory entries, found within the storytime command. 19. Fixed a few typos in the Artifact entries, found within the storytime command. 20. I believe I have addressed all the other major game-breaking bugs that were on my list to be fixed. I will playtest it before I release to ensure they are resolved. Now, I just need to finish off the Monster Descriptions for Sections 3/4, do a good playtesting session, and the game should be ready for GOG to take a look at it. 21. Wasn't able to finish Section 3 or 4s monsters for the beta. I have simply run out of time. I'm going to be exceptionally busy the next few days, so today is the only time I had left. I did manage to bugtest the release, and ensured that each of the bugs I intended to address, was addressed... and they are. Releasing V8 now, and hoping for the best! === Changelog for V8, Hotfix 5 === 1. Decided on a temporary fix for Sections 3 and 4; the creatures I had in mind do not fit in well with the ecology of the section and thus, I have to rethink on my critters for the sections. However, I am including 1 quick, 1 tough, 1 spell and 1 primal for Section 3 and 4 that will remain in these sections permanently. This way, all 4 sections are now playable. 2. Added the Wyrm, Wyvern, Possessed Wyvern and Primal Chaos Wyrm to Section 3. 3. Added the Deathknight, Vampire, Possessed Vampire and Primal Chaos Deathknight to Section 4. 4. Fixed a minor typo I noticed in some, but not all, of Section 1/2s Monster Descriptions. === Changelog for V8, Hotfix 6 === 1. Added three new rare shards to acquire; Shard of Protection, Shard of Stealthiness, and Shard of Retaliation. 2. Added a critical success/failure system. This is rolled before accuracy/spell penetration checks, if you get a 1 you fumble and a 20 you critically succeed; otherwise you roll normally. Fumbles are just misses, and nothing special or particularly debilitating. If you get a 20 on the other hand, you will always hit the target or penetrate their spell resistance, and in addition to that, you will also bypass their entire protection/magic protection values to do maximum damage. Implemented currently only for the players melee attacks and combat spells. 3. Noticed while working on the Criticals system for monsters, that I missed logic in the Criticals system for players. Specifically, when fighting Section 2s boss, it reflects a portion of the damage the player dealt to it, back at the player, and this logic was missing from the Criticals system for players. Also noticed that the shield bashing system completely lacked this logic as well, and thus have added it to it as well. 4. Made it so that getting a critical with a combat spell cast, results also in refunding the mana spent to cast it. 5. Modified XP gains in the spellcasting system, so that they are consistent with other sources of XP gain by doing activities; I missed these values when I had done the XP modifications in an earlier beta. 6. Made it so that the condition of the monster only displays when you apply a hit that deals damage to it. I found that with my testing, that having the message appear even when you miss or fail to penetrate the armor of the monster, was very distracting and not very immersive. Thus why I have now changed it to this. 7. Modified the monster condition system further by keeping track of how many damaging hits you deal to the creature. If you have damaged it only once, it will state that it bleeds from a single wound; if you have damaged it multiple times, it will state how many times you have damaged it. This should help to make combat a bit more interesting and reduce excess text posting onto the screen. 8. Bolded a variety of numbers, to aid readability; specifically damage dealt, damage taken or current HP values. 9. Whenever you acquire more time to complete the game, a message will appear stating you acquired extra time and will tell you what your current time remaining is as well. 10. Bolded character experience gained and what your current character experience total is as well. 11. Fixed a typo and a logic error in my Setup Camp command. 12. Fixed a minor logic error with my fortitude saves system. Will no longer say you resisted the effect (ie bleeding) and then state a bit later that you have overcome the effect as if you had acquired it... which you didn't. 13. Modified the linebreaks in the journal entries to aid readability. 14. Modified the monster condition to display a simpler "it suffers from x wounds". The reason for this change is that if you attack with a staff, or spell, it will state that it bleeds from cuts or lacerations, which don't make sense. Also, if a player renames their weapons, then it would be immersion breaking as well. As I don't want to spend a ton of time building in tons of different combinations, I'll keep it like this. 15. Bolded HP gained from Aid spells and Healing spells, to aid readability. 16. I believe I have fixed the logic flow breaking that is caused by the Haste effect. Apparently when I made it, it uses a flag called ActionCancelled. This flag controls whether or not a monster will attack you. However, it also controls the recast spell system, which is why it would break the logic flow. I've redesigned the recast spell system to take into consideration if you have ActionCancelled and if the Haste Round variable is greater than 0. Appears to work, so will now start implementing the haste system in other places, like the melee combat system as well. 17. You can critically succeed at cast other combat spells and noncombat spells, but cannot fumble their casting (as there isn't any real obvious negative to build the fumble for). The reason I want to offer this for these spells is so that if you critical, you get your mana cost back, which is a very useful reward if you critically cast a damaging combat spell. 