ZORBUS - Release notes ====================== This file contains release notes and some thoughts about the current state of the game. For a manual, see the file Zorbus.pdf. About Malwarebytes / VirusTotal.com =================================== - Malwarebytes detects the game's main executable Zorbus.exe as "MachineLearning/Anomalous.100%", which is a false positive. I've reported this at their forum: https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/289695-zorbusexe-false-positive-machinelearninganomalous100/ - VirusTotal doesn't even use all the whitelisting checks that desktop versions of antivirus scanners do: https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/288906-virustotal-only-detections-not-detected-in-desktop-product/ Latest release ============== Release 60 - Patch 3 (09-Feb-2024) - Tweaked some dungeon content generation parameters and edge cases. For example, previously you could come across a dungeon level where there were several hidden areas which were completely empty. - Filtering the game log wasn't possible when keybindings that had letter keys as movement keys were used (mainly the VI keybindings). You can now write a filter keyword in the log screen when SHIFT is pressed. (thanks to Zhuo for mentioning) Release 60 - Patch 2 (08-Jan-2024) - Hopefully fixed a bug where the player could level up at the same time as getting a low health warning dialog, making the game stuck on the dialog. I couldn't reproduce the situation, but tried to ensure that it won't happen. (thanks to OldMan for reporting) - When a player slots an item in companion's equipment, the slot is reserved, and the companion won't automatically change the item to an another one. To better indicate player slotted items, a letter "R" is now displayed on the right side of the equipment row, and when the selector is on the slot, a note is displayed in the item info box: "This item was slotted by the player. The slot is reserved, the companion won't automatically change this item to an another one.". - Fixed a bug related to the "Multikill" achievement. - Some recruitable creatures do not level up. To avoid confusion, "-" is displayed as level on their character sheet instead of "1". Release 60 - Patch 1 (09-Dec-2023) - Fix: Potion of Martyrdom does not heal withered companions. - Fix: Ring of Bonding does not heal / restore a withered companion. - Fix: tiefling clones no longer spam the Fire Ray talent. - If you have the Morbid Fascination of Undeath talent, you'll get full experience from kills made by your undead companions. Currently kills made from non-undead followers too, as I didn't want to break save file compatibility just for this. Will eventually be changed at next full release. - A red notification in item descriptions of disallowed items when you have the Morbid Fascination or Soothing Solitude talent. Now on your items when trading in shops, too. - You can now change companion behavior / tactics in examine mode with the controller: - Press B when the cursor is on yourself to change behavior of all companions. - Move the cursor over wanted companion to change its behavior with B. - Select a target creature or an empty map tile and press B to set an attack target or a travel destination for all companions. - Press Y to change tactics. If the cursor is on yourself or an empty tile, tactics of all companions are changed. - Press right bumper to command only expendable creatures. - You can not set a target creature or a travel destination for just one companion with the controller. - You can set a travel destination for companions in the map / autopilot screen with the controller. On the autopilot screen, select a destination with the cursor, press left trigger (all companions) or right trigger (expendables only). - Clarification to the Holy Warrior talent: holy-damage bonus applies only when a weapon is used, not on unarmed / gore attacks. - Added skill point formula and talent progression chart to descriptions of the Great Mind I & II talents. - Notes for Soothing Solitude, Morbid Fascination, etc. added to local leaderboard too. Release 60 (24-Nov-2023) - Important! This game release is not compatible with the save games of the earlier releases (r59 and older)! - If earlier save files are detected, they are moved into "(game folder)\Backup_r59\Save". When you start the updated game, a menu will open where you can launch older releases of the game and finish those runs. - If you had an unfinished extended game going on where you plan to utilize previously ascended characters, you can continue that with the older release. - Check the "Skip this menu until a new release is out" checkbox if you don't want to see the menu anymore until a new release is out. - You can also manually run the older version of the game from the "Backup_r59" folder, but close any other running version of the game first. - Older game release backups that don't have any unfinished save games are removed after a month. - If you launch an old game release from the menu, and the game doesn't seem to react to keyboard presses, it might be that the game window just isn't active. So click somewhere on the game screen with the mouse, and you should be ok. - Troubleshooting forum thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2125420/discussions/0/5350867208718932978/ - Tournament with gift card prizes, running from 27-Nov-2023 to 31-Dec-2023! More info at http://tournament.zorbus.net. - A sketch art & lore book is available at http://lore.zorbus.net, as a downloadable PDF and as an online flipbook. - New playable race: minotaur. Also added a minotaur archetype and a recruitable one. - New talent: Morbid Fascination of Undeath. Can be chosen only during character generation. - You feel at home among the dead and the living dead. Your demeanor and affinity to the dead can be off-putting to others. - You gain a +3 bonus to necrotic resistance. - You are later able to learn the Animate Greater Dead and Disrupt Undead talents. - Skeletons and skeleton warriors animated by you are equally good in both melee and ranged combat, and their tactics (default / ranged / melee only) can be adjusted. - You can not recruit, tame, summon, or charm living creatures. - You can animate, summon elementals, activate golems and statues, and have a clone of yourself. - You can not learn talents or use items that summon living creatures or deal holy-damage. - Positive Spirit-modifier does not adjust prices in shops. - New talent: Animate Greater Dead. Morbid Fascination talent as a requirement. - New talent: Disrupt Undead. Like Confusion but against undead. Morbid Fascination talent as a requirement. - New talent: Soothing Solitude. The extreme version of the Lone Wolf talent. Can be chosen only during character generation. - You are a hermit, a true loner. You want to do everything stubbornly by yourself, trust no one, and can't stand the company of others. - You get a +2 bonus to all abilities, but can only have a clone of yourself in your company. - You can not recruit, tame, animate, summon, or charm creatures, and can not activate golems or statues. - You can use trapkits that animate or summon creatures as the created creatures are not added to your party. - Animal Friend ja Stone Sense talents can now be selected on any experience level (previously only on character creation). - Some talents now block other talents. You can't learn both Natural Leader and Lone Wolf, and so on. - Gnomes now start with 1 point in Magic-skill instead of 2. - Companion list is now ordered by recruitment round and stays ordered that way when you go to different dungeon level. Same for the character lists on the character sheet and in the inventory screen. - New setting: "Number animated creatures". - Number undead creatures animated by the player. Adds a count number after the name (skeleton 1, skeleton 2, ...). Mostly for easier recognition of skeletons and skeleton warriors since you can equip them. - New wizard player tiles for elves, gnomes, and humans. - New item: Orb of Blocking - This orb creates a planar block that prevents all animating or summoning for the duration of the effect. Does not affect already existing animated or summoned creatures on the level. Only one planar block can be active at a time. Also exists as a switch room effect. - New item: Potion of Martyrdom - Drinking this potion makes you lose 25 points of Health and Stamina, and restores Health and Stamina of all your companions by the same amount + any positive Spirit-modifier of the drinker. - New item: Ring of Bonding - When two creatures wear a Ring of Bonding, they form a bond where Health and Stamina restoring effects for one also affect the other. Only instant restorative effects to Health or Stamina are shared, duration effects are not. The other creature is restored the same amount as the other, so some amount of restoration must happen before it is shared. The effect is shared with Potions of Healing / Endurance / Life, the Health Surge talent, restorative effects from thrones and wells. Not shared with vampiric weapons or the Bloodlust talent. - New item: Boots of Tracklessness. - These boots make the wearer odorless and immune to any kind of tracking. - New lore books: Cinatas the Fallen, Divine Newsletter, Memorandum of Project Carillo. These can be read from the external lore book at http://lore.zorbus.net. - Ring of Holiness renamed to Ring of Bones. - Change to Bloodlust effect: - If you are at full Health before the Bloodlust effect, your current Health is set to the new max Health. (thanks to Bekhter for mentioning) - New setting: "Row height factor". Adjusts the row height of the game font, making more fonts usable. - If you press enter on any of the font settings, a font dialog now opens, making it much easier to preview fonts than with the old menu system. - If you want to try something other than the boring default font, try Google's Convergence (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Convergence). It's not very usable on the smallest screen size, but try pumping up the interface zoom, and adjust font height and row height factor. - New setting: "Game controller, swap rest and autoexplore". If checked, X on a game controller rests a round and right stick press autoexplores. (thanks to FlyinJ for the idea) Release history =============== Release 1 (23-Mar-2019) - First public release! Release 2 (23-Mar-2019) - Quick fix: Multishot-talent wasn't working Release 3 (24-Mar-2019) - Characters now start with 1.5 x Health-points. - Wielding a shield has negative modifier to Magic-skill. - Fix: Health Surge -talent is no longer set as the last used talent. - Some difficulty finetuning. Release 4 (29-Mar-2019) - Manual updated with clarifications on closing doors, rest until healed, setting traps and other stuff. - Difficulty finetunings: some creatures removed from dungeon levels 1 and 2, bigger chance of a recruitable creature on the levels. - Rest until healed -command added ([S] or [NUMPAD_0]). Rests until healed or rests 100 rounds if already at full health so you can use it also to regenerate Stamina. Seen hostile creatures interrupt the rest. Can also be interrupted by pressing any key. - Health bars under creatures change color gradually from green to red as they get more angry at you. - Doors can now be closed also with [ALT]+[DIR]. The floor has to be clear of items. - Fixed ranged weapon enchantment. Ranged weapons can now be enchanted with "enchant weapon" and "vampiric weapon" -scrolls. When a ranged weapon and ammunition is equipped then elemental damage scrolls target ammunition. - Inventory now shows the key for dropping items. - Ability/skill/resistance-modifiers in item descriptions are now color coded. - Equipment ability requirements actually implemented (mainly for heavy armor, large weapons and large shields). - When you use target mode on a creature it shows the devices it's carrying (potions, wands etc.). - Some talent requirements and values finetuned. - Item price formula finetuned. - Spirit-modifier adjusts item prices in stores (+-10% per modifier, max +-30%). - Offscreen creature warning -setting draws red warning arrows in the edges of the map to directions where hostile creatures are seen. Mainly for small screens. Release 5 (31-Mar-2019) - Fixed an endgame related bug. - Fixed a rare but fatal dungeon generator bug which would result in a crash. - Fixed another smaller dungeon generator bug (sometimes you would see a single oddly colored floor tile in an area). - "Arrow of Explosion" and "Bullet of Explosion" now actually create a 3x3 explosion on the target. - Shops have more healing-, endurance- and blink-potions. - "Create obituary" -setting is now saved to the settings file. - Obituaries now have usage counts of talents and devices. - "Offscreen creature warning" -setting is now on by default. Can be changed from the settings. Release 6 (07-Apr-2019) - Intelligent hostile creatures nearby follow player when using stairs. - You no longer get xp from killing animated/summoned creatures unless they're animated/summoned from a trap. The xp award from creatures with animating/summoning talents is slightly increased. - You can quick switch ammunition for the current ranged weapon with [Q]. Equipping / switching ammunition is now a free action (doesn't take time). Correct ammunition type is automatically equipped when switching to a ranged weapon if the quiver slot is empty or the ammunition type is wrong. - Armor penalties on Motion, Stealth and weight reduced. Magical armors and shields are lighter. - More bullets and arrows created on the 1st dungeon floor. Players also start with 30 bullets now. - Removed to-hit-penalties from the Multistrike-talent. - A shield bash attack is made every round if you have the talent. - Natural Leader -talent raises the max amount of recruits by 2. - New talent: Lone Wolf. +2 to all abilities but can not recruit creatures. Can animate/summon normally. - Great Body/Motion/Mind/Spirit -talent descriptions now show your current ability score. - Closing doors is now little slower. - If you stumble upon a teleport trap, your autopilot coordinates are set to your former location so you can autopilot back to the former location if you have the map between the points explored. - Scrolls and elixirs are no longer quickslotted. - Removed "Save settings" and "Save keybindings" from settings/keybindings-menus. These are now automatically saved when exiting the menus. - Manual clarification: If you want to attack a friendly creature through the "chat" dialog, you need to have a melee weapon in your active weapon set. Release 7 (10-Apr-2019) - Dungeon level 2 made little easier. - Added some info to birth/level-up screens: - The formula how current maximum skill rank per skill is calculated. - How to hide/show unavailable talents. Release 8 (20-Apr-2019) - If you enable the option "Check for updates on start" from the settings, you'll be informed when a new release is available and asked if you want to update. The check is made when the game is started. Remember that you will lose your saved games if you update! - Character sheet now shows more detailed information on how the current values of abilities, skills and resistances are calculated (modifiers from equipment and temporary effects are shown). Character sheet also shows Max Motion (from armor), Motion-modifier from encumbrance and the current dungeon level number. - Some AI and morale adjustments. - In the quickslots view you can press [CTRL] + [C] to clear the quickslots. - Small updates to the manual: some gameplay tips added, info on the new update feature. Release 9 (22-Apr-2019) - All bump actions now work also in diagonal directions. - Fixed a bug where companion/summoned/animated did not always get hostile against an attacker. - A warning dialog is shown when you try to smash a fungus when there's a myconid nearby. - Containers in the shop-level are no longer autolooted. - You can now press [L] to browse locked furniture (doors, chests) in the autopilot mode. - Character sheet can be displayed with [C] in the level up - menus. - A lantern is automatically quickslotted if the "auto set quickslots" setting is on. - Some grammar mistakes and typos fixed. Release 10 (28-Apr-2019) - You can loot items from explored floor tiles and checked containers by pressing [SPACE]. By selecting an item from the list and pressing [SPACE] or [ENTER] you will be autopiloted to the item and the item will be picked up. If an item is in a container it will be listed only if you have at least once checked the contents of the container. - Containers are marked with green corner lines if you haven't yet explored their contents. - When selecting an autopilot target you can cycle still locked doors and unlooted containers with [F]. - In the autopilot mode portals can be cycled with [A] or [TAB] so you can press [A] to start the autopilot mode and then the same key to cycle through the portals and [ENTER] to pilot to the target location. - Autopilot is no longer interrupted so easily by neutral creatures or closed doors. - Duration of the True Seeing -talent increased. - Obituary file now shows game release number. - Fixed a bug where a creature could be indefinitely displaced without it getting angry. - Manual reorganized and info on the new features added. Release 11 (04-May-2019) - Removed the limit of saving the game only once per dungeon level. You still can't save the game on the endgame level though. - Pressing [A] in the autopilot mode cycles through unexplored areas. [T] cycles through known traps. - Autopilot is stopped when a secret door or a trap is found. - Pressing [E] autopilots you to the nearest unexplored location directly without going into autopilot mode. The autopilot takes you just to the unexplored tile and does not explore further. As your line of sight and possible lightsource reveals new areas you can press [E] again to move to one of these. You will be missing a lot of secret doors if you constantly use this command as autopilot does not walk near all walls. It's best to be used in short bursts of movement or for backtracking or finalizing the level exploration. - Pressing [H] opens a keyboard image that shows the current keybindings. This can be opened from the main game view and from the keybindings screen. You can press [ALT], [CONTROL] or [SHIFT] to show bindings that require one of those keys to be pressed. - If you walk near a furniture container that is opened (chests etc.) or is lidless (altars etc.), it is assumed that you have peeked into it and can then use target mode from any distance to see the container's contents. The items are not shown