Zorbus

[Joonas]

Thanks again, Troubler.

No new release yet but some answers:

2.A lot of enemies like to run away after you have knocked them down to low health. One thing that might happen is they run out of sight.
I haven't really tested this, but in the process they may run into someone your guy would be friendly with, and get killed, thus forfeiting all the EXP if you didn't see it happen.
Again, I don't know 100% what happens. But it's a big reason I chase after most enemies who flee. Though it seems like I would get some of that EXP from chasing them off.

If a creature has 10 health points and you damage it for 7 and it then runs away and some other creature kills it, you'll get 70% (7/10) of the XP, whether the killer is friendly or not and whether you see the death or not.

1.The ability to change your characters sprite at the start of the game with left and right is undocumented as far as I know.
This whole time I had been playing with the default sprite not knowing you could change it. Neat easter-egg otherwise.

This is actually mentioned in the Race-screen when the selector is on the name field and in the Character-screen when the selector is on "Create a new character". I think the text has been there from release 1 but I'm not sure. It's easy to miss as the help text is not seen when the selector actually is on the selected race/character.

I'll try to fix those other things in the next release.

Kyzrati (Gogmind developer) streamed the game:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/425931154

There's a feedback friday on the game in Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/comments/bpmwgs/feedback_friday_45_zorbus/

Elephantman played through the game (spoilers):
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-codex-of-roguelikes.71097/page-74#post-6131680

Nigetai played through the game (spoilers, japanese translated with google translator):
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnigetai.blogspot.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fzorbus1-threnders-journal.html

More from Nigetai (spoilers):
https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ja&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://twitter.com/search%3Ff%3Dtweets%26vertical%3Ddefault%26q%3Dfrom%253Att5074%2520zorbus%26src%3Dtypd&xid=17259,1500004,15700022,15700186,15700190,15700256,15700259&usg=ALkJrhhGRA1LaQHpsTJsSQBnvFaggTdwvQ

[Joonas]

Release 13

• Search range is now 2. You don't have to walk close to walls to spot secret doors but can detect them from 2 steps away.
• Heavily reduced the amount of xp gained from skill use (finding secret doors and traps, disabling locks and traps).
• You can now close doors even if there are items in the doorway. Items will be moved towards the creature closing the door.
• Rest until healed / Rest for 100 rounds should be a bit faster now (screen is no longer rendered during the rest).
• New talent: Strengthened Shots. Body-modifier is automatically added to ranged attacks.
• Ranged Elemental Damage talent's damage raised from 1 to 1d2.
• Divine essences no longer give you experience.
• If you pick a locked door while holding it's key, message about unlocking it with a key will no be longer shown.
• Autopilot is stopped if you have disabled auto-use-key setting and a locked furniture blocks the path.
• If a creature is friendly to you, it's also friendly to your recruits and animated/summoned creatures. There was a bug that if you for example had the Animal Friend talent, animals would still attack your animated skeletons.
• Autopilot / autoexplore ignores walking through doors which are known mimics.
• Fixed a bug where lots of devices where missing from the quickslotable item list. Big thanks for Troubler for mentioning this bug!
• Prisoners no longer care if you loot containers in the prison's main area.
• You can press a binded key in the help-screen to get a longer description of the command.
• Target-mode shows the name of a creature under the target cursor with a black background.
• Menus with adjustable numeric values have small arrows as visual clues.
• HOME and END keys can be now used to quickly get to the top / bottom of inventory and other lists.
• Screen can be maximized / minimized with ALT + BACKSPACE.
• Fixed a bug where choosing "Return to main menu" from the game menu didn't go to the main menu if you had restarted with the same character.
• Added a picture (drawn by Zyalin) to the main menu.
• Fixed some typos.

1.The tankards bug seems to extend to all usable items, like healing potions. Only the first few in your menu appear in the quick-select options.
 For example if you drop something, then other things will be available. Eventually you will come around to what you need by dropping things.

I think I got this fixed now.

[Troubler]

I just saw your update when I booted up the game.

If a creature has 10 health points and you damage it for 7 and it then runs away and some other creature kills it, you'll get 70% (7/10) of the XP, whether the killer is friendly or not and whether you see the death or not.

I must have not noticed because the text does not appear when they are away, or it doesn't happen that often. Either way that's a relief.
Theoretical question though. What if the creature heals in the meantime?

