Zorbus

[Joonas]

Zorbus is a fantasy-themed, graphical, turn-based, role-playing roguelike game. Your goal is to delve deep into a dungeon, find a portal to a mythical place called the Zorbus where a mere mortal can ascend to demigodhood.

The goal is to create a tight, streamlined dungeon crawling experience where the dungeon feels alive. Thematically Zorbus draws influence from the late 70s and early 80s tabletop AD&D campaigns and adventures.

The rule system for the game is slightly influenced by the d20-system used in the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Zorbus has experience levels but no character classes (race and gender is selected). On each level-up, you point-buy skills and talents. Talents are mostly combat abilities and spells.

By design, Zorbus does not have a hunger mechanic, item identification, crafting, autoexplore, an overworld map or quests.

More info, online manual and download here:
http://www.zorbus.net

[Krice]

It looks promising. What does "dungeon feels alive" mean?

[Joonas]

It looks promising. What does "dungeon feels alive" mean?

My plan was:
Dungeons are themed (both in map layouts and themed content in areas). There are special areas like throne rooms, banquet halls and prisons. There are several factions in the dungeon and also some wild life usually in caverns. Creatures also comment things and act somewhat intelligently.

I have mostly done all that. Whether these things are good or done well is a different story. Some players might prefer plain rooms, corridors and random monsters who never flee or use potions etc.

[Joonas]

Release 4

• Manual updated with clarifications on closing doors, rest until healed, setting traps and other stuff.
• Difficulty finetunings: some creatures removed from dungeon levels 1 and 2, bigger chance of a recruitable creature on the levels.
• Rest until healed -command added (S or NUMPAD_0). Rests until healed or rests 100 rounds if already at full health so you can use it also to regenerate Stamina. Seen hostile creatures interrupt the rest. Can also be interrupted by pressing any key.
• Health bars under creatures change color gradually from green to red as they get more angry at you.
• Doors can now be closed also with ALT+DIR. The floor has to be clear of items.
• Fixed ranged weapon enchantment. Ranged weapons can now be enchantent with "enchant weapon" and "vampiric weapon" -scrolls. When a ranged weapon and ammunition is equipped then elemental damage scrolls target ammunition.
• Inventory now shows the key for dropping items.
• Ability/skill/resistance-modifiers in item descriptions are now color coded.
• Equipment ability requirements actually implemented (mainly for heavy armor, large weapons and large shields).
• When you use target mode on a creature it shows the devices it's carrying (potions, wands etc.).
• Some talent requirements and values finetuned.
• Item price formula finetuned.
• Spirit-modifier adjusts item prices in stores (+-10% per modifier, max +-30%).
• Offscreen creature warning -setting draws red warning arrows in the edges of the map to directions where hostile creatures are seen. Mainly for small screens.

[Joonas]

At least one player has gotten to the endgame and of course there was a bug in there.

Release 5

• Fixed an endgame related bug.
• Fixed a rare but fatal dungeon generator bug which would result in a crash.
• Fixed another smaller dungeon generator bug (sometimes you would see a single oddly colored floor tile in an area).
• "Arrow of Explosion" and "Bullet of Explosion" now actually create a 3x3 explosion on the target.
• Shops have more healing-, endurance- and blink-potions.
• "Create obituary" -setting is now saved to the settings file.
• Obituaries now have usage counts of talents and devices.
• "Offscreen creature warning" -setting is now on by default. Can be changed from the settings.