in the level loot list until you actually loot (bump) the container at least once. - You can press [C] in the target mode to cycle through seen containers. Known empty containers are skipped. - If all 9 map points are set, setting a new one replaces the nearest one. - "Auto use key" setting. If disabled, you won't automatically use a key on a lock but the dialog that pops up when bumping a locked furniture has the option to use a key among the normal options. - If you dualwield two throwable items and only the other one has the "returning"-property then the one that doesn't have the property is not thrown. Release 12 (12-May-2019) - Fixed a memory leak. - You can quickly get to the nearest stairs down by pressing [A]utopilot and then [D]ownstairs. - Dodge is now automatically used for defense in combat if it's better than your Melee-skill based defense. - Some additional combat related stats of equipped weapons listed in the descriptions of the items. Release 13 (25-May-2019) - Search range is now 2. You don't have to walk close to walls to spot secret doors but can detect them from 2 steps away. - Heavily reduced the amount of xp gained from skill use (finding secret doors and traps, disabling locks and traps). - You can now close doors even if there are items in the doorway. Items will be moved towards the creature closing the door. - Rest until healed / Rest for 100 rounds should be a bit faster now (screen is no longer rendered during the rest). - New talent: Strengthened Shots. Body-modifier is automatically added to ranged attacks. - Ranged Elemental Damage talent's damage raised from 1 to 1d2. - Divine essences no longer give you experience. - If you pick a locked door while holding it's key, message about unlocking it with a key will no be longer shown. - Autopilot is stopped if you have disabled auto-use-key setting and a locked furniture blocks the path. - If a creature is friendly to you, it's also friendly to your recruits and animated/summoned creatures. There was a bug that if you for example had the Animal Friend talent, animals would still attack your animated skeletons. - Autopilot / autoexplore ignores walking through doors which are known mimics. - Fixed a bug where lots of devices were missing from the quickslotable item list. Big thanks for Troubler for mentioning this bug! - Prisoners no longer care if you loot containers in the prison's main area. - You can press a binded key in the help-screen to get a longer description of the command. - Target-mode shows the name of a creature under the target cursor with a black background. - Menus with adjustable numeric values have small arrows as visual clues. - [HOME] and [END] keys can be now used to quickly get to the top / bottom of inventory and other lists. - Screen can be maximized / minimized with [ALT] + [BACKSPACE]. - Fixed a bug where choosing "Return to main menu" from the game menu didn't go to the main menu if you had restarted with the same character. - Added a picture (drawn by Zyalin) to the main menu. - Fixed some typos. Release 14 (01-Jun-2019) - You can now enchant ranged weapons with elemental damage - scrolls. Randomly generated ranged weapons with elemental damage can also be found. - Some named ranged weapons added. - A new weapon, the hoopak, added. The hoopak is a staff topped with a fork and a sling on one end and a sharp spike on the other. It can be used both as a melee weapon and a ranged / reach weapon. It uses sling bullets as ammunition. - Help text added to the inventory screen. - You don't have to pick up a book to read it but can press [CTRL] + [ENTER] in the loot screen to read the it. - Book reading supports [PAGE UP] / [PAGE DOWN] / [HOME] and [END] keys. - Added more of Zyalin's art to loading screen, main menu and manual. Release 15 (09-Jun-2019) - Character creation changes: - Ability modifiers from race are added to the base value after adjusting / rolling. - If you roll the abilities randomly you can not adjust them. - New playable races: centaur, half-orc, halfling, gnome. - Small changes to the old races. - Some of the playable races start with talents. Smaller races have a smaller health dice and movement is a bit slower. - Changed a bit how restraining map effects (web, slime) work: - Magic- and Ranged-skills have negative modifiers when a creature is in the effect of Web. - Made the effects little weaker so that it's easier to struggle free. You can try to move or melee attack to get free. The check is a Body-ability check against the effect strength. - AI also tries to get free by moving if it can not teleport away. - You can not displace a creature when you or it is restrained. - Store changes: - Item selling price is automatically lowered if a shopkeeper doesn't have enough coins. - Shopkeepers slowly "regain" coins when you are not on the store level. - You can autopilot to store teleporters in the dungeon by pressing [A]utopilot and then [S]. Release 16 (22-Jun-2019) - Adjustments to playable races. - Tamed animals get their Health, Stamina and skills boosted when your character levels up. - New room content and monsters. - New item: Flask of Poison. Can be used to coat the active melee weapon or active ammunition with poison. Poison coating on a melee weapon wears off after 10-20 hits. Change to a weapon set that contains a ranged weapon if you want to coat ammunition. One flask is enough for coating 20 arrows / bullets. If you have more ammunition equipped then the rest of the ammunition is put in backpack. - Some typos fixed. Release 17 (29-Jun-2019) - Pressing [F] now targets/cycles creatures that are not yet at hostility level high enough to attack the player but not friendly either. - Option not to render the screen on every step when continuously walking / autopiloting / autoexploring. The default option is not to render. The game feels a lot snappier this way. - Pathfind / autoexplore shows dots marking the path that the player took. Green dots if the target was reached and red dots if the autopilot was interrupted (hostile creature seen, trap / secret door detected). - Option to exit lists (inventory etc.) with movement key up when the selector is at top position (not shown). Might be more convenient to browse containers, especially if there's nothing you want to get from the container. - Settings-menu now has descriptions of the options. - Obituary is more detailed. Shows the commands used count, creatures you damaged but someone else killed (damaged to 50% or lower of their health), latest log messages etc. - New in-game art by Tony Forsman showing an adventurer standing before the portal to Zorbus. Release 18 (02-Aug-2019) - This release is noticeably bigger than before (almost 170 megabytes) and the reason is... - Sound effects! Roguelikes don't usually shine in this area but try this one out. The sounds really make the dungeon feel like a living thing. Most creatures have custom sounds and the speech bubbles work well with the sound effects. There are also some short ambient pieces playing when you for example discover a hidden treasure chamber or a tomb etc. Splatting those kobolds and goblins is just so more satisfying with a proper sound effect. Hopefully the sounds work on all configurations. I could only test with Windows 10 on a real hardware. I tried with Windows 7 and Ubuntu with Wine in VirtualBox and sadly the sounds lagged there. Sound effects won't work on Windows XP. Sound effects are on by default and can be disabled from the settings. - Online leaderboard. When you ascend, your character information is sent to a server and added to a leaderboard. Again, I'm hopeful that this works. At least it worked on all configurations (WinXP, Win7, Ubuntu Wine) when tested in VirtualBox. This option is on by default and can be disabled from the settings. The leaderboard can be accessed from the main menu, from the homepage or going directly to http://wins.zorbus.net. - You can start the game with a randomly generated character. This option is added to the birth screen where you decide whether to make a new character or use a pregenerated one. You can press R when the menu selector is on the random character to roll a new one until satisfied and then press ENTER to start the game. - When looting things you usually pick up stuff by pressing ENTER. You can now directly equip stuff from the loot screen by pressing [CONTROL] + [ENTER] on an item. Same rules apply as for normal equpping meaning that you can't equip armor if there are hostile creatures seen. - Changed the key for switching inventory list type from F12 to [CONTROL] + [TAB]. Many probably haven't used this but with it you can switch between equipment/backpack-view and backpack/ground-view without exiting the inventory. F12 is now used to toggle item compare mode. - You can now exchange items with your companions and edit their equipment. This is launched through the talking dialog by pressing [CONTROL] + direction towards the companion. If hostile creatures are seen then the options are not shown. The above mentioned inventory switch command is useful here as you can for example first give some items to a companion, then switch the view and equip them without first exiting the inventory screen. - Magical enchantments in armor and weapons no longer increase critical defense modifier / critical attack modifier. - Settings menu updated with stuff related to sound effects and leaderboard. You can also set a default name for your character or change the text font / size. (Previously you had to manually edit Settings.txt to adjust these). - Obituaries have some new statistics like the current pantheon before you entered the endgame and again after you have ascended. Now shows your starting abilities / skills as level 0. Wand of Knock usages are now listed. Release 19 (04-Aug-2019) - Fixed a bug in calculating skill maximum values during level-ups: ability-modifier was not added. (skill maximum = level + ability-modifier) - Sound effects are now compressed making the download and memory usage smaller. - Manual updated. - In-game help Zorbupedia can be opened from the game menu. Release 20 (11-Aug-2019) - Fixed some endgame related bugs. - If you have an everlasting arrow/bullet equipped, ammunition of equal or lower enchantment won't be autopicked. - Inventory: You can adjust the amount of a selected item by 10 with [CONTROL] + movement key left/right. You can adjust the amount of a selected item by 50 with [ALT] + movement key left/right. - Summoning animation is now repeated 2 times instead of 3, making it a bit faster. Release 21 (18-Aug-2019) - Leaderboard now has a section for non-winning characters of at least experience level 2. Only the highest level character per player and per game release gets added to this list. This option is on by default and can be changed from the settings. - Removed weight from coins and ammunition. - Small stealth / visibility tweaks. - Small AI tweaks. - Max range of ranged attacks set to 10. Max range of talents set to 8. - Shopkeepers can no longer be lured with items from their shop area. Release 22 (25-Aug-2019) - Player and recruitable creatures get full Health- and Stamina-points at experience level 2. After that the points are randomly rolled. - Player gets 50% of the XP from creatures killed by companions (recruited / animated / summoned). Was previously 20%. - New playable races: aasimar, half-troll, saurial, tiefling. - Some small changes to the old playable races. - The log shows a line "xxx comes into view" when you see a creature type for the first time. Also shows the creature's name / type over the tile for 5 rounds. - Fixed a bug where some tamed creatures might get hostile against neutral creatures. Release 23 (31-Aug-2019) - There's a letter "R" displayed on a creature's tile when it wields a ranged weapon and "r" when it wields a reach weapon. - Log shows how much a creature resists of the damage done to it. - Loot distribution tweaked. Bosses, uniques and treasure containers should now have a bit more magical equipment. - Removed negative skill adjustments (disable, magic, search) from most helmets. - Obituary shows what method was used for character creation (fully random character / rolled abilities / point buy abilities). - Obituary shows if you witness an unique being killed by some other creature than you or your companion. - Fixed a bug that caused errors when the game was played without sound effects. Release 24 (15-Sep-2019) - Recruitable creatures that you haven't yet recruited go to Carillo (the trading demiplane) after you descend deeper into the dungeon from their initial dungeon level. - Shop inventories get restocked with some potions (blink, endurance, healing) after a while. - Some changes to playable races (starting talents and ability / skill adjustments tweaked). - A new talent: Team Spirit. Normally you'll get 50% of the experience points from creatures that companions kill but with this talent you'll get the full 100%. Requires the Natural Leader -talent (which can only be selected on the 1st level). - A green bar appears under the XP bar when you have fully explored the dungeon level even if you don't have the Stonesense -talent. - Some new magical equipment added. - Loot distribution and level difficulty tweaks. Release 25 (15-Sep-2019) - Quick fix: Fixed a bug where item properties would not be shown when browsing containers. Release 26 (27-Sep-2019) - New command: Rest until (Stamina) restored. By pressing [D] or [NUMPAD DIVIDE] you rest until Stamina is fully restored or until interrupted by hostile creatures. If you already are at full Stamina you rest for 100 rounds or until interrupted. Resting can be stopped by pressing any key. - New item: Scroll of Magic Mapping. Reading this scroll reveals the layout of the current dungeon level. Areas that are hidden behind secret doors are not explored but the secret doors themselves are revealed. It's easiest to use autoexplore to enter these areas. - Some small tweaks. Typos fixed. Release 27 (13-Oct-2019) - A map note can be added to your current location with [N]. Many themed areas have automatic notes. - You can display the map of the current dungeon level in fullscreen with [V]. Shows stairs, teleporters and notes. - Autopilot now has two display modes which can be changed with [SPACE] from the autopilot screen. The new one (set as default) shows the navimap enlarged to the game view. - Autopilot can pilot you to the nearest upstairs with [U] from the autopilot screen. - When you bump against stairs leading up, you can select to go to any previously visited upper level. When you bump against stairs leading down, you can select to go to any previously visited lower level. These options are only usable if there are no hostile creatures seen. Nearby hostile creatures may still follow you. At the moment this does not take more time than a regular level change. - The ascend/descend stairs screen now shows some info about visited levels like how much of it you have explored, if there are still challenge / cloning / etc. switches left and so on. - There's now only one setting for sending obituary files for the leaderboard. This settings needs to be on before you start a new game to affect that game. This is to prevent savescumming in the leaderboard. - Fixed a bug where attacking an avatar resulted in several history lines added to the report. - Fully exploring the shop level now shows a green "stonesense" line. - Fixed a bug where some challenge switch rooms did not summon monsters. Release 28 (20-Feb-2020) - Visual changes: - Support for ASCII mode. You can adjust the ASCII visual style from the settings. Uses truetype fonts. Press [HOME] to toggle between ASCII and tiles. - Red flash on a creature tile when it's damaged. Can be disabled from the settings. - Some new wall tiles. - More control of the visuals from the settings. You can for example disable flavor coloring so that only one color for walls/floors is used per dungeon level. - Audio changes: - Lots of new sound effects (now over 2000). - You can mute/unmute audio during game play with [END]. - UI changes: - Mouse support. Tooltips when hovering over UI elements. For me, using the mouse feels very clumsy but it may be helpful when still learning to play the game. - You can view other visited dungeon level maps in the full screen map viewer [V]. Select a map with movement keys or mouse. - Message log viewer can be launched with [L]. - The message log and book texts can be filtered with a keyword. Just write a wanted word when the message log / book reading screen is active. [CTRL] + [C] copies the text to the clipboard. - When bumping against stairs, you'll see the map of the target level (if level is already visited). - When you bump against a furniture, it's name is displayed is on the log if it can not be interacted with. May be useful in the ASCII mode when learning which glyph represents what furniture. - You can adjust the interface zoom up to 200% (was previously 150%). Note that text might not fit into UI elements with bigger zoom values. - In the keybinding screens there are presets for default / WASD / VI -keys. - Map points 1 and 2 are automatically set to the two shops on the shop level. So you can autopilot to the shops quickly by pressing [A], [1] or [2] and [ENTER]. Remember that you can get to shop teleporters quickly by pressing [A] and [S], on the shop level too. - Up to 40 quickslots (was previously 20), the amount is restricted by your screen height. - Only one device per type is automatically quickslotted. So if you have 2 x Wand of Energy Bolt, only one is quickslotted. - Save on exit. If you quit the game from the menu or just close thw game window, the game is automatically saved. - You can now filter inventory / level loot with "+" symbol so you can for example write "+2" to filter all +2 enchanted items, or "3+" to filter all items with at least +3 enchantment. - Character creation / level up screens list if there are talents with ability- or skill-requirements when the menu selector is on an ability or a skill. - Content changes: - Endgame is now much more challenging. Previously it was way too easy to get the ultimate ending. The in-game book "Deities & Demigods" has some information on the avatars of the gods. - Dungeon structure changed a bit. Changed some of the levels from 128x128 to 96x96. - New interactive furniture: thrones and wells. These can now be interacted with and can provide both harmful and positive effects. The in-game book "Dungeoneer's Survival Guide" has some information on these. - Crystal balls were previously just static, non-interactive furniture. Now the orbs can be taken from these orb