Hello everyone!

After months of adding new content I had planned to take this update real easy fixing bugs, tweaking and polishing some stuff and adding a few simple sub-zones. While I did do a bunch of odds and ends type stuff, I also ended up going down the rabbit hole of rebalancing a significant amount of the equipment and drop system.

After making the pretty major changes described below I had to play through about 20 complete runs and so ended up tweaking the balance on a whole lot of other stuff along the way. Some of these changes had a lot of thought behind them, others were just seat of the pants, gut feeling type things so please let me know if you think I've done something really dumb :P

For the last few months I've been giving a lot of thought to the way I'd like the equipment to function in RF-IV. Previously, your character was defined mostly by your talents with equipment performing only a supporting role. At a rough guess I would say we had a 75%/25% impact between Talents/Equipment. Also, each new piece of equipment did not tend to change the way a build would play in the same way that getting a new talent would.

I've being trying to shift this emphasis to a more even 50/50 split between Talents/Equipment by making each piece of equipment both more interesting and impactful. Equipment drops are completely randomized between runs so having equipment play a more prominent role creates much more diverse builds from run to run.

One major place I figured could use some improvement was the way that equipment is broken into tiers and dropped throughout the dungeon. Previously we had 3 + 1 tiers of equipment:

• Tier-0: The equipment that characters start. This gets replaced with the first drop that comes along.
  
• Tier-1: Drops in the early game and is by design very weak. Exists to fill slots until being replaced.
  
• Tier-2: Drops in the middle game. This is where the equipment gets more impactful and interesting. Many of these pieces have interesting effects, abilities or at least solid stats. This is where attribute points start showing up.
  
• Tier-3: Drops in the late game. The best equipment in the game with the most interesting and impactful stats and effects.

So 2/4 tiers of equipment existed with the soul purpose of filling slots until something better came along. They were, by design, supposed to be uninteresting and unimpactful. The way that drop counts worked, we dropped a lot of this stuff in Zone1/Zone2 with the idea being to help the player fill out all of his item slots but with the assumption that he would then quickly replace them with something better.

So we had a lot of items dropping early in the game that really didn't have much impact on the player. When he would eventually find another item of the same slot, it was almost always an upgrade (since it would be from a higher tier), but the amount of upgrade was smaller since he was going from Tier-1 => Tier-2 equipment.

The idea I'm testing out with this update is to:

• Remove the entire Tier-1 equipment list by increasing their power and merging them into Tier-2.
  
• Begin dropping Tier-2 equipment right from the start of the game.
  
• Decrease the total amount of equipment drops, especially in the early game. One way to look at this is that we removed the old Tier-1 equipment from the early game and then simply spread the Tier-2 equipment more thinly across the levels.
  
• Rename the players starting equipment to Tier-1 giving us 3 proper tiers: Starting Equipment, Early Game Equipment, Late Game Equipment.

By doing this, the player begins to get meaningful equipment immediately. Right on the very first dungeon level you can now find items that give a pretty drastic swing in power and have the potential to change the way you play, at least for a few levels. We also 'remove' a whole bunch of items that previously had no real use beyond the early game and replace them with stuff that can totally be carried right through to the final boss.

Moving forward, when designing new items or redesigning existing ones, since Tier-2 is now the lowest power level I need to deal with, I can try to make every item the player finds, both impactful and interesting. I have more 'power room' to make interesting items and I no longer have to support a whole table of items whose sole purpose is to be 'uninteresting'.

To implement this equipment rebalance, the following changes have been made:

• All Tier-1 equipment moved into Tier-2 with increased stats (see below)
  
• In the cases where we would have duplicates ex. Long-Sword/Broad-Sword, Long-Bow/Compound-Bow I've just removed one of them.
  
• Number of drops in the early game have been significantly reduced. Expect to have empty slots for longer but for each slot to be filled with something stronger.
  
• I've done a bunch of preliminary rebalancing and fiddling with equipment stats now that I only need to think in terms of 'Good Equipment' and 'Even Gooder Equipment'.

These changes result in a pretty significant power gain by the player early on and so some additional rebalancing has been made to roughly maintain the overall game difficulty. Note, that as with many balance changes, the goal right now is to change the overall game difficulty as little as possible.

• Increased monster HP by about 20% in the early game.
  
• This scales to an increase of about 10% in the late game (these changes have less impact later on).
  
• All monsters in Branch-2 have had their levels increased by 1. This is partially in response to a longer standing issue I've noticed where the player is often so kitted out by Branch-2 that it actually becomes the easiest zone in the game.

