Tangledeep (now at Launch in Some Weeks Patch Roundup!)

[getter77]

  http://store.steampowered.com/app/628770/Tangledeep/  $14.99 Win/Mac/Linux

Tangledeep combines the 16-bit graphics and polish of classic SNES-era RPGs with elements from roguelikes and dungeon crawlers to create a magical experience for players of all skill levels. Trapped in underground villages with no memory of the world at the surface, you must survive an ever-changing labyrinth to discover what lies above. Experience rich, tactical, turn-based gameplay as you explore a sprawling dungeon that’s different each time you play. Tangledeep features a customizable job system and hundreds of collectible items that allow you to approach each playthrough in a totally new way!

The Setting
For hundreds of years, people have lived in the safety of underground settlements and villages – where the only route to the surface is “Tangledeep,” a mysterious and ever-changing labyrinth. With memories of the surface world long forgotten, you set out for the labyrinth to discover what lies above. With each floor – full of magical beasts, ancient automatons, bizarre environments and hybrid biomes – the mystery grows ever deeper…

Key Features
    Experience finely-tuned, procedurally-generated and handcrafted gameplay as you fight challenging monsters, complete quests, and collect rare items.
    Master deep, tactical turn-based combat across 9 unique jobs. (More to come!)
    Choose between two game modes – including Adventure Mode, which removes the pain of permadeath.
    Share some of your progress between characters by using the banking system, or planting magic trees and raising monsters in town.
    Take in the scenery – comprised of beautiful 16-bit graphics and carefully handcrafted maps!
    Relax to a beautiful soundtrack composed by award-winning composer Andrew Aversa – joined by Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana) and Grant Kirkhope (GoldenEye 007, Civilization: Beyond Earth).

Multiple Platforms and Control Methods
    Runs on both PC and Mac, with Linux support in continuing development (already works great on several distros)
    Play with virtually any controller, and remap any control, binding, or shortcut
    Old-school keyboard-only support (numpad movement) as well as WASD preset bindings available
    Full mouse support - can even be played with ONLY the mouse!

Why Early Access?
“Tangledeep is already a beautiful, polished game with dozens of hours of gameplay. Its procedurally-generated maps, hundreds of items, 9 jobs, and diverse monsters give it high replayability even though the game isn't 100% done yet. Through Early Access, we can continue iterating on the game - expanding the dungeon, the story and lore, more items, more jobs, etc. - while also collecting valuable and useful feedback from players!”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Tangledeep will be in Early Access until December 2017. We have a clear development roadmap and we expect the full, final game will be released in either November or December.”
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The final version of the game will have significantly expanded story and lore content, more art (i.e. character directional sprites, attack animations), many more items, side areas, jobs, abilities, and secrets, fine-tuned balance, and additional challenge modes, among other things.”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Tangledeep has been in development since February 2016 and already has rich gameplay, Windows & OSX support (Linux works on some distros), full controller support, 50+ monsters hundreds of items... It's in great shape! We are constantly working on the game with new builds every few days.”
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“There will be no price difference from Early Access to the final game launch.”
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“Tangledeep's development has been very open to the community since day 1! We post development updates on Twitter and our Discord server regularly, as well as through our email list. Andrew (the lead developer) streams development weekly on Twitch as well.

Your feedback, suggestions, comments, and concerns will continue to be heard and rolled into ongoing development!”

Here we go---the final drive to this doubtlessly grand project!       Already a ton of background updates happened since the mid-KS days~

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #1   

Hello all! I hope you've enjoyed the first one and a half weeks of Tangledeep early access! Friday seems like a good day to share all game development news over the past week, so if you haven't been following each and every patch, here are the highlights:

GAME POLISH
Thanks to your bug reports and feature requests, we implemented about ~100 bug fixes, as well as dozens of quality-of-life changes ranging from text improvements to UI additions, controller enhancements and more!

EXPANDED ITEM DREAMS
Compared to even our original Early Access build, Item Dreams have been dramatically improved. There are more layouts, more events, more crystal auras, and more ways to improve your equipment than ever before.

WEAPON MASTERIES
Jorito the Weapon Master is a new NPC at Riverstone Camp that will teach you advanced and unique weapon skills, from jumping bow shots to axe cleaves and passive bonuses. Many more masteries to come!