Anyway, it's good to see that the game is getting attention. It was interesting comparing my experience with the other victories.
I share some of their opinions, like that acid cloud and wail of the banshee are OP, even in the later game, for similar reasons.
I'm surprised to see people beat the game without lone-wolf. Though I didn't know the NPCs level with you.
Didn't know the final bosses had special diologue if you don't kill them all before the final-final boss either. That's interesting.

Ranged-characters are having trouble holding my interest. The fire-power is so weak for ranged weapons I just end up using melee even with lower skill.
Feels like that route is not too fleshed out yet. Like ranged combat is primarily intended to be used as a supplement to melee combat rather than on it's own.
I will probably keep playing with melee or magic characters for a while, though I think I prefer melee even if weaker because magic is always the same process.
(i.e. I will always start with energy bolt, then blink, then acid cloud, then holy burst, then wail, etc) A few of the spells really outshine the crowd.
No wins this time around. Though I did take a few notes for release 12:

(Notes)
1.You don't start out with enough ammo to get very far with a ranged character for some builds.
 Quickly you will run out of shots and be brought to throwing daggers or whatever you can find.
 Sometimes at this point I just go to melee, which feels like less of a hassle even if my character is less proficient.
 Interesting as emergent gameplay though. My ranged characters often become the rogue from nethack, flinging daggers around.
2.Speaking of that, it would be nice if throwing talents like duelshot could be used with thrown weapons as well.
 I know daggers don't stack, so I don't know how awkward it would be to implement, or any balancing issues with it.
3.The starting ability priorities (i.e +2 body,-2 motion) of any race seem to make no difference. Any build can be made with any race.
 Race only seems to be functionally seperated by posession of dark-vision vs the extra talent of humans as far as I can tell.
4.I've noticed there is really not much variety in ranged weapons. There is the short-bow, sling, and long-bow.
 Compare that to the many spells and copious melee weapons in the game. There are also no ranged artifacts as of yet (that I have found).

(Bugs)
1.I once accidentally wandered into a myconids poison cloud while non-hostile, and it became hostile and attacked.

[Joonas]

Theoretical question though. What if the creature heals in the meantime?

Doesn't affect the XP.

Ranged-characters are having trouble holding my interest. The fire-power is so weak for ranged weapons I just end up using melee even with lower skill.
Feels like that route is not too fleshed out yet. Like ranged combat is primarily intended to be used as a supplement to melee combat rather than on it's own.

This is true. I added the Strengthened Shots -talent to boost the ranged damage and upped the "elemental ranged damage" -talent a bit but even that might not be enough. Not sure if pure ranged characters will ever be viable.

I will probably keep playing with melee or magic characters for a while, though I think I prefer melee even if weaker because magic is always the same process.
(i.e. I will always start with energy bolt, then blink, then acid cloud, then holy burst, then wail, etc) A few of the spells really outshine the crowd.

More meaningful spells are needed but I'm badly out of ideas.

1.You don't start out with enough ammo to get very far with a ranged character for some builds.
 Quickly you will run out of shots and be brought to throwing daggers or whatever you can find.

I added two new ammunition types in release 13: everlasting arrows and bullets. If you have one in the quiver it will last forever. 

3.The starting ability priorities (i.e +2 body,-2 motion) of any race seem to make no difference. Any build can be made with any race.
 Race only seems to be functionally seperated by posession of dark-vision vs the extra talent of humans as far as I can tell.

True. It's now mostly cosmetic if you don't count darkvision. At some point I'll need to add some new races.

4.I've noticed there is really not much variety in ranged weapons. There is the short-bow, sling, and long-bow.
 Compare that to the many spells and copious melee weapons in the game. There are also no ranged artifacts as of yet (that I have found).

There's at least one named bow but sure, more is needed. Crossbows, blowguns or something more exotic? Having many ammunition types created randomly might lead to running out of ammo if you're using just one type of ranged weapon.

[Joonas]

(Bugs)
1.I once accidentally wandered into a myconids poison cloud while non-hostile, and it became hostile and attacked.

I can't reproduce this but I remember this happening to me as well. Stepping on a friendly creature's harmful effect does not raise its aggro-level itself so there's something more involved. Do you remember if you had allies or summons at that point?

[Troubler]

There's at least one named bow but sure, more is needed. Crossbows, blowguns or something more exotic? Having many ammunition types created randomly might lead to running out of ammo if you're using just one type of ranged weapon.