General

• Reverted Strength 10HP => 8HP. I had to make the choice of either keeping this change and spreading it across all the items and talents (HP increments should match the STR increment), or else reverting it. The point of this change was to make STR a more balanced attribute compared to INT/DEX but I feel like it failed to really do that while just inflating HP totals. I don't think any amount of HP inflating is going to cause more skilled players to sink points into STR so I'd rather just leave it as it was.
  
• Tier-2 Spells: 6MP => 5MP. Tier-2 talents are generally not significantly more powerful than Tier-1 talents and so should not have such a higher cost (CD abilities don't have this). We now have a nice spread of 4MP/5MP/6MP for the tiers of spells. Further talent discussion on Discord can reflect these changes.

Talents

• Rogue: swapped Sleep-Bomb/Bear-Trap from Tier-1 to Tier-2.
  
• Bear-Trap (Damage): only 1 trap (was set at 2 by mistake)
  
• Bear-Trap (Long): double duration
  
• Shadow-Step (Extended): 5Range => 7Range

Power-Shot:

• Base and Upgrades: 6CD => 8CD in order to nerf the talent overall.
  
• Name change: Power-Shot (Damage) => Power-Shot (Heavy).
  
• Power-Shot (Heavy): 1/2 range, bonus damage, crits when adjacent.
  
• Power-Shot (Heavy): crit when adjacent now works with non-physical attacks (fire, shock, poison).

Sleep-Bomb:

• Sleep-Bomb (Long): 6-Range => 5-Range.
  
• Sleep-Bomb (Long): 6CD => 10CD
  
• Sleep-Bomb (Big): 3DUR => 4DUR
  
• Sleep-Bomb (Big): now spreads like a Poison-Cloud.
  
• Sleep-Bomb (Smoke): AoE of smoke that spreads like Poison-Cloud. Does not put enemies to sleep but blocks LoS. 6DUR to start.
  
• Boss Escape-Blink now removes sleep just like it removes Freeze and Net. Stun will be retained after blinking.

This is really just the start of an overall item rebalance following on from the changes to item tiers. Trying to make each piece of equipment more impactful and more distinct. In some places I've removed 2nd or 3rd stats on an item in order to make the primary stat more distinct. I'm also trying to move away from having quite so many abilities on items. I still definitely want to retain this mechanic but I want to use it more sparingly. An item with an ability on it should be both really useful and really interesting.
Weapons:

• Blunt weapon damage has been decreased overall to match Swords (what I consider the default). I feel like the Armor-Penetration is a valuable enough property to not also have these be the highest damage weapons.
  
• [X] Mace-of-Shielding: 12DMG => 8DMG, +1Shield => +3Shield. Trying to make this weapon more unique.
  
• Mace-of-Shielding now adds shield when using Cyclone-Strike and Shields-Up. Each is counted as a single attack.
  
• Staff-of-Shielding: 9DMG => 7DMG, +1Shield => +3Shield
  
• Power-Blade: instead of Power-Ability will innately add +10%AP after each standard attack (max 30%) until using an ability.
  
• Power-Maul: instead of Power-Ability will innately add +10%AP after each standard attack (max 30%) until using an ability.
  
• The poison damage from Poison Staves will now take into account the actual damage dealt in the the first hit (ex. crit or mitigated)
  
• Increase level of dancing blades XL:4 => XL:6
  
• Maggots from necrotic staff should pop in 5T
  
• Pike-of-the-Guard: +1DMG/Turn (Max 5) => +2DMG/Turn (Max 4)
  
• Pike-of-the-Guard: knockback now removes the buff
  
• Hammer-of-Crushing 14DMG => 12DMG. The crush is very strong and pretty easy to pull off consistently. This is likely still the highest damage weapon in game, just not by such an extreme amount.
  
• Blood-Stinger: Ability-Heal => 1-Melee-Life-Tap
  
• Soul-Reaper: Ability-Heal => 1-Melee-Life-Tap (also made it 1-handed)
  
• Scythe-of-Reaping: Ability-Heal => 2-Melee-Life-Tap
  
• Serpent-Fang-Dagger: 10DMG => 8DMG, 2xPoison-Damage/5Turns => 4xPoison-Damage/8T
  
• Assassins-Blade: 10DMG => 8DMG, 2xPoison-Damage/5Turns => 4xPoison-Damage/8T
  
• Slime-Covered-Harpoon: 11DMG => 9DMG, 2xPoison-Damage/5Turns => 4xPoison-Damage/8T
  
• Blood-Stained-Axe: Ability-Heal => +8HP. I don't want to drop an Item-Ability so early in the game and having 1-Melee-Life-Tap seems excessive at this point. Probably need a better redesign for this item.
  
• Goblin-Swift-Bow: 5DMG => 6DMG
  
• Sharp-Shooters-Bow: 4DMG => 5DMG
  
• Whip: 3DMG => 4DMG
  
• Staff-of-Energy: 2MP => 4MP

Equipment:

• Orb-of-Flowing-Thought: no maxMP reduction.
  