NEW RECIPES
We added about 7 new food recipes, plus a Recipes tab in your journal where you can view previously cooked or discovered recipes for convenience.

MID-LATE GAME DIFFICULTY
Through a combination of intentional rebalancing and bug fixes, the difficulty curve of the game's second half has generally gone up and should provide a good challenge for even roguelike veterans without being overwhelming.

HARDCORE MODE
Don't like meta progress? No problem, play hardcore mode. There isn't any. One death, that's it!

CLASS BALANCE
Budoka and HuSyn shipped as head-and-shoulders above the other playable jobs. Through our ~7 patches since last week, they have been made a bit more reasonable, while other jobs have generally been buffed, making for a variety of viable builds and combinations.

AI IMPROVEMENTS
Monsters are more aggressive and cunning than before; less easily kited or blocked by pets, they will lash out against anything in their way. Watch out!

WHAT'S NEXT?
We're always working on general polish - bug fixes, UI, control improvements - but we have a number of exciting things in the works for the next week. Here's a sneak peek:

-A new playable class is coming soon - tentatively called the Aethyrmancer - offering an aggressive summon-focused playstyle
-We're planning a New Game+ mode for those who have beaten the game - start from the bottom on the same character, but be prepared for much tougher monsters!
-More flavor and dialog improvements and additions, including more of a proper lead-in to the first and second boss fights
-More weapon masteries types will be added, starting with Staff and Fist masteries

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #2

Hello adventurers! Let's take a look at some of the notable changes, additions, and improvements to Tangledeep over the last week.

BALANCE
We continued to fine-tune various class abilities, items, feats, and stats to create more viable options and builds. Several kinds of monster AI were tweaked, usually to be a little less 'indecisive' with their movement and targeting. Pet scaling has been improved, too.

BUGS
We've been rapidly addressing bugs as we receive them and I'm happy to report that we've now fixed the most major bugs related to crashing at Erin the rumor giver, and issues with save files not loading properly. That stuff seems to be all cleaned up now, and we're going down the list and fixing everything reported in order of priority.

CONTENT
Fist and Staff masteries are now in the game, along with new Champion types and legendary items, among other things!

NEW GAME+ MODE
Have you beaten the game yet? If so, try your hand at New Game+ by selecting "New Game" and going to an existing save slot with a high level character. This will re-create the world while retaining all of your meta progress, items, experience and skills. Monsters in NG+ are much harder, smarter, and more aggressive, but also drop much better loot on average (and legendary/set drop chance is doubled!)

QUALITY OF LIFE
We implemented lots of QOL improvements across the board, such as:
    The addition of a second hotbar for skills/items - You can cycle hotbars via key/button bind easily!
    Expanded and improved Journal with an extended combat log, plus cleaned up Rumors page and the ability to abandon rumors
    Stacking status effect icons in the upper left
    Cleaned up equipment display of stat/combat bonuses
    Instantly portal back to dungeon/Item Dream by pressing P in town
    New option for "Battle Text Speed" (damage numbers etc)

SOULKEEPER PROGRESS
The next character job, the Soulkeeper, is coming along well - but I decided to put it on hold a bit while I focus on smashing bugs. However, some of the core mechanics are already done, such as converting powerups into "Monster Spirits" and reviving fallen monsters, abilities and all!

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #3

Hello adventurers! This is a double-week whammy of update news, so let's get right to the highlights since our last roundup!

NEW JOB - SOULKEEPER
Tangledeep's 10th job is now playable! The Soulkeeper is an aggressive summoner that uses "Echoes" collected from monsters to power her abilities. Debuff enemies and wear them down with your crossbow while reviving fallen monsters to fight by your side (not to mention all manner of elemental spirits!)

MONSTER CORRAL UPGRADE
The Monster Corral system has been revamped! Once captured and placed in the corral, monsters now have a variety of stats like Happiness, Weight, Rarity, and Beauty. Monsters can be Fed or Groomed to improve Happiness, Beauty, or both. Captured monsters also have certain foods they love or hate, so finding the right food will help them become happier even sooner. Happy monsters may produce certain items for you, even when you're away from the corral, so be sure to check back regularly!

NEW ITEMS AND MAGIC MODS
Three new staves, 8 new magic mods (equipment properties), 6 new legendaries, and a number of new non-legendary consumable items can now be found.