18. Modified shrine descriptions to remove mentioning selling (as you can't do that anymore) and to mention that you can setup camp here. 19. Don't know how I missed this when I redid drinking healing / mana potions, but will now properly state that each one drunk restores 25 HP or 25 MP, respectively. 20. Modified the Haste system so that if you perform melee attacks, you get extra actions based on Agility, rather than Intellect. While, spellcasting remains an Intellect check to succeed at. Also, added haste to the melee combat system. 21. Fixed a rare edge case error, that resulted from improperly unsetting flags for the spellcasting system when you drank a potion or elixir, from the recast a spell prompt. 22. Heavily modified the recast and reattack systems. You can now choose to attack or cast a spell from within this prompt. So, if you were casting Firebolt for the recast, you can now type cast and then choose Minor Aid or you could decide to attack instead of casting a new spell or recasting Firebolt. This should provide quite a few more options for players to use and should cooperate nicely with the fixed Haste system. I am personally really enjoying the changes to the this system as well as having the Haste effect work properly without breaking gameplay flow, and hope that players will enjoy it as well! 23. Took a lot of work, and a partial migraine, but I managed to get the shield bash debuff to last for more than 1 round. The more damage you deal with the bash/slam, will increase the duration of the debuff. The base duration is 2 rounds; a critical bash is 4 rounds, then added to it is total damage dealt / 100 (so if you did 312 damage with the bash, as a normal hit, the duration of the debuff would be 5 rounds). Should provide more options for shield-focused characters. 24. Removed an extra linebreak after you take damage from a trap. 25. Fixed a rare edge case error with the player dying. It will now properly remove debuffs and prevent you from say, bleeding, once dead. 26. Fixed a logic error with the flee command. If you died, but second winded, you wouldn't flee the room properly, and would be forced to try fleeing a second time. It now will check if you are permanently dead (I have a special system for handling that) and if you aren't, then you will properly flee the room after second winding. 27. Modified a few monster death messages to remove things like red blood. As not all creatures will have red blood, it would be immersion breaking to get that message. Also, not everyone has blood either. 28. As I have been able to make Shield bashing last for more than one round, I have now applied the bashing penalty applied to the monster, to their ability to dodge your attacks and to resist your spells. So the initial bash won't have the penalty applied to the monster, but if you were to attack, cast a spell, or bash them again, then the penalty would be applied, giving more depth to the Shield bashing system. 29. Spells that will do damage, are now bolded and italicized, to aid readability. I may bold noncombat and other combat spells in the future, but wanted the damage spells do stand out better. 30. Forgot to add a message stating that you successfully pickpocketed a creature, when you actually succeed. It would give the loot if you succeeded, but it didn't state that you succeeded. Now is addressed. 31. I've reduced the amount of "extra time" received by killing a Primal Chaos monster to 50 (from 100). However, there is now two more ways to acquire more time, one for stealthy characters and one for spellcasting characters. If you successfully pickpocket a Primal Chaos creature, it will suddenly disappear, and you'll receive extra time. If you fear a Primal Chaos with the spell Terrify, you won't get loot or XP, but again it will suddenly disappear, but you will receive more time. In either new case, it will tell you what your new time total is and the reason why they disappear will be explained later on in the game, as a lore update. 32. As I've made terrify allow you to get extra time, I've made it now that you have to beat the monsters spell resistance to scare them out of the room. If you fail, they will get to attack you as normal. === Changelog for V8, Hotfix 7 === 1. Fixed a logic error in a boss ability, related to the spellcasting system. Was using the wrong variable, from a deprecated system, but as this boss is encountered in Section 4, I missed it till now as very few players have gotten that far yet. 2. Fixed a large logic error in the spellcasting system, related to spell damage. Now, the number displayed as damage dealt, is the actual damage dealt. 3. Removed an extra linebreak after the successfully avoided the trap message, when investigating investigatables. 4. Added linebreaks after casting a buff-type spell, to aid readability. 5. Added linebreaks in the Enhance or Enchant items systems, as well as bolded the number of them you are currently carrying, to aid readability. 6. Forgot to add the cast a new spell system, to the recast spell system, for noncombat spells. It is now fixed, and can cast a different spell when prompted, by typing in "cast". 