stands. Orbs are devices and can be used like wands. - New partially handcrafted room content. - New items (Flask of Slime, Wand of Dismiss, Orb of Anchoring etc.). - New lore books and some of the older ones updated. - Shops restock more ammunition. - Falchion has now the great-property so it can be used as a reach weapon with the Great Reach talent. - Summon Animals talent: some variation of what kind of animals get summoned. - Potion of Cloning is renamed to Elixir of Cloning. This item won't be quickslotted. - Gameplay changes: - Better handling of friendly fire. Companions should no longer get angry at you or each other when taking friendly fire. - Critical hits deal 50% more damage (was 100%). Charge deals 50% more damage with shafted weapons (was 100%). - No experience points from killing creatures still in prison cells. - You need Mind-ability of at least 6 to be able to read books, scrolls or other texts. - By default, all ammunition is now autopicked. Ammunition doesn't have weight but if you feel that your inventory gets cluttered, you can disable this from the settings. - Companion changes: - Maximum number of companions is calculated from your base Spirit-value (previous from item/effect modified one). - Another way to see/adjust companion equipment. Press [F11] in inventory screen to cycle between you / companions. - [CTRL] + [E] in inventory screen toggles item exchange mode. [F11] to change companion. - You can see the stats of your companions by first opening the character sheet with [C], then using the movements keys up/down to cycle between companions. [TAB] or movement keys left/right cycle between two character sheet pages. You can also see the stats before recruiting a creature by selecting CHARACTER SHEET from the "bump friendly" -dialog. - Companions do not change equipment (other than ammunition) that the player has set to them. - Some critical bugs fixed. These occured very rarely but would have made the game impossible to win. - Huge amount of small bug fixes and tweaks. - Manual updated. More gameplay tips. Last page of the manual has some small spoilers of the dungeon structure and endgame. - Leaderboard has been reset. Release 29 (02-Mar-2020) - AI tweaking: - Consumable / device usage tweaked, especially for companions. - AI tries first to target hostile creatures that are not summoned or animated. - AI can unlit its lightsource when fleeing. - AI can unlit furniture lightsources to ensure safe resting / sleeping in dark areas. - Companion morale presets tweaked, hopefully resulting in better survivability. - Killing friendly creatures no longer gives experience points. - Weakened the necrotic damage effect that can happen from sitting on a throne or drinking from a well. The old effect could instakill characters in full health. - Updated the descriptions of the item enchantment scrolls: - Armors: Every enchantment point decreases the enchantment chance by 15 percentage points. - Weapons: Every enchantment point, elemental damage point, holy property, vampiric property and on-hit effect decreases the enchantment chance by 10 percentage points (used to be 15). - Log entry when your companion learns a new talent (companions level up at the same time as the player). - Fixed a bug where animated / summoned creatures would sometimes disappear from view after animation. - Fixed a small bug in ASCII mode. - A new lore book, "Legends & Lore", a list of ascended players. - Some typos fixed. Release 30 (28-Mar-2020) - 1 year anniversary release! - List of companions above the quickslots. Can be toggled with [F11]. Can also be toggled in the target mode and in the level map mode. - A direction arrow and distance is shown if you can't see your companion. The arrow is red if there are hostile creatures near the companion. - Commanding companions: - Commanding companions is a free action (does not take time). Don't do it if it feels like too much micromanagement. Just remember it as an option for tricky situations. - [CTRL] + [1] - [9] to change the behavior of a companion. - [CTRL] + [0] to change the behavior of all companions. - In the target mode you can also use [1] - [9] and [0] to command companions. - There a 4 types of behavior for companions: - FOLLOW (follow player, default behavior) - STAY (stay at current location) - TRAVEL (travel to an explored location, then STAY there) - TARGET (attack a hostile creature, then FOLLOW after target is dead) - In the main game mode, you can order companions to either FOLLOW you, or to STAY at their current location. - In the target mode [TAB], you can order companions to TARGET (attack) a hostile creature, or to TRAVEL to a wanted explored location. Move the target cursor over a target creature or an explored location, then change the behavior. - In the level map mode [V], you can order companions to TRAVEL to a wanted explored location. Point the location with the mouse cursor, then change the behavior. - Manual updated with the above info. - The automap screen [A] and the level map screen [V] show the locations of unseen companions. - Lots of monster AI adjustments and situation specific dialogue. - Optional dungeon ambience sound effect. A value from 0 to 5. Higher number means more frequent ambience, 0 disables the effect, 5 is constant effect. - Optional description of a heard sound effect on the map if the sound source is not seen. The value defines how many game rounds the text is visible (0 disables). - Some tutorial screens that can be launched from the game menu or from the [H]elp screen by pressing [H] a second time. - New items: Arrow of Dismiss, Bullet of Dismiss. Dismiss-effect on the the hit target (teleports to a nearby location). - The inventory lists now show the creature icon on the title bar when exchanging items between creatures or when handling their inventories. - Owlbears can be tamed with the Animal Friend talent. - Option to resize the tile graphics to 48x48 pixels. This is not pixel perfect resize so the tiles may look distorted or blurry! This size can be used with ASCII mode as well. - Option to adjust the vertical positioning of ASCII glyphs. - There was still a bug that could cause companions to vanish when changing dungeon level. Fixed. - Fixed a bug that happened when re-equipping a thrown weapon. Thanks to WindshieldViper for the method of reproducing the bug! - Fixed a bug where you could not melee attack a neutral monster stuck in slime/web. Now the dialog shows attack as an option. Thanks to WindshieldViper for reporting this. - Fixed a bug where creatures that had unlit their lantern would start picking up lanterns. Release 31 (04-Apr-2020) - Fixed a bug that happened when you poison/slime coated your ammunition with scrolls, and already had that kind of ammunition in your inventory. The new coated ammunition would be combined with the previous batch, leaving the ammunition equipment slot empty. This would lead to a crash if you didn't equip something to the empty slot before firing. Big thanks to Zero for figuring this out! - All found magical or otherwise major items are now logged into the obituary log. Previously only the most powerful items were logged. For devices (scrolls, wands, etc.), only the first found item of specific type is logged. - Item enchanting with scrolls is now logged into the obituary log. Release 32 (17-May-2020) - If you update to this release with autoupdate, it might be best to update without restoring old settings. - Sound effects revisited. Lots of new sound effects, some old ones removed / edited. Complete overhaul of the ambience sound system. Dungeon ambience is constant by default. Can be configured / turned off from the settings. - Optional creature wiggle. On by default, can be configured / turned off from the settings. - Health bars of summoned, hostile creatures are now in blue. Can be turned off from the settings. - Names of summoned creatures are in blue in the target mode / when a new creature is discovered. - Creature possession tweaked. Duration is now longer. Duration can be seen after the Break Possession talent in the quickslots. - There was a bug when calculating how much of the level is explored. Hopefully now fixed. - New book reading screen. Press [SPACE] to switch between the new and the old one. You can configure the font from the settings. Uses the "Segoe Print" font by default (comes with Windows). You can switch between the book font / regular font with [TAB]. - Monsters pick up boots, belts, rings and other equipment, and also equip them. Previously only picked usable devices (potions, wands, etc.). - AI tweaks. - Some new items. - An option to automatically create a map collection, an image of all dungeon maps you visited with the character. Unexplored areas are drawn in blue. The map collection is saved as a PNG image to the Obituary-folder after character death. It's also included in the character report uploaded to the leaderboard. A map collection is always created if endgame is reached. A map collection named "Last character - Maps.png" is always created but overwritten when the next character wins or dies. A map collection named "Best character - Maps.png" is created if the character''s experience points are higher than the experience points of any previous character. - An ASCII map of the character's last view is added to the obituary file. - Probably never mentioned this before, but you can press [TAB] to jump to the next divided section of a menu. Release 33 (13-Jun-2020) - Huge lore update. Some of the old lore books were rewritten and many new books introduced. - Massive thanks to Helical Nightmares for these: Against the Giants, Blood War vol. II & III, Journal of the Githyanki Pathfinder, Manual of the Planes, Saga of the Fire Giant King. - If a door was a secret door and you haven't yet visited the area behind it (from another entrance), autoexplore stops before the door. Next autoexplore command opens the door. Gives you a moment to prepare for a likely encounter. - You can now block / unblock map areas from autopilot / autoexplore (default key [P]). - This can be done from the normal game mode (blocks your current area), from the target mode (select an area with cursor), from the map mode (use mouse to point an area) and from the autopilot mode (use movement keys or mouse to point an area). - Blocked areas are shown in red in the target mode / map mode / autopilot mode. - Autoexplore will ignore blocked areas and autopilot will not try to find paths through them. Continuous walk will not work on blocked areas. - [CTRL] + [P] to clear all blocks. - There is a setting to automatically block an area from autopilot if there are creatures in the area that get gradually more hostile towards you. There's also a setting to automatically clear such automaticallly set blocks if the area becomes clear. Both settings are on by default. - Continuous walking in diagonal directions. - New spell: Rapid Regroup. Teleports your companions from the current map near to you. Also available as a wand. - Nerfed Acid Cloud, again. - The strength / damage of map cloud effects now get weaker each round. - Fixed bug where Blink could not find a location to teleport to. - Better logging of talent / device usage when only the origin or only the target is seen. - The last used talent is automatically set for new characters if the character has an applicable talent. - Added a tip about web / slime to the manual / in-game Tips & Trick book: You can try to attack even when stuck in web or slime. A Body-check is made to determine if you can struggle through the restraining effect. The strength of map cloud effects decrease each round, making it a bit easier to get free. Potion of Mobility gives temporary immunity to restraining effects. Use a Potion of Blink or the spell Blink for an immediate escape. An advanced option is to replace a cloud effect with a less harmful one, for example conjuring Fire Wall on a web effect. - Fixed a bug with wand charges. - Removed rings of immunity. - New item: Wand of Sanctuary. Teleports you and your companions to a safe spot on the level. - You can no longer sell the djinn its own lamp. - Fixed a bug that could happen if you simultaneously died and got enough xp to level up from a creature killed by a companion. (thanks to Brian) - Choices in the endgame dialogues are now hopefully a bit more clear. (thanks to Freiling, Helical Nightmares) - If you filter an item group in inventory / level loot, the item group title is now shown even if there are no items of that group. (thanks to DirkB96) - The starting area on the first dungeon level is set to a location with enough (non-secret door) connections to other areas. (thanks to Helical Nightmares) - The initial arrival areas of each dungeon level are made more safe. The doors of the areas are closed if possible. - Fixed some AI problems with multitile creatures. - If a companion teleports, its behavior is set to "follow". - If your companion uses an item with the Die Hard effect, it is written to the log even if you can't see it. You will still hear the bell sound. - Character sheet now shows arrows as indicators for browsing companion information. - A setting to adjust the "stay on screen" duration of speech bubbles. - Removed some stuff from the in-game Player's Handbook which was better presented in the graphical tutorial. Split the gameplay tips into a new book, Tips & Tricks, also available in the starting room. Both of these tutorial books can be read even if your character can't read (low Mind-ability). - You can now disable the letter selecting from the inventory and other lists. Each list type has its own setting. Disabling makes it easier to filter items as you can just write a filter keyword without holding [SHIFT] down. Letters are disabled from the level loot list by default. (thanks to DirkB96) - The old book reading mode is disabled. - Some new content. - New fan art by Tony Forsman. Release 34 (13-Jun-2020) - Quick fix: Human wizards with a possible Web-spell shouldn't be created on dungeon level 2. Fixed. Release 35 (20-Jun-2020) - Optional low Health warning popup dialog that blocks all commands. The dialog is visible for the configured duration or until closed with [ESC], [SPACE], [ENTER], or left mouse click. The warning thresholds can be configured from the settings. You can set a cooldown in seconds between dialogs. You can disable the dialog when it's visible with [DEL] or [CTRL] + [W]. You can disable or re-enable the dialog with [CTRL] + [W] in normal game mode. - Optional Health bar / UI frame flash when low on Health. Can be configured from the settings. - When no hostile creatures are seen, companion movement speed is the same as the players. - Companions that were not near hostile creatures are regrouped around the player after autopilot / autoexplore regardless of their movement speed. - Setting for autopilot / autoexplore: stop if companion sees hostile creatures (off by default). Summoned / animated / charmed creatures are not counted as companions here. - Tweaked autoexplore so that it stops before a locked door even if you have a key to the door. Next autoexplore command will open the door. - New behavior for companions: HANDLE. You can command companion to disable or force a lock / disable a trap. Target a lock or a trap with the cursor in target mode, then press companion number to command a companion, or press [0] to select the best companion for the job. There must be a clear path to the target when issuing a HANDLE command. You won't get experience points from locks or traps disabled by a companion. - Companions in FOLLOW behavior will try to disable or force a lock after your failed attempt if there's one with better Body-ability or Disable-skill nearby and neither the player or the companion sees hostile creatures. The same method (disable / force) will be used. Can be disabled from the settings. - New pro tip to the manual / in-game book: Give Disable-skill boosting items to a companion. If you have found items that boost the Disable-skill, but don't want to wear them or don't have room in your equipment setup for them, give them to a companion with the highest Motion-ability. Then, when needed, command the companion to disable a lock or a trap. They will also do that automatically after your failed attempt if their Disable-skill is higher than yours. - Better handling of charmed creatures. Fixed some related bugs. - Previous release introduced some bugs to the book page changing with mouse. Fixed. - Fixed a bug with book keyword filtering. - NPCs no longer pick up scrolls. - Fixed a bug where recruitable NPCs wouldn't always appear in the shop level. - Since there are quite a lot of settings now, you can filter the settings-menu items by writing a keyword. Hold down [SHIFT] if you have binded letter keys for movement. Release 36 (27-Jun-2020) - Improved autoexplore: There is no need to manually walk around the dungeon to search for remaining hidden areas. Once autoexplore no longer finds anything to explore, it will check if your Search-skill is high enough to detect any of the possibly existing secret doors on the map. If something is found, autoexplore autopilots you to the found secret door. You may want to boost your Search-skill with items, potions or talents, even temporarily, for better results. - Type "0" as a filter in inventory / level loot lists to filter special items, unique items, devices (potions, wands, etc.). Remember that you can filter with an item type (function keys) and a keyword at the same time, so you could press F3 to filter weapons and then type "0" to filter only unique or special weapons. - Some difficulty finetuning. - Leaderboard has been reset. The old leaderboard for releases 28-35 can be found at http://wins.zorbus.net/r35. - You can add a timestamped comment to the journal by pressing [CTRL] + [N]. The log journal is added to obituary files. - Some new sound effects. Fixed some audio related bugs. - Added new gameplay tips to the manual and in-game tips book: dualwielding, different ways to open locks, level loot. - The in-game Zorbupedia now has a list of all talents in the game. You can filter Zorbupedia topics with a keyword. Zorbupedia can be opened from the game menu, during character generation and during level up. Release 37 (04-Jul-2020) - Fixed a bug where NPCs could equip a 2-h weapon after only a shield was equipped in off-hand. (thanks to KurzedMetal for reporting this) - Charmed creatures no longer react to player looting containers in their home. (thanks to KurzedMetal) - Fixed a bug where the shop level teleporter wouldn't work if the game was saved before all companions arrived at the level. (thanks