SHOPS IMPROVED
Many shopkeepers now stock higher-level goods as YOU gain levels.

PALADIN MINI-REWORK
The Paladin job now benefits from "Wrath", a resource generated by blocking or using Smite Evil. Wrath will power up your Divine Fury skill (which replaces Divine Bolt), OR give you extra defense after using Shield Slam.

MANY BALANCE CHANGES
Adventure Mode death penalty has been reduced, many types of food are now better or have shorter Full time, ranged weapons have been tweaked, pet scaling improved, many abilities adjusted... the list goes on and on!

ART IMPROVEMENTS
Several new tilesets have been added, along with dozens of new hit animations for the full cast of monsters.

NEW MUSIC BY GRANT KIRKHOPE
Enjoy the new theme to the Casino by the composer for such classic games as GoldenEye, Banjo Kazooie, and many others!

BOSS FIGHT IMPROVEMENTS
The first and second boss fights have been further fleshed out and improved, with lead-in areas for both!

SIDE AREA REWARDS
Completing a side area now gives you one (or more) special reward chests with a bonus chance for legendary/set item drops!

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #4

Hello again adventurers! I hope you're having a good weekend. We've made some big changes over the last week, along with a sizable amount of under-the-hood engine work to make further development (and possibly, player-made content) easier. Let's check out the highlights:

ABILITY BUFFS
All damaging abilities can now critically hit. The crit chance is the same as your normal crit chance, whereas before it was a flat 5%. Ability crits also get bonus damage from your critical damage modifier!

SHIELD / BLOCK IMPROVEMENTS
It is now possible to block any PHYSICAL enemy abilities, reducing their damage. Shields now display their block damage reduction in the tooltip, too!

GEAR BUFFS
Previously, magical weapons and armor received better baseline power, defense, or dodge, scaling up with the # of magical properties. However, other kinds of equipment did not get any special bonuses, despite their rarity. This has been changed!

* Magical shields now get extra block damage reduction
* Magical accessories now boost ALL core stats
* Spellbooks now increase all elemental damage
* Quivers now boost ranged attack damage

Many legendary items have also been buffed - though this may not affect your existing drops (sorry!)

MAGIC ITEM TINKERING
You can now use the Dreamcaster to REMOVE a magical property from an item! This is useful if you want to continue entering the item to find the perfect magic mod. Removing a mod costs one Orb of Reverie plus some gold.

MERCHANT IMPROVEMENTS
Wandering merchants will now come and go while you are in Item Dreams. Also, merchants in side areas will now restock their goods periodically.

FAST TRAVEL
You can now instantly travel to most any "safe" side area such as merchant zones or the casino by entering the cave in Riverstone Camp!

WEAPON / OFFHAND PAIRING
A much-requested feature... You can now 'pair' an offhand item with a specific mainhand weapon. This is a great way to customize your weapon loadout even further! Examples:

* Pair a shield with your favorite sword
* Pair a different shield with a strong axe
* Pair a spellbook with a powerful magic staff
* Pair an offhand dagger with your mainhand dagger for dual wielding

Switching weapons will automatically equip the paired offhand. Useful!

ENGINE WORK
It might not be glamorous, but we significantly overhauled how handmade dungeon rooms and floors are stored and loaded. It is now possible to lay out these areas entirely in a text editor or external utility with no code required. We've also continued the monumental task of making every element of the game (UI, combat log, dialogs) localization-ready.

[getter77]

~ARRP 3 Week Patch Roundup 

Hello adventurers! Let's go over all the awesome stuff that has been added, changed, and improved over the last 3 weeks.

DIRECTIONAL ANIMATION PROGRESS
One of the major goals of our Kickstarter was raising funds to do directional animations for all player characters. We've made some great progress on that, with the Brigand being the first job to enjoy a full set of animations in all directions!

FLASK INFUSIONS
Who doesn't love extra flavor in their drink? At levels 5, 10, and 15, you will now get a choice of Infusions to add to your flask which produce all sorts of positive effects!

HUGELY EXPANDED LATE-GAME
Previously, reaching floor 20 would take you to the final boss battle. Now, there is a final 'hub area' with four connected, hand-crafted zones with all-new monsters and minibosses to fight. Completing these very difficult areas doesn't just yield great loot, XP, and JP, but they will weaken the final boss as well.