• Dusty-Tome: +1INT.
  
• Cloak-of-Stealth: lowered ENC and no protection.
  
• Spring-Sprong-Boots: 2Range => 3Range, no protection.
  
• Brass-Shackles can now be enchanted.
  
• Boots-of-Stealth: 2ENC => 1ENC and no protection
  
• Minotaur-Hide-Armor: made lighter ENC and switched SP + Protection => SP + Melee-Damage.
  
• Orc-Battle-Armor: made heavier ENC and raised the protection.
  
• Gi-of-Flowing-Thought: gain 1MP every time you sprint (no other stats.
  
• Gloves-of-Draining: 3-Melee-Life-Tap => 2-Melee-Life-Tap. The Melee-Life-Tap stat can now be enchanted.
  
• Gauntlets-of-War: no protection.
  
• Festering-Boots: no protection.
  
• Helm-of-Telepathy: no protection. The enemies are now also made visible on the main game screen.
  
• Rocket-Boots: no protection.
  
• Boots-of-Vampirism: no protection.
  
• Clockwork-Power-Armor: 1STR, 8ENC-Capacity => 2STR. Lets just let this be the BiS melee chest.
  
• Lockjaw-Hide-Vest: 2Prot, 3Melee, 30%rTox => 2SP, 2Melee, 30%rTox
  
• Leather-Armor: +1Protection
  
• Cloth-Armor: +10% Ability-Power
  
• Goblin-War-Shield: 4ENC, 2Prot, 8HP => 5ENC, 3Prot, 2Melee-Damage
  
• Spiky-Shield: 2Prot, 4DS => 3Prot, 6DS
  
• Ring-of-Health: 8HP => 16HP
  
• Ring-of-Mana: 2MP => 4MP
  
• Ring-of-Speed: 1SP => 2SP
  
• Ring-of-Slaying and Ring-of-Archery: 2DMG => 3DMG
  
• Ring-of-Protection: 2Prot => 3Prot
  
• Ring-of-the-Vampire: 1Life-Tap => 2Life-Tap

Added both Slime-Pits and Frozen-Frost-Keep sub-zones prior to the relevant boss. Amusingly this was supposed to be the main part of this update before the big rebalance kind of grew out of control :P

Monsters:

• Frost-Giant-Warrior: Melee-Attack, Grab, Berserk
  
• Frost-Giant-Priest: Throw-Hammer, Heal, Haste
  
• Frost-Giant-Knight: Melee-Attack, Overheal-On-Hit, Blink-Ally
  
• Frost-Giant-Magi: Ice-Projectile, Ice-Shield, Ice-Wall
  
• Overheal-On-Hit: 10%HP => 20%HP but this will only trigger on adjacent allies.
  
• Wobi-the-Warlock HP: MLOW => MED
  
• Porecsa-the-High-Priestess HP: MLOW => MED
  
• The-Lich-King HP: MED => MHIGH
  
• All Cloud-Bolts: 5Range => 4Range. These are already pretty devastating. They don't also need to be really long range.
  
• The Battle-Spheres summon by Magic-Yendor have no duration (they must be destroyed).
  
• All enemy heals -1CD. I want to really make it obvious that these guys are healing and encourage the player to deal with them.
  
• Totem-of-Healing (the stationary level ones) Heal: 3CD => 1CD. I'd even consider making it 0CD and forcing the player to not fight in their range.
  
• Pirate-Powder-Monkey bomb fuse 2T => 3T (same as goblin miner)
  
• Giant Leech: DMG: MED => MHIGH, HP: MED => MHIGH, Fast-Swimmer (make it a much harder single monster).
  
• Yendor-Flame and Yendor-Storm will summon 6 => 4 Vortices but they will be XL: 10 => 12.
  
• The Repair-Module on the Clockwork-Train now has less HP. Making it easier to kill first.

Levels:
Working to reduce the size of a bunch of levels that were above the rough 450 open tiles I've established as the standard size. I'm also slowly shrinking boss arenas to fit the new standard I found in the recent round of boss creation which is that the arena should roughly all fit onto the screen when standing in the middle.

• Added Slime-Pit generator
  
• Added Frozen-Frost-Keep generator
  
• Made levels smaller: Arcane-Force-Floors, Core-Lava-Islands, Sewers-Bridges, Orc-Training-Hall, Crypt-Three-Way, Palace-Round, Clock-Train-Tracks, Ice-Static-Caves.
  
• Made boss arenas smaller: Cazel-the-Conjuror, Lich-King, Minotaur-Arena, Forge-Master, Wobi-the-Warlock, some Yendor rooms.
  