to szary) - Changed weapon enchantment a bit: - There's a chance that the weapon will be destroyed in the process if it's already enchanted with more than 3 enchantments. Every enchantment point above 3 decreases the enchantment chance by 15 percentage points. Plusses, extra elemental damage points, holy-/returning-/vampiric-properties and on-hit effects count as enchantments. - When the selector is over an enchantment scroll in the inventory, the info box shows which item the scroll would target and the enchantment success chance. - New item: Scroll of Returning Weapon. Adds the returning-property to a weapon (thrown weapon returns to thrower's hand). - Small fixes and polishing done. Release 38 (13-Jul-2020) - Most of the stuff in this release is implemented after feedback, so big thanks for it! - Hopefully fixed a severe infinite loop bug that could happen when you looted home furniture of charmed creatures. (thanks to Horvatii and Mkok) - Companions no longer enter a teleporter that you just came out from. (thanks to Claudio) - Companions follow the player better in corridors and other tight areas. (thanks to Claudio) - Resting 100 rounds for Health / Stamina is interrupted when one of your companions reach full Health / Stamina. (thanks to Claudio) - Companions use ammunition now more intelligently. (thanks to Claudio) - You can give a Flask of Poison or a Flask of Slime to a companion who will then automatically use it. - New feature: Autoammo. When autoammo is enabled, the best ammunition against a target is automatically selected. Autoammo tries to restrain, poison, or otherwise select an ammunition that the creature is most vulnerable to. Ammunition of Dismiss or Explosion are not used, but ammunition of Slime and Poison are. Can be toggled with [CTRL] + [Q]. Can be toggled from the main game mode or from target mode. A green ”AA” text is shown in the weapon set box when a ranged weapon and autoammo is active. - Squirm talent grants a bonus when trying to squirm through a restraining map effect (web, slime). - Fixed checking if a creature is on a restraining map effect when he uses reach or ranged attack. - AI spellcasters are not so spammy with web / poison cloud spells. - It is no longer possible to edit inventories of summoned celestials. (You could summon them, take their weapons and sell them at the shop, thanks to Mkok for reporting this) - Drow companion now has a proper dualwield talent that is listed on his character sheet. (thanks to Claudio) - Log viewer [L] separates which messages belong to a given round. (thanks to Claudio) - Amulet of Health no longer grants immunity to poison but resistance of 2 points. - The miscellaneous statistics in obituary files shows the number of animated and summoned creatures. Release 39 (24-Jul-2020) - By pressing [A] you automatically approach and attack nearest seen hostile creature with a melee- or a reach-weapon. You can use autoattack just for approaching so you can use it to chase down a creature or to narrow the range to it for a ranged attack, spell, etc. If no openly hostile creature is seen, a target creature is selected from those who get gradually more hostile against you. Autoattack ignores creatures in areas blocked from autopilot. Autoattack is disabled if your current Health is under 30% of max Health (the percentage can be changed from the settings). - The default keybinding for autopilot changed to [P]. Blocking autopilot areas changed to [O], clear all blocks to [CTRL]+[O]. If you use the game updater, it's best to reset keybindings because of these changes. - If the game crashes, it tries to save the game. A crash report is created into the Crash-folder. - Settings: Option to disable log top add (new messages added on top of the log instead of the bottom, on by default). - The game is saved if you select "Return to main menu" from the game menu and the setting "Save on exit" is on (on by default). Release 40 (22-Aug-2020) - New setting: Never flee. If on, creatures other than companions never flee. Some creatures, usually those using ranged attacks or spells, still try to maintain distance. Character obituary will not be sent to the leaderboard if this setting is on or turned on during a game. Off by default. - New setting: Death splash animation. Procedurally generated death splash animation instead of the "skull on red square" animation on creature death. Off by default. Thanks to Lagi for the idea. For a preview, see this: http://www.zorbus.net/tmp/splat.gif - New setting: Brighter darkvision. If on, the tiles seen with darkvision are a bit brighter, but only if your lightsource is unlit. Off by default. - Fixed a bug where you could auto reach attack a creature behind another creature. Other autoattack tweaks as well. - Buffs are listed when you inspect creatures with the target cursor. Previously only harmful effects were listed. - Small tweaks here and there. Release 41 (09-Oct-2020) - (Regular, not Greater) Amulet of Health was bugged, it didn't protect against disease. (thanks to Zero for reporting this) - Fixed a bug where the game unnecessarily created crash saves into the Crash-folder. You can delete your existing Crash-folder. - Duration listed in descriptions of items with duration effects. - New item: the Orb of Withering. This orb creates a necrotic field that prevents all creatures on the dungeon level from regenerating Health or Stamina (naturally, by talents, or by items) for the duration of the effect. Also affects vampiric attacks. - Added archetype characters (warrior and wizard) to character creation. These are pregenerated, quickstart character types. - Some new sound effects. - Small fixes and tweaks here and there. Some typos fixed. Release 42 (17-Oct-2020) - Fixed a bug where you would not get experience points from a creature (that you have damaged) dying outside of your view. A log entry is now also made in the style of "x dies elsewhere. (n XP)". (thanks to Robsoie for finding the bug) - Autoattack now functions on blocked areas if you and the target are already on that blocked area. - Two charm effect related bugs fixed. - Added mass loot function to level loot. When you press [CTRL] + [ENTER] on an item, all items of that same type are picked up. Autopilot automatically pilots you through the items and picks them up. Mass loot can be used with ammunition, devices other than books (potions etc.), keys, and trapkits. Most of these items are normally autopicked, but autopick isn't used when hostile creatures are seen. It's best used after the level is cleared of hostile creatures, and you want to collect the remaining coins, potions, etc. Remember that you can use "0" on level loot to filter coins, special or unique items and devices (potions, wands etc.). - Level loot now shows the distance to the item directly in the list. - New setting: Always bright Health bars. Normally Health bars under creatures are dimmed depending on the light amount of the tile. If this setting is checked, health bars are always drawn at full brightness. (off by default) (thanks to BenightedAlizar for the idea) - Added Archer and Leader quickstart archetypes to character creation. - You can now change the gender of archetype / random / past characters by pressing [G] in the first character creation screen. - Small fixes and tweaks. Release 43 (27-Nov-2020) - A tournament version of the game is included (Zorbus_Tournament.exe). You can not save the game in this version. The "hostile creatures never flee" setting can not be used in this version. - When you are about to use a Flask of Poison or a Flask of Slime, the item description shows which item it will affect. - The wiggle effect of partially seen multi-tile creatures was bugged. Fixed. (thanks to lemon10 for reporting) - If a default character name is set in settings, it is now used for archetype characters as well. - As usual, small tweaks here and there. Release 44 (05-Dec-2020) - Target mode renamed to examine mode. - New setting: Furniture animations. Teleporters, lightsources and crystal formations are animated. On by default, can be disabled from the settings. - In the autopilot-screen (P command) you can move the target cursor by 10 tiles with CTRL + arrows / numpad. Same works in the examine mode. (thanks to ZXC for the idea) - Recruitable creatures no longer pick up devices (potions, wands, etc.). You can still give them devices, but can not transfer devices from them to you, so you can no longer recruit creatures just to get their potions. Companions may also have equipment that can not be removed. - Changed weapon autoequip so that only thrown weapons are re-equipped (if you're still unarmed). Thrown weapons are also autopicked if no hostile creatures are seen. The notoriously buggy autoequip is hopefully finally fixed. (thanks Masterox and others before for reporting) - Keyboard help screen is color coded: movement, combat, resting, items. The screen is quite crowded and couldn't really fit any description for the colors. - Keybindings menu has presets for DCSS-style keybindings. Might need more tweaking. - If mouse is disabled but mouse tooltips are enabled in the settings, you can now see tooltips of items / talents in the panels of the main game view. This makes it possible to quickly see descriptions of items / talents without risking accidentally using them. (thanks to ZXC for the idea) - Mouse hovering over the current weapon set in the main game view shows the same extended info as the equipment screen. - Fixed the behaviour of creatures animated / summoned by a charmed creature so that when the charm is broken they stay friendly with the animator / summoner. (thanks to Adam Skinner for reporting) - Dismiss no longer affects multi-tile creatures. Some creatures are now immune to dismiss. (thanks to Adam Skinner for reporting) - Fixed a bug related to Arrow of Dismiss / Bullet of Dismiss. - Fixed a bug with the ability point-buy method in character creation. (thanks to Pieter Kirkham for reporting) - Fixed a bug where CTRL or ALT + NUMPAD 4 / 6 didn't adjust item amount in inventory. (thanks to Adam Skinner for reporting) CTRL pressed adjusts the amount by 10, ALT pressed adjusts the amount by 50. - Fixed several bugs related to multi-monitor setups. The game now remembers which monitor it was played on. (thanks to ZXC for help) - Removed the penalty to Search-skill check from having your lantern turned off when using autoexplore to detect secret doors. (thanks to ZXC for reporting) - Several typos fixed. (thanks to Tone and YARD, noticed them while watching / reading their let's play of the game) Release 45 (10-Dec-2020) - Autoexplore now picks up items that you would normally autopick, first from the current area that you're in, then after nothing to explore is found on the dungeon level, any remaining items from the whole level. As the autoexplore in the game works in bursts, area by area, it may look like it skips nearby items, but those items are then likely located on a different area number. - If you press [CTRL] + [ENTER] in the level loot list when the selector is on the top position, it will automatically pick all items from the explored areas on the level that would normally be autopicked. Pressing [CTRL] + [ENTER] on an item in the lists picks up all items of the same type (only works with ammunition, devices, keys, trapkits and coins). - Negative modifiers from equipment to Search-skill are not taken into account when autoexplore is used to detect secret doors. So you don't have to unequip your helmet even if it has a negative Search-modifier. This only applies to searching with autoexplore, not to normal searching during movement. - You'll get no experience points from animated or summoned creatures that are created after initial level creation. These can be identified from blue Health bars if the setting "Blue Health bars" is checked. - The inventory encumbrance bar now has slots for better encumbrance level visualization. - Items show the price that they can be sold for. Items that can be sold are in green in loot lists. - Buy / sell price adjustments now use modifier from the base, unadjusted Spirit-value. - You can no longer transfer books or scrolls to companions. - If you have an everlasting ammunition in your possession, same type of ammunition of equal or lower enchantment won't be autopicked. Branded and coated ammunition will always be autopicked. If the setting "Pick all ammunition" is disabled, then only ammunition for your currently equipped weapon will be automatically picked up. - Changed a bit how Elixir of Experience works: now you get the needed for next level minus needed for current level xp added to your current xp amount. Previously it just set xp to needed for next level amount. - Trapkits are now autopicked. - Current dungeon level is shown in the corner of the minimap. - Added color group descriptions to the keyboard help image. - Keybindings menu now has some help text. Binding conflicts (same binding used twice) are in red. Changed the DCSS preset a bit as it had some conflicts. - Obituary files now have more detailed dungeon level statistics (kills, xp total, xp from combat / skill use / exploration / other). - Talent descriptions now list their speed. - You can autopilot to containers which are mimics. Note that if some destination seems unreachable in autopilot mode, try moving the cursor around a bit. - Fixed a bug where some creatures (guardian ghosts etc.) would forget their hostility against the player. - Hopefully finally fixed a visual glitch where a map cloud effect like web or slime could stay on the map forever. - Fixed a bug where enchantment chance to succeed was negative with some items. If chance is 0%, enchantment is automatically aborted. (thanks to ZXC for reporting) - Fixed a bug where last log lines in obituary files would be wrong when "Log new messages on top" setting was no checked. (thanks to ZXC for reporting) - If your base Mind-ability increases, the talent counter will be recalculated properly. Previously it was reset when you got a talent-point. - Fixed a bug where taking the Lone Wolf talent didn't set the talent counter properly at the start of the game. (thanks to ZXC for reporting) - Fixed a bug where using hoopak and the Dualshot-talent at an enemy in reach attack range resulted in a reach attack instead of two ranged attacks. There's still the problem that you can not make a normal ranged attack at that range, it always makes a reach attack. Sometimes you might want to make a ranged attack in that situation with special ammunition. (thanks to Cookedpoo for reporting) - Fixed a bug where you could not reach attack using the mouse. (thanks to Cookedpoo for reporting) - Fixed descriptions of the Silver Spoon talent and the Wand of Fireball. (thanks to Tone for reporting) - Manual updated with some clarifications (experience, critical hits). - Several typos fixed. Release 46 (18-Dec-2020) - After character death, a new statistics table and maps of visited dungeon levels are shown. The maps show unexplored areas in blue. The statistics table shows "actions/s" which is a sum of keypresses and mouseclicks per second. You can switch between the tables with up/down or mousewheel. In the "game over"-dialog there's also a new button for opening the character obituary file (opens in system default text editor). - New setting: Never blink. If on, creatures other than you or your companions never blink (teleport away). Off by default. Character obituary will not be sent to the leaderboard if this setting is on or turned on during a game. - Autoexplore now picks up items that you have thrown. (thanks to Boomaye for reporting) - Autoexplore now picks up items from nearby areas if the tile they're on is explored and near enough to current location. - Autoexplore should now find a path to secret doors that are blocked by immobile creatures such as fungi or plants. - If one of your companions has a higher Search-skill than you then it is used with autoexplore to detect secret doors. You can give equipment to companions to boost their Search. - When you examine a creature the description now says if there is no XP awarded from killing it. - You can press W in the autopilot screen to cycle between wells, thrones and switches. - You get XP from killing a creature after its charm effect has ended (if the creature awarded XP in the first place). (thanks to Cookedpoo for reporting) - Fixed a bug where the max distance for a ranged weapon was calculated wrong. (thanks to Cookedpoo and Boomaye for reporting) - Fixed a bug where autopickup didn't pick up items with no weight when you were encumbered. (thanks to ZXC for reporting) - You can only have one clone (or simulacrum) at a time, a second clone will go berserk and attack you. Some update broke this, the clone would not turn hostile. (thanks to Dynast for reporting) Added warning about several clones to elixir and talent descriptions. - Fixed a bug where some unlikely creatures (golems, statues, etc.) were stealthy in darkness. (noticed from Tone's stream) - Creatures that follow you to another dungeon level are now ready to act faster after arriving. (thanks to Boomaye for mentioning) Their distance to you determines in what order they arrive on the new level. Companions still follow you from anywhere on the level, but that might change in the future. - Companions now react faster to creatures who slowly turn hostile against you. (thanks to Cookedpoo for reporting) - Shop restocking is now tied to several values, not just game rounds spent away from the shop level. (noticed from Tone's stream) - Skill tooltips in character sheet show the related key ability. Same for Zorbupedia skill descriptions. (noticed from Tone's stream) - In the level loot list, the "0" filter now also shows weapons with at least 3 enchantments. - Holy-damage now affects only evil-aligned creatures. - Fixed a bug where 1.5 x negative Body-modifier was added to damage with two-handed and versatile weapons (negative modifier should be added as is). - The visited dungeon levels table in the obituary files now show actions (keypresses / mouseclicks) per second per dungeon level. - Added some clarifications to skill descriptions. - Added examples of weapon combinations / sets to the manual. Also basic explanation of how the action queue in the game works. - There's now support for smaller patches that only replace the executable files. These patches are much smaller to download (below 5 megabytes). Autoupdate informs if a patch is available. Save files should be combatible but I wouldn't risk it so it's best to update only after you don't have any unfinished games. - Autoexplore is no