Update Alpha 7: Desires Update

Major:

Camp Update:

• Although a lot of this ends up being internal, almost the entirety of the workings of the camp menu have been updated/reworked.
  • Essentially, this means that any event or input that happens in camp can now trigger effects and/or scenes, similar to how the dungeon already works. This sounds vague because it is. It's a VERY wide system in what it allows.
  • Unfortunately, while the system may be very wide in possible scope, my time to write content for it is much more limited. As the game is still in alpha, the emphasis is on putting these systems in place over completely filling them with content. There are still a handful of scenes that will hopefully give you an idea of what to look forward to more of in the future though.
• Time segments are now half as long as they were before, meaning that there are 16 in a day. 6 are used for the dungeon, and 10 are free for you to do as you like.
  • Sleeping and preparing spells remain the same length of (relative) time as before.
  • Researching only takes a single time slot (so half as long as before).
• You can now join the knights in what they're doing around camp, gaining some favorability with them in doing so.
• After a few floors, you can also invite individual knights to your tent, leading into...

Desire Manipulation:

• The knights have always had a set of desires that have dictated their actions during camp, but now it has become possible to see and manipulate them!
• This content appears at the end of the third floor of the dungeon, so I won't belabor its tutorial here.
• While not 100% complete in everything that desire manipulation can do, as with the camp changes, there should be enough to give you an idea of where things are going and what to look forward to.

Active Spells:

• Non-passive spells have now been added to the spell pool
  • Just as with passive spells, some can be obtained as starter spells and some can only be bought from the Witch.
• Active spells can be cast in camp only, although their effects may extend beyond that.
• Active spells are put on cooldown after cast, and are refreshed by spending time preparing your spells from the Manage Spells menu.
• Scry is also an active spell while in camp, allowing you to view some hidden scenes.
  • There are not very many of these presently
  • Unlike other active spells, Scry recharges automatically every time slot.

Minor:

• Fixed the hanging seals trap requiring the ally to be captured to trigger the disarm event for some reason?????
• Fixed the binding rope constrict scene formatting error.
• Added a button in camp that will tell you how many days since you have slept, how many dungeon floors you have cleared, if you have loaned any mana to the Witch, and what spell effects you are currently under (active and passive).
• Fixed a mistake in the combat maid's attack script causing it to skip the first text box.
• Fixed a bug where threats with the 'requires unobscured room' flag set to true could STILL sometimes spawn in obscured rooms.
• Revealing the exit to the floor now makes adjacent rooms visible (not explored). This is the same as if you had had an ally explore the stairs room, where it was not before. Previously this could lead to cases where rooms adjacent to the exit were stuck in an invisible state if you had the Witch reveal the exit.
• Fixed being able to click the auto turn button while it is disabled and behind the regular next turn button.
• Changed one of the fonts to make a better distinction between a 0 and an 8.
• Added a save game update to remove previously removed curses (Faintheart and Fatalism) from any save files that still have them hanging around in their metaprogress files, as attempting to research those curses when their data is not in the game would cause a crash.
• Fixed spells in the Witch's Den showing an extra icon when clicked for information.
• Stat upgrade buttons are now always displayed when the ally has stat points. Clicking the button without enough stat points will display a message stating how many points are necessary to upgrade.
• The game now properly distinguishes between events that have happened this run and events that were carried over from new game+. This means that many events that mistakenly ended up being "once per meta progress save file" are now properly "once per run" as intended (this includes the Drider spawn, in case you were wondering why she was so rare).
• Added a button to view Research Notes while in the dungeon (no researching allowed in there, obviously).
• Clicking and holding left click on an ally for .5 seconds will now skip the orders menu and go straight to 'Set Destination' mode. As this is meant to be a convenience shortcut, it allows selecting EITHER a room to move to OR and ally to follow.
• Fixed the Regrowth skill not being flagged as learnable.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the Craven curse to not trigger even when you had it.
• Fixed an issue that could cause status effects that tick on action to get stuck as non-ticking statuses when moving between dungeon floors.
• Fixed the room info window not showing the correct percentage value in the health/complexity counter bars for traps.
• Fixed an issue where total KP in the NG+ window would show an incorrect amount when options were automatically deselected because their prerequisite options are no longer selected.
• Fixed an issue where hitting 100 Corruption using a Witch's Den would crash the game (also prevented the Witch from giving enough corruption for any ally to hit 100 directly from her, but even if she did that it wouldn't crash anymore).
• For convenience, selecting an ally will now display their current status effects in the top right turn count box regardless of what turn it is. Deselecting the ally reverts the displayed status effects to that of the current turn's ally.
• Changed the process of converting from a run save to meta save data to hopefully prevent any other cases of crashing due to attempts to access save game data during the process of game over-ing.
• Added an "Abandon Current Run" button to the Data section of the options menu. This button will only be available if there is existing save data. Note that this DOES NOT unlock New Game+ on its own, and IF USED BEFORE New Game+ is unlocked normally, does not save any data about the run that is being abandoned.
• New Game+ now checks that the previous run has reached the point where magic is introduced before offering the option to retain spellcasting (not that I imagine a lot of people are losing on floors 1 or 2)
• Particle effects that occur multiple times at once (example: scrying a room with the charge spell active and all three allies inside) will now mute all but one of the particles in order to avoid layering over each other and potentially being REALLY LOUD.
• Fixed a bug where the chance of passing out during research due to lack of sleep was being calculated incorrectly.