• More Necros and Death-Priests should spawn.
  
• Gave all Cloud-Vents a longer CD so that they spend more time inactive.

Mechanics:

• Glyph-Doors are simply removed from the map when they open. This allows Rogue to immediately throw a bear trap into the doorway.
  
• When an unaware enemy is damaged, the 50% chance shout that he performs will be delayed until his actual turn. This means that cleaving or AoEing into a group of sleeping or unaware enemies will crit all of them.

Mechanics:

• Reduced the volume again so that we don't all have to play at 10%
  
• Colored item names by tier. Tier-1 = White, Tier-2 = Blue, Tier-3 = Yellow
  
• Lightning-Bolt (Stun) added desc
  
• Haste is shown as a yellow H glyph.
  
• Torment is shown as a purple skull glyph.
  
• Discord is shown as a purple D glyph.
  
• You can now always see your allies even when they are invisible

Bugs and Crashes

• Fixed the dungeon entrance cave sometimes appearing on UD:2.
  
• Added Ice-Breath back to Celtius-the-Dragon.
  
• Fixed Kocha-the-Enraged ejecting when there was still a single construct alive.
  
• Fixed a crash when the Ranged-Construct would overheat as the last construct remaining.
  
• Removed the attack from the Practice-Dummys in the tutorials.
  
• Fixed: Force-Lance was crashing the game when you quit and reloaded with it equipped.
  
• Talents w/ 4 upgrades will now hide the 4th upgrade button when holding an item.
  
• Fixed: crash when Dirge-of-Destruction was playing near a Flesh-Golem and the player summoned some rats (presumably any monster summon). The rats were placed on the same tile as the magot that was spawned from Dirge damage.
  
• Better Blade-Glyph implementation that should fix a whole host of crashes associated with them.
  
• Fixed: Blink-Ally being cast at the same time that an enemy dies to a Fire-Shroom was resulting in a weird blocked tile.
  
• Fixed: a crash where an NPC would shroom blink to the same tile that a Battle-Sphere was being summoned on.
  
• Mine-Carts now count as conductive so that shock will spread along the tracks beneath them.
  
• Fixed 18 instances in code and descriptions of misspelling 'Category' as 'Catagory'.
  
• Switches will no longer be placed in such a way that they diagonally block doors or corridors.
  
• Fixed Burst-of-Spines not working.

Whew. So that got a bit out of hand. Like I said at the top, I ended up testing this update a whole bunch and made a lot of little minor balance tweaks. I think overall the game plays really nicely right now. Maybe a little bit harder depending on what drops you get early, but the really impactful equipment drops feel good to me.

I'll be continuing to adjust equipment according to this new scheme going forward. Mostly looking to make each and every piece of equipment interesting, impactful, and unique. I also still need to rework the enchantment system so that, for example, a Ring-of-Health should enchant 16HP => 32HP. A Ring-of-Speed should enchant 2SP => 4SP. This helps to make them viable targets for enchantment when compared to a Ring-of-Strength: 1STR => 2STR. I think that weapons likely also need to have +2DMG per enchant to make them good enchantment targets.

The next major update I'll be returning to adding more bosses. Hoping to finish up with getting 3 bosses into each of the branch zones and then likely rework some of the existing ones. Doing so much play testing helped me to narrow in on what I think are the most critical things to add to the game right now.

• More bosses everywhere. They are such a memorable and important part of each run. They are also pretty static compared to the rest of the dungeon so having too few can make runs feel samey.
  
• More zones in general. I still want to push along with sub-zones but I think its more important to get more completely new zones added. And yes, I now agree that getting another zone in the Orc/Palace section is really important.
  
• Completely rework Vault-of-Yendor. This is now some of the oldest content in the game and its really showing. I think the whole zone needs a top to bottom rewrite. A complete rewrite of all the monsters. Redo most of the existing levels and add a ton more. We probably need at the bare minimum 3-4 times as many levels as we currently have.

Hope you all enjoy the update! A lot of balancing took place this time and we've opened up a lot of room for future balancing so please let me know your thoughts on this update and any suggestions for items that need to be looked at!

• Fixed a crash with skeletons casting Creeping-Doom.
  
• Fixed a crash with a whole bunch of enemies using certain abilities.

Reduced the enemy HP across the board. Most cases were previously a +25-40%. It is now almost exactly +20% for all HP types.

Working my way through melee weapons trying to establish some base values from which to balance from. My goal moving forward is going to be to have a much larger range of damage values (usually negative) that are balanced out by much larger or more impactful special effects on weapons. The goal is to make each weapon really feel unique including crazy cases where you are happy to get a weapon that has half your current DMG but adds something really game changing through its effect.