I had not considered the ammo issue. And there are not really that many historical weapons to work with after all. All I can think of is the recurve bow and the staff-sling.
There is also the more fantastic great-bow, which could also use arrows. You could invent some of your own launchers like you did with melee weapons (reacher, viper whip, trinity, great-flail, etc.)
Those are just some ideas. And if ranged weapons remain secondary, it wouldn't really matter so much either way.

I've been playing with everlasting ammo some and it has been an interesting addition. I'll try a ranged guy using strengthened-shots soon.

More meaningful spells are needed but I'm badly out of ideas.

Personally I think the variety in spells is fine, and you could think up more as you go along, but it needs balance so there is not one best route to go with them.
Some are underpowered or overpowered. For those people who like to mess around with making specific builds, it would need more balance and depth.
But for me, I think I just enjoy melee more because it's less predictable what you will get in the end.

True. It's now mostly cosmetic if you don't count darkvision. At some point I'll need to add some new races.

Actually, one quick way to fix this is to do a flat addition or reduction of those points after the player has gone through the ability screen instead.
So you might have someone start with 10,14,10,12. After they continue past the abilities screen a dwarf becomes 12,12,8,14, and an elf becomes 8,16,10,12.
That would make it so that the player can't just weasel around it and the points matter.

I also forgot the other races start with different skills, and these still matter, so there is that.

I can't reproduce this but I remember this happening to me as well. Stepping on a friendly creature's harmful effect does not raise its aggro-level itself so there's something more involved. Do you remember if you had allies or summons at that point?

I was almost certainly playing a lone-wolf character, so no companions. And I have not used summons for a while, so none of those either.

[Joonas]

http://www.zorbus.net

Release 14

• You can now enchant ranged weapons with elemental damage - scrolls. Randomly generated ranged weapons with elemental damage can also be found.
• Some named ranged weapons added.
• A new weapon, the hoopak, added. The hoopak is a staff topped with a fork and a sling on one end and a sharp spike on the other. It can be used both as a melee weapon and a ranged / reach weapon. It uses sling bullets as ammunition.
• Help text added to the inventory screen.
• You don't have to pick up a book to read it but can press CTRL + ENTER in the loot screen to read the it. Book reading supports PAGE UP / PAGE DOWN / HOME and END keys.
• Added more of Zyalin's art to loading screen, main menu and manual.

Zyalin's ingame art:
http://www.zorbus.net/art.html

Zyalin's Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/zyalin_art/

[getter77]

Hoopak!  Ah, some Gold Box nostalgia right there of a most particular sort~   

[Joonas]

Hoopak!  Ah, some Gold Box nostalgia right there of a most particular sort~   

First time I heard of a hoopak was when I played Champions of Krynn, so yes, it's from the Gold Box games / Dragonlance. The death animation in Zorbus is also a tribute to that game serie.

[Troubler]

I've gotten a few archers down to the end. Didn't win because I was being careless experimenting in the endgame. Strengthened shots helps and is a good addition.
It works well as a barrier to being a "real" archer. If you don't start off with it, you just have to use melee weapons until you can afford it or find enchanted bows.
Though it may be confusing to people why their skilled archer is doing 0-2 damage when shooting at kobolds, so it is slightly cryptic.
True archers are now about as viable as melee characters with this. The change in elemental damage is probably overkill.

I played around some with the silver spoon talent when I was looking for good early melee weapons. Though eventually I realized the melee bonus from motion is enough alone.
Some aspects of the talent can encourage start-scumming though, since sometimes you get a good launcher or better sword out of it.

The reduction in EXP from searching and disabling has made the game more difficult, I am maybe 3-5 levels lower by reaching the endgame.
Disable has lost a lot of utility now, but just using it for the EXP never really felt right anyway.
The hoopak weapon is a pretty interesting additon, but by chance I have not used it much.
I already found some of the artifact ranged weapons, which are good additions.