longer interrupted by autoexplore key if setting "draw screen when autopiloting" is unchecked. - Added ranges to Dualshot and Multishot descriptions (these talents have the range of the used weapon, max 8). - Combination of Close Combat Ranged + Dualshot talents now correctly displays the yellow corner lines around a target in range 1. - Autoexplore is no longer interrupted by autoexplore key if setting "draw screen when autopiloting" is unchecked. - When you update the game from an older release, the update procedure also installs any existing patch at the same time. - If you opened a list (inventory, talents, etc.) and clicked mouse on an item without moving the mouse first (no selector visible), the list would just close and not select the item, talent, etc. Fixed. - Fixed a bug where a creature following you from dungeon level to another could set the area blocked from autopilot. - Fixed a bug where the log would say that you got XP several times from a creature that used Die Hard. You actually got XP only once, but the log entry for XP was still shown. - If you reset quickslots in the quickslots manager with CTRL + C and "Auto set quickslots" setting is on, your lantern is automatically assigned to F1 even if not equipped. If you have several lanterns, the highest ranked is used. - Fixed yet another bug where companions would not react to a hostile creature until it attacked you first. (thanks to Cookedpoo for reporting) - Fixed a bug where some map effect descriptions were shown in the log even if you didn't see them. - Fixed various typos (thanks to Cookedpoo and others for reporting). Release 47 (21-May-2021) - You can no longer return to the previous dungeon level. The reason for this was to remove tedious gameplay, where you returned to previous levels to find remaining secrets, and cheesy gameplay, where you returned to previous level to rest safely. - Support for game controllers. I've only tested it with Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller, hopefully others will work too. Controller needs to be enabled from the settings, and you can configure / test various things from there. The last page of the tutorial shows the controls, and the same page can also be seen if you enter the game menu with the controller. - Replaced old raycasting-based field of view -routine with an algorithm by Adam Milazzo. (http://www.adammil.net/blog/v125_Roguelike_Vision_Algorithms.html). If you are creating a game yourself, check it out. It's absolutely brilliant! - Removed the Map-command [V]. Autopilot-command [P] can now be used for map. It can now be opened even when hostile creatures are seen. - Removed the map note- and journal note -commands. - Creature AI changes: - Some creatures can now track you by scent. Races have different odour intensities, shown in character creation. - When you blink away, creatures might spread around to nearby areas to search for you. - When searching for you, some creatures may lit a lightsource (if they have one), even if they have darkvision. - Creatures can now set up traps when they're fleeing from you. - Some creatures may enter a berserk-state if wounded enough. A wardrummer drumming may also trigger this state. In the berserk-state creatures get combat bonuses and never flee. - Lots of other small AI tweaks. - Challenge ratings for creatures. - When you see a creature type for the first time, its name is shown on top of it for a few game rounds. - The color of the name indicates its challenge rating, ranging from ”harmless” (yellow) to ”deadly” (red). - Examine-mode and fire-mode show the ratings of all seen creatures. Also shown in creature description in the right side panel. - A creature's rating is updated when its or your stats change. - Just remember that while there are quite a lot of calculations behind the rating, it still is just a rough estimate. - New effect: Tracking. Available as ammunition, flasks and as a talent. - Tracking forms a mental link between the attacker and the target. The attacker knows exactly where the target is for the duration of the effect (the target is marked on the navi- and autopilot maps). The target also glows as if wielding a lightsource, making hiding in darkness impossible. Only one creature can be tracked at a time. The latest hit creature always becomes the target. The tracking link to a creature breaks if the attacker enters another dungeon level or Carillo. - There's also a talent ("Teleport to Tracked") and potion ("Potion of Stalking", needs a better name?) which teleports the tracker near the tracked creature. - Monsters can use tracking too. One might shoot you with a tracking arrow and know your exact location for the duration of the effect. And of course it will also inform its friends of your current whereabouts. - This effect might not be as usable or fun for the player as I envisioned it to be, but at least the monsters seem to like it a lot. - Character sheet has some changes. Some new stats on the 1st page, 2nd page redesigned, now showing the weapon sets with stats. Equipment and talent lists now have tooltips. - Weapon and talent speeds are hidden from the player. Action Cost and APR (actions per round) are used instead. - Weapons now have APR (actions per round) and DPR (damage per round) calculations. - This was a UI nightmare since you can use some items one-handed, two-handed or dualwielded which changes the stats. - Attack and defense values include all current ability-, skill- and other modifiers. Separate values are calculated for melee / throw / shoot attacks and melee / ranged defense. Ranged defense is only used with shields. - Inventory item statistics for one-handed and versatile weapons are calculated with an (imaginary) off-hand shield in use. The actual statistics can differ when weapons are dualwielded or when a versatile one- handed weapon is used two-handed. Second character sheet page shows the actual in-use values. - When you now blink, your companions are also teleported near you. Tweaked the algorithm behind blinking as well. - The Health-bar and UI frame flash in green when you're poisoned. - Autoattack target is now marked with two red triangles. - Autoattack automatically swaps to the other weapon set if it has a melee weapon and the active weapon set does not, and there's a hostile creature next to you. This can be disabled from the settings. - Attack marked -command [R] automatically swaps to the other weapon set if it has a shooting weapon and the active weapon set does not, and the nearest hostile creature is at least minimum distance away. Minimum distance can be adjusted from the settings. - Throwable weapons are no longer thrown with the Attack marked -command [R] unless the weapon has the returning-property, so you no longer accidentally throw your weapon. You can make throw attacks with the Fire ranged -command [F]. Why didn't I do it like this from the start? - If you for some reason end up being unarmed, a warning text is displayed on the top of you character tile. - Removed the extra 1.5 x speed duration for returning thrown items. - Off-hand thrown attacks get 1/4 of positive Body-modifier added, full if the modifier is negative. - Fixed various problems with the Multishot-talent: - You no longer shoot at creatures that are blocked by other creatures. - You shoot at creatures next to you if you have the Close Combat Ranged talent. - In gameplay, the talent is enabled when your current Ranged-skill is high enough for at least 2 targets, and there are at least 2 hostile targets that can be shot at (the lines of fire to them must to be clear). - When a large creature hits a smaller opponent, it's now possible that the opponent is pushed backwards by the strength of the blow. - You can bump into furniture that has a noted-indicator ("!") on them to "wake" up the creature (mimics, statue, etc.) - Autoexplore tries to struggle free from a restraining map effect (slime / web). - You can now try to escape a map cloud effect into the direction where your companion is standing. With [CTRL] + direction you can try the same with a hostile creature. - The inventory screen is no longer opened when you bump empty containers. - Empty barrels and barrels with only corpses or bones are automatically opened and marked as looted. Same with cauldrons. - Changes to quickslots: - The "F1" slot is automatically reserved for the lantern even if you have it turned off when clearing the quickslots. - Trapkits can be quickslotted for easier use, but they will never be automatically quickslotted. - A quickslot is dimmed if there's no sense of using it at that moment. Disabled if you can not use it at that moment. - [CTRL] + [D] clears set quickslots in the quickslot manager, but preserves player set quickslots. - You can toggle allow/disallow quickslotting of a device/talent with [DEL] in the quickslot manager. - You can lock a slot to certain item, which keeps it reserved even if you use the last of its type. - Related new setting "Hide corpses and bones". Hide corpses and bones from the "items on ground" side panel. This has the benefit that the "items on ground" side panel won''t be displayed when there are just corpses and bones on the ground, so the quickslots stay visible. - Remember, you can set up quickslots from the quickslot manager [F12], but also by pressing a quickslot-key that isn't yet binded to anything. For example, if the "5" slot is free, press it, and directly choose what to bind to it. - Some renovations in Carillo (the shop hub level): - Limited the amount of visits to Carillo per dungeon dungeon level. There's a chance that the teleporter is destroyed after you have visited Carillo 3 times. - The Tomb Raiders Guild has opened a shop in Carillo. Their prices are double to standard unless you have a guild membership card. No, you can't actually join the guild, but have to obtain a card somehow else. - The bouncer and the shopkeepers will tell you if they've added new items to their inventories. You can press [F10] when checking the shop inventory to filter only items that are new since your last visit. - Speech bubble from a friendly creature in Carillo no longer stops autopilot. - When browsing a shop inventory, the item description states how many of those items you already have in your inventory (devices only). - Hiding (in darkness) near plants and fungi now give bonus to Stealth-checks. Each neighboring plant/fungus gives a +1 to Stealth. This is not shown anywhere, but is used in calculations. Mentioned in the skill description. - The amount that "Health Surge" talent will heal is listed after its name in parentheses (in quickslots panel and talent list). - Two new switch rooms: anchoring and withering. - You can no longer use teleporters when you're anchored or when there's a level-wide anchor effect active. - Sound effects revisited, again. Even after removing and replacing many, there are now over 4000 sounds effects. Main menu now has music. It can be volume controlled from the settings, disabled if you set the volume to 0. - There's now a name for the currency used in the game, instead of just "coin". It's now called "zorbit", of course. - New settings: - Closing doors by bumping at the wall tile right of them is now an option that you can disable from the settings (on by default). - Option to require [CTRL] + direction to be pressed to interact with furniture, instead of just bumping at them. Does not affect bumping at doors to open them. You might want to turn this setting on if you constantly keep accidentally bumping at map objects. - Option to pick up trapkits, on by default. Trapkits have no weight, but you may feel that they clutter the inventory, especially if you don't use them. - Keybindings-menu can now be filtered with a keyword. - Clairvoyance-talent didn't work when you used it from the talents-menu with a hotkey (happened in Tone's stream last year). - Animal bones and corpses removed. I had an idea for them to rise as animal skeletons and zombies when animated, but don't have proper tiles for those. - Life saving items (Amulet of Life Saving, Plot Armor, etc.) always save life even when you don't have any Stamina left. They also save you from death even if you're withered. - Potion of Antidote cures poison, but now also gives immunity against poison for a duration. - Potion of Extra Healing / Potion of Superior Healing give immunity against disease for a duration. - New potion: Potion of Life. "This powerful potion restores 100 Health-points, cures disease and poison, and removes withering effect targeted against the drinker (map-wide withering effect is unaffected). The potion also grants regeneration and immunity to disease, poison and withering for the duration." - Trapkits can now be set even if you see hostile creatures, as long as they don't see you. Trapkits can be quickslotted for easier use. Some new trapkits added. - Summoning items (horn, figurines, etc.) have a longer duration. - Small changes to the playable races. Odour listed in race descriptions (hostile creatures can track by scent). - Talent progression changed. You now need Mind-ability of at least 18 to gain 1 talent per experience level. - Lone Wolf -talent gives +1 to all abilities (was +2). - New ASCII-mode setting: "ASCII wall / floor color adjustment". Random adjustment to wall / floor base color. - Huge amount of tweaks here and there. - Game balance has probably changed a lot, so the leaderboard has been reset. - There's an external tool, "Zorbus Dungeon Generator", available at http://dungeon.zorbus.net. It's a random dungeon generator to create tabletop RPG -style maps. You can run it in step-mode to see how the algorithm creates the map. Release 47 - Patch 1 (22-May-2021) - Fixed a bug where game controller stopped working in the autopilot-screen. - Autoexplore correctly informs when the path is blocked by a creature when searching for the remaining secret doors, instead of the "Nothing to explore" message. - Tweaks to companion AI: - Won't waste spells or devices against shrieker fungi. - Won't chase creatures through unexplored map tiles. - In stay-behavior will now unequip their lantern when you do. (thanks to Cadex Emu for reporting) - Resting is now halted if a companion (not animated/summoned) sees hostile creatures. (thanks to Cadex Emu for mentioning) Release 48 (29-May-2021) - Added navimap and map preview to the level loot screen. It now shows a path to the item. (thanks to Cadex Emu for the idea) - New companion behavior: Regroup. When in this behavior, companions try to stay close to you, melee attack only nearby creatures, use ranged attacks or talents against distant creatures, and blink away only if surrounded. In the default follow-behavior, companions move around more, and when fleeing try to move to a nearby area or blink away. - Related new setting: "Companion auto regroup-behavior", on by default. - Companions will automatically enter regroup-behavior from follow-behavior when they need to flee, trying to move towards you. Does not affect animated, summoned or charmed companions. - Related new setting: "Companion auto follow-behavior", on by default. - Companions will automatically enter follow-behavior from regroup-behavior when in full Health, in at least half Stamina, and no hostile creatures have been seen for some time. This affects only companions that have automatically entered the regroup-behavior (see the setting above). - Companion list is now shown also on top of the "items on ground" list in the right sidepanel. (thanks to Cadex Emu for the idea) - Valuable (sellable) items are now on top of the list. - Added a new command: "(Toggle) mundane ground items in sidepanel" with default binding [CTRL] + [BACKSPACE]. Toggles showing mundane (non-sellable) ground items in the sidepanel. If mundane items are not shown in the panel, they're listed in the log, ensuring that quickslots stay visible. - Continuous resting won't start if you're poisoned. - Summoning traps set by the player should now be more useful as the summoned creature now attacks also other creatures that hate the player instead of just the trap springer. - Disabling your own traps is now always successful (and you get the trapkit back). - Creature wiggle is now asynchronous by default, controlled by "Wiggle synchronous" in the settings. (thanks to Lagi for the idea) - Hopefully at least reduced the low health / poisoned flashing frame flickering that happened when you used mouse / controller. - Hopefully fixed a controller error. (thanks to Renan for reporting) - Fixed controller sensitivity when entering side panel. - Added a note to [F]ire-mode's help-text: "A friendly creature needs to be manually targeted". So if you want to make a shoot or reach attack against a friendly creature, you need to manually target it. Cycling targets does not select friendly creatures. - Replaced Homepage-button with a Zorbupedia-button in the main menu. - Zorbupedia talent list is sorted to boost/combat/spell/utility-talents. - Added better explanation for [CTRL] + [TAB] to the help text in the inventory-list. The command changes the inventory list type: - When looting stuff from the ground or from a container, use it to switch to your equipment & backpack, and vice versa. - When exchanging items to a companion, use it to get to your or your companion's equipment & backpack (depending on which side is active). - Also remember: - [F11] to switch companion in inventory-lists. - [CTRL] + [E] to enter exchange-mode from your equipment & backpack -list. - You can enter exchange-mode with a controller by pressing right thumbstick in personal inventory. - Several typos and errors in item/creature descriptions fixed. (thanks to Cadex Emu for reporting) Release 49 (05-Jun-2021) - Added some post-processing to the field of view -algorithm for better corner wall exploration. - Made some optimizations to autoexplore. - Fixed a bug where some throwable weapons without reach (hand axe, dagger, etc.) still could be thrown with the [R]-command when distance was 2, even if not of returning-type. - Distances to items in blocked areas are listed in red in level loot list. Blocked areas also drawn in red in the minimap of that screen. - Autotargeting for ranged attacks and talents (the red and yellow corners around creatures) tries first to target a non-summoned creature. - New setting: "Autoammo uses anchoring & withering", on by default. If this setting is enabled, autoammo uses anchoring and withering ammunition automatically. Anchoring is used against creatures that can blink away with a talent (usually spellcasters). Withering is used only against unique creatures. - Companions now use anchoring and withering