BRAND-NEW CORRAL AND PET SYSTEM
It's what you've always wanted: the ability to not just capture dungeon monsters, but take them into the dungeon as permanent pets! The new monster corral builds on the previous patches, allowing you up to 12 monster slots (up from 3). Captured monsters, once further tamed, can be brought back into the dungeon and will fight by your side forever... or until they die. But unlike other pets, monster pets get half of your healing, so it's easier to keep 'em alive!

Not only that, but it is now possible to create ALL-NEW monsters by cooking Romantic meals and serving them to two monsters with good relationships. Did I mention all monsters now maintain relationships with all other monsters in the corral?! Hybrid monsters inherit stats and powers from their parents, allowing you to potentially create the ultimate pet with lots of awesome stats and abilities.

TONS AND TONS OF ENGINE WORK
From performance optimizations to save data handling and much more, we've written huge swaths of engine code to make it more performant and easier to edit and maintain.

BUG FIXES AND QUALITY OF LIFE
Dozens of fixes and QOL improvements have been made, such as showing more detailed and accurate Spellshape information, a new pet "party" UI on the main HUD, better menu behavior and much more.

PORT PROGRESS?!
Tangledeep is getting a console port! Which console? You'll find out soon enough! With master devmans Jim Shepard now on the team full-time, we've actually created a working build on (insert console name here). Exciting times!

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #5

Hello adventurers! Development is in high-gear and we've got lots of cool stuff to share from our work over the past week.

MAGIC GROVE EXPANDED
Tired of all your trees doing the same thing? Now there are four distinct species of tree, all with their own unique look and items! Depending on what kind of drops you need, you can plant the appropriate seeds and cultivate your very own custom grove. You can also find uncommon and even rare seeds that result in more magnificent and powerful trees.

DEEPER ITEM CUSTOMIZATION - LUCID ORBS
If you haven't used the Dreamcaster yet, it's a device in Riverstone Grove that allows you to spend Orbs of Reverie - plus some gold - to delve into "Item Dreams" and power up your items. We've expanded this system further with the addition of "Lucid Orbs", which have specific modifiers already attached to them. For example, using a "Lucid Orb of Elemental Shielding" in the Dreamcaster and entering your favorite legendary shield will add Elemental Shielding to that shield! (As long as you spend enough gold, too.)

Lucid Orbs will allow players to more precisely customize the perfect gear set for their character, and encourage new builds! Stay tuned, as this system is going to get expanded even further next week...

MORE DIRECTIONAL ANIMATIONS
More jobs now have idle/run sprites in all four cardinal directions. We're looking more polished every day.

TONS OF QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS
From instant switching of ranged weapons to better equipment bonus readouts, page up/down shortcuts, a better pet UI display, better error message feedback, smarter cursor auto-targeting and over a dozen more features, we've been fulfilling lots of player-requested improvements.

Our philosophy is that the challenge of Tangledeep should come from the gameplay, not issues with controls, UI, or information displays. That all should be butter smooth and a pleasure to interact with!

BALANCE ADJUSTMENTS
In our ongoing mission to maximize the number of fun and effective builds and characters you can use, we've made changes such as allowing 2-handed weapons to have up to 8 magic mods, making Daggers use both Guile and Strength to compliment the stats of common dagger-using jobs, adjusting how summons work, and much more.

We've also punched up the difficulty of New Game+ mode a bit further, and adjusted the second boss fight to be more in line with the escalating difficulty of the 1st and 3rd. Lastly, the XP curve has been tweaked so the early game doesn't soar by quite so quickly, while at the same time monsters take longer to become "Worthless".

ENGINE OPTIMIZATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS
We've continued to do lots of under-the-hood work, reducing the size of save files, reducing level generation time, and adding a spiffier, more-accurate way to see if the game is loading data (rather than sitting at a black screen with static text.)

----
p.s. Have you been enjoying Tangledeep? If so, consider writing a review! It really helps the visibility of game <3

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #6

Hello adventurers! Today brings some huge under-the-hood changes for Tangledeep. As a result of these changes, your map/dungeon progress will be reset as of this patch. However, your character progress will be preserved - XP, JP, equipment, monster corral, bank.

