MidBoss: full release now on Steam (v1.4.0 Update) $

[Eniko]

If you've missed the full release of MidBoss, now's the time to pick it up if you were interested. Between August 7 and 14 it'll be 10% off on Steam and itch.io (DRM free).

There also was the first big quality of life changes patch, making the game a lot smoother of an experience.



QoL part 1 overview
This new version contains many bugfixes, as well as quality of life features that were easier to implement to tide players over until the next patch. An exhaustive list of changes is available below, here we'll highlight the most important changes.


Possession and depossession changes

We've changed the way these skills work in two ways, to help encourage players to use imp form more often. Many players were not aware that the imp form can be stronger than any other form if equipped with optional mastered forms, as it gets the best stats of all forms that way.

The first thing we did is to add a prompt window to the depossess ability. This window calculates what mix of equipped, mastered forms would give you the best attribute multipliers as the imp, and shows you how your base stats would increase just like the possession prompt does. The prompt contains dropdown boxes so that you can play around with the equipped forms and immediately see how your stats would be affected, all of this without committing to actually depossessing your form before you know what the consequences will be.

This same prompt also automatically pops up when you master your current form, alerting you that your stats may improve if you depossess and equip it to your imp form. We have however added an option to disable this to the options menu.

Finally the possession prompt now contains a choice between possessing the creature you killed, or draining their soul. Soul drain is a new mechanic where instead of possessing you instead heal yourself by 10% of your max HP plus 10% of the creature's max HP. This means that to regain health as the imp you no longer have to possess and then depossess, which takes turns. Soul drain takes effect and heals you immediately.

To soul drain you do have to still cast possession on creatures. Soul drain is also available outside of imp form, to lessen the playerbase's impression of Life Leech as an absolutely crucial-to-have skill.


GUI changes

The depossession prompt is not the only way we've increased the player's ability to easily track changes. The equipment menu now contains a collapsible list of stats on the right side of the window, which update in real time as you change forms or equip different items.

We've also clarified in the tutorials that soul fatigue does not take effect until you close the window, and no matter how many times you swap forms while the window stays open you will only ever gain 1 stack of soul fatigue, and 0 if you roll back your changes. Combined with the stats on the equipment menu it is now much easier to track how changing equipped forms alters your stats while in imp form.

In fact, to aid with just this process, mastered forms in dropdowns now show a mastery star, so you can see at a glance which forms are mastered and which aren't.

We've also changed the names of three stats to make their function clearer to players. Power is now known as Sorcery, Focus is now known as Precision, and Force is now known as Affliction.

While there is no item hotbar in this version, we have made it so that items can be used or equipped from the ground by right clicking the item in question. If you try to equip an item from the ground and there isn't enough room for unequipped items, they'll be dropped to the floor instead.

Finally as part of the GUI improvements we've added several types of map markers. There are markers for stairs, the merchant, the cratefish king, all four types of shrines, and legendary and unique items on the map.


Damage reduction

All three armor types (plate, leather, and robes) as well as shields now come with an additional damage reduction quality. The value is random, though plate armor will reduce physical damage more, and robes will reduce magical damage more. Shields and leather armor have a balance between both.

This damage reduction is a percentage which is applied after the incoming damage has been reduced by toughness or resistance, which should help with late game damage mitigation for melee builds. This should help with the feedback that late game damage was too binary, either you take tons of damage, or you take no damage at all.

(Ghouls were also nerfed slightly because apparently fast zombies too stronk)


Destructible items

While many players have told us smashing everything in sight is one of the more satisfying aspects of the game, we have heard those of you who feel it takes too long. To alleviate this, we've greatly sped up the hit animation on destructible static items.

Additionally, bookshelves are now destroyed in a single hit, and will randomly look either tidy or disheveled.

While not something you smash yourself, when the cratefish king's goodie crate breaks it will now spread items across more tiles, making it easier to sort through your loot.