ammunition automatically. So you can now give anchoring ammo to companions who will then shoot them at those annoying blinking spellcasters. - Companions won't go to blocked areas to pick up items. - Creatures summoned from traps set by the player won't get angry at player's companions. - Traps won't be created on containers that are automatically opened / peeked (empty barrels and cauldrons, or barrels and cauldrons with only bones or corpses in them). Release 50 (25-Jun-2021) - An alternate grid path for ranged targeting is now calculated and used if the first path is blocked. Also affects reach attacks and Charge-talent. Ranged attacks should now be symmetric, meaning that if creature A can target creature B, B can also target A. There are still some cases where you can see a creature but can't target it. Ranged attacks use Bresenham's line drawing routine to traverse grids, while the field of view -algorithm does not. - New command: Continuous autoexplore, default key [CTRL] + [E]. Keeps exploring until a hostile creature is seen, something is detected, a trap is sprung, or until the whole dungeon level is explored. Can not be used when in low Health (controlled with "Health flash percentage threshold" from the settings). - New command: Autopilot to next unlooted container, default key [CTRL] + [C]. You can now autopilot to next unlooted container directly from the main game mode. - Autopilot-screen shows the contents of peeked containers when the cursor is on them. - Lidless / opened containers are automatically marked as peeked when an area is fully explored, unless the area has creatures that get gradually more hostile. Peeked means that you know the contents of the container. - Hopefully fixed a bug where the autopilot-screen displayed wrong amount of unlooted containers. (thanks to Mkok for mentioning) - Fixed a bug where encumbrance wasn't recalculated in all cases where items were picked up. (thanks to Nopenope for mentioning) - Die Hard talent now heals the same amount as Health Surge. (thanks to Mkok for mentioning) - Limited the amount of simultaneous similar sound effects when looting or dropping big amount of items, and in some other cases as well. Release 50 - Patch 1 (01-Jul-2021) - Tweaked first area after descending stairs selection so that you don't enter an area of just couple rooms separated from the rest of the dungeon level by a single secret door. Release 50 - Patch 2 (06-Jul-2021) - Fixed a bug where if a hostile creature followed you to Carillo and started attacking the customers, shopkeepers might summon demons that were hostile towards you. Oozes or Tomb Raiders no longer follow you from the dungeon to Carillo. - Hostile creatures won't follow you to the Zorbus-level. - Some other small tweaks. Release 50 - Patch 3 (16-Jul-2021) - Some dungeon generator tweaks. - Offscreen creature warning arrows are now placed pointing at creature location, not just in the centre of map edges. Release 51 (24-Jul-2021) - Not so much new stuff in this release, but had to make a full release after some structural changes to data files. - Fixed a bug where alternate paths to target were not properly calculated at distance 2 (affected reach attacks among others). - Resting does not start if creatures that get gradually hostile are seen. - You can now drop items from your or your companion's inventory when exchanging items. - Creatures with a lightsource waiting in ambush no longer lit wall tiles until the ambush is sprung. - Lots of small tweaks. Release 52 (06-Sep-2021) - Fixed a bug where animated skeletons would needlessly pick up several armors and shields. (thanks to Faeren for reporting) - Level-wide anchor/wither-effects are removed when you go to another dungeon level / Carillo. (thanks to Nopenope for reporting) - Golems and clones are no longer counted as real recruits when maximum number of recruits based on Spirit-ability is determined. (thanks to Nopenope for suggesting) - Holy Burst talent is disabled in quickslots and talents list if there are no evil creatures seen. Same for the wand. - Some devices, mostly wands, are disabled in quickslots and inventory if they can't be used (for example, a wand might affect seen hostiles, but is disabled if none is seen). - Health bars under creatures are now framed with black, making them stand out more. (thanks to Namsan for suggesting) - New setting: White Health bars under friendly creatures. If enabled, Health bars under friendly creatures are white instead of green. Might help to distinguish friendly creatures from hostile creatures if you are suffering from red-green color blindness. (thanks to Namsan for suggesting) - Clicking left mouse button on a distant hostile creature no longer throws a throwable weapon unless it's of returning-type. - Clicking left mouse button on a distant hostile creature now respects the "Attack marked auto swaps to shooting set" setting, meaning that if the setting is enabled, and passive weapon set has a shooting weapon, then weapon set is swapped. - Fixed several characters in in-game books and help texts, that caused odd characters in some non-English Windows-versions. (thanks to Namsan for reporting) - http://building.zorbus.net has a roguelike development related "book" in PDF-format called "Building Zorbus one brick at a time". - Big thanks to Maximum Break (Gidon) and Another Dying (Jay) for making YouTube let's play videos of the game! - Another Dying: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt8DIPRtpvB6Na5aBXH6ZIbMb0XDG6xdg - Maximum Break: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7yHTTOjLsXkZn7t5Qsuc3wcGXT8vjHii Release 53 (19-Sep-2021) - New talent: Expert Trapper. - Normally you can set traps to nearby tiles only, but with this talent you can set traps traps on tiles up to distance 3. Setting a trap never fails and takes only half the time it would normally take to set. Traps set by you are harder to avoid, and possible damage or duration is increased by 50%. You will also gain a +4 bonus to Disable-checks when disabling traps. - New talent: Expert Enchanter. - Normally you can safely enchant an item with 3 enchantments, and every enchantment point above 3 decreases the enchantment chance by 15 percentage points. Plusses, extra elemental damage points, holy-/returning-/vampiric-properties, and on-hit effects count as enchantments. With this talent you can enchant items safely without any restrictions. - Tieflings get this talent automatically. - New item: Scroll of Disjunction. - This scroll separates enchantments from the main-hand weapon of the active weapon set into separate enchantment scrolls. Even if the weapon has several plusses, only one Scroll of Enchant Weapon is created. Sentient weapons are not affected. - New item: Elixir of Ability. - Increases a random ability score. Only available in shops, restocked every now and then. - Non-unique armor, shields, and weapons in shops are a bit cheaper now. - Fixed a bug where companions would just drop a better item after you gave it to them through item exchange. Reminder: Companions won't change equipped items that are set by the player in companions' equipment lists. Ammunition is an exception. - Trap tweaks: - Fixed a bug where no dialog was opened when you walked on a known floor trap that was on a tile with an opened door. - You can now safely walk on floor traps set by you (the dialog is still opened). - Reminder: in some situations you may want to intentionally spring a known trap, for example Animate, Confusion, Dismiss, Summon, or Anchoring traps. If you spring your own Animate or Summon trap, then the created creatures will be friendly towards you, and attack creatures that are hostile towards you. Animated creatures without a master will eventually turn hostile against everyone. - Fixed some grammar mistakes and typos. Release 54 (21-Sep-2021) - Fixed a severe bug in character generation. (thanks to David Mortin for reporting) - Scrolls of Disjunction are now generated only in shops. You're guaranteed to find 2 scrolls. - Scroll of Disjunction now shows a preview of possible disjunction results (a list of scrolls that will be created). Release 54 - Patch 1 (30-Sep-2021) - Note: Your save files should work after the patch, but make a backup of the save folder before updating! - Fixed a bug that prevented using stairs / teleporters. (thanks to Zero and Synth for reporting) Release 54 - Patch 2 (10-Oct-2021) - Fixed a bug where a creature was marked as caught in a web / slime even when escaped the map effect. - Fixed a bug where a creature was marked as poisoned even when the effect had ended. - Creatures are cured from poison and disease after using Die Hard or a life saving item. - You can now displace creatures from a cloud map effect. - You can now swap places with an animated or a summoned party member or a recruited golem from a harmful map effect. - New character archetype: infernal (tiefling). Release 54 - Patch 3 (17-Oct-2021) - If you fail at setting a trap, a dialog will open asking if you want to retry the attempt or abort. You can try as many times as you want, but each attempt will take normal duration. The dialog will not open / will close if a hostile creature spots you. (thanks to Namsan for the idea) - Fixed a shop-level loophole. (thanks to Mkok for reporting) - Expert Enchanter talent was originally deliberately meant to affect weapon enchanting only, but changed to also affect armor enchanting. Release 54 - Patch 4 (24-Oct-2021) - Added a warning prompt when you try to close the game window at the Zorbus level (where the game can't be saved). - Autoexplore is now correctly stopped when you come across a locked door when the setting "autouse key on lock" is unchecked. (big thanks to Zero for reporting and providing a save file) Release 55 (12-Aug-2022) - Resting until healed took quite a while in late game when you had hundreds of Health points. Optimized to be at least a bit faster. - Companion tactics. You can now command a companion to prefer ranged tactics instead of the default tactics. Ranged tactics means that the companion tries to maintain distance to hostiles and use mostly ranged weapons. Default tactics uses both melee and ranged weapons, and wont't try to maintain distance to hostiles. Ranged tactics is indicated with a ”R” letter on the companion image in the companion list. Default key for changing tactics is [ALT] + [1] - [9] (companion number) or [ALT] + [0] to change tactics of all companions. - You can use "ranged attack and retreat" tactics if you set behavior to REGROUP and tactics to RANGED on all characters. Can be very useful in some situations, like when retreating from a group of oozes that would otherwise destroy the party with their acid attacks. - Companions follow the player better in corridors. Companions no longer try to follow the player / chase enemies through unexplored areas. - New talent: "Seeker Shots". With this talent you can target anything that you see within your shooting weapon's range. There's a -3 modifier to attack per each obstacle in the line of fire. Can not be used with Dualshot or Multishot. - Tweaked autoammo a bit, so that regular or everlasting ammunition will be used against creatures with a "harmless" or "mostly harmless" challenge rating. There was a small bug in the previous implementation and it didn't take challenge rating into account, so autoammo would waste better ammo on harmless creatures. Autoammo can be toggled with [CTRL] + [Q]. - Hoopak can be used for reach attacks and shoot attacks. If the DPR of the shoot attack is higher than the DPR of a reach attack, then a shoot attack is made when distance to target is 2 (or at distance 1-2 if you have the "Close Combat Ranged" talent). - The area of effect of "Chain Lightning" talent and wand changed to "chain". Targets can now try to dodge the effect. - Dodging vs spell damage now takes the spellcaster's Magic-skill into account. The higher the caster's Magic-skill is, the more difficult the spell is to dodge. - Removed kick attack from playable character races. Unarmed fighting isn't really a thing for the player character, and previously punch + kick attacks in the beginning of the game were more powerful than most weapons. - You can see skill and talent progression when you mouse over the Mind-ability in the character sheet. - In-game Zorbupedia has a talent progression table in the talents info section. - Changed weapon enchantment a bit: - You can now safely enchant a weapon with 4 enchantments, and every enchantment point above 4 decreases the enchantment chance by 15 percentage points. Plusses, extra elemental damage points, holy-/returning-/vampiric-properties, and on-hit effects count as enchantments. - With the "Expert Enchanter" talent you can now safely enchant weapons with 9 enchantments. Every enchantment point above 9 decreases the enchantment chance by 15 percentage points. This talent enables armor enchanting without any restrictions. - You can no longer enchant a weapon with a "Scroll of (element) Weapon" if the weapon already has that damage element. - New enchant scroll: Scroll of Returning Shield. You need the "Shield Bash" talent to throw a returning shield. - New item: Carillo Express Card. Included in the items from the "Silver Spoon" talent. With the card, you will automatically get discount from the regular shops in Carillo. The card has charges which can be used to teleport the party to the Carillo teleporter. The card vanishes once the charges run out. - New item: "Unearthed Arcana" book (Halaster's diary) has finally some content. Some new text added to "Dungeon Master's Guide" as well. If you want to read them online, see http://www.zorbus.net/lore.html. Spoilers obviously. - New item: Wand of Wind. Conjures forth a strong gust of wind, which extinguishes lightsources and disperses cloud effects in 15 tile radius. Environment lightsources (torches, braziers, etc.) and lightsources carried by creatures are affected. Creatures whose lightsources are extinguished won't be able to relight them for a small duration (10-15 rounds). - New item: Arrow of Extinguishing / Bullet of Extinguishing. Ammunition that can extinguish lightsources. Environment lightsources (torches, braziers, etc.) and lightsources carried by creatures can be targeted. A creature whose lightsource is extinguished won't be able to relight it for a small duration (10-15 rounds). If you have enabled autoammo then this ammunition will be automatically chosen when the target cursor is on an environment lightsource. - New character archetype (quickstart character type): "Noble". Has the "Silver Spoon" talent which includes the new Carillo Express card. - Small adjustments to character archetypes. - Some new monsters. The nastiest new one probably is the "Sentinel", which on a successful hit teleports the target to the most dangerous location on the level. - The magic lamp djinni's inventory has now ammunition and some random devices (wands, horns, figurines). The djinni's inventory is different on each summoning, so you might have only one chance to buy certain items. - Companion / monster AI tweaks. - Death splash animation on by defaut. If you want the old skull death animation, uncheck "Death splash animation" from the settings. Several new death splash animations added. - Fixed a bug where items from the "Silver Spoon" talent weren't always created. - Fixed a bug where the rising indicator text was rendered over a wrong creature tile. - Fixed a rare bug where the dungeon level was completely explored, but no XP award for exploration was given. - Lots of other small tweaks here and there. - Leaderboard has been reset. The previous leaderboard can be found at http://wins.zorbus.net/r54/. Release 56 (14-Sep-2022) - The game can now be found on Steam at https://store.steampowered.com/app/2125420/Zorbus/. - Steam version has currently 20 achievements. - You can take screenshots to game library with F12, mapshots with [CTRL] + [F12]. - Possible future tournaments can be played with the Steam version only. - Steam overlay is not possible because the game doesn't use DirectX or OpenGL. - Changed some of the default keybindings: - Screenshot: from [CTRL] + [F5] to [F12]. - Mapshot: from [CTRL] + [F6] to [CTRL] + [F12]. - Quickslot manager: from [F12] to [CTRL] + [ENTER] or [DEL]. - Item compare in inventory / shop: from [F12] to [INS] or [CTRL] + [BACKSPACE]. - Tiefling's Fire Ray talent's damage changed to: fire: 2d4 + 1 per 2 levels. Difficulty to dodge the effect now scales with the tiefling's level. - Companions who are separated from the player behind unexplored tiles no longer group themselves around the player after autoexplore finishes. - Removed device use checks from wands. Now using wands is always successful. - Fixed a bug where some possessed creatures like dragons could not open doors. All possessed creatures can now open non-locked doors. - Elixir of Cloning is dimmed in inventory if you already have a clone in your party. Cloning chambers won't clone you if one already exists. - Effects from sitting on a throne and drinking from a well now last longer. - New item: Scroll of Darkvision. This scroll enchants the currently equipped armor to grant the wearer darkvision of 7 tiles. - Added darkvision-property to some of the existing items: Shadow Dragon Scale Armor, Night Club, Nightbringer. - Renamed "Kit of Dimensional Anchor trap" to "Kit of Anchoring trap", and changed the effect to target only the creature that sprung the trap (was a level-wide effect previously). - Renamed "Kit of Necrotic Field trap" to "Kit of Withering trap", and changed the effect to target only the creature that sprung the trap (was a level-wide effect previously). - New trapkits: Acid, Sonic Burst. - Fixed a bug in field of view postprocessing: sometimes it revealed wall torches of unexplored areas. - Some new content, lore, and dialogue added. Release 56 - Patch 1 (18-Sep-2022) - Fixed an essence related bug. - Some tweaks to Steam version startup. Release 56 - Patch 2 (25-Sep-2022) - Fixed a bug where you could recruit companions over the recruitment limit. (thanks to FrigidRock for reporting) - Hopefully fixed a bug where examining a creature could cause a "List index out of bounds (-1)" error on some game window configurations. (thanks to Pulshach and Rascal07 for reporting) - The "Speed Burst" talent is now a free action (doesn't take time). (Thanks to Vulkn for the idea. Another one of those "Doh! Should have been like that from the beginning" moments.) - Note for non-Steam users: Unfortunately the patching system doesn't change datafiles but only the executable, so you need to download the full game for