v1.7 Update - Yetis and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Update highlights

This update is one of the largest to ever hit GKH. It includes:

• Graphical improvements: individual potion icons, wall shadows, rounded corners on water/lava, several new sprites, hovering animations for flying monsters, and more
• A complete disguise rework that gives each disguise a Special property
• 3 new disguises: Bombardier, Ice Mage, and Commander
• New branches: MENAGERIE and ICE HOUSE
• A new Weekly challenge mode
• Speedrun and seed support
• AI pathfinding improvements - Charm is much more usable
• More sounds, bug fixes, and secrets...

Competition

To commemorate the introduction of the new Weekly challenge mode, I'm also a running a competition. Here are the rules:

1. The competition runs one week: Monday, August 31st - Sunday, September 6th.
2. Play the new Weekly mode and upload your morgue file
3. The top score for Week 1 wins - track the leaderboard here.
4. The prize? Get your own tombstone in the Graveyard with your chosen name and an "epitaph" (a short phrase chosen by you). Alternatively, choose the epitaph for my tombstone.
5. This comp is a one shot event. If you find a way to submit a second score, it won't count.

Full changelog

Compare the previous version to v1.7:

Graphical Improvements

• Rounded corners on water/lava and a much nicer water animation
• Flying/levitating monsters are now animated!
• There is now a shadow near the bottom of walls making them appear less "floaty"
• Individual icons for each potion bundle, which makes your collection easier to understand at a glance
• Redrew the awful looking stone walls
• New floor tile in the mix
• You can now see 2 tiles deep through cave walls, making them look chunkier and eliminating ugly gaps.
• You may have noticed some odd behavior with obstacles like tables, particularly that if they were forcibly moved they didn't seem to cleanly animate. It wasn't your imagination and it's been fixed.
• Pits have gotten a makeover. Dust particles float out of pits to make them more distinct from dark areas. The edge of pits matches the surrounding tiles better now.
• Improvements to the visual effects of CHARM, GLACIATE, and QUAKE
• Effects for some monster spells that summon monsters
• Added a nice fade in effect to pages in the book menu.
• Fixed some weirdness that occurs the split second after taking a portal.
• Clearing outdated sunlight/moonlight from previously seen tiles which tended to look rather jarring and confusing as well.

Disguise Rework

• The disguise menu has been refactored from scratch. No more sensory overload with all the gory details of 15+ options staring at you.
• Almost every disguise has been tweaked
• Each disguise except the Officer now has a unique Special, something that no other disguise can get.
• New disguise: Bombardier. Starts with the BOMB spell and is particularly proficient at using it.
• New disguise: Ice Mage. Can only learn ice spells. Ice resistance and fire vulnerability. Starts with ENCASE.
• New disguise: Commander. Addresses a very common complaint: why do your fellow humans and vampires never pitch in to help you?

Changes to existing disguises

• Officer gets improved leggings in addition to the other improved gear
• Vagabond has reduced metabolism
• Scholar will find improved grimoires
• Assassin now gets Invisibility Potion instead of Blood and a bonus to dexterity when Hidden/Invisible.
• Cultist has reduced cooldowns on demon blood abilities.
• Shapeshifter no longer starts as a werewolf (it seemed to be a major letdown when people realized it was only temporary), but can easily become one on Floor 1. The timing of Lycanthropy triggered by moonlight has been extended.
• Sharpshooter's bullets pierce through enemies, potentially hitting multiple targets in a line.
• Alchemist knows the identity of all potions. Primers, which usually identify potions, instead reroll a chosen potion to something else. Also Flux has been swapped for Lizard Leg.
• Merchant will heal when picking up gold piles.
• Apothecary's horrible stats have been made slightly better.
• Berserker has a 25% chance to knockback enemies when landing hits.

New Spells

• ENCASE. Creates a wall of ice blocks around you. The ice can be pushed around.
• BOMB. Creates deadly explosions that can destroy walls, but a potion is required to fuel each cast.

New Branches

• The MENAGERIE/ICEHOUSE branches have a 50% chance of showing up in each run in place of MAZE/HIVE. The maze seemed to be one of the most boring areas in the game, so hopefully having both possibilities offers more variety.
• MENAGERIE: a collection of all new exotic enemies. Some enemies are confined to cages; others will find their way out regardless.
• ICEHOUSE: a dangerous ice themed branch, which still fills the role of a food cache.