QoL part 2 roadmap
The next patch is tentatively planned for September. Some of the planned changes include:

• Item throwing system. This means the Alchemist's Manual will finally have an effect.
• Inventory upgrades. These include a way to scrap unwanted items, turning them into a stackable scrap pile in your inventory that takes up a single slot, additional inventory slots, and stackable potions and tomes.
• Two brand new abilities. The first is Guard, which replaces Rust on the skeleton. This will be a toggle ability that drains your stamina over time but increases your damage reduction values. The second is Miasma, a ground targeted ability that will replace Life Leech on the warlock, inflicting a blind effect which causes a penalty to accuracy on anything that passes through it.
• New status effect qualities on weapons, giving some weapons a chance to proc blind, poison, burning, or slowing debuffs on hit.
• An item hotbar which lets you use items much like abilities, without having to go through the inventory, and item favoriting which prevents favorite items from being scrapped or showing up in the merchant's sell tab.
• An optional hand pixeled replacement font for the current default font, to address complaints of the font being blurry.

Keep in mind that this is not a full list of changes coming in the next patch, only an overview of the most important planned changes, and that this is subject to change.


Changes in v1.1.7: (savegame compatible with previous version)
[2017-08-03]

• Abilities
  • Added soul drain. When the possession prompt pops up you have the option of draining the target's soul instead, healing yourself for 10% of their maximum HP + 10% of your maximum HP.
  • Colossus splash damage is doubled. Splash damage now also pierces defense.
  • Depossess now pulls up a depossession window that previews your stats as the imp, allowing you to mix and match forms and see how your stats would change with those forms equipped in imp form.
  • Ethereal now also absorbs half of incoming magic damage.
  • Staff Master ability now adds 30% of the magical damage bonus of equipped wands and staves to physical/melee damage.
• Accessibility
  • The blips indicating entities on the minimap now change color when using different color blind profiles.
• Bug Fixes
  • Added safeguards to prevent soft-locking on the final floor because of portcullises not opening correctly between stages.
  • Added some code to prevent item duplication bugs from occurring when picking up items. Additionally the game should be more robust when dealing with duplicated items on load and should no longer crash.
  • Fixed a bug causing walls to overlap objects or vice versa after changing resolutions while in game.
  • Fixed a bug where an item's stack label was still visible in its slot while click-dragging it around the inventory.
  • Fixed a bug where the minimap would disappear when opening the options menu if it was maximized.
  • Fixed a bug where the spiked shield's damage bonus was not unidentified, but the flavor text describing it deals damage was.
  • Fixed a bug which caused the header font in credits to not be high contrast when high contrast fonts were enabled.
  • Fixed a bug which was causing a full crash if an error happened during save load instead of going back to the title screen and notifying the user of the save load error.
  • Fixed a bug which was causing monsters to not use various certain skill tomes even when available to them.
  • Fixed a bug with holy water that would mistakenly apply every uncursed bonus to the player, causing all sorts of weird effects.
  • Fixed a bug with the minimap minimize/maximize button not updating its graphic if keyboard was used to toggle the size.
  • Fixed a bug with using holy water on an item that had both a cursed version of an attribute bonus, and a normal version, where one of the bonuses would not apply after turning the cursed bonus into a positive.
  • Fixed a crashing bug related to monsters that use skill tomes, causing certain tomes to crash the game when used.
  • Fixed a rare crashing bug affecting Blink ability.
  • When an ability kills a monster with the vessel condition as well as the player, and the player is not in imp form and possesses the monster, a redundant imp will no longer be left behind.
• Entities
  • Flying creatures are no longer affected by pools of acid.
  • Ghoul's violence attribute reduced slightly.
  • Replaced Envenom ability on Hell Rat with Flame Strike.
• Environment
  • Added map markers for stairs, merchant, cratefish king, shrines, and valuable items (legendary/unique).
  • Bookshelves can now be destroyed in a single hit. Bookshelves now randomly use one of the two available sprites.
  • Cratefish king rewards are now spread across multiple tiles when possible.
  • Smashing object animation is now 40% faster.
  • Stack now blesses all your items, instead of only your equipped items.
• General
  • Added a "Form mastered!" sliding notification.
  • Cratefish rewards now take 60 cratefish per reward (up from 50).
  • Due to the way armor and shield damage reduction bonuses are generated, the merchant's inventory for any given seed will now be different than it was before.
  • Focus attribute has been renamed Precision.
  • Force attribute has been renamed Affliction.
  • Game now remembers item labels toggle setting.
  • Power attribute has been renamed Sorcery.
• GUI
  • After mastering a form a window now pops up asking you if you would like to depossess to imp form. This window is like the depossession window and previews your stats as the imp with the best multipliers you could have.
  • Discarding a death card now brings up a prompt that makes it clear the player is forfeiting their chance for grave goods.
  • Mastered forms in the equipment window now show a mastery star in front of their names.
  • Meta attribute value font is no longer blurry.
  • Status effects at the bottom of the screen are now sorted by whether they are a buff or debuff, and by name.
  • The equipment menu now has a collapsible sidebar showing an overview of your stats for convenient reference.
  • The item select window that pops up when using an ID scroll or holy water will no longer be able to accidentally select an item instantly when double clicking to use.
  • Titlescreen social widgets revamped. Now contains links to the wiki, and Kitsune Games Discord, Twitter, and website.
  • You can now use and equip items from the floor. If your inventory is full when equipping an item, any unequipped items that won't fit in your inventory will be dropped on the floor.
• Items
  • All armor and shields now come with damage reduction values. This damage reduction is applied after incoming damage is reduced by resistance or toughness, but before any other damage scaling status effects.
  • Potions now have both a fixed value effect and a percentage based effect, in order to maintain their use in the late game.
  • Retro potions now indicate when the mode is already unlocked in their tooltip.
• Options
  • Added an option to change the fullscreen map opacity to the graphics section.
  • Added an option to disable the depossession prompt upon mastering a form to the gameplay section of the options menu.
  • Added drain soul keybind option.
• Tutorials
  • Added an additional tutorial that explains that soul fatigue is not "locked in" until exiting the menus, allowing players to freely experiment with what forms they want to have equipped as long as they don't close the menus.
  • Changed the soul fatigue tutorial and added an extra tutorial to make it clear that changing multiple forms at a time only incurs one stack of soul fatigue.
  • Clarified wording on the grave goods explanation message.
  • The low health tutorial and Mid reminders have been updated to mention the soul drain feature.
  • There is now a tutorial message explaining the defense negating effects of piercing damage and criticals.