• Spear: 9DMG
  
• Sword: 10DMG
  
• Axe: 10DMG
  
• Mace: 11DMG (a small buff)
  
• Tier-III: +2DMG
  
• Two-Handed: +3DMG
  
• Normal-Effect: -2DMG. -2 should be the minimum i.e. we should not have a special effect that is not strong enough to warrant a -2DMG.
  
• Strong-Effect: -4DMG (or more)

I did a very quick and dirty run through the existing melee weapons adjusting their damage to reflect the formula above. Now that everything is normalized I think we should be able to really easily spot weapons that either need a buff or nerf to their special effect. In most cases the damage of Tier-3 weapons was reduced due to their special effect so we will likely need to buff a bunch of these. I did a bunch of really quick buffs while going through. No idea how it will actually balance out.

• Inferno-Sword: 12DMG => 10DMG. Flaming-Cloud: 1/2DMG for 2T => Full-DMG for 2T.
  
• Blade-of-Energy: 12DMG => 10DMG. Restore-MP: 10-Charge => 5-Charge and 9MP => 12MP. Should this simply be changed to +1MP per melee attack?
  
• Power-Blade: 12DMG => 10DMG. Ability-Power Max 30% => 50%.
  
• Power-Maul: 14DMG. Ability-Power Max 30% => 50%.
  
• Soul-Reaper: 12DMG => 10DMG. Melee-Life-Tap: 1HP => 2HP
  
• Swift-Blade: 12DMG => 10DMG. Restore-SP: 10-Charge => 5-Charge
  
• Dancing-Blade: 12DMG => 10DMG. Summon-Blade 6XL => 9XL
  
• Blood-Stained-Axe: 8HP => 16HP. This boss drop needs a complete rework.
  
• Storm-Chopper: 12DMG => 10DMG. Spreading-Shock: 50%DMG => 100%DMG
  
• Scythe-of-Reaping: 15DMG => 13DMG. Melee-Life-Tap 2HP => 3HP
  
• Berserkers-Axe: 15DMG => 13DMG. Is the effect strong enough already to warrant the -2?
  
• Pike-of-the-Guard: 9DMG => 7DMG. Removed Parry %. 2DMG per turn max 4DMG => 8DMG
  
• Force-Lance: 9DMG => 7DMG. Is the knockback enough?
  
• Spectral-Lance: 11DMG => 12DMG
  
• Spear-of-Discord: 11DMG => 7DMG. Casts Discord on 100% of hits (testing some crazy stuff)
  
• Spear-of-Confusion: 11DMG => 7DMG. Casts Confusion on 100% of hits (testing some crazy stuff)
  
• Mace: 10DMG => 11DMG
  
• Force-Hammer: 10DMG => 9DMG. Is the knock-back good enought?
  
• War-Hammer: 13DMG => 14DMG
  
• Mace-of-Shielding: 8DMG => 9DMG
  
• Frost-Forged-Hammer: 12DMG => 11DMG. 10% Freeze => 25% Freeze
  
• All Swords Parry 10% => 20%

Poison Weapons:
Whole bunch of discussion on numbers here. I think me and Random got something pretty close. Going with my implementation of: Total Poison Damage is Hit-DMG + 20DMG dealt over 4T. The first turn doesn't deal damage and the last turn will deal any remaining damage (when not divisible by 4)

Based on my/our calculations this should lead to weapons that deal substantially more damage when switching targets with each hit. Of course they also have the benefit of allow you to hit and then move away. Trying out the following values to start with:

• Serpent-Fang-Dagger: 2DMG
  
• Slime-Covered-Harpoon: 3DMG
  
• Assassins-Blade: 4DMG

Equipment:

• Hat, Gloves, Shoes: 20%AP => 10%AP
  
• Robe: 10%AP => 15%AP
  
• Ring-of-Power: 10%AP => 15%AP
  
• Minotaur-Hide-Armor: 2SP => 1SP

Misc:

• Monster Overheal-On-Hit: 20%HP => 30%HP (since we changed to adjacent only)
  
• Fixed enchantment HP to be 8HP per enchant.

Equipment:

• Mystic-Skull-Helm (Tier-2): Added base 4MP
  
• Circlet-of-Knowledge (Tier-2): 1INT => 6MP
  
• Crown-of-Thought-Theft (Tier-3): 1INT, 1-Mana-Tap => 2-Mana-Tap
  
• Crown-of-Flowing-Thought (Tier-3): 1INT, 1-MP-Regen => 2-MP-Regen
  
• Wobi-The-Warlock now drops Crown-of-Thought-Theft instead of Crown-of-Brilliance (moved to general drops)
  
• Ring-of-Spirit-Shielding: noEnchant
  
• Serpent-Fang-Dagger: Removed rTox (instead of parry as it seems odd to be only sword without).
  
