Solstice (now at v0.0.44b Alpha)

[getter77]

v0.0.38 

New features

Added a wide-screen mode (Press CTRL and Numpad + and - to change sizes)
Added Origins to character creation process; origins determine starting stats and provide bonus skills and resistances.
New Centurion skill - Commanding shout - cause fear in your enemies and inspire your allies with a leaders word of command.
New Centurion skill - Berserk - as the title suggests, the Centurion becomes enraged, both doing and taking increased damage. This skill is physically exhausting. Increased level improves damage, reduces defense penalties.
New Mindblade passive skill - Mental Fortitude - each level increases the mindblades resistance to mental attacks (eg, confuse, fear, charm, etc); also shields your allies from mental attacks.
New weapons, creatures, etc.

Balance changes

All classes will now have 6 active skills unlocked at character generation, 1 passive skill unlocked at character generation, and 1 ultimate skill that is unlocked via a quest. There is now a large pool of general skills (planned to be around 25-30) that are not class specific.
Players now how 3 unassigned skill points at the beginning of the game, with class skills unlocked.
Removed Cause Fear from Mindblade skill set (too similar to the new Centurios skill - the goal is for each class to play differently).
Monk Leap Attack now ends in a spin kick if not landing directly on an enemy.
Monk Haste now improves evasion rating while active.
Blackpowder weapons (guns, rifles) are now the exclusive domain of Alchemists (without finding a trainer) (Gun Use).
Gun skill and scavenge shot have been rolled into 1 skill called Gun Use (improving your gun skill simultaneously improves how much ammo you can scavenge when breaking down metal items.)
Blacksmithing currently allows item repair at level 1, weapon improvement at level 2, and armor reinforcement at level 3 (armor/weapon crafting not implemented yet).
Added discrete disease resistance stat, and berserk stat.
Some skill checks ALWAYS have a failure/success chance regardless of the skill disparity (notably, you always have a chance to hit or miss in combat); other skill checks can now be so difficult/easy that they cant hit/miss (eg, if your Fire Resistance is 100, you can't be hit with a fire attack, even on a critical)

Bug fixes

Players were unable to assign locked skills to hotkeys even though they started with free points.
Fixed ground
color in weather window.

[Samildanach]

I like the new changes (regional races, targetable abilities, etc). Good stuff.

I just came across an oddity.



I might be misunderstanding it but I think what's happening here is that somehow the shopkeeper had -2002 gold when I arrived, and I can't make any transactions at all when he has negative money, even to buy from him. I just want to buy that potion!

[Brigand]

I like the new changes (regional races, targetable abilities, etc). Good stuff.

I just came across an oddity.

I might be misunderstanding it but I think what's happening here is that somehow the shopkeeper had -2002 gold when I arrived, and I can't make any transactions at all when he has negative money, even to buy from him. I just want to buy that potion!

Oooh, good catch, thanks! I have corrected my code to allow transactions that make money even if the vendor is in the negative. The real question for me is how did he get to -2002 in the first place? I don't see where youre trying to sell 2000 gp of equipment, and he cant spawn with negative gold.

Thank you Samildanach

[Samildanach]

The real question for me is how did he get to -2002 in the first place? I don't see where youre trying to sell 2000 gp of equipment, and he cant spawn with negative gold.

I'm not sure. I had visited him previously and sold him about four or five items, but nothing that should have cost him thousands of gold (unless something was secretly worth more than it seemed), plus I had bought some things in exchange which should have at least partially balanced it out.

I'll watch out for this happening again, maybe I can spot a pattern.

[Brigand]

I'm not sure. I had visited him previously and sold him about four or five items, but nothing that should have cost him thousands of gold (unless something was secretly worth more than it seemed), plus I had bought some things in exchange which should have at least partially balanced it out.

I'll watch out for this happening again, maybe I can spot a pattern.

Hmm, after a little digging, I am gonna guess you had visited this vendor in the past, and were returning to him at a later date. I have some code that has the vendor buy and sell while you are away, and it wasnt subject to buying when it didnt have enough gold - hence a massive debt. However, if you were actually playing the Infinite Dungeon, I'll have to look closer.