(Notes)
1.For a while, webs have been extremely frustrating with melee characters, because I thought I could not attack while stuck.
   However, I noticed wizards and archers can, which made me wonder what the mechanics of being stuck were.
   I did a little bit of experimenting and think the reason for this may be technical rather than intentional, as it seems I can still hit things by pressing CTRL.
   If it is intentional, being stuck to the point you can not move your arms seems like it should put a pretty hefty penalty on wizards spells, considering the effects of cumbersome armor.
2.Shops could use a way of bartering with items or holding credit, since the shopkeeper runs out of coins pretty quickly.
   For example, I had this happen: A shopkeeper had this nice Holy Vampiric Rapier +4 I wanted to buy for 4900 bucks.
   I have about 3000 on me in the form of coins, and 2000 worth in the form of misc items I want to dump.
   There is no way to turn those items into something of worth without coins in someone's possession.
3.A quick-autopilot to the store teleporter (like the one for the nearest down-stairs) would be useful.
   I go back and forth to that place a lot more often then I need help finding the nearest down-stairs.
4.The new rooms in the tavern are a neat addition, as are the chests full of loot. However, they can be easily looted at the very start of the game.
   All you have to do is wait in the guys room next to the chest until he falls asleep. At that point you can do whatever you want.
   Open the chest and grab the high-quality goods inside, and you are better off than a character who took the silver-spoon talent.
   I did this once to get a +3 holy rapier at the start of a game. (I was testing the viability of archers so I didn't end up using it)
5.It seems some items should prevent a door from being closed. For example, if an elephant corpse is in the doorway, shutting it would not be such a casual thing.

(Cosmetic)
1.The glaive has the description of the bardiche
2.Strengthened shots says your "body-modifier added to ranged attacks", but added to which aspect?
   I think it means ranged attacks work more like melee attacks in damage, but I don't know. This could use some clarification.
3.If a zombie or skeleton comes out of an opened grave, shouldn't that mean that there would not be a corpse in the grave after?

(Bugs)
1.Found a pretty big exploit. By rerolling the ability scores enough, you can get more points than is normally possible.
   I was once messing around with it and rolled a total of 52. I thought it was odd, since I can normally never get it past 49 at best.
   So I moved the abilities back down to 6,6,6,6 and noticed I had 47 points to spare! Looks like rolling does not take modifier prices into account.
2.Once a shopkeeper just walked out of his shop, I noticed his items were no longer for sale.
   Not sure what made him do this. It happened again with a recent character when I was luring a quaist into the bar to be killed.
   I swung by the shopkeepers shop and he was out again, wandering around the center room. He did not get hostile with the quaist, but it was when I noticed this.
3.Funny trick I found. If you are trapped in a web or slimed, you can displace enemies into the slime to free yourself if you manage it.

[Joonas]

Release 15

Character creation changes:

• Ability modifiers from race are added to the base value after adjusting / rolling.
• If you roll the abilities randomly you can not adjust them.
• New playable races: centaur, half-orc, halfling, gnome.
• Small changes to the old races.
• Some of the playable races start with talents. Smaller races have a smaller health dice and movement is a bit slower.

Changed a bit how restraining map effects (web, slime) work:

• Magic- and Ranged-skills have negative modifiers when a creature is in the effect of Web.
• Made the effects little weaker so that it's easier to struggle free. You can try to move or melee attack to get free. The check is a Body-ability check against the effect strength.
• AI also tries to get free by moving if it can not teleport away.
• You can not displace a creature when you or it is restrained.

Store changes:

• Item selling price is automatically lowered if a shopkeeper doesn't have enough coins.
• Shopkeepers slowly "regain" coins when you are not on the store level.
• You can autopilot to store teleporters in the dungeon by pressing (A)utopilot and then (S).

4.The new rooms in the tavern are a neat addition, as are the chests full of loot. However, they can be easily looted at the very start of the game. All you have to do is wait in the guys room next to the chest until he falls asleep. At that point you can do whatever you want.

Now they don't fall asleep.

1.The glaive has the description of the bardiche
2.Strengthened shots says your "body-modifier added to ranged attacks", but added to which aspect? I think it means ranged attacks work more like melee attacks in damage, but I don't know. This could use some clarification.

Fixed the descriptions. With Strengthened Shots Body-modifier is added to ranged damage.

3.If a zombie or skeleton comes out of an opened grave, shouldn't that mean that there would not be a corpse in the grave after?

Yes, have to fix this at some point. Currently it's also possible that several bones are created in the same grave.

2.Once a shopkeeper just walked out of his shop, I noticed his items were no longer for sale. Not sure what made him do this. It happened again with a recent character when I was luring a quaist into the bar to be killed. I swung by the shopkeepers shop and he was out again, wandering around the center room. He did not get hostile with the quaist, but it was when

Could not reproduce this no matter how I tried.

Now that Disable-skill use doesn't give that much XP, do you still think that the option "auto use key on lock" is needed?

[ObsessiveNerd]

Hey Joonas,

I love the new race options in update 15.  Just wanted to say I think Zorbus is super fun and very well made from what I've seen thus far.