• Serpent-Fang-Dagger: Extended to 6 turns of poison
  
• Fixed the poison damage ticks to correctly deal the full poison damage over [x] turns.
  
• Display poison damage as a stat
  
• Cutlass of the depths - 10dmg. Effect not strong
  
• Frost Forged Hammer - removed rCold (25% freeze is a very strong effect)
  
• Staff-of-Shielding: Desc was wrong, its actually 3-Shield per shot (corrected the desc)
  
• Staff-of-Shielding: 7DMG = 5DMG (a very strong effect)
  
• Lockjaw hide vest: removed the rToxic (Looks crazy strong. I would instant enchant for 4 SP!)
  
• Ring-of-Slaying and Ring-of-Archery 3DMG => 2DMG (normalize with most other stats)
  
• Boots-of-the-Sands: 1SP/rFire => 1SP/1Stealth (thematic, boss drop, stealth has skill floor)
  
• Ring-of-Protection: 3Prot => 4Prot
  
• Ring-of-Fortitude: 3Prot => 4Prot
  
• Chakram cost 2GP => 5GP
  
• Remove minotaur hide armor for now (its overlapping in a number of places)
  
• Elven-Silk-Armor switching from evasion to 2Prot/2SP on chest and 1/1 on other pieces.
  
• Force-Lance and Force-Hammer: 4KB => 3KB (its a bit absurd)
  
• Robe-of-the-Lich: 1Mana-Tap, 1Life-Tap, 30%Toxic => 5Life-Tap
  
• Slime-Covered-Harpoon: removed rToxic (the poison effect is really strong by itself).

Monsters:

• Ira-Swamp-Siren and Hespia-The-High-Priestess: not unstable in water
  
• Spiney-Frogs: 3DS => 4DS
  
• Clockwork-Pyro: Flaming-Cloud-Bolt: 4CD => 3CD (I'm tempted to make this like 0-1CD, give him no other attacks and just make him the ultimate Flamer Bolter).
  
• Clockwork-Pogo-Gunner: Fire-Rocket: 2CD => 1CD
  
• Skeleton-Archer: Arcane-Arrow: 2CD => 1CD
  
• Death-Watch-Archer: Poison-Arrow: 2CD => 1CD

User Interface:
Moved monster level in mouse over description to be in the same line as the name. This helps clear up a line of the description while also tying the level together with the colored name (the color is based on the level).

Meta Balance:
Reduced gold drops by approximately 25% as there seems to be a lot more gold in the latest version. Not actually sure where these values 'should' be, but I don't want to mess around with too many variables at the same time so trying to keep this consistent.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Single lava tile in Core crash
  
• Fixed Frozen-Frost-Keep not having a switch to open the gate.
  
• Fixed Frozen-Frost-Keep crashing on generation
  
• Fixed a level-gen crash in Sunless-Desert
  
• All greater staves will no longer inherit the upgrades from the associated talent.

Last Hot-Fix for this update, assuming of course that something doesn't go horribly wrong with this one. Mostly just a big pile of bug fixes. Special thanks to Rethlit for sending me a bunch of these! More special thanks to Random595 who has created several new Danger-School courses as well as a tricky puzzle that I have yet to figure out.

I'll be moving on to update 1.26 after this which will be focused on reworking the entire Vault-of-Yendor. Won't be tackling the boss fight, but I'm intending to pretty much remake the entire set of levels leading up to it. This will be another one of those rolling updates where I'll be using the Danger-School to test out new layouts, mechanics, ideas etc. A Focused-Feedback thread will be going up on Discord to gather feedback and suggestions.

Balance:

• Staff-of-Shielding: 5DMG => 4DMG. We might need to continue pushing this further. This is a great case study on my theory of pushing stats into 'extreme' territory in order to create really distinct and gameplay changing equipment.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Ring-of-Gravity can now be enchanted. (Rethlit)
  
• Arcane weapons will not consume MP when using talents. (Rethlit)
  
• Necrotic-Staff now deals adjacent crits (Range-Mastery and Power-Shot)
  
• Fire and Storm staff will have the Fire/Shock appear on the correct tile of Goblet-Shield. Previously it always appeared in the center.
  
• Projectile adjacent crits against Goblet-Shield (Range-Mastery and Power-Shot) (Rethlit)
  
• The Goblet-Shield will no longer bleed.
  
• Penguins will no longer be able to slide if they are immobile (constrict, bear trap etc.) (Rethlit)
  
• Elemental Sneak attack will now work on sleeping enemies (sleep bomb) (Rethlit)
  
• Monkey stealing weapon will now correctly remove the associated ability (Rethlit)
  
• Sharks will no longer be summoned on Ice (Rethlit)
  
• Constricted is now removed immediately when knocking an enemy back so his friends don't crit you (Rethlit)
  
• Boots-of-Grounding, Shield-of-the-Guard, Pike-of-the-Guard all now remove their status effects when the player is knocked back.
  