[Samildanach]

Yes, I bought and sold a couple of things then went to a dungeon for a bit, came back and found the -2002.

[getter77]

v0.0.39   

In addition to whats listed below, there was a massive, 4 day clean up of submap generation, combat routines, damage calculations, and cell properties. I believe performance is slightly improved, and code is generally cleaner, but I'm sure a bug or 2 crept in that I overlooked.


New features

New Priestess skill - Bind Soul - Resurrect a corpse as a completely loyal minion at the cost of your own blood. Decay level of the corpse affects the abilities of your minion.
New general skill - Poisons - Currently, this ability allows you to poison your weapon a number of times for the cost of some mana; ultimately, when the crafting interface is done, you will require reagents to produce the poisons. Araxians get the skill for free at the beginning of the game
Some terrain can now be destroyed/changed by your skills in addition to melee attacks (eg, freezing water with a frost ray, or splitting a boulder with a bolt of lightning).
Ally/Enemy indicators
New attack synergies (being hit with fire will cancel the effects of freeze or slow and vice versa, using an earth attack on a frozen target can shatter, higher chance to freeze during rain, lightning does more damage during wet weather, etc.)
You are automatically resupplied with a limited amount of food from the supplies foraged by the crew when you reboard your ship.
Higher levels of bow use (fletching) and crossbow use (bolt crafting) produce better ammo.
2 new monk combo finishers.
Monk combo skills now provide a to-hit bonus and a slight damage bonus as your improve them.
Monk combo skills can now be increased to level 10; only the first 3 levels are required to use them in the combo chain - the additional level improve their damage and to-hit bonus.
Allow numbers and spaces in character names, and longer save file names (trivial change).
Holy attacks now illuminate the target in addition to burning evil targets; illuminated targets are easier to hit. If the target is not evil, it will not take the extra damage, but will still be illuminated.
Few new monsters; new monster attributes and abilities (eg, nocturnal flag, resistances explicit, etc.)

Balance changes

Weapons now have ideal ranges (as well as monsters). You can still attempt any shot you want on a creature you can see, but your ranged to-hit falls off linearly past the ideal range.
Weather affects ranged combat.
Cartography now improves your chance to passively detect secret doors (if you notice on your map there's a big void between 2 walls...)
Cartography now improves your chance to passively detect traps (this may become a separate skill at some point).
Removed "Purchase Mode" from the character screen entirely - just press + when highlighting a skill to put points into it.
Experience curve lowered slightly; stat and skill pt bonuses on level up slightly altered.
Number of points invested in a skill limited to max experience level.
Endurance drain and recovery rebalanced.
Max HP and Mana calculations reduced. HP is based on constitution and level; Mana is now completely based off willpower.
Mana and HP regen rates changed slightly.
Damage reduction from armor calculation changed with the addition of new armor types; you will see more damage reduction the more armor you have relative to the damage taken. Conversely, if your armor value is a fraction of the incoming damage (less than half), you will see little reduction. The keeps centurions from becoming unstoppable, and allows a general reduction in creature damage so that low HP characters are not unplayable.
Monk combo skills must be at level 2 to continue a combo, and level 3 to finish a combo.
Base sight range increased.
Creature perception range increased.
Holy damage now causes you to glow with an unearthly light, lowering your evasion.
Monk combos shifted around slightly (if you only use water and wind strikes, the combo finisher will be related to those 2 elements, with the exception of a single, special combo.)

Bug fixes

Skill activation was not targeting correctly from the character screen.
Doors could sometimes be generated "hanging" off a single wall in the dungeon due to minimum corridor lengths between adjacent rooms.
Fixed transitions for ladders.
Massive cleanup of submap generation code; addressed some missing cell descriptions and triggers.
Cleanup of AI code; minor performance improvements.
Monk combo skills must be at level 2 to continue a combo, and level 3 to finish a combo.
You could target creatures standing in light that were off the display (probably more realistic, assuming line of sight, but looks bad when creatures are walking in the message area.)