Here's what we've done since last week!

DATA COMPRESSION AND OPTIMIZATION
One of our biggest goals recently has been optimizing the size of save data files, and generally optimizing read/write performance. This is not really an issue on PC, but it definitely impacts other platforms. We're not done with all this yet, but already we've been able to reduce save sizes by about ~50%.

MULTI-WEAPON PAIRING
Thanks to your feedback, we've now made it possible to pair the same offhand item with multiple weapons. For example, you can now pair Legendary Shield 1 with three of your weapons, but then Legendary Shield 2 with your fourth weapon. This is great for ease of switching your main/offhand setup in the dungeon.

TONS AND TONS OF BUG FIXES
This includes both recently-created bugs from new systems, as well as older bugs with things like line of sight, specific character abilities, certain magic mods not working 100% properly, etc etc.

GIANT BOSS HEALTH BARS
Need I say more?!

NEW MONSTER ROMANCE MINI-QUEST
You'll now get a little quest related to Rose Petals and monster romance once you have at least two critters in the corral, and you've made some progress in the dungeon.

WHAT'S NEXT?
Most of the last week was focused on engine work, which is not particularly exciting, but absolutely necessary for maintenance and growth. Moving forward we have some awesome new stuff in the pipeline including a NEW playable JOB! Stay tuned!

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup #7   

Happy Friday, adventurers! Let's start with the big news... Tangledeep will be coming to Nintendo Switch in Q2 2018! This is really exciting for me, as I grew up with Nintendo consoles and handhelds, and many Nintendo games have greatly influenced Tangledeep. But I also think it's going to be a great way to introduce an entirely new audience to the game!

If you're not a Switch owner, or you somehow DON'T want the awesome experience of playing Tangledeep on a handheld (or on your TV)... don't worry! 100% of my dev time is going toward the PC version. Jim, our second programmer, is handling the Switch port in addition to helping with various code cleanup, features, and engine optimizations.

In short - This port will be a really good thing for the game, but it won't get in the way of the PC version!

On to the patch notes!

NEW JOB: EDGE THANE

Inspired by the roguelike Sil and epic stories like Beowulf and the Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tangledeep's latest playable job is a mighty warrior that charges into battle with the power of song. Edge Thanes thrive when fighting challenging enemies, preferring melee combat and two-handed weapons to run-and-kite tactics.

This job introduces a new mechanic, "Songs", powerful self-buffs that grow in duration and intensity as you fight. The longer and more challenging the battle, the more effects your song will have! You can then ADD to songs by using Verses, which all have their own unique effects as well.

We hope you'll enjoy the Edge Thane and all her awesome new skills!

CHARACTER SHEET UPGRADE

Many effects in the game affect attributes like your overall damage/defense, or elemental damage output. However, they were not reflected anywhere on your sheet... until now! Put on a Shock Ring and you'll see the appropriate bonus to +Lightning damage (along with all other Lightning boosts). Many buffs/debuffs that seemed subtle will now be more visible with a quick glance at the character sheet.

TEXT RENDERING IMPROVEMENTS

All text in the game is now rendered with 'meshes', which provide greater clarity at all resolutions. Previously, lower resolutions would produce more blurry and low-contrast text.

Switching to this new technology also allows us to properly localize all elements of the UI and player HUD. We even did a test with Japanese characters, and they look awesome!

TWO-HANDED SWORDS
You will now find five ranks of two-handed swords throughout the world! The spritework/flavor text is not quite done, but the gameplay is all there. Two-handed swords have the highest damage of any weapon type to date, at the cost of not having an offhand item or weapon. On the other hand, two-handers can have up to EIGHT magic mods instead of just five...

CODE CLEANUP + OPTIMIZATION
Not the most exciting thing, but we've made some incredible progress here which will help keep the game as easy as possible to maintain and expand upon. Also, Jim has been working on some incredible optimizations to make data loading lightning-fast, something that is very important for Switch.

COMING SOON...
Ability orbs! A special Halloween patch! Get hype!

[getter77]

Halloween Update 

We're celebrating Tangledeep's first ever seasonal event with both limited-time and permanent new content! There's also some awesome new features that we introduced in last week's patch, so let's go through everything here!