this to take effect, or wait for the next full release. - Some AI tweaks. - Unlocked Steam achievements are now logged into the obituary (miscellaneous statistics & history). As some players have reported problems with achievements, an error message is written to the log / obituary history if something goes wrong. - Tip: If you want a companion to be a pure melee warrior, equip a melee weapon into both of his weapon sets. You have to equip the second weapon "by hand", otherwise the companion drops the reduntant weapon. Companions won't change equipment slotted by you. - Note: Check these settings if you're annoyed by fleeing enemies: - Never flee - If checked, creatures other than you or your companions never flee. Some creatures, usually those using ranged attacks or spells, still try to maintain distance. - Never blink - If checked, creatures other than you or your companions never blink (teleport away). - Character obituary will not be sent to the leaderboard when these settings are used. Release 56 - Patch 3 (26-Sep-2022) - Fixed a bug where flicking the switch in Sunrise rooms would not damage hostile, neutral undead. Now it deals energy-damage to hostile, neutral undead and holy-damage to evil undead. Doesn't damage undead companions. (thanks to Suejak for reporting) - Animal Friend can now try to tame foxes, jackals, and zorbos. (thanks to Suejak and others for reporting) - Halflings now get the Expert Trapper talent at 1st level. Release 56 - Patch 4 (02-Oct-2022) - Tweaked the game start a bit so that there won't be that many hostile creatures in the areas next to the starting room. - Tweaked later dungeon levels so that the starting area won't be created next to a throneroom. - Fixed a bug where the Orb of Dragonkind didn't affect wyverns although the item's description said so. (thanks to vehementi for reporting) - Steam achievement listing in obituary file's miscellaneous statistics was empty after a save game was loaded. Fixed. - If you use WASD keybindings, you can use the [W], [S], and [D] commands with [CONTROL] in the autopilot screen. Added a note about it to the autopilot help. (thanks to vehementi for reporting) Release 56 - Patch 5 (02-Oct-2022) - Using a Scroll of Disjunction didn't create a Scroll of Energy Weapon. Fixed. (thanks to vehementi for reporting) - Fixed a bug where mouseover on an unseen creature would change the cursor color to red or green. (thanks to vehementi for reporting) - Death of a god is written into the obituary history log even if the event was unseen. - Some typos fixed. - Leaderboard entries from the last 24h are now marked in green. Release 56 - Patch 6 (06-Oct-2022) - Hoopak's shooting DPR was calculated wrong. Fixed. (thanks to DaviddesJ for reporting) - Added alternatives to inventory commands: (thanks to DaviddesJ for suggesting) - [NUMPAD_PLUS] to switch companion (also [F11]). - [NUMPAD_MINUS] to toggle exchange mode (also [CTRL] + [E]). - [NUMPAD_MULTIPLY] to sort the items by time acquired / new items in shop (also [F10]). - [NUMPAD_DIVIDE] to toggle compare mode (also [INS] or [CTRL] + [BACKSPACE]). - Remember that you can open inventory with [ENTER], [NUMPAD_ENTER], or [I]. - Added trapkit usage stats under obituary file's "device uses". - Added notes to some of the item descriptions: - Amulet of Life Saving / Plot Armor: the Die Hard effect ignores withering. - Gloves of Expert Trapper: does not stack with the Expert Trapper talent. Release 56 - Patch 7 (17-Oct-2022) - New option "Stop continuous autoexplore after detection" under "Autopilot" settings. Checked by default. If checked, continuous autoexplore is stopped when something is detected (secret door, trap, etc.). Uncheck if you don't want continuous autoexplore to stop when secret doors or traps are found. - Tweaked autoexplore to better handle areas where it can not reach (mostly cases where known traps are blocking the way). Now it should at least autopilot the player closer to the area. - Level loot's "0" filter (valuable and sellable items) now also shows weapons and armor with +1/+2 enchantment in the early dungeon levels. - Fixed a bug where getting back to the game from the game menu didn't respect the master volume setting for ambient audio. (thanks to Lights for reporting) Release 56 - Patch 8 (22-Oct-2022) - You can now use flasks (of Slime, Poison, etc.) even when hostile creatures are seen. Flasks can not be quickslotted as in the main game view it would not always be clear what item they would target. - New setting "Stop when mildly hostile creatures are seen" under "Autopilot" settings. Unchecked by default. If checked, prevents and stops autopilot when mildly hostile creatures or creatures that gradually turn hostile are seen. Affects all autopiloting commands (autopilot, autoexplore, autopilot to unlooted container, level loot). (thanks to DaviddesJ for the idea) - Fixed a bug where creatures charmed with an orb were uncharmed (orb charmed creatures should stay charmed forever). (thanks to Casey and others for reporting) - Fixed a bug where Scroll of Returning Shield could enchant off-hand weapons. (thanks to DaviddesJ for mentioning) Release 57 (18-Nov-2022) - Important! This game release is not compatible with the save games of the earlier 56.x releases! - If r56 save files are detected, they are moved into "(game folder)\Backup_r56\Save". When you start the updated game, a menu will open where you can launch older releases of the game and finish those runs. - If you had an unfinished extended game going on where you plan to utilize previously ascended characters, you can continue that with the older release. - Check the "Skip this menu until a new release is out" checkbox if you don't want to see the menu anymore until a new release is out. - You can also manually run the older version of the game from the "Backup_r56" folder, but close any other running version of the game first. - Older game release backups that don't have any unfinished save games are removed after a month. - If you launch an old game release from the menu, and the game doesn't seem to react to keyboard presses, it might be that the game window just isn't active. So click somewhere on the game screen with the mouse, and you should be ok. - Troubleshooting forum thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2125420/discussions/0/5350867208718932978/ - Tournament with Steam / Amazon gift card prizes in December! The main menu will have a "Tournament rules & leaderboard" button during the tournament (also visible one week before / after). The button opens the webpage at http://tournament.zorbus.net. When you start a new game, you can choose between a regular and a tournament game. - New scoring system. For details, check the PDF manual (page 53) or in-game Zorbupedia ("scoring" 1 and 2). - Score can be seen after a game has ended, and in more detailed form in the obituary file. - This replaces the old system where score was simply the amount of experience points. - Leaderboard has been reset. You can find the old leaderboard at http://wins.zorbus.net/r56. - Small changes to some of the endgame opponents: The O.G. got multipunch / multikick talents, the Titan got multipunch. - Previously if animated / summoned creatures were not seeing their master for some time, the creatures broke free of their master's will. - Removed this for animated creatures. - New setting: Autoexplore to creature. On by default. - If checked, once you have completely explored a dungeon level, autoexplore autopilots to the nearest hostile creature. Creatures that do not award experience points or are in areas blocked from autopilot are ignored. Since creatures can move during autopiloting, you may need to use autoexplore a few times to reach the creatures. - Once you have completely explored a dungeon level, you can see the amount of remaining hostile creatures in the autopilot screen. - New tactics mode: Melee only. (ALT + companion number to change tactics of a companion. ALT + 0 to change tactics of all companions.) - Fixed a bug where some creatures did not properly relight their lantern after it being extinguished by the player. - New lore book: Diary of the Depressed Demigod. - Item change: Book of Decide: expanded this lore book a bit. - Item change: Boots of Domination, Boots of Mobility: the wearer is immune to attack effects that push the defender. - New in the Silver Spoon talent: - You will also receive item deliveries from your family. These will be placed in the Silver Spoon chest in the main area of Carillo. A new delivery is available each time after you have descended to an even-numbered dungeon level (2, 4, 6, 8, 10). After you have descended to dungeon level 6, a butler golem will be delivered to Carillo. - New setting: Never teleport player or companions. Off by default. - If checked, you or your companions will never be teleported by hostile creatures (flumphs, sentinels) or by teleport / dismiss effects. - Character obituary will not be sent to the leaderboard if this setting is on or turned on during a game. - Can not be checked in the tournament version of the game. - New setting: Auto hide mouse cursor. Off by default. - If checked, pressing a key on the keyboard hides the mouse cursor, moving the mouse brings it back. (thanks to Morphix_314 for the idea) - Character generation changes: - Warnings and color coding if a save file with current character name already exists. - Added info on ability random rolling method when menu selector on reroll. - More points to ability point buy -method. - Added color coding based on filling talent ability / skill requirements in character generation / level up screens. - Recruit dialog changes: - When recruit / remove button is active shows the max amount of companions + some info. - Recruit button not shown if all your companions haven't yet arrived on the level. - Recruit button text in red if party is already full. - Carillo Express card is disabled in quickslots / inventory if there's an achor effect active. - Tutorial scaled 2x if it fits to screen (mainly 4K displays). - Added a tip on closing doors when the cursor is on an open door in the examine mode. - Some new female NPC sound effects. - Obituary changes: - Score table. - Shows the reroll count if character's abilities were randomly rolled. - Best melee weapon / ranged weapon DPR per experience level (taken when there are no temporary Body / Motion modifiers). - Switch room usage counts, trap disabling stats, and trapkit usage stats under "Miscellaneous". - Changes in party composition are now logged (companion recruits and removes). Release 57 - Patch 1 (23-Nov-2022) - Optional personal local leaderboard. If you want this, check the option "Create obituary after death". - You can launch both leaderboards (local & online) from the main menu. Both open in your default internet browser. - You can also manually see the local leaderboard by clicking "personal_leaderboard.html" in the Obituary-folder. - If you want to clear the local leaderboard, just delete all files from the Obituary-folder. - Fixed some number rounding errors in the new scoring system. - Fixed a bug that spammed unneeded comments ("Had no companions." etc.) in obituary's history log. Release 57 - Patch 2 (03-Dec-2022) - Fixed a bug where the Seeker Shots talent didn't work with the mouse when shots were made in the main game mode (not in fire mode). (thanks to General_Jah for reporting) - New setting: Cursor centering in examine / target modes. Off by default. (thanks to Decay for the idea) - Disables centering the view around the cursor in examine / target modes, and instead the view is moved when the cursor is close to a screen edge. This setting is used as the default for started games, but you can toggle this in-game when in examine / target modes by pressing [C]. Automatically used if the "No view centering (push-scroll)" setting is checked. - "Push-scroll" setting renamed to "No view centering (push-scroll)". - Removed the cycle containers -command [C] from the examine mode. - Some changes to mouse commands: - Right mouse button in main game mode is now only used for "use last used talent at location". - Interacting with creatures is done with [CTRL] + left mouse click or with middle mouse button. - You can now attack gradually-turning-hostile creatures with a reach or shoot weapon from the main game mode. - You can melee attack gradually-turning-hostile creatures with [ALT] + left mouse click from the main game mode. - Added some mouse related tooltips to the info box. - Changes to item exchanging with companions: - When exchanging items with a companion, first [ENTER] keypress or first left click on an unselected item under the selector just chooses the item, and the second [ENTER] keypress or left click transfers the item. - If the unselected item under the selector is a potion, just one item of the stack is selected. You can select the whole amount with SPACE or adjust the selected amount with movement keys left / right. - Items that can not be transferred back from a companion are color coded in red and there's a warning in the item info box. - Fixed a bug where the email field in settings didn't output "@" character when [SHIFT] + 2 was pressed. Release 58 (21-Jan-2023) - Important! This game release is not compatible with the save games of the earlier 57.x releases! - If r57 save files are detected, they are moved into "(game folder)\Backup_r57\Save". When you start the updated game, a menu will open where you can launch older releases of the game and finish those runs. - If you had an unfinished extended game going on where you plan to utilize previously ascended characters, you can continue that with the older release. - Check the "Skip this menu until a new release is out" checkbox if you don't want to see the menu anymore until a new release is out. - You can also manually run the older version of the game from the "Backup_r57" folder, but close any other running version of the game first. - Older game release backups that don't have any unfinished save games are removed after a month. - If you launch an old game release from the menu, and the game doesn't seem to react to keyboard presses, it might be that the game window just isn't active. So click somewhere on the game screen with the mouse, and you should be ok. - Troubleshooting forum thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2125420/discussions/0/5350867208718932978/ - Zordiac challenge: - Find the 3 books (This is the Zordiac Speaking, vol. I-III), solve the cipher. First one to solve it will get a $50 Steam gift card as a reward! - When reading books, press TAB to switch between the script font and a plain font. Book text can be copied into the clipboard with CTRL + C. - Check this webpage to see if anyone has yet solved this: http://www.zorbus.net/cipher.txt. - Mail the solution to joonas@zorbus.net. - New command: Full rest (V or NUMPAD_MINUS). - Rest until both you and your companions are fully healed and restored. - This will often take some (real) time when you have lots of Health / Stamina points and there are still lots of creatures on the dungeon level. - Resting is now properly interrupted if a companion is hit by a ranged attack / spell from an unseen enemy or is otherwise damaged. Previously an unseen enemy could kill a companion during resting if the companion was set to regroup-behavior. (thanks to M for mentioning) - New command: autopilot to next undisabled trap (CTRL + T). - Changed "trap cycling" key to T and "focus cursor on tracked creature" key to X in the autopilot screen. The old key R for trap cycling still works. - Autoexplore now checks if the player or companions can detect traps from already explored areas. (thanks to Tempe for mentioning) - Continuous autoexplore now properly starts when there are autopickable items on the player tile. (Tempe) - Autopilot command (P) now binded also to NUMPAD_PLUS by default. - Companions that don't fit the companion list now respect the "command all companions" command (CTRL + 0). Change tactics works also with ALT + 0, but the indicator (none, M, or R) can be seen only on characters that fit in the character list. - Command key in the companion list is in red if a companion is poisoned. It's just an indicator, you can still command the companion. - Mouse tooltips in the companion list now lists states / effects that the companions has. - Tweaked autoattack / approach and attack -command (A) so that it attacks creatures that are on a blocked area when the player is not, and the player is next to them or can reach attack them. (Tempe) - Moving with mouse clicking: better pathing around obstacles when hostile creatures are around. (Tempe) - You can now order companions to target (attack) friendly creatures in examine-mode. (Tempe) - When you give orders to a specific companion (1-9) in examine-mode and the cursor is on the companion, following behaviors are cycled: follow, regroup, stay. - You can now transfer devices (potions, wands, etc.) that you have given to companions back to you, but they won't let you transfer the original devices that they had in their possession. The original devices won't be combined with devices of similar type as long as they're in the companion's possession. - Added floating text indicators when a creature is anchored / tracked / withering. - Added floating text indicators on a creature when one of these effects end: anchored, diseased, poisoned, tracked, withered. (Tempe) - New setting: "Attack marked Health percentage". Minimum Health percentage for attack marked to be available. 