Weekly Challenges

• A new mode: Weekly. One chance per week to beat the game. Everyone gets the same map and same disguise.
• Half the time, a random disguise is selected.
• The other half, you get a new disguise which is unique to the weekly challenge: Challenger, which rolls random attributes, spells, and potions every time.
• You are prevented from descending beyond Underworld 2 during the weekly challenge. Competing on score will be more about getting as many of the 9 rings as you can in as few turns as possible rather than an endless slog through Underworld.

Website updates

• New weekly challenge leaderboards
• Added more filtering options to the leaderboards

Seeds

• The seed of each run is recorded on morgue files
• You can choose a seed on the disguise menu (make sure to pick the same disguise for this to be effective)

Speedrun support

• Run time is recorded and preserved across saves
• An optional run timer can be displayed on screen
• Time added to morgue files
• Best time for each class/difficulty added to disguise menu

More Sounds

• Sounds for opening chests
• Sounds for picking up potions, bullets, books, armor, guns, swords, etc.

New Monsters

• A new mid level vampire type "Knight" that is strongly resistant to damage types other than sunlight. I'm hoping this adds more incentive to interact with the sunlight mechanics.
• Lava Croc. Imagine a crocodile pulling you into water. Now imagine a crocodile pulling you into lava.
• A bunch of unique monsters added to the MENAGERIE/ICEHOUSE: Monkey, Tiger, Poison Toad, Shark, Elephant, Yeti, Polar Bear

Balance

• The Queen Bee and Varcolac have each had their XP halved. Varcolac was actually giving out more XP than later, harder bosses. Queen Bee was propelling people to late game power way too easily.
• Sand Vipers removed from the Greenhouse. These were both way deadlier than new players expected and too exploitable for experienced players.
• Greenmen are now healed by water

Miscellaneous

• Charm changes: Better ally pathfinding, Cap on succesful charms per spell level, Higher failure chance, Pet wolf is slightly stronger
• HEAL now heals allies too when you're full health
• Increased QUAKE damage by 50%
• 5 new achievements: new disguises, weekly, and under 20 minutes
• Monsters will now prioritize non-pits when following up stairs. They can still fall down the pits by accident, but only if the area is too crowded.
• Improved swapping behavior. Neutrals move out of the way of enemies and allies. Allies that are the same kind as an enemy will move out of their way too.
• Preventing death from poison and a few other things while resting. You will still die, but the game won't allow you to do it in one button press.
• New option for changing the number of on screen log messages
• A few spells can no longer be cast if doing so would be pointless (e.g. no potions for BOMB)
• True damage numbers now shown in log instead of maxing out at remaining HP
• Removed screenshake when attacks are happening off screen
• The character sheet can now be open AND closed with the same button: C
• Goblin Anarchists behave similarly to the BOMB spell including destroying walls.
• New soaking "Wet" status. Increases resistance to fire, removes the Burning status, and slightly damages vampires after exiting water.
• Levitation now lets you move while in Statue Form.
• Most ice monsters no longer slide on ice. This prevents the Ice Father from killing himself repeatedly, which was pretty confusing.
• The chance to sometimes avoid sliding on ice has been doubled from 5% to 10%.
• Status effect reporting is a little cleaner without the unnecessary duration when removed.
• Slightly improved the look of buttons in the Morgue.
• Reworked the tutorial section on sunlight. Players were given 99 bullets to play with, but only a single bullet is required. Many players literally thought the game required you to shoot the enemies dozens of times. This area may now be more deadly for people not paying attention, but hopefully the point is driven home.
• The tutorial can now be skipped at any time from Options.
• Added an "unlock everything" option to Options.
• The message displayed when attempting to climb the final staircase without the required rings has been made more clear. I watched too many people guess at what to do.
• Reduced the game executable size by 500MB

Secrets

• Some easter eggs for my Patrons.
• ??
• ?????

Bug fixes

• Fixed a rare bug that could happen if an enemy was trying to slide into a tile while it was getting replaced with something else (e.g. TEMPEST).
• Keyboard revolver aiming has been fixed to have parity with the mouse
• Fixed some huge bugs with pits
• In general, a whole class of movement related issues should now be prevented
• Fixed a bug on morgue files where vampire turns + human turns did not quite equal total turns.
• Tons of typo fixes.

Huge thanks to Athros, Acro, Tone, and Tom Loughlin for their help in testing this update!

If you find any issues, please reach out! Instructions for doing so are in the forums.

Enjoy!