Shattered Pixel Dungeon v4.0.0!

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com)

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon v4.0.0 has been released! You can get it right now on Steam, or on any of the other platforms Shattered is distributed on.

Along with this update, Shattered is 45% off on Steam for the next few days! The launch discount is a bit short this time, as another sale for Roguelike Celebration is coming next month.

You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

What's new in v4.0.0

v4.0.0 is arguably Shattered's biggest update yet! There's a massive new quest, a bunch of new in-game art, 6 new enchantments, and plenty smaller changes and adjustments.

I talked about this update in four previous blog posts:

• Coming Soon to Shattered: The Vault Quest!
• Status Update: v4.0 Beta Soon!
• Coming Soon to Shattered: New Enchants and Pixel Art!
• Coming Soon to Shattered: A New City Quest!

Here's the full changelog for v4.0.0! Click or tap on each entry to read more. Note that this changelog will become slightly outdated as patches are released and dev commentary is added, so check the changes screen in-game for the most up to date version.

(The sections below contain expandable text boxes, you may need to view the post directly in order to see them properly.)

New Content:

• Dev Commentary
  - Released September 9th, 2026
  - 281 days after v3.3.0 (175 days after v3.3.8)Dev commentary will be added here in the future.
• New City Quest!
  The Ambitious Imp's quest has been totally redone, into easily the largest quest yet!The Imp now tasks you with raiding an ancient dwarven vault, filled with hazards and loot! Be careful though, as you won't be able to take your gear with you! The quest includes:
  - A massive new sub-region roughly the size of three dungeon floors, featuring over 20 new room types!
  - Three new static hazards that are integrated into ~10 of the new rooms!
  - New variants of enemies ranging from the prisons to the city!
  - An entire second progression experience, with easy low tier loot and well-defended high tier loot!
  - A new boss that's specially designed to test the skills of vault plunderers!Of course, adventurers need a suitable reward ;). If you're successful in the vault, the Imp will let you take a single item out with you! Many items in the vault are at a similar power level to his classic reward of a highly upgraded ring, but you'll get a much bigger variety of choice. He'll also continue to set up shop later as usual.
• New Environment Visuals
  After almost two years since I initially teased it, the first wave of visual improvements to Shattered's in-game pixel art are finally here!Lots of dungeon environments have been improved or given new details by Aleksandar Komitov! This time around there's one important universal change and then a focus on the city region and quest rooms:
  - There is now shadowing where walls meet floor.
  - The City now has a new kind of special floor tile.
  - Carpets are now a custom visual that can be applied on top of regular tiles anywhere! They are currently only used in the dwarven city.
  - Enhanced visuals at the city entrance and exit.
  - Overhauled visuals for the caves quest & blacksmith.
  - Overhauled Mass Grave and Ritual rooms from the prison quest.
  - Improvements to sewer barrels, barricades, and city flaming pedestals.I expect to continue releasing waves of new art and tweaks each major update for the forseeable future, please let me know what you think!
• New Consumable Item Sprites!
  After almost two years since I initially teased it, the first wave of visual improvements to Shattered's in-game pixel art are finally here!Most of Shattered's consumable items have been given overhauled sprites by PumpkinVolt! This time around we focused on consumable items, and some items directly related to those consumables. The following sprites have been redone:
  - Seeds, darts, potions, & elixirs/brews
  - Runestones, scrolls, & spell items
  - Dewdrops & petrified seed (related to seeds)
  - Liquid metal & blood vial (related to potions)
  - Energy crystals & exotic crystals (related to spells)
  - Dwarf Tokens & other new quest itemsI expect to continue releasing waves of new art and tweaks each major update for the forseeable future, please let me know what you think!
• New Enchantments!
  Four new enchantments and two new curses have been added for weapons! Long-time players will recognize several of these as reworked enchantments that were previously removed years ago.- Venomous is a returning common enchant that can apply stacking poison on a delay.
  - Vorpal is a returning uncommon enchant that can convert damage into non-stacking bleed.
  - Eldritch is a returning uncommon enchant that can apply fear to all nearby enemies except your primary target.
  - Crystal is a new rare enchant that boosts damage, but requires you to work around limited durability.
  - Pressurized is a new curse that can create a geyser of water, pushing both you and enemies away.
  - Wondrous is a new curse that can trigger random cursed wand effects.
• Swarm Intelligence Overhaul
  The swarm intelligence challenge is getting adjustments to improve counterplay and consistency.Prior to v4.0 swarm triggered with a static 8 tiles of range only when an enemy initially noticed you. Experienced players found a bunch of ways to avoid triggering the effect entirely though.The challenge is being adjusted to now trigger constantly whenever an enemy sees you, but with a range of only 2 tiles that increases up to 12 over time. Breaking sight in any way, even for a moment, resets this range. This way tricksy gameplay is still rewarded, but in a way that's more visible and easy to access.A visual buff has also been added that shows you the current alert range.
• New Enemy AI
  As part of the new vault quest, I've added a separate style of enemy behaviour that's meant to work with stealth gameplay! Enemies using this AI mode have these differences:
  - Nearby enemy movement can be seen through walls.
  - Sleeping enemies have reduced detection range.
  - Wandering enemies patrol pre-set routes and have a sharply reduced detection range behind themselves if they are moving.
  - Investigating is a new AI state that exists between wandering/sleeping and attacking. Investigating enemies will move toward you, but don't attack until they detect you again. Investigating enemies can lose sight of the player easily, so ducking behind doors or corners is very effective.
  - If an enemy is attacked, they skip investigating and immediately start retaliating, just like normal.Currently this new AI mode is only used in the new vault quest, all other enemies in the dungeon should be unchanged.