[Joonas]

Release 6

• Intelligent hostile creatures nearby follow player when using stairs.
• You no longer get xp from killing animated/summoned creatures unless they're animated/summoned from a trap. The xp award from creatures with animating/summoning talents is slightly increased.
• You can quick switch ammunition for the current ranged weapon with [Q].
• Equipping / switching ammunition is now a free action (doesn't take time).
• Correct ammunition type is automatically equipped when switching to a ranged weapon if the quiver slot is empty or the ammunition type is wrong.
• Armor penalties on Motion, Stealth and weight reduced. Magical armors and shields are lighter.
• More bullets and arrows created on the 1st dungeon floor. Players also start with 30 bullets now.
• Removed to-hit-penalties from the Multistrike-talent.
• A shield bash attack is made every round if you have the talent.
• Natural Leader -talent raises the max amount of recruits by 2.
• New talent: Lone Wolf. +2 to all abilities but can not recruit creatures. Can animate/summon normally.
• Great Body/Motion/Mind/Spirit -talent descriptions now show your current ability score.
• Closing doors is now little slower.
• If you stumble upon a teleport trap, your autopilot coordinates are set to your former location so you can autopilot back to the former location if you have the map between the points explored.
• Scrolls and elixirs are no longer quickslotted.
• Removed "Save settings" and "Save keybindings" from settings/keybindings-menus. These are now automatically saved when exiting the menus.
• Manual clarification: If you want to attack a friendly creature through the "chat" dialog, you need to have a melee weapon in your active weapon set.

[Troubler]

At first I was put off by the apparent simplicity of the game, but it's actually really good.
Your dungeons are some of the best I've seen in a roguelike, and they do feel "alive" like you described.
The chatter the characters make is also pretty fun. The gameplay is immersive and has decent depth.
It is hard to put my finger on it, but something about it is unusually enjoyable.

Great job, I haven't seen something like this before. I hope you keep working on it.
I'll be playing it the next few days before getting you some more detailed feedback.

---

EDIT:

I've been playing maybe once or twice a day for this last week. I put in some more effort today and managed to beat it!
Got the ultimate ending (Though no sign of "that guy" yet, but I could have probably easily defeated him with this last character anyway).
This has quickly become one of my favorite roguelikes. The gameplay is engaging, the lore is charming, and the dungeon makes exploration fun and death not too frustrating.
My biggest complaint right now is that the later levels got a bit too easy. Though it was pretty cathartic melting demons left and right and punting liches around.
My winning strategy this time was producing some kind of lone-wolf "super wizard" which also took advantage of the talent bonus mind gives to boost all my abilities sky high.
This worked out a little bit too well, and I destroyed the second half of the game. First half went well too. The EXP bonus from a mind-based character also helped with that part.
There is not a lot of reward for diversifying your spell repertoire at the moment, so this didn't have many drawbacks at all. I focused on energy bolt/blink/acid cloud for ~90% of the game.
By the end I was a jack of all trades who could even hold up in melee against many tougher opponents, though spells were still king.
The avaliablity of summons largely made the penalty for lone-wolf irrelevant, and probably should not have been an option.
Though there were other reasons not to use summons (which I talk about below) that drove me away from their use for the most part.

Anyway, here are my notes for the game.
I wont post my victory log since there are no spoilers, unless you think it's okay.


---

(notes)
1.Some way to instruct allies from a distance would be nice. You can use "Y" to yell, so you should be able to shout commands.
2.It's easy to accidently kill a fungus in a fungaloid garden. I noticed the game warns you if you try to steal from them.
   Maybe this should give a warning too?
3.Haven't tested this yet, but if you start out with a mind of 13 or something, and then take the "great mind" perk to raise it,
   will you get the talent points for the levels that you earned before you got the perk?
4.The EXP penalty for killing enemies using allies can be pretty steep for spirit-based characters
   Depending on allies is not very viable, (or even wise considering no respawning enemies) as a result right now.
   This factor made me only consider using summons as a desperation move most of the time (mainly fighting one or two of the final bosses).
5.The game switches to the 100-turn wait when you have full-HP but doesn't take stamina into account
   This resulted in a lot of tedious tapping when waiting out stamina regeneration.
   Though I did get the rhythm down to the point it was almost seamless!
7.Could the Autopilot browse for known locked containers? Often when I find a key, I want to head back to one, but I forget their location.
8.I was constantly wasting health potions confusing 1 with F1. This was a big pain, I had just turned off auto-quickslots as a result.
9.Theoretical question: Does a dagger in the off-hand still lower melee defense?
   I'm not really sure what this mechanic is supposed to simulate beyond two-handed weapons being unwieldly.
10.Coins have weight and auto-loot grabs coins automatically. This adds some annoyance when managing my stash of coins.
11.Auto-loot in general is a pain when stashing arrows, shots, scrolls, potions, and similar things.
   Maybe there can be an option when opening a container to exclude it from auto-loot, or maybe even an option not to auto-loot containers at all?
   Otherwise the containers in the dimensional market would be good to have something like an exclusion for auto-loot at least, as they have nothing.
   (Actually this issue turned out to be the worst of them all, "Auto-pickup" from my stashes constantly went on my nerves)
12.Could you make it so I could pull up more character info during a level-up? Like what 'c' does normally in play.
   Often I want to make some decisions with regards to how my stats are, but I forget the details off hand.
13.Does lone-wolf bar the simulcruim spell from being useful? I have never cast it, but I don't know if it would act like a summon or "real" character.
14.There should be a confirmation for selecting the non-saving "quit" options from the menu.