[getter77]

Huzzah! 

[getter77]

v1.2 Mega Update!   

The big patch you've all been waiting for is finally here! There's too much to cover in depth so here's a quick list of things you'll be interested in:
Upgrade system provided by the merchant. Scrap useless items into a single (sellable) pile, increase the number of slots in your inventory, and stack potions and tomes.
Three brand new abilities! Throw lets you throw anything in the game at your enemies, Guard replaces the Rust ability and is a toggle which drains stamina every turn but increases your damage reduction, and Miasma which replaces Life Leech on warlocks which throws down a field that blinds anything that passes through it, lowering Evasion and Accuracy.
Fast travel! Just right click on the map to travel to your cursor, the merchant, the cratefish king, or the stairs.
Item quickbar for using, equipping, and throwing items easily and conveniently.
Changes to game modes, there are now three to pick from. Hardcore mode is the default permadeath roguelike mode, 1UP mode gives you 5 lives with more to find along the way, and Narrative mode is for those who want to casually explore all the game has to offer with infinite lives and buffs to make the game easier.
Each new game mode now comes in three lengths: quick (same as quick play), standard (a new faster mode between the old quick play and default), and extended (the same as the old default).
Changes to make shrines more accessible. Gods will summon champions to punish you for trashing their shrines. If defeated these champions will drop icons belonging to their god, which you can use to gain the god's blessing. Additionally, pages of lore will randomly drop throughout the game, some of which contains information about the gods and how to interact with them.
New Game+ enhancements. When starting a New Game+ you can start the game with a new random seed. Additionally there's a hazard boost option, this makes items and monsters stronger, allowing you to play through the game multiple times at increasing difficulty.
Experienced players can now speed up animations by 25, 50, 75, or 100% through the options menu.
Mastery procs and debuffs will be shown onscreen to make it clearer what's going on.
Improvements to keyboard targeting prioritizes enemies over static objects, and selects targets in a more natural left-to-right fashion.
The floppy disk item has been implemented. If you find and use it there's an achievement in it for you, and a glimpse into MidBoss' past!
Improvements to controls and options for new players of all experience levels.

And those are just the highlights. Read on below for the full changelog, and if you enjoy these changes and MidBoss, please vote for it in the Labor of Love category of the Steam awards.