7. Fixed a logic error with the shield bash code, that would improperly display that the monster is no longer dazed from a bash, when you never bashed that creature in the first place. === Changelog for V9 === 1. Modified the initial character creation to provide an alternative to new players that do not wish to do the tutorial and prefer to learn as they go. Also, mentioned that I highly suggest new players to do the tutorial as the game isn't your typical text adventure. I mention this because, when I showed off the game to a couple of friends, that had never played the game before, they instantly typed in one of the races and jumped straight into gameplay and then got horribly confused and frustrated, as the game didn't work like typical text adventures. Hence why the needed verbosity. 2. Added a simple pane on the interface that shows all of the most common commands and clicking on one performs that command. Doesn't look the prettiest yet, but it is functional and useful, so there is that. 3. With a bit of fiddling around, and some coding duct tape, I now have on the interface a list of currently active buffs. It is quite crude, and fugly, but it is functional, and does its job. In the future, I'll look into making it look better. 4. With a bunch of fiddling around with various ideas, I've come up with a better way to show off active buffs, that is more informative and far less fugly than the previous attempt. The problem with the status display is that it is a pre-built function call that only takes strings; you can't have complex logic used directly for it, otherwise the status pane borks, which is what causes the majority of issues for the way I'd like to post the information. 5. With even more fiddling, managed to get it to change color to black (how to read info) and grey (the buffs themselves are colored grey). Now it doesn't look out of place. Yah! 6. Modified the round mechanic system heavily. I've now made it so that free actions, are truly free; they do not cause a debuff to tick down, they do not cause you to lose "time", and they do not cause a buff to tick down. Non-free actions will; these are exploring, ascending, descending, fleeing, pickpocketing, attacking, casting spells (even non-combat spells) or investigating an object. 7. Made it so that when a lesser debuff is applied, it is delayed briefly for a single round. The reason for this is to reduce the number of frustrating deaths caused by surviving a trap, to be killed off by the debuff. Plus, it allows players who are "on the ball" to get rid of the effect, before it deals any damage. Should make the game feel much fairer now. 8. Fixed a bug with finding living adventurer journals at a shrine. Should now only check this once per shrine, rather than every turn, as it was previously. 9. Created a new system for progression and advancement. You can now salvage unwanted Rare Shards (that aren't useful to the build of character you are building; ie Shard of Stealthiness for a Warrior) into 2,500 Character Experience and 25 more Rounds of Time. Thus, even if you don't find a shard that is desirable to your build, it can still be useful for character progression; or if you are in a real bind for Time, you can salvage them for that. 10. Added a note in the Command List for pickpocketing. You cannot pickpocket bosses and attempting to do so, will always fail and result in them immediately attacking you. 11. Implemented a new spellbook loot system. Made it so that you can only find specific spellbooks as loot, dependent on current section you are in. For section 1, you can only find 1st or 2nd level spells. For section 2, you can only find 3rd or 4th level spells; have a missing spell from 1st/2nd... buy it! Should ensure a better distribution of spells and restrict higher level spells for deeper sections. If you have all the spells that could be found in a section, you will of course get soul shards instead. 12. Added in linebreaks in purchasing 3rd level spells or higher. For some reason 1st and 2nd spell purchasing had proper linebreaks, but 3rd to 7th didn't. Fixed now. 13. Mentioned in all tiers of spell purchasing that any other input cancels the purchasing of a spell. Don't know why it didn't have this, so now fixed. 14. Buying spells now has a brief description of what the spell will do, when you cast it. Should help with making spell purchasing decisions. 15. Lesser debuffs are now on the status display, on the interface. 16. I somehow forgot to add the spell criticals system to non-combat spellcasting. This is now fixed, and possible to have criticals with non-combat spells. All a critical will do is refund the mana cost. A minor thing, as spell cost isn't affected by armor or shield values, but if every other spell can critical, might as well have it for non-combat spells as well. 17. Fixed a major logic error with the Matriarch Araneas dispel buff boss ability. It was deactivating the flag for a buff, but wasn't actually fully deactivating the buff. I have fixed it so that deactivating the flag will properly deactive the buff and thus this boss ability should now work as intended. 18. Made it so that if the buff runs out of rounds or is dispelled, that it will produce a default message on the newly created status display. Usually something like: "Haste is Inactive." And of course made sure that the buff is actually deactivated when it says it is inactive. 