• Fixed Poison-Cloud having an annoying extra second of pause delay after it spread.
  
• Colored the exit portals on the mini-map.
  
• Summons and dominated monsters will now follow the player out of the exit portals.
  
• Oil from Flamer-Bot will no longer spread over pits.
  
• Celtius: reverting to the version where his body moves first so that his head can attack you if you are strafing around him or kiting in melee range. This makes it significantly more important to keep your distance from him which I think is a key part of the fight theme. Reduced his bite damage: 26DMG => 21DMG.
  
• Fixed: the player could sprint for unlimited distance when standing on a Speed-Path
  
• Ranked-Modifier (Super-Speed): fast enemies will correctly be unable to multi-move in liquid
  
• Fixed a Sewers vault where the chest would be inaccessible to Ogres.
  
• Fixed: charging through an ally that was delayed-lunging causes a weird lock up as you swap places. The player will no longer be able to charge through allies (this is odd to me).
  
• Fixed: another scuttle crash.
  
• Fixed: Dash-Attack killing a Big-Golem causes the player and the ejected Kocha to occupy the same tile resulting in a crash.
  
• Boots-of-Grounding, Pike-of-Guard, Staff-of-Shielding, Mace-of-Shielding will all have their effects removed if you unequip the item.

Hello everyone!

Figured I'd make this a proper update integrating all 5 new bosses into the main game. A big thank you to everyone who helped design, test and balance these bad boys! I'll definitely be following this 'open source', and test driven approach for all future bosses. I had not planned on using the new Danger School game mode for this sort of thing but its worked wonders and I think the quality of these bosses will reflect the extra testing, feedback and iteration.

I had actually planned on pushing through and getting a new boss for each of the 6 branch zones completed for this update but I'm kind of running out of steam here and I can feel myself teetering over the burnout cliff. An entirely new zone, a brand new game mode and 5 new bosses, most with complex mechanics, has been a pretty challenging load to cram into just two months of work.

So I'm releasing this update as is and I'll be taking a few weeks to do some easier work. I've got some artwork to do for this update, a few of the bosses and their items still need proper sprites. There's also probably some extra balancing or polishing I could do on the fights. Besides that I'll be doing some easy level design work and adding a few new generators to some of the dungeons. This will also be a good time to catch up on some of the bugs-and-crashes that are being reported.

Hope you all enjoy the new bosses, looking forward to your feedback!

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A fight against a big chunky obsidian golem that should primarily challenge the players movement and positioning.

• Statue Animation: he animates inert statues into obsidian golems when he is within 1 tile of them. They will revert to statues if they are more than 2 tiles away from him.
  
• Stomp: when the player is roughly orthogonal to him he will stomp the ground and create a line of lava towards the player (orthogonal only).
  
• Lava Regen: like all obsidian golems he heals quickly when in lava.
  
• Berserk: <50%HP, 10CD, 5DUR
  
• Drops Brass Shackles: these fit in the 'Charm' slot and add a 25% chance to grab enemies for 5T when the player is melee attacking. The enemy is then unstable and immobile until the player moves away.

A total rework of this boss using newly implemented AI behavior that allows for bosses (or any NPCs) to have 'states'. This is a pretty classic boss fight mechanic that will allow us to have bosses that cycle through different states each with their own abilities and behaviors.

• Summoning State: summons Flame-Vortex
  
• Flame State: rapidly summons flaming clouds between him and the player.
  
• Orb State: a single turn in which he summons a long range Fire-Orb on one of several special platforms.
  
• He has a chance to Escape-Blink on every state change to stop the player from easily boxing him in.

A fight mostly designed by Rethlit. The main idea is that the player must split his attention between the quickly regenerating boss and the hoard of water logged zombies that he is raising. Fail to focus on the boss and you won't be able to burn him down. Fail to focus on the zombies and you will get surrounded and beaten down.

• A simple Acid-Attack. I'm still debating how dangerous the boss himself should be.
  
• Raise Dead: raises 1 zombie from the water as close to the player as possible. Will raise 2 zombies when he is low on health. I believe the CD and duration is balanced so that he caps out at 6-8 zombies or so.
  
• Fast HP Regen.
  
• Drops Rotting Shroud: 16HP and 3HP-Regen (the first item/talent with HP-Regen!)