Couple of small cosmetic bugs:
- The spiked shield has the description for the bladed shield.  I did see this in update 14 so maybe it's fixed now.
- I started a half orc when 15 came out and when npcs refer to me by race, the string is "half_orc" which I figure isn't supposed to have the underscore.

Do you have some kind of bug tracker users could submit to or is this thread the best option?

Looking forward to seeing what comes of Zorbus!

[Joonas]

Couple of small cosmetic bugs:
- The spiked shield has the description for the bladed shield.  I did see this in update 14 so maybe it's fixed now.
- I started a half orc when 15 came out and when npcs refer to me by race, the string is "half_orc" which I figure isn't supposed to have the underscore.

Do you have some kind of bug tracker users could submit to or is this thread the best option?

Thanks, I will fix those in the next release. No bug tracker so this thread can be used for that.

[Troubler]

Now that Disable-skill use doesn't give that much XP, do you still think that the option "auto use key on lock" is needed?

I still go back and unlock doors and chests with disable, just to scrape up as much EXP as possible, unless I don't invest in it at all.
As of release 14 it feels like level 20 is a soft limit to how high you can go before the endgame without disarm, and 21 is what I got with disarm.
But I don't know how much of that came from the chests and doors.

Could not reproduce this no matter how I tried.

Neither can I. If I see it happen again I will report the circumstances.

Got another ultimate ending but for release 14, with a mixed character I wanted to make for a long time.
With fewer chances to level up, the final bosses were considerably more difficult, but I managed it at level 21.
The final fight took all the tricks I had to pull off. First I released the two secret bosses, killing off half of them.
Then I took the remaining bosses on one by one. Using up every potion I saved up, most of my summons, and several clones.
The final-final boss died to the secret boss luckily, though was always pretty weak compared to a few of the rest.
The pure combat guy with the crazy +5 sword, bow, and ammo was the most fearsome, but I managed to outsmart him at range eventually.
I had used everything but stealth to kill them all. It was a lot of fun. I could have won without killing the last few, but that was plan B.

The endgame is really shaping up at this point. It is a lot less trivial now with the EXP changes.
Looks like some of the bosses were also buffed, though that may just be me fighting them at a lower level.
Some of the changes in the new version look very interesting, particularly the new races.

(Notes)
1.With the increase in books and other items that can be sold, it seems like you get more money in the early game recently.
2.The wording is strange when an enemy tries to hit you but misses. It's something like "The Orc bashes you with the hammer but misses"
3.You changed a lot regarding this in release 15, so I don't know if it still matters now, but a magic/melee character with web makes a lot of the combat trivial.

Nigetai's tweets reminded me of pastebin, so I will just use that to post victory files from now on.
These are all full of spoilers obviously.

(Release 6)
https://pastebin.com/raw/XT003bqB

(Release 8)
https://pastebin.com/raw/Na8QRUf1

(Release 12)
https://pastebin.com/raw/idJuBuMW

(Release 14)
https://pastebin.com/raw/pmticKZr

[Joonas]

Release 16

• Adjustments to playable races.
• Tamed animals get their Health, Stamina and skills boosted when your character levels up.
• New room content and monsters.
• New item: Flask of Poison. Can be used to coat the active melee weapon or active ammunition with poison. Poison coating on a melee weapon wears off after 10-20 hits. Change to a weapon set that contains a ranged weapon if you want to coat ammunition. One flask is enough for coating 20 arrows / bullets. If you have more ammunition equipped then the rest of the ammunition is put in backpack.
• Some typos fixed.

S
P
O
I
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E
R
S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S


Don't know if anyone has noticed but if you manage to get your character to the Zorbus level and ascend to a demigod/god then the character data is saved. A new character that enters the endgame level should see the old character there with the name slightly changed. Now if you challenge any of the gods then the old character will help you in the combat. You can try talking to your former character (well, you just get one reply but anyway).

The plan is to set the ultimate ending difficulty so high that you need to ascend a few characters to demigods/gods before having a chance against the ultimate boss. The "ascended characters" save file is deleted if you challenge the ultimate boss so you'll get just one try.


S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S ===== S P O I L E R S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

2.The wording is strange when an enemy tries to hit you but misses. It's something like "The Orc bashes you with the hammer but misses"

You mean this should be something like "tries to bash you with the hammer but misses"?

Thanks for those pastebins.