HALLOWEEN GOODIES
In addition to spooky mists and a few new seasonal costumes for some of our favorite monsters, be on the lookout for new limited-time consumable items that can drop from any enemy in the game! Don't gorge yourself on too much sugar, though...

NIGHTMARE PRINCES
As a *permanent* new feature, you will now occasionally find the lair of a Nightmare Prince while exploring an Item Dream! These are extra-powerful enemies with unique powers and dungeon lairs, as well as unique loot that can't be found anywhere else. Plus, they are the prelude to something new coming NEXT week to further continue our Halloween celebration...

SKILL ORBS
You will now find a special type of Lucid Orb called a Skill Orb once you have explored deeper into Tangledeep! Skill Orbs allow you to attach ability modifiers to your equipment, which transform and enhance certain skills. There are 33 Skill Orbs available - that's 33 skill transformations and modifications! Each of these can change how the skill works and how it fits in your build!

BOSS GANGS
For hearty adventurers looking for powerful loot and more Lucid Orbs, talk to Erin in town and listen for Boss Gang rumors. These are bands of champion monsters that have claimed a random floor of the dungeon. You must defeat them!

THIRD BOSS FIGHT REVISE
This fight should be more engaging and fleshed out than before!

DYNAMIC FONT SUPPORT
Though the game is still only in English for now, we can now support other character sets across the entire UI, even non-Western languages like Japanese. This looks great in-game and we're so excited to begin localization!

ENGINE HEAVY LIFTING
We've been continuously working on optimization and code cleanup. For the most part this is not super visible but dungeon generation should now be a lot faster, and we're also working on improving initial load times. This is necessary for Switch but will benefit ALL platforms and players too.

SO MUCH MORE!
A new champion mod, more Dream Crystal auras, tons of balance changes and tweaks, over a dozen quality of life improvements, better tooltips and, of course, tons of bug fixes too

[getter77]

Halloween update Part 2 

And now on to our SECOND Halloween patch which brings a whole mess of awesome new permanent features!

ITEM NIGHTMARES
For those who have defeated three Nightmare Princes in regular Item Dreams, you should have three Red Orb Shards... deliver those shards to Mir in Riverstone Grove to receive a Nightmare Orb and enter an Item Nightmare!

This is a very different dungeon type full of danger, new frogs, a deadly new boss (the Nightmare Queen, and new rewards. In fact, Item Nightmares are home to 18 exclusive new magic mods, so gear hunters, rejoice!

NEW MAGIC MODS AND LEGENDARIES
In addition to the Nightmare-exclusive gear, you'll now find yet more magic mods for your gear throughout the world, plus several new pieces of legendary armor!

TONS OF NEW ART
This is one of the biggest sprite enhancements yet, featuring top/side attack animations for 5 jobs, a new visual tileset, and lots of new attack/skill animations. These new battle FX look much flashier and more impactful, and plus, they feel great to use!

PANDORA'S BOX
These wicked treasure chests have been improved, sporting tempting animations and FX if you open them (so you can feel the impact of your choice.) In addition to XP, JP, gold, and possibly Lucid orbs, they now have a chance at dropping legendary items... but remember, every chest makes the game harder!

QUALITY OF LIFE
We've removed stamina drain in water, improved pet AI, added tips during load screens, and ditched some extraneous tutorial popups, among other things. All thanks to player feedback

DEEP ENGINE WORK
Jim has been hard at work making the game faster, smoother, and ready for Switch. In this build we've included some changes that should make combat and turns run smoother overall, especially when fighting groups of enemies like Neutralizers.

[getter77]

Patch Review Roundup Part 8

Hello adventurers! Halloween might be over, but we still came up with a mountain of treats over the last week. Our focus was primarily on making the game experience better overall, fulfilling many player-requested features and conveniences, addressing balancing issues, and fixing tons of bugs. Here are some of the highlights:

Balance: Monster Density and Respawns
In the 2nd half the game, most maps would often spawn with a very high monster density and respawn rate. This made it a bit too difficult to survive as you'd be constantly overwhelmed by monsters, even after defeating a whole group. We've adjusted these numbers, which should make it more rewarding to stand and fight instead of just running through.