Changes:

• Existing Enchant Changes
  With new enchantments being added, I've also taken the oppourtunity to improve on some quirks relating to existing enchants:- Kinetic conserved damage is no longer lost (but still isn't increased) if the hit from kinetic is cancelled due to the enemy first dieing to another on-hit effect (e.g. smite)
  - Corrupting can now apply if ANY part of the corrupting hit kills (e.g. smite), not just the hit from the corrupting weapon itself.
  - Grim now triggers more consistently if extra damage (e.g. smite, holy weapon) applies before the hit from the grim weapon itself.
• Change Screen Adjustments
  With another major release coming to Shattered, I've decided to look back and make a few adjustments to spruce up the changes screen.
  - Changes screen is now split into post-release (v1.0+) and pre-release (v0.9.3-), this gives enough space for tabs for each major version (with v0.5 and older still grouped together)
  - Change screen icons now use historical visuals that are accurate to the update being covered. I felt this change was especially important now that we're starting a big in-game art expansion.
  - Added change history for the original Pixel Dungeon at the end of the list. This includes original comments made by Watabou for each update!
• 10+ Misc. Changes
  Highlights:
  - Health bars now visually darken to show the total amount of incoming damage over time
  - Targeted cell VFX for incoming enemy attacks now persist until the attack occurs
  - Added better support for 3rd party Android appstores that handle updates themselves
  - Various internal code improvements to music playback, should reduce stuttering/glitching
  - Defeating the caves quest boss now shows a 'boss beaten' slain
  - Made UI/UX improvements to stone of augmentation
  - Lowered the ( and ) symbols in pixel font for better consistency with regular fonts. Makes for better text emotes too ;)Other:
  - Updated credits based on new artist contributions
  - Alchemy and well water VFX are now visible in the fog of war
  - Items are now pushed out of doors that become locked by bosses
  - Dropped support for savegames prior to v3.1.1
  - Performance improvements to blue 'checked cell' visuals, red targeted cell indicators, and skeleton key spectral walls.
  - Updated various code dependencies
• 40+ Bugfixes
  Fixed the following bugs:
  Highlights:
  - Cases where necromancer skeleton visuals could become desynced from their actual location
  - Specific cases where generating extra artifacts (e.g. via wealth farming) could affect ring generation in later depths.
  - Blood vial causing healing effects to stack when they shouldn't
  - Mossy clump changing level shape for runs on the same seedEffects:
  - Damage from Radiance's illuminate proc not counting as magical
  - Battlemage's wand of lightning effect lasting for less time than intended
  - Champion's second weapon not being counted as equipped by some effects
  - Partial damage buildup from Corruption being lost on save/load
  - Telefrag ability not interacting properly with some on-kill effects
  - Spectral walls from skeleton key using the wrong vfx on boss floors
  - Duelist's feint ability awakening sleeping enemies nearby
  - Combo parry into riposte move setting combo time to 5 when it was previously higher
  - Empowered clobber triggering at 6 combo instead of 7Items:
  - Helpful darts triggering on-hit fx on allies since v3.3.5
  - Weapon state becoming bugged if the rapier's lunge attack failed to find a target
  - VFX from flow and swiftness glyph being visible in the fog of war
  - Specific cases where enchantment changes could be reverted on thrown weapons
  - Wild magic zapping with more wands than intended in some cases
  - Value of elixir of honeyed healing not scaling properly with quantity
  - Skeleton key not pushing enemies behind doors it locked in some cases
  - Lost backpack item being usable to manipulate item stacks in shops
  - Potions counting as being used when they splash harmlessly
  - Fireblast applying paralysis to downed ghoulsEnemies:
  - Enemies converted to allies not granting xp or items in specific cases
  - Specific cases where electricity VFX would not appear in the DM-300 fight
  - Specific cases where crystal guardians could get infinite haste
  - Necromancers being a bit too eager to teleport their skeletons in some cases
  - Various cases where chasms could cause enemy deaths to trigger twice
  - Assassination and combined lethality not working on armored brutes
  - Death by shocking elemental damage not counting as death by enemy magic
  - Enemies with corrupting weapons turning other enemies into alliesMisc.:
  - Exploit allowing players to be at a floor entrance when ascending to it, instead of exit
  - Specific cases where the player could jump into chasm on floor 26
  - Large bosses appearing outside the bounds of desktop boss HP bar
  - Windows made by right clicking or middle clicking not centering on inventory pane when they should
  - Incorrect text relating to potions of healing or waterskin in hero epitaphs
  - Unequipped ring of force being usable via quickslot by Duelist
  - Various rare and minor bugs in level generation
  - Various minor visual and textual errors
  - Various rare crash bugs