Outstanding

To improve performance, I use a single heightmap for creature pathfinding; unfortunately, if you charm/raise a swimming creature, he cant use that pathfinding algorithm, so I either need to implement a second swimming height map, or choose a less performance demanding pathfinding routine.

[getter77]

v0.0.40 

New features

- New engineer skill - Caltrops - create a field of painful, slowing metal spikes to keep enemies at bay. Requires metal fragments from which to fashion the caltrops.
- New general skill - Scavenge - allows you to break down an item for its materials. Higher levels of this skill produce more usable material.
- Crafting - Currently there are 4 basic crafting categories (general, alchemical, blacksmithing, weaving/tailoring), with a few more planned. Basic crafted items are slightly better than found ones.
- Full crafting interface - Press Ctrl + I to see all your recipes and components, and what you need to complete a recipe. You can also craft a highlighted recipe by pressing enter.
- Abbreviated crafting interface - Press Shift + I to quickly list recipes you can complete immediately (those that you currently have everything you need).
- New items and weapons.

Balance changes

- The alchemist has undergone a transformation to an Engineer, which appears to be slightly more suited to how his skills are turning out. As a result, he no longer starts with alchemy, but has some new "techish" skills to compensate.
- Switching between melee and ranged attacks now incurs a slight (half-turn) penalty. The swap occurs automatically when you change attacks, or if required, you can prepare a specific attack type beforehand. To prepare a melee attack when using a ranged weapon, press Z once (normally forces melee attack if you were using melee weapons); to prepare a ranged attack when using melee weapons, press f once (ranged attack).
- Pole arms are very slightly less damaging than other 2-handed weapons, but can provide a modest evasion or defensive bonus.
- Creatures must be able to see to be warded off by a magic flare.
- Inventory item selection is now case insensitive.
- Poison is now an general crafting skill rather than a discrete skill - Araxians still get the ability for free as a crafting recipe, and start with several poison vials. Other classes can obtain poison by learning alchemy. To apply your poison, <u>se the poison vial (don't drink it).
- Some armor types provide bonuses to evasion rather than penalties (for example, the armor distorts exactly where you are, making you harder to hit)
- Alchemy is now a non-class specific crafting skill rather than a class skill.
- The basic crafting skills (create bullets, arrows, bolts, etc.) now require either wood or metal fragments, or possibly both.
Note: the creation of arrows/bolts remain tied to their respective skills (I may for completeness add the crafting recipes to blacksmithing, but the bow/crossbows skills are not going away, as they retain the fletching/bolt crafting ability.)

Bug fixes

- Allies we not staying properly leashed when out of visual range.
- Variable type for player current burden was an integer, causing rounding errors with items with fractional weights.
- Changed vendors to buy items one at a time, but failed to changed the buying price.
- Using flare in the infinite dungeon would teleport you to a new level.
- Changed flare mechanics; removed targeting.
- You could use a skill that was unlocked but had no points in it by activating it from the character screen.
- Throwing a bottle of water at a creature could sometimes cause a crash.
- Weapon damage types were getting overwritten as normal damage.
- Slowed creatures were still moving at full speed due to sequencing bug.

Outstanding

- To improve performance, I use a  single height map for creature path finding; unfortunately, if you charm/raise a  swimming creature, he cant use that path finding algorithm, so I either need to  implement a second swimming height map, or choose a less performance demanding  pathfinding routine.

[Lucentdepths]

I'm loving this *in general* The system seems real well thought out, the map is detailed but understandable, the skill system is cool.. found a few trainers etc... and its only alpha, huzzah.

But a couple glaring things have made it an exercise in frustration, and imo absolutely need to be taken care of. It *should* be fairly simple but would definitely involve work.

FIREPLACES are a huge problem. I cant even finish a single quest in a town. If the elder has a fireplace, he's guaranteed to die. In fact any NPC with a fireplace is guaranteed to die. They WILL walk into it and burn to death. So will your puppydog.