(cosmetic remarks)
1.A lizardman on level 2 refered to me when I was not in his line of sight, and also in an adjacent room.
2.When something is trapped, the game refers to it by the name probably in the code.
   Like "There is a trap in the fu_altar" rather than just the altar. I guess fu is short for "furniture".
3.I ran into the merchant plane to escape a monster who had poisoned me. It followed me in, and the poison killed me.
   The greeter there then called me a thief when I died, even though I had just waked in a few seconds before.
4.Animal bones produced a humanoid undead minion? (This may not have actually happened, I was not paying much attention at the time).
5.Confusion description grammar is wrong "End of fighting each other"
6.Githyanki warrior spelling mistake, he says "otside" rather than "outside" when he meets the player
7.Generally speaking, enemies may refer to the player when talking to another hostile.
   For example, the Mycon said "Why did you do this human?" when fighting a zombie.
   He continued to say this to me, even though he killed the zombie and we were never fighting.
8.Nightvision sounds nice, but it is so hard to see in the darkness that it was not worth the eye-strain for me.
   This is a pretty big problem if you want to attempt a stealth-heavy run. As a result I have not as of yet.
9.Missing punctuation for an engraving: "Just take a look around you (.) What do you see (?) Pain, suffering, and misery.
   (Or something like that)


(bugs)
1.The great-flail doesn't seem to count as a "great" weapon in the case of the "great reach" talent
2.Clicking "Return to main menu" sometimes just restarts the game with the same character
   This button is generally buggy. The character I get sometimes starts with a halberd and platemail as well. (Debug?)
3.My summons wont attack a hostile enemy who became hostile after they were summoned.
   See: Animals that lose their patience and attack. Try summoning before they get angry.
4.You can not ctrl-move into other characters diagonally as far as I know.

[Joonas]

Troubler,
thanks a lot for your post! I read it first before you edited it and didn't notice until now that you had updated it (date of the post didn't change).

I just updated the game to release 8. I'll try to fix the things you mentioned.

Major stuff in release 8:

• If you enable the option "Check for updates on start" from the settings, you'll be informed when a new release is available and asked if you want to update. The check is made when the game is started. Remember that you will lose your saved games if you update!
• Character sheet now shows more detailed information on how the current values of abilities, skills and resistances are calculated (modifiers from equipment and temporary effects are shown).
• Some AI and morale adjustments.

[Joonas]

Release 9 is out and fixes some issues that Troubler mentioned:

• All bump actions now work also in diagonal directions.
• Fixed a bug where companion/summoned/animated did not always get hostile against an attacker.
• A warning dialog is shown when you try to smash a fungus when there's a myconid nearby.
• Containers in the shop-level are no longer autolooted.
• You can now press [L] to browse locked furniture (doors, chests) in the autopilot mode.
• Character sheet can be displayed with [C] in the level up - menus.
• A lantern is automatically quickslotted if the "auto set quickslots" setting is on.
• Some grammar mistakes and typos fixed.