Pet Improvements
Love having pets? Well, we have good news! Tamed corral monsters now regain 25% of their health with each passing ingame day. Also, the "Companions" magic mod now applies to ALL pets, not just ones from the corral. Plus, you can now buy Pet Insurance to ensure your carefully-raised monster buddy isn't lost forever if it gets in trouble.

Item Stacks
You can now drop, deposit, or withdraw specific amounts of any item instead of whole stacks at once. Also, shopkeepers now display stacks of consuambles instead of the same item 4-5 times in a row.

Snack Bag Shortcut
Eating food is something any good Tangledeep player will be doing all the time. However, it was a bit clumsy to open the menu, go to your inventory, and filter your healing food every time you wanted to heal. Now, there's a new UI shortcut (and bindable action) that jumps immediately to your Inventory with only healing tiems filtered. Handy!

Combat Log Cleanup
In a heated battle, the combat log can easily generate tons of messages. We've done a pass of consolidating many of these messages; for example, if you restore HP, Energy, and Stamina, this is now displayed on one line instead of three. If a monster takes damage multiple times from the same source, that is also combined. We'll continue making improvements and tweaks here.

More Attack Animations
The rest of the jobs are now fully animated, with movement, idle, and attack animations in all directions!

All this, plus a smattering of new legendary items and lots of bug fixes!

[getter77]

Sunday Patch Roundup 

Happy Sunday, adventurers! This week's patch has turned out to be one of the very biggest in Tangledeep's entire history. It started as mostly bug fixes but grew to include an enormous amount of meaningful balance changes and new content. Let's dive in!

THIRD TIER WEAPON MASTERIES
All 8 weapon types now have a third tier mastery skill. Each of these skills are totally unique to each weapon type and provide excellent passive benefits. For example, the third Bow mastery will randomly interrupt enemy skills used within your bow range. The third Axe mastery will execute another attack immediately if your first attack slays a monster.

Of course, this is just the appetizer for...

ULTIMATE WEAPON TECHNIQUES
Rounding out the weapon mastery tree are Ultimate Techniques for each weapon! These are super-powerful active skills that cost no Stamina or Energy, but carry a long cooldown that only ticks when wielding their respective weapon types. Ultimate Techniques are the most expensive to learn, and you can only accept ONE per character due to their incredible power.

EXTENSIVE BALANCE CHANGES
There are a ton of changes in this patch, all intended to deliver a more well-rounded experience. Spellshapers (and Spirit Power in general) have been toned down; Parry now scales a bit higher, but is halved at ranged, giving melee fighters a new advantage. Several magic mods have been tweaked to drop at any level, that previously only dropped at low levels. The Strength stat has been improved. And more!

NEW SIDE AREA: CRAGGAN MINES
Venture through a volcanic mine and help some friendly Craggan miners, picking up some gems along the way! This area will appear for any new characters.

NEW MAGIC MODS AND ITEMS
A new gear set has been added that should make tanky melee characters very happy. There are also a number of new magic mods for *melee* weapons specifically.

IMPROVED INVENTORY
We threw out the previous inventory filter system, which didn't make a lot of sense. The new system is much more straightforward, fitting each item into a 'tag' such as Recovery, Offense, or Utility. You can easily filter your consumables with a single click or button press, and view just Favorites as well.

PET COMMANDS
Want to boss your pet around? Is your summon misbehaving? Try giving them commands! By clicking on their portrait in the 'party' HUD (lower right), OR entering examine mode and clicking on them, you can issue some basic instructions. For example, you can tell a pet to stick more closely to you while moving around, stop using abilities, or drop everything and run to you immediately (even in the middle of combat.)

[getter77]

Black Friday Patch Roundup 

Hello Adventurers! These last two weeks have marked a big milestone for the game, with the completion of our 12th playable job.

THE WILD CHILD
Inspired by the concept of Blue Magic from the Final Fantasy series, the Wild Child rounds out Tangledeep's lineup of playable jobs*. Raised by monsters in Tangledeep itself, the Wild Child has only a handful of abilities available by default; she learns most of her skills from monsters!

In total, there are 12 monster abilities you can learn, ranging from the Salamander's Fire Breath to the roar of the Mottled Sandjaw, all the way to the Destroyer's mighty cannon fire. Every ability has both a primary effect and a secondary self-buff. Learning all monster powers gives you a huge array of new options!

* More jobs will come post-release!