Tagging hazardous tiles as such and making NPC pathfinding attempt to avoid moving into them willingly, even to the point of just staying still instead of moving, would fix this.  Depending on how in depth you want it, you could code exceptions to the rule. "if creature immune to fire, creature will walk through fire willingly... or, if creature is in berserker rage, 50% chance to walk through fire regardless of danger"

This has  been maddening and I've barely played an hour or two. Otherwise awesome.

Food is the other issue I'm seeing. I've found out how to reuse bottles to get water (at the ocean no less haha) to restore a bit of stamina, and getting new rations at the ship works,.. but corpses seem to be unusable. 'U'sing a corpse, unlike 'U'sing a ration, gives no endurance but just renames it to 'corpse' instead of 'goblin corpse' or 'panther corpse'. But the system at least somewhat seems to understand that corpses are food, because when you salvage a corpse, it gives the message 'you have salvaged x organic material from the RATION'

Now, not playing far but knowing there is crafting, I don't know if you have a way to use those 'organic material' to combine into rations if you have the proper skill.. and that would be awesome! But you should be able to consume corpses in a pinch, for less satiation than properly salvaging/butchering and making real rations. And that of course opens the door to special corpse effects if you ever want to go that route.

In the mean time, workaround for not being able to get food 'on the go' which is REALLY needed for long journeys (quest to go check out this place faaaar faaar away and far from where you can bring the ship.. you need tons of food)... is exploiting the ship.

For now you can get up to 3 free rations by going to the ship. You can then enter the ships hold and store those rations in the chests. Leave the ship. Enter the ship again and you'll be given 3 more rations. Do this a few times to make a food stockpile and you can actually do some traveling without getting stuck unable to move. Once food is more readily accessible (corpses, and probably eventually making real rations?), this exploit could be fixed, perhaps, by making ship rations a special sort of ration (S. Ration?) which could not be put into the chests on the ships hold, preventing the exploitation of it. Especially seeing as you could probably exploit them for gold too. Though I've yet to see a merchant.

All in all really amazing for just a 0.4. I'm very impressed. I'll be passing this along to some other folks I know.

EDIT: To get new rations at the ship, you have to not only exit the ship, but exit the ships tile and step back onto it on the map, thats what triggers the new rations, not actually entering the ship area.

EDIT 2: Don't use water flasks from the ocean...

EDIT 3: Found hostile village kinda dangerous still level 1.. mage.. lizardman village. Took em all out. Moving in now because it has a forge and a well.. wells are gooood ! ^_^

[Brigand]

Thank you so much for taking the time to play and leave feedback

FIREPLACES are a huge problem. I cant even finish a single quest in a town. If the elder has a fireplace, he's guaranteed to die. In fact any NPC with a fireplace is guaranteed to die. They WILL walk into it and burn to death. So will your puppydog.

Yeah, I just found this one out last night. Apparently I broke it last release. It was pretty funny to see the villagers running around on fire. I need to add some flavor text where they scream when on fire...   Fixed, and will be in Fridays release.

Food is the other issue I'm seeing. I've found out how to reuse bottles to get water (at the ocean no less haha) to restore a bit of stamina, and getting new rations at the ship works,.. but corpses seem to be unusable. 'U'sing a corpse, unlike 'U'sing a ration, gives no endurance but just renames it to 'corpse' instead of 'goblin corpse' or 'panther corpse'. But the system at least somewhat seems to understand that corpses are food, because when you salvage a corpse, it gives the message 'you have salvaged x organic material from the RATION'

Now, not playing far but knowing there is crafting, I don't know if you have a way to use those 'organic material' to combine into rations if you have the proper skill.. and that would be awesome! But you should be able to consume corpses in a pinch, for less satiation than properly salvaging/butchering and making real rations. And that of course opens the door to special corpse effects if you ever want to go that route.

Just added in the ability to consume corpses, for an increasing chance to get sick the older the corpse is. I think i will add a cooking ability to reduce this chance.