13.Does lone-wolf bar the simulcruim spell from being useful? I have never cast it, but I don't know if it would act like a summon or "real" character.

Lone wolf -talent does not affect Simulacrum or other cloning methods. Added a note to the talent's description.

9.Theoretical question: Does a dagger in the off-hand still lower melee defense? I'm not really sure what this mechanic is supposed to simulate beyond two-handed weapons being unwieldly.

Each hand / item has their own attack/defense rate. For defense, the item with best defense value is used or dodge-skill if its skill value is higher. I'll have to create some extra character sheet page where these values are listed.

1.The great-flail doesn't seem to count as a "great" weapon in the case of the "great reach" talent

This is odd. I tested this and it worked. Note that the reach attack indicator is not shown if a creature is not aggroed enough to attack you. You can still attack it with [f]ire.

2.Clicking "Return to main menu" sometimes just restarts the game with the same character This button is generally buggy. The character I get sometimes starts with a halberd and platemail as well. (Debug?)

Hopefully this was already fixed in some earlier release. Yes, those items were for the debug character.

1.Some way to instruct allies from a distance would be nice. You can use "Y" to yell, so you should be able to shout commands.

This might be added at some point. Any ideas for what commands to have? Or what kind of UI to have for it?

3.Haven't tested this yet, but if you start out with a mind of 13 or something, and then take the "great mind" perk to raise it, will you get the talent points for the levels that you earned before you got the perk?

No, it doesn't affect previously earned talent points.

8.I was constantly wasting health potions confusing 1 with F1. This was a big pain, I had just turned off auto-quickslots as a result.

You can also change quickslot key bindings to letter keys (H for healing potion) or shift + function key etc.

8.Nightvision sounds nice, but it is so hard to see in the darkness that it was not worth the eye-strain for me. This is a pretty big problem if you want to attempt a stealth-heavy run. As a result I have not as of yet.

Yes, this is annoying. Not sure how to handle this.

[Troubler]

I probably should have just double-posted, it's not like there is much competition anyway.
But good to see you are still at it. I'm particularly excited about the autoloot change.
Also I forgot to mention that I was playing release 6 when I took those notes.

This is odd. I tested this and it worked. Note that the reach attack indicator is not shown if a creature is not aggroed enough to attack you. You can still attack it with [f]ire.

I think I had pressed 'f' and it gave me the red text that says I need a reach weapon.
Maybe I was wrong here though, and may have not have picked up the talent for that particular character.
But I could have sworn I double checked by picking up a great-sword with the same guy and it worked.

This might be added at some point. Any ideas for what commands to have? Or what kind of UI to have for it?

I'm not so sure anymore. I wrote that when I was using allies more, but now mostly do lone wolf characters.
I remember wanting this when one of my allies ran off to fight a powerful enemy I was escaping from, and they got themselves killed.
I wanted a way to get them to follow me away from the danger. It could also be used to prioritize targeting when against multiple enemies.
You could maybe also use it to talk to or recruit characters from a distance, which would make sense to me since they already talk to you over distances.
For UI I was just thinking about expanding the 'y' command to have some sub-options. Similar to how autopilot works now.
You point at a target and press the button for what you want to do.

Yes, this is annoying. Not sure how to handle this.

Maybe what is covered by night-vision could be tinted a certain color (something easy on the eyes), but only when not covered by actual light.
That's all I can think of.

---

In the meantime I beat the game again in release 8.
I had a feeling about that key in the end... It was a bit anticlimactic, but worth going back just for fun anyway. The secret boss was kind of a pushover.
He should be able to blink away when stuck, or have resistances, or something. Since I just filled up his room with acid and he would helplessly melt.
I had to block the door, but his damage output wasn't enough to compete with the devastating and ongoing background effect of the acid.
Then again, I saved him for last, expecting more of a fight, so my character was also tremendously over-leveled for the occasion.
Otherwise the final bosses were considerably more difficult this time due to me lacking a cloak of immunity or something like that.
This is despite the fact that I was a much higher level when fighting them.