A random side suggestion by Kocha herself during some other boss discussion has led to what should have been the most complex boss of the bunch. The idea is that the 'boss' is actually a disembodied spirit that can inhabit one of three powerful constructs. She will switch between them every 6-10T at random. Beating down the individual constructs is difficult and resource intensive but each of the 3 has a unique way to 'eject' Kocha, leaving her vulnerable for a single turn in which you can deal damage.

• Melee Construct: Fast moving with a powerful melee attack and grab ability. He will also lunge towards the player to close distance. Forcing him to lunge into a wall will cause Kocha to eject.
  
• Range Construct: A powerful, very long range projectile attack. Once active the construct will 'charge energy' each turn from 0 to 8 at which point it will overload and eject Kocha. If it is able to make an attack it will reset this charge to 0. This charge level will be shown visually once I get a proper sprite made. Some kind of rising energy up a crystal or something.
  
• Summoning Construct: When activated it will immediately summon 8 spectral blades. Kocha is ejected if the player is able to kill all 8 blades.
  
• If the player kills all 3 constructs without killing Kocha then she will spawn in an Enraged form and repeatedly fire projectiles until finally killed.
  
• Drops Construct Power Core: Player gains 10% Magic-Power each turn (max 30%). Casting a spell resets it to 0%.
  
• I'll be doing some proper sprite work to make each of the constructs look unique in the next few weeks.

This is the guy who takes the crown of being the most complex and hardest to implement. This is easily the most work I've had to put into a single enemy. The 'Dragon' is composed of 5 pieces and is our first example of a multi-tile enemy. I've still got to clean up and generalize the code a bit but it should now be reasonably easy to make more bosses like this. Despite all the code complexity, the fight itself is relatively straight forward with the main idea being to NOT stand toe to toe with the dragon but rather kite him around and whittle him down.

• The whole dragon has a proper facing direction and he can only generally move when he is facing the right way.
  
• Head: a very strong bite attack and Ice-Breath which creates a large area of Freezing-Clouds.
  
• Body: Lunges forward to help the dragon close distance. Will also trample the player if he is in front of any of the body parts.
  
• Wings: these will flap and throw out Frost-Vortex that will kind of drunkenly mill about wherever they land. These should act more like a disruption to player movement rather than an actual threat.
  
• Tail: will tail slap the player with a big knockback.
  
• Drops Shield of Celtius: Protection, Cold Resistance and an innate 6 points of Shield-of-Ice that stacks with the talent form.
  
• This guy definitely needs some proper sprite work for the next update. The current version was thrown together in about 10 mins but after hours and hours of struggling with his implementation code I need a break right now from looking at him :P

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Testing this out so would appreciate some feedback. During repeated boss testing it became clear that casters often experience two possible fights:

A) They are able to quickly burn through their large mana pools with rapid casting and just brute force the boss down. They can often ignore a lot of the unique mechanics through sheer damage output.

B) Failing this they are left 'out of gas' and kiting around for a long time waiting for mana regen or looking for an energy shroom.

This ability to quickly burn mana and then suffer the consequences is absolutely a feature of casters but in my opinion it is currently over tuned. I'd like to see them with less upfront output but a greater ability to sustain throughout a fight. Overall I think casters are still a little weaker than CD based classes so I'd like for this change to either maintain their overall power level or even increase it slightly.

I would also like to still have the option for builds with high mana points but this should be something the player actually has to work towards and sacrifice something else for. The player should not just accidently end up with more mana than he knows what to do with.

• MP Regen 2MP/5T => 3MP/5T
  
• Int MP: 3MP/INT => 2MP/INT
  
• All MP items + Mental Clarity have been adjusted accordingly (3MP => 2MP).
  
• Exceptions: Robe-of-Flowing-Mana, Ring-of-Wizardry, and Mental-Clarity (Upgrade) are nearly as high as they were before (essentially a relative buff).
  
• Mental Clarity (Regen) +2Regen => +1Regen. Based on testing 5MP/5T was pretty insane. This is still possible to attain with items.
  
• +1 Starting MP so that the early game balance is unchanged (still start with 8MP). Early game casters are effectively buffed.

Minor changes made while testing.

• Burst-of-Wind: 8DMG => 6DMG
  
• Wall-of-Fire: 7Range => 6Range
  
• Wall-of-Fire (Quick) 0CD => 5CD

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So a big chunk of new content which I'm excited to finally see in game. As mentioned above I'll be taking it a bit easier for the next few weeks. Get some easy content added, fix some bugs, do a little polish and house keeping. After that I'd like to get another round of bosses added and then I'm either planning on tackling another new zone or else starting a top to bottom rework of Vault-of-Yendor. Haven't decided yet :P

Thank you everyone for all your feedback and support! This update in particular really felt like a collaborative effort and it was loads of fun to brainstorm and debate with you guys. Hope you all enjoy the new content!