Not sure yet what I want to do in terms of special food effects. Don't want to blatantly copy Nethack with corpse consumption. I am open to any cool ideas you might have

In the mean time, workaround for not being able to get food 'on the go' which is REALLY needed for long journeys (quest to go check out this place faaaar faaar away and far from where you can bring the ship.. you need tons of food)... is exploiting the ship.

For now you can get up to 3 free rations by going to the ship. You can then enter the ships hold and store those rations in the chests. Leave the ship. Enter the ship again and you'll be given 3 more rations. Do this a few times to make a food stockpile and you can actually do some traveling without getting stuck unable to move. Once food is more readily accessible (corpses, and probably eventually making real rations?), this exploit could be fixed, perhaps, by making ship rations a special sort of ration (S. Ration?) which could not be put into the chests on the ships hold, preventing the exploitation of it. Especially seeing as you could probably exploit them for gold too. Though I've yet to see a merchant.

Good catch, I hadn't considered making a stockpile, so this will have to be altered a bit. I am going to make crew foraging limited by time (X food per day, etc, depending on how well they forage.)

The idea behind food is less to kill you, than to limit how far inland you can explore until you gain better abilities, or acquire a stockpile of food for exploring. Thats why wells can replenish you infinitely; they provide a radius from which you can explore without expending food, as does the ship.

[Lucentdepths]

In the meantime I've resorted to save scumming in towns because PC's willingly sacrifice themselves constantly.. important ones.. elders, trainers, merchants, healers.

So now I save before entering a new town and reload until I get a town where the important NPCs, or at least the elder, are in buildings with NO fireplace.

Also, if an elder dies, you can never finish their quest. It ends up stuck in the quest log. I suggest either the ability to abandon quests, or automatically remove them if the NPC who gave them to you dies (the only time it really matters), otherwise it clutters up and its hard to keep track because they aren't done by town names/npc names.

I would suggest that specifically, because there are ways they can die even if they stop walking into their fireplaces. Like a PC rampage force attacking them, or some so-far unknown event you throw in, etc.

[Lucentdepths]

Note for Players: To keep your companions from sacrificing themselves (notably the dog you start with and anything you manage to charm/raise later),  you can press 's' to make them stay in place when you enter a town and not follow you. Otherwise prepare to lose your companions.

EDIT: Nevermind.. this doesn't seem to make them stay put for more than a few turns :/

[Samildanach]

You can then enter the ships hold and store those rations in the chests.

I didn't know it was possible to roam around the ship!

Good catch, I hadn't considered making a stockpile, so this will have to be altered a bit. I am going to make crew foraging limited by time (X food per day, etc, depending on how well they forage.)

I also didn't know there was a crew or that they could forage!

Clearly I still have a lot to learn about this game.

[getter77]

v0.0.41 

Sorry it's a bit light on new features this patch (several new recipes, a few new world interactions, some interface ease-of-use fixes, etc); no less work was put into it over the past week, just that most of my time was spent squashing bugs, making a ton of balance changes, and a whole lot of code refactoring that needed to be done before I continue.

New features

- You can remove any weapon or armor from a quick menu using Shift+R on the map screen (similar to using e to equip, or shift+E to equip your offhand.)
- Recipes can now be found as loot (some special recipes will not drop randomly).
- Advanced the main story quest very slightly (mainly testing the quest framework).
- You can now extinguish light sources using water (lights expose stealthed characters, maybe some other effects with nocturnal creatures).
- You can now consume corpses for a little bit of nutrition; beware disease the older the corpse.
- New recipes


