v1.9 - Goblins Attack! - now live

Thanks to all who joined the v1.9 beta. It's now fully live.

v1.9 introduces an explosive new branch plus many new spells and abilities. A huge number of small tweaks and improvements have been included.

v1.9 summary:

• New branch GREAT HALL: tons of goblins and explosions
• Three new spells: VORTEX, FETTER, and QUILLS
• Six new abilities: AURA, SHRED, WRING, GUZZLE, ASSASSINATE, and FRENZY
• Abilities now take 0 turns and can be chosen out of 3 options
• Changes to Officer, Apothecary, Assassin, Commander, and Challenger disguises
• UMBRA has been properly nerfed
• Improvements to BLINK, TEMPEST, WARD, LEVITATE, and BLAST
• Options menu reworked. Custom input delay option added to fix numerous control issues.
• Tons of bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and UI improvements
• Noise system revisited and now shown on UI
• Secrets?!?

Full changelog:

New Content

• New branch GREAT HALL: tons of goblins and explosions
• New monster Goblin Hurler: throws bomb
• New monster Balaur Hatchling: an early game version of the Balaur but this one is completely blind.
• New spell VORTEX: pulls monsters in and around you and damages flying/floating monsters
• New spell FETTER: binds a monster in magical chains that cause levitation and prevent movement
• New spell QUILLS: gives you a magical shield based on your missing health that reflects melee attack damage
• Vampire abilities now take 0 turns and can be chosen out of 3 options just like spells
• New ability AURA: a rapidly shrinking aura of immunity that can be used to shield yourself or allies
• New ability SHRED: damages monsters near you and adds Bleeding
• New ability WRING: causes non-bleeders to become bleeders
• New ability GUZZLE: collects all nearby blood
• New ability ASSASSINATE: teleport next to the closest enemy and give them stunned and vulnerable statuses for 1 turn
• New ability FRENZY: sets your HP to 1 and gives you a quills shield equal to your missing health
• New Legendary Grimoire that gives more spell options or more mana
• New MALLEABLE MODE. All spells, abilities, stat upgrades, etc. are chosen for you.
• Added 4 new entrances to the hotel
• New item Hunter's Lens: improves your critical hit chances

Graphics changes

• The explosion animation has been redrawn to look a lot better
• Chests now explode their items onto the surrounding tiles instead of just being a menu
• One turn illumination from spells now draws instantly
• Bats added to the title screen
• Added fadeouts to a few spell animations like FIRESTORM
• Primers have been colored blue to more clearly distinguish them from grimoires
• Now drawing blood behind torches... it looked really weird before
• New chair obstacle with 4 direction sprites
• Camera zooms in when talking to friendlies

Gameplay & UI

• Noise is now displayed on the main UI. Many actions that were missing noise now have them and the system has been rebalanced.
• Commander now starts with AURA, Assassin with FADE, and Alchemist with WRING
• Apothecary given another extra poison resist level
• Officer now gets a full HP/MP heal on level up
• Challenger now starts with an ability when starting as vampire
• Significantly buffed weekly challenge archenemies (they were real pushovers before)
• Raised the chance for Challenger to start as vampire to 50:50
• UMBRA has been nerfed. It should still be a great spell but not so good it trivializes the game.
• UMBRA minions are sped up but weaker, so you don't have to wait on them so much.
• No more UMBRA healing on Revenant
• Hotel stairs can now collapse. Collapsed stairs require an extra turn to climb.
• Allied vampires no longer steal your blood unless they need it and you don't
• Stun and frozen moment now reduce evasion to 0
• Fixed a bug with Vulnerable inadvertently reducing Defense. With this change, Vulnerable should cause slightly less extra damage.
• Critical chance is shown on the character sheet
• Werewolves have been reworked: They now have a huge crit chance and heal/satiate on crit
• SWAP has been folded into BLINK (if a monster is in that direction, you swap)
• TEMPEST is now a lot more consistent
• BLINK has been made more accurate with further guaranteed distance
• WARD cost reduced
• BLAST can now destroy walls starting at level 2
• QUAKE damage now requires line of sight
• LEVITATE speed up increased by 1
• Big sludge XP cut in half (because you also get XP for the spawned sludges)
• Ice House monsters are now immune to cold so they won't die in the icy water
• Spiridus has been made flying
• Demon Blood potions are again guaranteed in every run
• Bleeding now does 1 damage in Easy, 3 in Despair
• Monsters will now stay in the same relative position when climbing stairs with you if possible
• Reduced Magma Golem chance per turn to create magma
• Bounty Potion payout is now purely based on turn count which should be way more consistent
• Tooltips added to small disguise buttons
• Message added if user tries and fails to use diagonal movement for various reasons
• Moroi and Samca are now vulnerable to moonlight
• Hunter gets QUILLS now instead of ENRAGE, which wasn't really something you could play around
• Added the times when you changed form to the morgue
• Goblin Anarchist now only combusts with a 1 tile radius regardless of if they blow up before or after death

Options & Controls

• The option menu has been reworked: options are now grouped by subheaders
• All options now have detailed descriptions
• Added visible values to slider options
• Added a custom input repeat option that fixes a slew of horrible control issues for some people (this includes accidentally flying across the map if you hold down a movement key or shooting the revolver 10 times in a split second and ruining the tutorial)
• Added the ability to bind some arbitrary keys that were not supported before (e.g. Alt)
• Option added to disable xp sound
• Added a button to open the minimap
• Added a button to open the hotel map
• The "center" controller button is now mappable
• Added playstation controller icons
• Ability direction selection has been improved
• Right click now works for examine in keyboard examine mode
• The player can no longer "shoot themselves" which previously did nothing but wasted a bullet

UI

• Spell and ability names are greyed out when unusable
• Broken windows are highlighted on the minimap
• Hunger status is now shown for non-human forms like bat form
• Low level human spell casters now show all possible spells on description so you don't have to examine each one
• Resistance tooltips now have precise detail
• Shadow Form description now shows total values instead of per level values
• Added success rate chance to CHARM failure messages
• Next Page indicator on books
• Added a death tip about examine
• Added a death tip if you die with Vulnerable
• Death tips now have red highlighting on important words
• Added a note on fountain descriptions to say they might identify the associated potion

Bug fixes & Tweaks

• Fixed several display issues with the player or monsters falling in pits
• FINALLY fixed the generation of ugly doors, I think
• Fixed some display issues with the health bar
• Fixed a bug with Samca and frozen moment
• Fixed a weird display message involving Holy Water
• Fixed some dash bugs
• Fixed river portal sprite
• Fixed several ASCII display issues
• Fixed a display issue with commander and firefly
• Fixed a bug with pushing Samcas through sunlight while vulnerable
• Fixed some bugs with shadow minions dying to sunlight
• Fixed an issue with Goblin Anarchist allies hurting you, which was annoying
• Fixed some staircases not spawning far enough from boss
• Fixed a double death message from Goblin Anarchist
• Fixed a bug with talking to bats, which you can now properly do
• Fixed a bug with allies refusing to swap with you if near water
• Clarity reworded, for clarity
• Fixed a bug with tooltips overlapping hotel map and other menus
• Fixed some issues with low screenshake values overriding higher ones
• More clarity on staying in the SHADOWS in the tutorial