Known issues
On Mac and Linux the blue and red color channels on hardware cursors are reversed. This will be fixed in a patch shortly after Thanksgiving weekend.

Changes in v1.2.0:
(savegame compatible with previous version)
[2017-11-22]
Abilities
Implemented new Guard ability, this ability replaces Rust on skeletons and reapers. This is a new type of ability, a toggle ability. It can be turned on and off at will and will drain stamina every turn until turned off or you run out of stamina.
Warlock's life leech ability has been replaced with a new ability: Miasma. This ability drops a 3x3 field that inflicts the blind debuff on anything that passes through it, inflicting a 25 penalty to Accuracy and Evasion.
Zap minimum damage increased from 60% to 70%.
The imp now has the new Throw ability, which can be used to throw any item in the game that can be picked up. When the Throw ability is available to the player the item shortcut bar will prompt the player when a new shortcut is created whether the item should be used/equipped or thrown.
Bug Fixes
Clarified wording on Devyn's Aether Respiration blessing.
Fixed a bug where Gravelord was applying its critical bonus as if it were an item, causing it to be scaled.
Fixed a typo in Fear's description.
Altar minimap icon is no longer off by 1 tile.
Fixed a bug with Ethereal where it would keep its user alive until their mana depleted completely.
Fixed a bug causing the drain soul option to never appear if you disable tutorials before getting the possessed form tutorial message.
Fixed fester typo.
Fixed a bug where the stats in the depossess prompt were not accurate with unmastered forms.
Fixed an issue with downward slash graphics being randomly flipped.
Fixed a bug where "items bought" in statistics was showing the number of items blessed, not bought.
Fixed a bug which was causing the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, and Pen & Paper retro mode potions to not report their unlocked status in their tooltips.
Brood mother now has a status effect icon (oops).
Fixed a bug where the merchant would spawn with increased stats if a floor with a merchant on it was generated while the player was effected by the Precision Engineering buff given by the god Stack.
Fixed a bug which caused the final boss to have its passives duplicated on load.
Fixed a bug causing titlescreen menu items to be slightly misaligned.
Custom Game Options
The custom game window now includes an extra lives slider, which can be set to a value between 0 and 15 inclusive, or to permadeath or infinite lives
The quick play and default preset buttons in the custom game window have been replaced with the new presets of quick, standard, and extended. Quick is the same as the old quick play, while extended is the same as the old default.
Added a 'Narrative mode buffs' option to the custom game window, to toggle the narrative mode buffs to stats, stamina/HP/mana, and damage reduction on and off for custom games.
Death Cards
Added an unlockable MidBoss Classic card border.
Death card details now list unlocked upgrades (if any) and flags set by the game (if any).
Death cards window now shows how many lives a player had remaining at the end of their game on victory cards.
Environment
The game now spawns additional weaker aggressive monsters for each floor.
Gods will summon champions to punish you if you vandalize their shrines too many times. These champions can drop minor and major icons of their god, which can be used to gain the god's blessing.
Torn pages may drop randomly, containing small snippets of lore. This lore may help players figure out how shrines work.
Fast travel has been added. You can fast travel by right clicking anywhere on the map, and this lets you travel to where you clicked, the merchant, the cratefish king, or the stairs up and down.
Game Modes
When applying an exp multiplier in a custom game the amount of xp and form xp given when killing any monster cannot go below 1.
New mode: 1UP Mode. This mode introduces extra lives, letting players respawn at the last stairs they took a limited number of times. Additional lives can occasionally be found in chests.
New mode: Narrative Mode. This mode acts like 1UP mode but has infinite respawns, and buffs the player's meta attributes, HP, MP, stamina, and damage resistance.
The titlescreen menu has been changed. New game now opens another menu giving you the choice of Hardcore, 1UP, Narrative, or Custom Game modes, which in turn ask you for a game length of either quick, standard, or extended. Quick corresponds to the old quick play mode, and extended corresponds to the old default mode. The quick play and custom game options have been removed from the main menu.
General
Optimized the save system to prevent framedrops that some users were experiencing.
The last target selected using keyboard will be automatically re-selected when activating abilities using the keyboard.
Keyboard targeting will no longer attempt to target static scenery if the current ability cannot target scenery.
Keyboard targeting will now prioritize enemies over static scenery. This can be disabled in the options menu to revert to the old behavior.