I had also put more effort into searching and leveled the skill this time around. It payed off well in items, experience, and entertainment.
Though even with a very high search (26 with true-sight), it was pretty hard finding every nook and cranny of each level, I tended to get ~%97 coverage.
I also put more points into disarm, but it was not so useful. Traps themselves are never a big threat, and setting them is not worth the investment.
But maybe a more limited character would find use in it. This guy had better (magical) ways of doing all the things disarm does.
The potential for additional EXP for disarming things was alluring though, but ultimately I didn't invest enough to see how far that goes.

Just a few more things I noticed this time around. These are all for release 8 unless otherwise noted.

(notes)
1.The game should give a warning before stepping into dangerous terrain, like an acid cloud.
   It wasn't a big issue, and I only slipped once or twice into one. But I could see it being a particularly frustrating death.
2.The "true-sight" spell was pretty tedious to tap over and over when searching old levels for hidden doors.
   Not sure what to recommend, since it's the only spell with this problem.
3.Maybe there could also be an option in the autopilot to help with backtracking to unsprung traps.
   Once I had the disarm skill leveled, I wanted to go back and disarm some, but finding them again was difficult.
4.I noticed the game has this strange habit of greying out the option to save occasionally. It has only happened a few times and I don't know what it is for.
   All 3 times this happened to me were pretty inconvenient though, particularly since I use wine and the screensaver popping up crashes the game.
   Usually it "clears up" after a while as well, and I can save again, but I don't know what causes that either.
5.The victory/obituary file should have a note somewhere for which release this happened in.
6.The secret boss doesn't drop that essence stuff like all the others do in the end (Though that might be intentional).

(cosmetic remarks)
7.Mimics in the victory/obituary file are listed 3 times, but not as which one (chest, coffin, or door I presume)
   Same for "Wolf" and several other enemy types, it might just be from these kind of cosmetic differences.

(bugs)
8.This is actually something I remembered from the last version I played (release 6), but forgot to mention.
   Once picking out one of the final bosses to kill, if you cast confusion the rest of them will gang up on the one.
   They might be allied, but are not hostile to you yet, so the effect was kind of strange. It wasted the one guy pretty quick iirc.
   I think I had just cast confusion to deal with his summons. My memory is kind of hazy so you may want to see what happens yourself.
9.If you switch spots back and forth with an enemy type that loses it's patience (like a snake or centipede), it will not become angry.
   So long as you spend your turn switching spots with it, their HP bar will remain the same color. You can do this indefinitely.
10.Interestingly I had 100% map exploration of level 3, yet only found 12 out of the 15 hidden areas there. I am not sure how that is.
   If it's determined by opening containers, I have a possible explanation: Often I do not open containers with a guardian in the room.

[Joonas]

7.Generally speaking, enemies may refer to the player when talking to another hostile.
   For example, the Mycon said "Why did you do this human?" when fighting a zombie.
   He continued to say this to me, even though he killed the zombie and we were never fighting.

This should be fixed now.

6.The secret boss doesn't drop that essence stuff like all the others do in the end (Though that might be intentional).

Yes, it's intentional.

10.Interestingly I had 100% map exploration of level 3, yet only found 12 out of the 15 hidden areas there. I am not sure how that is.
   If it's determined by opening containers, I have a possible explanation: Often I do not open containers with a guardian in the room.

This was hopefully just a rounding error which should have been fixed now. Hidden areas are counted as found if you just find a way in and explore at least 1 floor tile there. Containers have no effect.

4.I noticed the game has this strange habit of greying out the option to save occasionally. It has only happened a few times and I don't know what it is for.
   All 3 times this happened to me were pretty inconvenient though, particularly since I use wine and the screensaver popping up crashes the game.
   Usually it "clears up" after a while as well, and I can save again, but I don't know what causes that either.