Buffs:

• Item Buffs
  While v4.0 is mainly focused on new content, there are a few balance changes I'm making as well. Several items are getting some boosts:- Force Cube base damage up to 10-30 from 10-25- Footwear of Nature charge speed scaling with level increased, up to +50% at +10
  - Dried Rose ghost HP up to 40+10lvl, from 20+8lvl, and ghost damage now scales with strength, just like the hero
  - Master Thieves' Armband charge speed now scales with level, up to +50% at +10- Exotic Crystals conversion chance up to 20% per level, from 12.5%
  - Chaotic Censer is now much more likely to spew gasses that actually harm the enemy
• Talent/Ability Buffs
  A couple of abilities/talents are also getting buffs:- Combo Strike Duelist ability now grants 15 turns of duration on-kill, just like Gladiator's combo
  - Feint armor ability base cost decreased to 35 from 50 (cost swapped with challenge)

Nerfs:

• Item Nerfs
  A few items were also showing as quite strong and are getting scaled back a bit.Most notably, I'm returning runestones of aggression back to their pre-v1.0 behaviour vs. bosses. In retrospect, while I do want them to be usable to redirect aggression during boss fights, letting them apply directly to bosses was a mistake. You can still use aggro stones on boss minions to take aggression off yourself during boss fights, and everthing ganging up on one minion is a more suitable scaled-back version of the scroll of rage effect.- Stone of Aggression can no longer be directly applied to bosses
  - Ring of Haste speed boost per level down to +15%, from +17.5%
  - Spyglass downside made more signiciant, bonus item opacity down to 10% from 15%
• Talent/Ability Nerfs
  A few targeted nerfs/adjustments to hero abilities or talents. Some of these are general and some are aimed at preventing cheese in the early stages of the new quest:These changes are general (although barkskin was also far too strong in the vault):
  - Barkskin talent no longer triggers from furrowed grass, but does now trigger from plants
  - Barkskin talent amount per level reduced to 33% of hero level, from 50%
  - Challenge armor ability base cost increased to 50 from 35 (cost swapped with feint)These adjustments are aimed at the new vault area specifically:
  - Hold Fast talent now requires the Warrior's seal, or has a cap based on worn armor if used by other heroes
  - Monk no longer retains energy over revives or entry into the vault

What's Coming Next?

• Overview and ETA
  The next major update to Shattered will be v4.1.0! I expect this will be a quite small update, focusing mainly on being a followup to v4.0.0.To be honest I'm pretty whiped after v4.0 ended up taking almost 9 dang months to release after v3.3 (6 if you want to start from the last v3.3 patch), so I'm going to be taking things a bit easy for a while and don't have a specific ETA to provide.However, I would like to do another update in 2026, so you'll probably hear from me in another blog post with more details in the coming months.
• New Items
  In terms of new gameplay content, I expect v4.1 will focus mainly on some new additions to various item categories! I've been developing a few promising ideas on the side, and I think it's time to start implementing some of them.I've been inclined to do this since the success of the Skeleton Key, and realizing it was the first artifact I added in about 10 years!
• More New Visuals
  Now that the in-game art overhaul project has started that will also be a focus moving forward. I can't give any garuntees, especially as the work is dependant on artists who have other projects too, but v4.1 will definitely include various new artwork. In particular I'd like to focus on general environment art, treasure rooms, and various equipment item sprites.
• Misc. Changes
  And of course, I expect v4.1 will include lots of little fixes an adjustments. All of the new content in v4.0 will likely get some adjustments in patches, but there will be larger changes to it that will need to be done in v4.1 instead.

If you'd like more frequent incremental updates, you can:
- Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter
- Follow me on Mastodon
- Follow me on Bluesky