Keyboard targeting will now function in a more sensible left-to-right manner.
Implemented new achievement "Yo dawg".
Clarified damage types tutorial wording.
Graphics
Added custom hardware cursors.
Added an option to show the mouse cursor in screenshots to the options menu, this option is off by default.
Item labels now do not appear until after an item's drop animation has completed.
Increased unique/legendary item glow size for small items.
GUI
The depossess prompt now equips the selected forms when you click yes.
The depossess prompt now tries to add forms you had equipped as the imp before to the selected forms, as long as this does not lower your multipliers.
You can now click yes on the depossess prompt when you're in imp form. This will only equip the selected forms, nothing else.
The possession window no longer shows the keybinds under the buttons when onscreen keybinds are disabled.
Learning the final Imp ability will no longer cause the mastered form depossession prompt to appear.
The possession prompt now shows a mastery star if the form it's asking you to possess is mastered.
Items
You can now favorite items from the equipment menu. Favorite items will no longer show up on the cat merchant's sell list, and will display a minimap icon when dropped. Favorite items will always ask for confirmation when trying to salvage them.
Added keybind to favorite items. Press the F key while mousing over items in your inventory to favorite them.
Added bulk selling buttons to items which are stacked when trading with the merchant.
Added keybind to salvage items and turn them into scrap. Press the Delete key while mousing over items in your inventory to salvage them.
You can now identify and bless items directly from your inventory without having to go through the item select popup.
Added an item quickbar. Drag items from your inventory onto the bar to use it. The bar can be used in two ways, by holding shift and then pressing the corresponding keybind for the item you wish to use, or by pressing and releasing the 'U' key, followed by the keybind. Both the key to hold or press in sequence can be modified via the options menu.
The "Path (hold)" keybind functionality has been removed to make way for the item quickbar.
The Floppy Disk item's functionality has been implemented.
The cat merchant now sells various upgrades including the pocket library, potion pouch, large backpack, and bag of holding. These upgrades improve inventory management.
The cat merchant now gives you the salvage-o-matic upgrade in his opening cutscene. This allows you to turn items into stacking scrap, which can be sold later.
Weapons of rarity rare and higher now sometimes spawn with a chance to inflict a status effect on hit such as burning or poison.
Legendary item abilities on weapons, armor, and shields will be different for seeds.
Tome abilities will be different for seeds.
Accuracy potions now cure blindness.
Alchemist's Manual functionality is now implemented.
You can now switch an either hand weapon to the other slot even if that slot is occupied by a non-either hand weapon, the non-either hand weapon will be unequipped.
Epic weapons will now sometimes spawn with the Returning property, which returns the item to your hand or inventory after being thrown.
New Game+
New game+ now carries over upgrades.
New game+ now includes a "hazard boost" option. Increasing this value will make monsters stronger, items more powerful, and cause more balls of yarn to be dropped.
You can now start new game+ with a new random seed. Additionally, for 1UP victory cards the number of lives for new game+ can be kept or reset to 4.
New Player Experience
The game will now show a one-time prompt to players for their experience with turn-based dungeon crawlers when it starts, this modifies the movement duration, turn delay, delay on aggro option settings, as well as which tutorials and reminders are shown. Note that the MidBoss Pro option disables all tutorials and hints, and sets the 'Animation speed' option to 25% faster.
A new controls overlay now appears on the 1st floor. This overlay shows how keys map to the directions of movement, and changes the cursor to one that indicates moving can be done using the left mouse button. It also allows players to change the orientation of the movement keys with a single click if using standard key bindings. The overlay can be hidden, either temporarily or permanently, and re-enabled from the options menu.
The control orientation picker has been removed.
Options
Added an experience level option to the gameplay section of the options menu. This affects what tutorials and hints are shown.
Minimum movement duration has been decreased from 0.13 seconds to 0.10 seconds.
Added 'Animation speed' option, this can be used to increase non-movement animation speeds by 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent.
Procs
Added option to disable the flash step mastery sound.
Mastery procs and status debuffs now have on screen text when they occur. Mastery procs are yellow and debuffs are purple.
Added option to disable onscreen proc/debuff messages.
The shield item mastery has been renamed to Block from Guard in order to prevent confusion with the new Guard ability.