By design, you can only save once per dungeon level and you can't save at the endgame level. It this was not the case then it's a bug.

7.Mimics in the victory/obituary file are listed 3 times, but not as which one (chest, coffin, or door I presume)
   Same for "Wolf" and several other enemy types, it might just be from these kind of cosmetic differences.

Yes, they are separate monster definitions with the same name.

---

Release 10 is out:

• You can loot items from explored floor tiles and checked containers by pressing SPACE. By selecting an item from the list and pressing SPACE or ENTER you will be autopiloted to the item and the item will be picked up. If an item is in a container it will be listed only if you have at least once checked the contents of the container.
• Containers are marked with green corner lines if you haven't yet explored their contents.
• When selecting an autopilot target you can cycle still locked doors and unlooted containers with F.
• In the autopilot mode portals can be cycled with A or TAB so you can press A to start the autopilot mode and then the same key to cycle through the portals and ENTER to pilot to the target location.
• Autopilot is no longer interrupted so easily with neutral creatures or closed doors.
• Duration of the True Seeing -talent increased.
• Obituary file now shows game release number.
• Fixed a bug where a creature could be indefinitely displaced without it getting angry.
• Manual reorganized and info on the new features added.

[Troubler]

Cool. I've been trying to get a melee character going, and have been fairly successful, but I ran into a really nasty crash twice which ended my game.
Also I recently realized I have been using dodging wrong this whole time, and that it only works when unarmed. Should have read the fine print.
Realizing this has changed a lot. Particularly my opinion on how weak melee is, since I was investing in dodge and melee in equal amounts.
Fully investing into melee, even with less intelligent characters, has made them much more viable than before.
Though this also makes unarmed magicians sound incredibly powerful, as I also armed them before while investing in dodge.
I have also tried messing around more with disarm and it's not so bad. The EXP is decent later on.

Here is what I noticed playing release 9:

(notes)
1.When holding two melee weapons that can be thrown (like a hammer and a dagger), there is no way to choose which one to throw.
 At least as far as I know. The character seems to choose randomly at the moment. I first noticed when he kept throwing his dagger, instead of his weapon that returns.
2.Is there a way to set a map point to a different location if you have no free ones left? I misclick 'm' occasionally.
3.Opening a chest with a key seems like it should be optional, since you could instead try to disarm it for the EXP.
 What I mean is that using the key costs you that opportunity, but bumping the chest to inspect it automatically uses the key.
4.If you are using autopilot and discover a secret door on the way to your destination, it doesn't stop.
 Sometimes I forget where I found it when traveling that way, since it went by too fast.
5.I was thinking it would be nice if autopilot could take you to unsprung traps as well, for similar reasons to containers.
6.Guardians of some containers shouldn't get angry if you just look at their contents, at least in theory.
 For example, if there is an altar, I would be physically able to see what is on top of it without angering the myconid guarding it.
 Maybe through targeting mode even? Since you could see it from a distance. With some containers like a chest though that wouldn't be possible.
 Again, just theoretically. That's not taking into account any issues with how containers currently work, balance, implementation, etc.

(cosmetic)
1.Missed "you" in "The myconid might get angry if (you) hurt the fungus."

(bugs)
1.Sometimes I can't put tankards into the quick-select, and sometimes I can. Not sure what causes it.
2.Lost my first character to a crash. When I was traveling back upwards to level 5 from 6. I got a message saying "Out of memory" and the game froze.
 That was a shame too, since that was my first viable melee-based character. And it happened again going from level 6 to 7 (or 7 to 8?), with another good melee character.
 I never ran into this crash before release 9(I've been playing since 6), if that helps any. I also updated from 8 to 9 through the game this time as well. Also playing on Wine.
3.The automatic re-equipping after throwing an item seems to be odd. At least when duel-wielding.
 For example, once I threw a dagger and he put an Urgosh (two-handed) into his main hand and another dagger in the other.
 This only happened once and I couldn't reproduce it.