19. Fully redesigning the Tutorial, with its second iteration. It will be greatly simplified to reduce information overload, but each character will get a new item called the Adventurers Manual, which will have a more verbose and thorough explanation of all the special rules that aren't covered in the tutorial, but are only really needed for more advanced players. This should make doing the tutorial a lot easier and ensure still that the information for making advanced decisions is still in the game and can be read at an users leisure. Also, the tutorial will feature a skip to tutorial section to allow users to decide if they will do all of the tutorial or only part of the tutorial. 20. Found in personal testing that the Points of Interest script posts too often; particularly if you haven't investigated the investigables. So, I've changed it now where it will post once at end of combat, once after every investigation, and if you need it more often, just type "look" to produce the room description again and will show a list of investigatables. This way, it doesn't get in the way anymore. 21. By messing with when the Points of Interest script appears and lesser debuffs, it broke my flow of linebreaks. After an hour of fiddling with the linebreaks, I've managed to solve all of them, and its back to looking professional again. Yeah! 22. My "newest" (although added probably back in v5 or v6) rare Elixirs off Drainers weren't updating HP or MP, if they added Vitality or Intellect respectively. That is now fixed. Additionally, I buffed up the older elixirs from +3 single attribute gain to +4 single attribute gain, as the "newest" elixirs added +2/+2 or +1/+1/+1/+1/+1/+1 attribute increases and wanted their value to be in line with the "newest" ones. 23. Resisting acquiring a lesser or greater debuff trains Vitality. Suffering a debuff trains Vitality more. 24. Fully deprecated the old Buff system, stored in Display Info. The new Status Effects display, on the interface, should have all the information you need. 25. Primals have approximately a 10% chance on hit to apply a greater debuff (modified by depth level and player luck) and Bosses have approximately a 25% chance on hit to apply a greater debuff (again modified by depth level and player luck). Should increase the challenge level of these critters. 26. Ran a balance pass over my Rare Shards, to upgrade weak ones to be in line of desirability of newer ones. Shards of Battle increase melee accuracy by +4 (up from +2) and Shards of Penetration increase spell penetration by +4 (up from +2). Shards of Regeneration and Rejuvenation restore 2 HP or 2 MP per round. I shouldn't need to upgrade Rare Shards in the future now; all other Shards are used in multiple different calculations, and thus are in some ways more valuable. 27. Deprecated the "storytime" command. Backstory and Artifact information is now found under the "history" section of your Journal. Additionally, new historical lore will unlock based on if you kill X numbers of Primals (bosses count as quite a few primals for unlocking this lore) or can be purchased from the Celestial, for each section you visit, which should further provide greater immersion to the player. 28. Fixed a typo with creating a character with a Quickling and added Minor Aid spell to their list of starting spells. 29. Added a new dungeon feature; a freely accessible Pile of Loot. I hinted at the possibility of this in one of the "dead adventure" journals, but never got around to adding it. Now it is in the game. How it works is, the moment the room is empty of threats, you will loot it and get whatever valuables from it that you can. By freely accessible, I mean it lacks any traps and thus anyone can grab it... you just have to kill the monster if there is one in the room, to get it. 30. Ran a balance pass over Shields, Armors, and Weapons; I found in personal testing that I'd only ever choose pick the same gear everytime and thus this balance pass is to address the issue concerning the fact that different items only real difference is numerical bonuses and I wanted to change that. The larger the shield, the greater the penalty applied when bashing and the longer the bash debuff is applied (bucklers apply no bonuses, while Tower Shields apply greater values), thus making different sized shields more desirable, depending on playstyle. Upped the damage of the Longsword to 16 damage and changed sneak attack damage values; Daggers do 32x damage, Shortswords are unchanged at 8x damage, Longswords deal 4x damage, Staves deal 2x damage, and Greatswords are unchanged at 1x damage; this makes daggers highly desirable for pure stealths, but those that want to have more reliable damage, particularly if you fail to one-shot a target, will have a variety of different options. Finally, Chainmail Armor has been increased to 8 Protection (from 4) and Platemail Armor has been increased to 16 Protection (from 8 ); this means that the heavier armors do protect more, but they will also severely hurt your ability to dodge attacks or avoid traps, thus making different armors more desirable to different playstyles. 31. Redesigned the Help command. As the most common commands are now found on the interface, that meant that the Help command wasn't too helpful anymore. The new Help command will be much more helpful! 32. Completed the instructional components of the new Tutorial.