CLAW COMBAT
Going hand-in-hand with the Wild Child is a new weapon type: claws. These weapons are ideal for characters who go "all-in" and offer a ferocious new fighting style. Claws are more easily dual-wielded than other weapon types, and gain power as you take damage. Their weapon masteries make it even easier to stay in the fray and tear apart your enemies.

MAGIC MOD EXTRACTION
For those of you looking to get that perfect modifier for your gear, you're in luck: the Dreamcaster can now be used to extract magical properties from items! Doing this will destroy the item, but give you a Lucid Orb Shard with a specific magic mod attached. Getting three shards will automatically create a full Lucid Orb used to attach that mod to any other item.

NEW ITEMS
Since the last set of patch notes, you'll now find 6 new legendary items and several new consumables!

EXPANDED TUTORIAL ZONE
There is now a second tutorial area after the first "Path to Tangledeep", which appears when you make a character on a fresh save slot. This new area is larger and offers some opportunities to explore and learn mechanics without the fear of running into champions or respawning monsters.

TONS OF BALANCE CHANGES
Thanks to your feedback, we've adjusted many job abilities, monsters, Item Dream mechanics, magic mods, and other game features to provide a better experience overall. Be sure to check the full patch notes to see what changed.

[getter77]

Mid-December Patch Roundup 

Hello adventurers! First, the big news:

Tangledeep launches out of Early Access on February 1st, 2018!

We hope you are excited about this as we are! Though this is later than our original planned release period (Dec/Jan), our progress has not slowed down, plus we want to make sure the game isn't lost in the holiday chaos.

To that end we've been hurtling along full speed and improving the game in every way imaginable. Let's cover some of the major changes and additions since our last big update post...

TONS OF ART AND FX POLISH
The visuals of Tangledeep are among its best features, and we've been continuing to make them pop. New spell animations, battle FX, number popups, and other effects have been added to juice up just about every aspect of the game and make it look fantastic.

Oh, and there's new music and sound effects too!

OVER 15 NEW ITEMS AND LEGENDARIES
New recipes, consumables, accessories, and both legendary AND set gear are available for you to find - happy hunting!

NEW SIDE AREAS AND SIDE QUESTS
Crawling through the dungeon is good and fun, but interesting and memorable side areas, environments, and events are equally important. You can now explore a desert maze, thaw out a frozen research area, rematch Duke Dirtbeak, and find a lost pet - plus meet some new NPCs and merchants too!

EASIER MONSTER RAISING
Getting your first pet - the escaped frog in Riverstone Grove - is now a guarantee, once you hit level 3 and head down to that area. Also, raising happy monsters is now much easier at lower levels. Previously it could take a ton of time and food to raise even a simple Moss Jelly to the point where it would be usable as a pet. Now, the investment is only about 25% of where it was; however, this does scale up with higher level monsters. Don't expect that Verdigrizzly to be as easy to tame!

UPDATED CASINO
There are more reasons than ever to head to the Casino! There's a third game now (Chinchirorin), and you can bet up to 10,000g in all three games. Plus, winning gold in the casino wins you Casino Tokens, which can be used exclusively at the new Casino Shop to get all sorts of awesome items.

FINAL BOSS REVAMP
For the most experienced among you, the placeholder 2nd phase final boss fight has been redone from the ground up. Though the actual boss sprite is still placeholder - we need to roll out the rest of the story, first - the fight mechanics are there.

UI REWORKS
We've remade the Equipment, Inventory, and Skill pages of the UI totally from scratch with all new code and layout. This will continue to change as we skin and perfect the UI, but these changes were necessary to fix bugs, provide more functionality, and allow better compatibility with the Nintendo Switch port.

CLASS AND FEAT UNLOCKS
Three of the game’s jobs (HuSyn, Gambler, Wild Child) are now locked initially. This is for any or all of these reasons: the jobs are a little more unusual OR difficult to play, the story requires it, to reduce ‘analysis paralysis’ for new players, and provide a sense of accomplishment as you progress through the game. (Don't worry, no lootboxes here!!)

If you have been playing the game for awhile, the unlock requirements will not be too difficult. There are also two new feats, which - along with rager - are also locked, but not too hard to unlock.

FULL ENDING SEQUENCE
What great RPG doesn't have a beautiful ending sequence and credits roll?