[Joonas]

Release 11 is out.

• Removed the limit of saving the game only once per dungeon level. You still can't save the game on the endgame level though.
• Pressing A in the autopilot mode cycles through unexplored areas. T cycles through known traps. Autopilot is stopped when a secret door or a trap is found.
• Pressing E autopilots you to the nearest unexplored location directly without going into autopilot mode. The autopilot takes you just to the unexplored tile and does not explore further. As your line of sight and possible lightsource reveals new areas you can press E again to move to one of these. You will be missing a lot of secret doors if you constantly use this command as autopilot does not walk near all walls. It's best to be used in short bursts of movement or for backtracking or finalizing the level exploration.
• Pressing H opens a keyboard image that shows the current keybindings. This can be opened from the main game view and from the keybindings screen. You can press ALT, CONTROL or SHIFT to show bindings that require one of those keys to be pressed.
• If you walk near a furniture container that is opened (chests etc.) or is lidless (altars etc.), it is assumed that you have peeked into it and can then use target mode from any distance to see the container's contents. The items are not shown in the level loot list until you actually loot (bump) the container at least once.
• You can press C in the target mode to cycle through seen containers. Known empty containers are skipped.
• If all 9 map points are set, setting a new one replaces the nearest one.
• "Auto use key" setting. If disabled, you won't automatically use a key on a lock but the dialog that pops up when bumping a locked furniture has the option to use a key among the normal options.
• If you dualwield two throwable items and only the other one has the "returning"-property then the one that doesn't have the property is not thrown.

Big thanks again for Troubler for feedback. 

1.Sometimes I can't put tankards into the quick-select, and sometimes I can. Not sure what causes it.

3.The automatic re-equipping after throwing an item seems to be odd. At least when duel-wielding.
 For example, once I threw a dagger and he put an Urgosh (two-handed) into his main hand and another dagger in the other.
 This only happened once and I couldn't reproduce it.

I tried to reproduce these but couldn't. I will keep them on my to-check list as well as all the other stuff you mentioned earlier.

2.Lost my first character to a crash. When I was traveling back upwards to level 5 from 6. I got a message saying "Out of memory" and the game froze. That was a shame too, since that was my first viable melee-based character. And it happened again going from level 6 to 7 (or 7 to 8?), with another good melee character.
I never ran into this crash before release 9(I've been playing since 6), if that helps any. I also updated from 8 to 9 through the game this time as well. Also playing on Wine.

This is bad. There's a problem with memory fragmentation in the game. I use a lot of memory streams and dynamic arrays. There unfortunately is no quick fix for this. If you play for long sessions it's best to save & quit and restart the game once in a while. I removed the "only save once per dungeon level" thing.

Before each release I stress test the game with an autoplay that explores all levels and then starts again with a new game. Eventually it crashes after doing about 15-20 complete runs of the game. The crash happens when changing a dungeon level when lots of data is written and loaded.

[Joonas]

Release 12

• Fixed a memory leak.
• You can quickly get to the nearest stairs down by pressing (A)utopilot and then (D)ownstairs.
• Dodge is now automatically used for defense in combat if it's better than your Melee-skill based defense.
• Some additional combat related stats of equipped weapons listed in the descriptions of the items.

I stress tested the game for several 12-15 hour sessions with autoplay without a crash. Autoplay uses the game AI for the player character to clear all levels and then it starts over again. It's quite fast: it only takes about 4 minutes to go through the game.

http://www.zorbus.net

[Troubler]

That's great news. The possibility of another crash was pretty demoralizing. Though I have played version 11 some.
As soon as I saw release 12 out, I managed to get a melee character to victory. And it was my most successful character yet, reaching level 40 by the end of the game.
Also thanks for all these features you have gone out of your way to add, they certainly are appreciated. Though I've always enjoyed the game.