Balance changes

- Armor now will block damage equal to your DEFENSE rating, up to half the incoming damage. Hopefully, this will allow armor to make a big difference to received damage, while keeping high armor characters from becoming completely untouchable. (I am open to suggestions if anyone can think of an alternative damage reduction based on DEFENSE, considering DEFENSE values can get really high compared to damage values - I absolutely dont want to raise damage values because it makes clothies unplayable when they die in a single hit.)
- Priestess now starts with level 2 armor proficiency (leather) given that she can be played melee (albeit stealthy melee)
- Vendor screen cleaned up - the original system would only allow you to buy and sell entire stacks of equipment (why would you want to buy 3 pairs of leathergloves?), so I changed the system to buy and sell a single item at a time, which was also clunky when it came to ammo/throwing weapons/etc. Items now buy and sell in single units UNLESS it makes sense to buy it as a "bunch" (eg, a quiver of arrows, stack of crafting components.) Also some adjustments to prices (buying and selling.)
- Weaving renamed the more generic tailoring, and includes leatherworking in additional to cloth.
- Shroud of Darkness renamed Fade to avoid confusion with Cloak of Darkness.
- The time it takes the ship to build up a supply of foraged food for you is no longer instantaneous. The captain will only give you supplies if aren't obviously carrying any, and enough time has passed for the crew to find food.
- Like gold, picking up crafting components/herb is automatic and does not consume a turn (a little less realistic, but since the components are currently weightless theres no reason not to other than to add a bit of tedium.)
- Allies with ranged attacks will now find an optimal range to fire their weapons and stay while an enemy is in sight, rather than the slightly more chaotic "dancing" they were doing before; they will move to maintain that range, and return to whatever they were doing before an enemy came into sight.
- Crafting station requirements are now linked to the recipe rather than the skill type (for example, and alchemist could make glass bottles using a forge to melt the glass shards.)
- Creatures now have discrete melee speeds (they already had ranged cooldowns for reloading weapons; melee and movement speed, however, used to be the same value.)
- Some shuffling of racial bonus skills until all are complete. (There was some skill overlap in the race that gets suggested for each class.)


Bug fixes

- Skill screen could sometimes crash if you pressed space with the very last skill highlighted.
- Creatures of all movement types except swimming should be able to use the pathfinding heightmap.
- Villagers and pets/allies are now no longer too stupid to avoid walking in fire...doh....
- Fixed a performance issue with allies being unable to find a valid path to the player and constantly requerying for the path each turn (eg, you teleported somewhere unreachable.) If an ally doesnt know where you went, or cant realistically reach you, he will cease trying until you open a path for him or refind them.
- Fixed an ally targetting bug (raised creatures were still picking targets/nearest threats as their base type, not considering that they were no longer hostile.)
- General clean-up of save game code (not surfaced to user; save files are a little bit bigger, but massively reduce code complexity and the chance I forget to make a change in the right places.) Affects all creatures and objects.


Planned for next patch

- Hireable henchmen
- Pets/Henchmen will level
- Humanoid will not carry and use equipment
- Cooking (maybe)


Outstanding features

- A bunch of incomplete skills (the Mindblade and Centurion are particularly glaring example, though I dont have all the crafting skills done, and a TON of the general skills arent implemented yet.

- Lots of the storyline remains to be defined, though the overall arch is complete.

- Complete the homebase building screen. (If youre so inclined, you can actually build a complete town with the few objects implemented right night - stone walls, doors, windows - with no restrictions. I just haven't completed any of the town populating interface which is tied into the quest interface eg, rescue the blacksmith, build him a forge, and he will live in your base and work for you.)

- Complete the siege interface. About 25% complete, requires homebase building interface to be complete.

[getter77]