Balance:

Ally Camp AI:

• Allies will now be more likely to pick activities in camp that actually satisfy their current desires.
• Allies will deprioritize relaxation activities if they know they are going to sleep later in the day.
• Ally desires no longer increase while that ally is asleep.
• Allies deciding to do activities socially is now based more heavily on their current and base desires for Community.
• Allies deciding to masturbate or have sex in camp is no longer as reliant on them having high amounts of lust (though that still helps).
• Allies will now avoid certain activities during times when they don't make much sense. Mostly doing things out of camp late at night or right before dungeon time.
• Ally starting desire drives were increased slightly.

Damage Stats and Resting:

• Corruption breaks will now set the breaking stat to 70 (down from 75). This will prevent the awkward cases where a character is getting stunlocked by something (which ideally wouldn't happen in the first place but whatever) and isn't gaining any new corruption from further breaks.

Skills:

• Increased Bulwark's Requirements:
  • 23 Willpower and Health was really easy to get. It's still pretty easy to get now, but it's not a complete given just from having good stats.
  • New requirements: Base Willpower and Health both >= 24 and the character's desire drive for Ideals or Success must be High or greater.
  • Still on the list for a rework.
• First Aid and Bedside Manner:
  • Will now double check that the Injury damage taken isn't reduced to 0 (such as through Warding) before its effect is applied.
• Changed Finish Line:
  • New Effect: Grants a Morale Bonus that gives a bonus of [3 to Willpower/3 to Willpower and 1 to all other working stats] and prevents Exhaustion gain from moving between rooms after entering the end room of the floor. Lasts until entering the next floor.
  • This is meant to give the skill a bit more uniqueness. While the morale bonus is nerfed, the new effect can be quite strong for Elli keeping her Exhaustion lowered. It can add up to A LOT of damage prevented if Elli is able to scout her way to the end room early in a floor. This may actually be too strong, but I guess we'll see.
• Adjusted Conduit:
  • Removed the first level of the skill.
  • Added a requirement of Willpower base >= 26.
  • Made the icon a bit less EXTREME contrast.
• Buffed Spellsword:
  • Now learnable with any rank of Conduit.
  • Increased percentage of willpower per stack of charge used from 10 to 20.
    • Spellsword is a constant drain on any ability to build up charge stacks for any other use, so if you're deciding to opt into it, it should probably have a better payoff.
  • Also fixed an issue where its particle effect was not displaying on use.
• Fixed Barkskin having 'thorns applied counter <= 3' in one of its requirements sets. It is now >= 3 like it is intended to be.
• Removed Danger Sense:
  • Bad skill that encourages sitting around doing nothing.
  • Also it's associated spell was bugged and causing crashes.
• Made Flow State more accessible:
  • No longer requires 3 applications of Trance.
  • New requirements: Base Willpower >= 28, Material drive of moderate or higher, Knowledge drive of moderate or higher.
• Changed Heartbreaker:
  • Can now be learned by Lucette
    • Flavor-wise it made sense for her to not, but now that you can manipulate her desires it seems like a pointless restriction.

Curses:

• Masochism:
  • Will now double check that Injury damage taken isn't reduced to 0 (such as through Warding) before its effect is applied.
• Pride:
  • Fixed the duration not doubling if an ally is present at the time of Wounded Pride application. 
• Most camp chats that hinted at characters having specific curses now instead require that curse be embraced in order to say them.

Spells:

• You will now receive the free spell given by the Witch at the end of floor 2 (based on your dialogue choice) every run.
• Removed Sensory:
  • See the note on Danger Sense above.
• Nerfed Brainstorm:
  • Changed from a passive spell to an active spell.
  • Only kind of a nerf really. This makes it less flexible, though it doesn't cost any mana now at least.
  • New effect: On cast, the set of skills ALL allies are currently able to learn is rerolled.
• Changed Charge:
  • Changed name to Charged just because having a spell and status effect that are the same name is confusing.
• Buffed Quintessence:
  • Set the application of Thorns to add duration if the target already had Thorns (previously the new application was ignored).
  • Added to the random starter spell pool (it was kind of weird to only be gainable in new game+).

Witch:

• Increased cost to remove darkness by 5 (this is still stupidly cheap for how good it is).
• Increased the maximum number of spells the Witch can possibly offer in one den from 4 to 5.
• Slightly increased the likelihood of the Witch offering spells.

Threats:

• Lowered Exhaustion damage dealt by many events that cause it.
  • With the way that the numbers around Exhaustion and Well Rested are balanced, high amounts of exhaustion gained at once can be quite sticky and annoying to deal with.
  • Many of these exhaustion causing events now cause fatigue/weaken instead.
• Added a Flee event to the Bat .
  • I've heard a couple of stories of people being semi-stunlocked in bat rooms and that's really not intended with a weak enemy like this.
• Lowered the amount of desire taken away by the Hanging Seals trap Mute Desires event.
• Set Hanging Seals trap Mute Desires event to allow it to change Desire Drives if current desire values are low enough.
• Rope of Binding now has Health as its target defense stat.

Floor Generation:

• Lowered the lower and upper limits for the amount of walls that generate between rooms (make floors a bit less winding hallway-y).
• Changed threat generation to assess possible modifiers in a random order every time.
• Changed threat generation to have a small chance to assign a modifier that moves the threat's difficulty rating AWAY from the intended difficulty of the floor instead of closer to it.
  • This is meant to give at least a CHANCE of Weakling/Runty monsters spawning occasionally (since there still aren't new, high difficulty threats that will naturally get those modifiers in later floors)
  • This will make the difficulty of threats a bit less consistent between rooms, and may generally make the game SLIGHTLY easier unless level generation does an unusual thing and happens to over-correct for it.