Anyway, I finally got my win with a no-magic (except for true-sight), melee character. Getting a viable one was tricky but worked out.
I had started trying some races other than humans out. All of my fighters so far had been humans with a 14,14,16,14 start.
You begin with the guy at 12,12,13,12 and use great-mind and lone-wolf to blow him up to 14,14,16,14. And you are at 1-talent-per-level by level 3.
But starting with a "warrior" ability at 16, and only starting out with 14 mind is more viable. I thought this was only possible with elves and dwarves, but in hindsight not really.
It looks like humans are capable of this as well(and with an extra talent). So far it seems racial ability changes don't make too much of a difference. Maybe for extreme characters?
For my victory I played as an elf thinking it would. The night-vision was pretty good, though like I said before, hard on the eyes, so I did not use it too often.
Then gradually I would get back to 1-talent-per-level status by around level 7 through focusing on the great mind talents.
I can get a good 16,12,14,14 or 12,16,14,14 start with a lone-wolf. With 12 body you can wield anything and high-motion makes heavy weapons very powerful.
The 16 motion build is just superior as far as I can tell. Trying the 16 body one might give me a bit more in damage, but when I keep missing it doesn't feel worth it.
I might try a 12 mind one in the future, as the talents just go to spells in the end, which I don't use, but the penalty for skills may not be worth it.

With a melee character the game is still notably harder than a mind-centered run, though with 16 motion it's more manageable and success is more easily replicated than what I was doing before.
A lot of close calls, though I suppose melee combat would be by nature more risky than ranged combat. Regardless, by the end of the game my guy was a tank who slaughtered everyone.
The secret boss was notably harder this time around, though not incredibly so. Either he is tougher in melee or you buffed him when I wasn't looking.
His necrotic damage took several chunks out of my HP, but it was nothing one potion of holiness couldn't easily mitigate. His dodge was impressive though and kept me busy.
The final boss came to my aid, and helped finished him off. My theory is the secret boss actually exists to give less combat oriented players an edge in the end-game through this fighting.
And speaking of potions, by the end you will have so many stored up that it makes much of the endgame very safe. Health potions don't help so much, but heroism wrecks the final bosses.
Also I beat the game with Nightbringer. I was pretty sentimental with all the great-flails that used to spawn, even though I had better weapons. The comments were pretty funny too, especially when I reached the endgame.
I had that cloak of protection for the endgame again (and the ring of resistance to boot) so most magical attacks just bounced off. That may have made this melee run easier than it otherwise would have been.

By the way, I've noticed so far all of my successful runs take about 5-6 hours.
I might try a ranged-combat character next time, though I have found ranged combat pathetically weak.

Alright, here are my notes for releases 11 and 12.

(notes)
1.When an enemy opens a door, it makes a *creak* noise, and produces a small bit of fading text on its tile to indicate where the door is.
   The text fades pretty quickly, but maybe should only fade once you make your next turn, or gradually fade with turns, since this can track enemies.
   There is some other text like *sounds of battle* which also seem to work like this. Right now it's slightly reflex/memory based.
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.
 But that's just from my immediate point of view. Like with seeing what's on a container, this is not taking into account any bigger picture.
3.I think the explore function once ran me into a (known) door mimic, activating it and causing it to attack.
4.Inactive golems still seem to walk around, though that might be intentional.

(cosmetic)
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.
2.If you pick a locked door while holding it's key, a message will say you unlocked it with the key even though you used disable.

(bugs)
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.
2.Ran into a strange bug. I autopiloted into (or near?) a locked door. The auto-use-key option was off when I bumped into the door.
 The prompt for what to do would not take any options except for using the key to open it. That was pretty scary, I thought I would be stuck there!
3.Once a druid in a prison got upset at me for trying to open a chest in the prison-room, from inside his cell.
 I'm guessing they claim whatever containers are in the room they spawn in, but this was kind of funny.
4.The bouncer didn't attack me when I opened the secret door, because I think he didn't see me do it.
 I don't really know what happened. But the point is I got away with it and he did not become hostile after I came out.
 This one has only happened in release 12 as far as I could tell.