v0.0.42 

New features

- Certain creature types
(those with humanoid shape and intelligence, such as a skeleton or a troll) can now use armor and weapons (melee and ranged). While the equipment level is generally tied to a creatures power level (if you're level 1, its unlikely you will beat up a powerful creature for his powerful equipment), occasionally a creature may get lucky and stumble upon something powerful. This equipment is of course available to you should you defeat the creature. Ammo is used by a creature - they don't have unlimited shots - and they will switch to melee attacks when they run out.
 - You can give an ally (actually any friendly who can use equipment, such as a villager) a specific piece of equipment to use by standing next to them and <h>anding it to them. They will return the removed equipment, if any. If you hand an ally a 1-handed weapon while they are already wielding a 1-handed weapon, they will swap weapons if it is larger or equal in size/damage, or equip it in their off-hand if smaller (dual-wield). Otherwise, they will swap out the weapons/armor as expected. (I may need to add specific fighting style flags to the creatures to determine what happens on a case-by-case basis.)
 - You can now hire henchmen to accompany you on your journey. Your personality determine whether someone can be influenced to fight for you, and how many will do so at once (how good of a leader you are perceived to be).
 - New Mindblade skill - Agony - The Mindblade can create a psychic link with a target (who must have a brain - you can't use it on plants, constructs, etc.), inducing the target's pain center. This is as painful to the target as real injury (inflicting damage each turn), and the target will eventually shut down and die as a result. If the target gets too far away, or moves out of sight, the link will be broken.
 - New combat style - Unarmed - (Monks start with this by default, but it is not formally a monk-only skill). Unlike weapon skills, you gain improved attack speed with increased skill level, to the point you can make multiple unarmed attacks before an enemy can respond. Damage type is indicated by your gloves/gauntlets, if equipped. In addition, the weight of the gloves/gauntlets increases melee damage and attack speed (heavier gloves make you attack slower.)
 - Added a secondary target indicator that displays the area affected by a remotely targeted AOE (e.g., flash powder.)
 - All players start with the ability to "craft" a camp fire - useful for cooking (not implemented yet) and other types of crafting recipes (blowing glass bottles, for example).
 - Several new recipes and items (mostly buff type potions, some new armor and weapons).

Balance changes

- Pickaxe is now considered a 1-handed axe so that all classes can at least use it for digging.
- Fade has been rolled into Cloak of Shadows. Cloak of Shadows allows the user to stealth, and now also provides the Fade passive evade bonus. The Priestess will be compensated with a different passive skill.
 - Engineer's flare is now of limited duration (higher intelligence = longer duration; smarter engineers can create their flares to burn longer).
 - Climbing gear now allows you to escape pits/holes, in addition to its original functionality of climbing mountains. (You must have at least 1 point of climbing skill.)
 - Close Wounds (monk) is now a regeneration effect rather than a straight  heal (duration improved by level=more heal ticks, tick magnitude determined by constitution.)
 - Spears have been added as a 1-handed polearm, providing a moderate defense boost (other polearms provide evade bonuses). Can be used with a shield (and largely intended to be).
 - If your melee weapon is cursed, you can't swap to using your ranged attack, and vice versa. (Attempting to melee with a cursed ranged weapon results in a large hit to both damage and attack skill.) Previously the curse would only stop you from switching out the weapon slot.
 - Experience gained from fighting monsters lower level than you is reduced, down to zero if they player is significantly higher level. Fighting higher level creatures provides an experience bonus.
 - Bind Soul now only allows you to raise one creature at a time. Binding your soul to another corpse will cause the first to instantly die as your soul is no longer animating it.
 - Raised creatures (from Bind Soul) and Charmed creatures no longer count  against your total ally limit.

Bug fixes

- Skills were activatable outside their maximum range.
 - Attempting to craft a non-existent recipe resulted in a crash.
 - It was possible to equip a shield in your offhand without the shield dependency depending on how you equipped the item.
 - Fixed some of the scaling issues on the various screens.
 - Fixed pricing algorithm to avoid players being able to sell equipment at a higher price than it's subsequent sales price (except in very specific, intentional circumstances.)
 - Player was able to use ammo of any type with launcher of any type.


Outstanding

- Allies need to have a separate screen where you can examine their stats and equipment in detail.

 - Allies need to level up on their own experience curve.

 - Allies need to have AI implemented to seek out better weapons (maybe...don't want they to take something the player wants), and pick up their own ammo after combat.

 - A bunch of incomplete skills (the Mindblade and Centurion are particularly glaring example, though I don't have all the crafting skills done, and a TON of the general skills aren't implemented yet.

 - Complete the home base building screen. (If you're so inclined, you can actually build a complete town with the few objects implemented right night - stone walls, doors, windows - with no restrictions. I just haven't completed any of the town populating interface which is tied into the quest interface e.g., rescue the blacksmith, build him a forge, and he will live in your base and work  for you.)

 - Complete the siege interface. About 25% complete, requires home base
building interface to be complete.