0 disables (default). Works similarly as the setting "Autoattack Health percentage", but instead for the attack marked -command (R) for reach / ranged attacks. (Tempe) - New setting: "Centaur hooves sound effect". Hooves sound effect when playing as a centaur. Disabled by default, as it can be a bit distracting. - Inventory / level loot lists: typed filter accepts multiple keywords separated by spaces. Pressing SPACE is a bit problematic since it's also used for actions / selecting items, but this can be bypassed by pressing SHIFT + SPACE or by pressing ".". Remember that you can enter a filter keyword in lists by writing it with SHIFT pressed, but if you disable letter selecting from settings, you can just write a filter word directly without pressing SPACE. Level loot has letter selecting disabled as a default. - Talents menu during birth / level up: you can filter talents by writing a keyword with SHIFT pressed. (SHIFT needs to be used as pressing C or H already open the character sheet / Zorbupedia) - Settings / keybindings menu, book reading, log viewing: typed filter accepts multiple keywords separated by spaces. - Added starting date id to save game filenames, so that you can have several ongoing games with the same character name, and no longer have to worry about saves being overwritten. - Email address in settings menu is hidden, mainly for streamers. (thanks to Cowslanlr for the idea). - By pressing O in the tutorial screen, you can open it in your designated PDF viewer so that you keep it open on another monitor. So from the main game mode press H twice to get into tutorial screen, then O. The PDF tutorial also exists in the game folder as "Tutorial.pdf" and has the keyboard help screen included as the last page. - Better handling of corrupt save files. (thanks to Aeth for help) - Some players have reported that their ascended characters were not saved on the endgame level, i.e. the avatars file was not properly saved or was recreated on later runs. Could not yet reproduce this problem, but the game now creates a log file to try to catch this problem. The log is saved to the game folder as "Log.txt", and shows changes to the avatars file among other things. Release 58 - Patch 1 (22-Jan-2023) - Fixed a bug that could happen when autoexploring and "Auto use key on lock" setting was unchecked: autoexplore would not try to find alternative routes around a locked door. (thanks to Tempe for providing a save file) - Fixed a bug that could happen when "Stop (autopilot) when mildly hostile creatures are seen" setting was on. (thanks to Tempe for providing a save file) - The current Health / Stamina values after level up are now set to the same percentages of max Health / Stamina as they were before the level up. Previously the Health warning sometimes launched when the current Health of max Health percentage dropped under the warning threshold. So now there's a small boost to your current Health and Stamina on each level up. Release 58 - Patch 2 (26-Jan-2023) - Fixed a bug where autoexplore would not pilot in front of an unexplored area if the door to that area was trapped. - Friendly creatures (non-companions) should no longer block autoexplore / autopilot. Happened mostly when there was just one corridor exit from an area. - If no clear path to a container / item / trap can be found, autoexplore / autopilot automatically clears the flora (plants and fungi) from its way if a path is found that way. - Yet another new setting: "Flora overgrowth". - For immersion, some areas in the dungeon are overgrown with plants and fungi. You might need to clear your path to get through the area. - Enabled by default: overgrowth areas similar to previous releases of the game. - If unchecked, plants and fungi are not placed next to each other. - A minor impact to gameplay: creature's Stealth is boosted when surrounded by plants and fungi. - If a companion runs out of ammunition, there's now a red ”A” (for arrows) or ”B” (for bullets) indicator on the bottom right corner of the companion's image in the companion list. Had to set the letter background to solid black, otherwise it looked garbled, even with a text shadow. - When a creature is charmed or tamed it is cleared from being the target for autoattack. - Examining a creature with the target cursor shows in its description if it can be recruited or tamed. - If the new commands (V for full heal, CTRL + T for autopilot to nearest trap) introduced in release 58.0 don't seem to work, reset the keybindings in the keybindings menu. - The Zordiac Challenge cipher has been solved. The winner is Herr Harold! The solution: http://www.zorbus.net/cipher.txt. Release 58 - Patch 3 (28-Jan-2023) - The teleporter to Carillo should now always be generated in an area that has enough connections to other areas of the map. What could happen is that the teleporter was in small group of areas that were connected to the rest of the map through a single secret door, and if you used some item (Carillo Express Card, for example) that teleported you to the teleporter, you could end up stuck in that area if you could not detect the secret door (and had no items to boost your Search-skill). (thanks to Vulpy for providing a save file) - Fixed yet another bug in autoexplore. (thanks to Vulpy for providing a save file) - Several players have reported that Steam thinks that the game is running although the game process has ended. - Moved the call to SteamAPI_Shutdown as the last thing that the game does when it closes, to the game form's OnDestroy() event, to see if that helps. - Also made a separate tool to test the shutdown: http://www.zorbus.net/zorbus_steam_test.zip. Release 58 - Patch 4 (25-Feb-2023) - The game now autosaves before going to a different dungeon level and after each level up. Autosave is deleted when the game is saved normally. Hopefully this will help players who suffer from power outages. - Autoexplore (to remaining hostile creatures) no longer autopilots to friendly animals if you have the Animal Friend talent or an item that grants it. (thanks to Grey Lensman for mentioning) Release 59 (02-Jun-2023) - Important! This game release is not compatible with the save games of the earlier releases (r58 and older)! - If earlier save files are detected, they are moved into "(game folder)\Backup_r58\Save". When you start the updated game, a menu will open where you can launch older releases of the game and finish those runs. - If you had an unfinished extended game going on where you plan to utilize previously ascended characters, you can continue that with the older release. - Check the "Skip this menu until a new release is out" checkbox if you don't want to see the menu anymore until a new release is out. - You can also manually run the older version of the game from the "Backup_r58" folder, but close any other running version of the game first. - Older game release backups that don't have any unfinished save games are removed after a month. - If you launch an old game release from the menu, and the game doesn't seem to react to keyboard presses, it might be that the game window just isn't active. So click somewhere on the game screen with the mouse, and you should be ok. - Troubleshooting forum thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2125420/discussions/0/5350867208718932978/ - Some new options during character creation: - Spirited Learner is a talent that can be chosen only on the 1st experience level and only during ability adjustment. It costs 1 talent point. - You might not be the smartest but you sure are spirited. You learn new things by hard work and sheer determination. With this talent, Spirit-ability is used for skill and talent point progression instead of Mind. Note that even with this talent, Magic- and Search -skills still retain Mind as their key ability, and all spell talents have a Mind requirement. Mind of at least 6 is needed to be able to read. - When using the point buy -system for ability scores, you can trade 5 points for 1 talent. - New talent: Bloodlust. - When you kill a creature with a melee or a ranged attack, your Stamina gets restored by 10% of your max Stamina, and you gain a temporary 1d4 point boost to your Body-ability for 11-20 rounds. The ability effect does not stack with other temporary ability effects. Half-orcs get this for free. - New talent: Holy Warrior. - Spiritual upbringing enables you to channel holiness to attacks against evil-aligned creatures. 1 point of holy-damage is added to melee and ranged attacks. The damage is increased to 1d2 once you reach experience level 12 and your adjusted Spirit-ability is at least 16. Only evil-aligned creatures are affected. Holy damage is doubled against most undead creatures. Stacks with holy damage from weapons and from temporary effects. - New talent: One with Darkness. - You have an extraordinary knack to be fully functional in complete darkness. You gain darkvision of 8 tiles, +3 to Stealth-checks when trying to remain unseen in darkness, +5 to perception checks to detect creatures in darkness, +5 to attack rolls against creatures that don't see you (stacks with the normal +10 bonus, also a bonus to score critical hits). When you score a critical hit, you do 25% extra damage (stacks with the base 50% extra from critical hits and extras from other sources). Can only be taken on the 1st experience level. - New talent: Veil of Darkness. - When activated, you emit a burst of darkness which extinguishes seen lightsources within 15 tile radius. Environment lightsources (torches, braziers, etc.) and lightsources carried by creatures are affected. Creatures whose lightsources are extinguished won't be able to relight them for a small duration (10-15 rounds). - Melee Elemental Damage / Ranged Elemental Damage talents: These now scale with experience level. - Stonesense talent: You'll get +1 to Search-checks when trying to detect secret doors, +2 to Search-checks when trying to detect living statues. Recruitable rogue saints (living statues) are stronger when you have this talent. - Changes to the companion list on the upper right corner: - Shows max 20 companions. - Added keys for commanding companions 10-20 individually. - Some of the commanding keys have changed! - [INS] or [F11] toggles the list. - [CTRL] + [INS] or [CTRL] + [F11] toggles the viewing of expendable companions (constructs, animated, summoned, charmed). - [CTRL] + number to command companions 1-10, [CTRL] + [F1]-[F10] to command companions 11-20. - [DEL] or [NUMPAD_0] to command all companions. - [CTRL] + [DEL] or [CTRL] + [NUMPAD_0] to command all expendable companions (constructs, animated, summoned, charmed). - You can use mouse wheel up / down to hide / show the list. - Rogue saints are no longer counted as real recruits, they're grouped with golems as "constructs". - Companion options: - On the second page of a companion's character sheet are some options to control more of the companion's behavior. Currently just one: you can set an option that a companion won't animate or summon creatures. - New item: Orb of Nullifying. - This orb creates a nullifying field that removes a group of resistances from all creatures on the dungeon level for the duration of the effect. The nullifying affects randomly either physical (blunt, pierce, slash) or elemental (fire / cold / lightning / acid) resistances. Only one nullifying field can be active at a time. - Some changes and clarifications to critical hits: - A critical hit does 50% more damage. Affects all damage element types (physical, cold, fire, etc.). - Improved Melee Criticals and Improved Ranged Criticals talents add an extra 25%. - One with Darkness talent adds an extra 25% if the defender can not see the attacker. - If the defender is sleeping, critical hits do 100% extra damage, but this does not stack with above modifiers. - Some changes and clarifications to stealth: - If the defender can not see the attacker, the attacker gets a +10 attack bonus. One with Darkness talent adds an extra +5. - If the defender is sleeping, the attack roll for melee attacks is an automatic 20, ranged attacks get a +10 attack bonus. - After an attack made from a neighboring tile, an unseen attacker is always marked visible to the defender. For attacks made from distant tiles, a Search vs Stealth skill check is made to determine if an unseen attacker is seen. A spotted creature can move to a new position to try to gain stealth again. - Added some new mouse commands to the inventory screen: changing between companions, switch between equipment / inventory etc. These can be activated by left / right clicking the inventory list title bars. See tooltips for more info. - Creatures flash in blue when they heal themselves. - Good and neutral aligned creatures get 99 holy-resistance, making damage output in the log more consistent to other element types. Previously the holy-element was simply zeroed if the defending creature was not evil. - Fixed an inconsistency in logged damage calculations that occured when a creature died, so that the damage element calculations make sense. Previously you could see something like "...and kill it! (Blunt: 1 = 4 - res 1)". Now you'll see "(Blunt: 1 = 2 - res 1)" - Fixed a bug where the autosave wasn't deleted when the game was won. (thanks to Lights for mentioning) - Keybindings have changed. This release should automatically reset them to the defaults, but if it doesn't, do so from the keybindings menu. - The command "Toggle low health warning" in the WASD-keys -preset now defaults to [CTRL]+[H]. Previous [CTRL]+[W] was in conflict with "continuous walk to north". - Added 44 new Steam achievements for a total of 64. (thanks to ZeroAffex and Lights for ideas!) - Tutorial and PDF manual updated. PDF manual now has descriptions of all talents. - Small changes to sound effects. - The leaderboard has been reset. The old leaderboard is here: http://wins.zorbus.net/r58/. Release 59 - Patch 1 (03-Jun-2023) - Fixed a bug where an anchor effect was set as the last used talent if the player was affected by it after flicking a switch in a challenge room. Release 59 - Patch 2 (05-Jun-2023) - Fixed a bug where companion list indicated a companion being out of arrows / bullets when the companion had a shoot weapon in both weapon sets and the quiver had wrong type of ammo for the other set. - Level loot screen now remembers the last sorting method: by distance or by item type. (thanks to Level10Cybermancer for the idea) You can switch between the sort methods with [F10] or [NUMPAD MULTIPLY]. - Fixed a bug with the "Lever Lover" achievement: now only switch room switches are counted for this achievement. Release 59 - Patch 3 (15-Jun-2023) - Changes to enchanment scrolls: - You can now give enchantment scrolls to companions, and then use them from their inventories. Your Mind-ability and possible Expert Enchanter talent will be used when reading the scroll. - When enchanting items in inventory, you can press [CTRL] + [W] to swap the active weapon set. - If two weapons or a weapon and a shield are equipped in the active weapon set, unequip the first item if you want to enchant the other item. - Random character creation now uses the new talents introduced in release 59: Spirited Learner, Bloodlust, etc. - Fixed a bug where creatures animated in Carillo were too powerful. (thanks to Horthas for reporting) Release 59 - Patch 4 (16-Jun-2023) - You can now use mouse wheel to switch to previous / next companion in the inventory screen. Move the mouse to the list title and then scroll wheel up or down. With the keyboard, previous companion can now be selected with [CTRL] + [F11] or [CTRL] + [NUMPAD PLUS]. Release 59 - Patch 5 (23-Jun-2023) - New things in inventory screen: - Now shows companions as a list of images making it easier to switch between companion inventories. - Removed switching between equipment/backpack and backpack/floor. This was just confusing. Hopefully no one misses this. - Some companion related inventory keybindings have changed. - You can now switch between companions: - [CTRL] + [UP] / [DOWN] - [NUMPAD MINUS] / [NUMPAD PLUS] - [CTRL + F11] / [F11] - By clicking a companion image from the list of images. - By using mouse wheel when the mouse pointer is on the list titles or on the list of images. - You can now switch between equipment & backpack and exchange-mode: - [CTRL] + [TAB] - [NUMPAD 0] - [CTRL] + [E] - By right clicking when the mouse pointer is on the list titles or on the list of images. - You can adjust item amount with the mouse wheel when the selector is on an item. - [SHIFT] pressed adjusts by 1, [CTRL] by 10, and [ALT] by 50. - Made some adjustments on how companions replace equipment by better ones that you give them. - If they fill the ability requirements of an item, they should always equip the more valuable item (value in zorbits). - If you come across a situation where this doesn't happen, take some screenshots of the situation ([F12]), and I'll take another look at it. - Remember, if you equip an item by hand, the companion won't change it (other than ammunition). - Some players have complained on how the settings screen is confusing, all dumped into one list, etc. - It may be, but it's not high on my to-do -list to do anything to it. - Remember that you can jump to next titled section with [TAB], and can filter the settings by writing a keyword, like "autopilot" or "health". - There are benefits of having just one list with groups, as there are settings that belong to many groups, and filtering shows them all. Release 59 - Patch 6 (26-Jun-2023) - Added companions as a list of images to the character sheet. - Clicking near the character sheet companion / page switch arrows no longer closes the character sheet. If you use the mouse, it's easier to use mouse wheel to switch between companions and right mouse button to switch the page. Added a tooltip near the arrows to mention the mouse commands. - When in exchange-mode in inventory, left clicking your character now resets to your equipment / backpack. Release 59 - Patch 7 (28-Jun-2023) - Added an option to use [CTRL] + left / right to switch between companions in inventory when the selector is at top position (not shown). - Some other small UI tweaks. Release 59 - Patch 8 (19-Sep-2023) - You are now guaranteed to find an Elixir of Talent in one of the shops in Carillo. - Level loot now remembers the state of the "0" filter (which shows coins, devices, special and sellable items). - This can be toggled by pressing "0". Also added an alternative key to toggle it: [NUMPAD_0] - Fixed a bug where "xxx wakes up" messages were generated during combat. (thanks to Aoemica for mentioning) - Fixed a bug where arrow keys didn't function in examine- / level map -modes when DCSS keybindings were used. - Changing the name of a pregenerated character is now saved. - You can now delete saved games from the load menu by pressing [CTRL] + [DEL] when the selector is on the save. - When the game goes idle after 30 seconds of no player interaction, all animation / sound effects now correctly stops. Previously the health bar flashing and heartbeat sound effect didn't stop. - The section in the obituary file that lists former ascended players and companions now also mentions their race and experience level. - Added some clarifications to in-game ability / skill descriptions, Zorbupedia, and the PDF manual: - When defending against a melee or a ranged attack, every adjacent hostile creature above one decreases the defense by 2. - When using the Magic-skill, every adjacent hostile creature increases the skill check difficulty by 1. A positive Spirit-modifier decreases the difficulty by one creature per modifier point. A negative Spirit-modifier further increases the difficulty by the modifier amount.