[getter77]

v1.2.1

(savegame compatible with previous version)
[2017-11-24]

    Bug Fixes
        Fixed a bug causing the game to freeze instead of crashing properly (and generating a crash report) when crashing during a save.
        Fixed a bug causing the game to crash when selling stackable tomes to the merchant.
        Fixed a bug causing the game to crash when throwing equipped items.
        Fixed a bug preventing players from throwing items that were equipped from item shortcuts.
        Fixed a bug which was causing the game to not save immediately if closing the shop through the close button.
        Fixed an issue which could cause a crash when exiting the options menu on rare system configurations.
    Graphics
        When throwing a stacked item, the items will no longer all land in the same spot.
        When throwing items onto the floor they will no longer all land in the same spot.
        Hardware cursors should now be the correct color on Mac and Linux.

[getter77]

v1.2.2

(savegame compatible with previous version)
[2017-11-27]

    Bug Fixes
        Fixed depossession/mastery window crash that should have been fixed in 1.2.1.2, apologies for the inconvenience.

[Eniko]

MidBoss has been updated to version 1.3.0 and is 50% off right now on itch.io, Steam, and Humble. The big changes in this patch are the new crisp pixel art font, Steam trading cards, and a new room type.

The new font is of particular interest if you let the game pass by before because of the font being blurry and hard to read, this update should definitely fix that.


I won't spoil you on the new room type's function, but here's a picture of it.


Changelog:

Changes in v1.3.0:
(savegame compatible with previous version)
[2018-06-03]

    Bug Fixes
        Fixed typo in Staff Mastery tooltip.
        Fixed an occasional BGM related crashing bug in MidBoss Classic.


    Environment
        Added a new room type that contains an unbreakable adamantine chest with a glowing red lock.


    General
        MidBoss Pro experience level no longer disables the tutorial as some players were picking it the first time they played the game.


    Graphics
        Fixed a font rendering bug that could cause weird pointy stroke on death card text on Windows systems.
        Vsync will no longer be forced off for users who's AMD cards falsely claim to support adaptive vsync. If a crash related to adaptive vsync is detected a file "amd_disable_vsync.txt" is created, if this file is detected on load adaptive vsync is disabled and regular vsync can be used instead.


    GUI
        Added a new pixel art font which makes text in the game much crisper and (hopefully) easier to read. This will be turned on by default and the old font can be restored by checking "Use old font" in the Graphics section of the options menu.
        Because the new pixel font does not have italics, new icons have been added to the forms window to indicate whether an ability is active, passive, or innate.


    Steam
        Steam trading cards have been added!

[getter77]

v1.4.0

MidBoss version 1.4.0 is out now, marking the start of the Saint Patrick's Day event, which will run until the 31st. Collect 25 shamrocks which drop from random enemies to permanently unlock the new Shamrock card border.

This new version also fixes several important bugs, including the return of the gold victory card border and the Soul Fatigue mechanic, and clarifications to tooltips for the Guard, Zap, and Shocking Grasp abilities.

(savegame compatible with previous version)


    Abilities
        Burn debuff now stacks up to a maximum of 12, it previously stacked infinitely.
        Clarified the description for the Zap and Shocking Grasp abilities to note that while these attacks deal magic damage, your physical damage is used for the damage calculation.
        Guard ability description clarified.


    Bug Fixes
        Fixed a bug which caused arena room chests to drop loot when all monsters were killed if the player had failed the arena room challenge by dying.
        Soul Fatigue was removed from the game due to a bug, it is now back.
        Fixed a bug causing the golden victory card border to not unlock after beating the game.
        Fixed a bug which was causing the death card screen to ignore settings for flipping the left and right mouse buttons.


    Events
        Saint Patrick's Day event! Gather 25 shamrock drops from monsters before March 30th to unlock the Shamrock card border. Event starts March 16.


    General
        The rat in the room you start the game in can no longer drop lore pages. The final boss and rot maggots can also no longer drop lore pages.


    Bug Fixes
        Fixed a bug that was causing shamrocks to not be counted on games that had global stat tracking disabled due to non-standard custom game settings or cheats.