COX 2 Ver. 1.54.65 released!

A new release? Two days shy of only one month after the last release? Yes! 

The weeks immediately following a release are actually the time I most enjoy working on Caverns. Why? Because I know I’ve got a three month window before my self-imposed deadline for the next one, and while I have an official to-do list before then, I’ve got enough time that for the first couple of weeks, I can ignore that list entirely and just go hogwild, adding whatever whim strikes me. And I did that, here! Despite the short turn around, you’ll still find a lot of new content to sink your teeth into.

But that’s not the reason for this release here and now. The reason for that is that WHILE I was working on all that new content, players were out there gaming through the last release... and filling me in on some bugs I’d overlooked. Some of them were tiny. Nothing new there. But a few were so serious that I just felt more and more uncomfortable leaving them out in the wild, where new players could stumble across them and come to the conclusion (correctly, in a few cases) that the game was broken. So I set about repairs and rebalances. And here we are.

Huge thanks to CX-V1P, Keleva, DeathMage13, and zyrax fairfeather for the bug reports and thoughts that contributed to this build. Also to TonNoise, Stabbins777, Balathazar and v_roma for highlighting some issues they were having.  And to Spenta of Water and Gokudera ElPsyCongroo for some bug reports I forgot to mention in the devlog of the last build.

Please enjoy the new, more stable game, all the new content and, what I’m most proud of, the complete rebalance of all the weapons! Polearms should no longer be a default favourite and Axes and Blunt Weapons will finally get their fair (and brutal) shake!

Let's be clear: THIS UPDATE WILL NOT WORK WITH EXISTING SAVES!  LOADING A SAVE FROM AN EARLIER VERSION WILL HAVE UNPREDICTABLE RESULTS.

Also, if you're updating rather than grabbing the game fresh, lemme know if anything untoward happens.  The new yt and mt files in the saves folder are smaller than they used to be...  I don't think this should impact you in anyway, but if it does, tell me ASAP and I'll replace them.

Okay, here’s the newness: 

Major Improvements:

- Overhauled weapon damage such that they should be better balanced across all levels and types, but still having a lot of diversity (more than before, actually) in how they play.

- 2-handed melee weapons will now result in a 25% increase to bonus strength damage when they do it, since the bonus damage they were getting wasn’t impactful enough to merit ditching a shield or avoiding dual wielding.

- 2-handed missile weapons will now result in a bonus to hit (or a lessening of what should be their penalty to hit, if one), to compensate for the fact that you can’t use a shield or dual wield.

- New Disease: Magelouse (monsters can catch, too).

- New Map Tiles: Tree of Wisdom, Sorceror’s Puzzle, Pillar of Salt, Dragon Cult Shrine.

- New Boobytraps: Sorceror’s Curse, Sorceror’s Puzzle Trap.

- New Spells: Vitality, Soul Transfer.

- New Magic Items: Lichlord’s Mirror, Lucky Horseshoe, Four Leaf Clover, Deadly Demon’s Skull, Unicorn Horn, Sigil of Xegex, Dragon Worshipper’s Pendant, Tome of Dragon Worship, Godstone, Runelocked Grimoire, Ambrosia, Ecliptic Compass, Silver Apple of Talltioward, Mask of Beauty, Coat of Many Colours, Eye of Oblar, Gopher Wood, Jewelled Ephod, Medallion of Twilight’s Grace, Sekolan Robe, Knotworked Hair of a Mountain Giant, Tablet of Divine Laws, Curator’s Skull, Moon Berry, Dark Almanac, Magician’s Eye, Hero’s Hand, Sigil of Power, Sceptre of Authority, Caduceus, Mask of Dreams, Heart of the Iron Sentinel, Portal Key, Recuperative Elixir, Tavern Coin, Pergaments of Minor Mysteries, Holy Shroud.

- New Potions: Influence Potion, Destiny Potion, Potion of Water Breathing.

- New Mundane Items: Medicine, Blackbeard Ale, Promissory Note, Holy Scripture, Laurel Wreath, Holy Relic.

- New Events: Curdled Brews, Duststorm, Trollish Magic, Metamophosis, Inheritance, Obvious Forgeries, Baited Breath, Bad Omens, Disillusionment, Furtive Footsteps, Pillar of Fire, Runaway Cart, Surge of Psychic Thought, Divine Benevolence, Buyer’s Market, Spring Into Action, Thorn Sleep Curse.

- New Armour Enchantments: Prismatic/Aurora/Rainbow, Starmetal/Nebulite/Astral Forged, Ashen/Black/Midnight, of Splendour/of Majesty/of Magnificence.

- New Weapon Enchantments: Ashen/Black/Midnight, Peridot/Viridian/Emerald, Ritualistic/Sacrificial/Oblative.

- New Jewellery Enchantments: of Intention/of Purpose/of Resolution, of Conflict/of Battle/of War, of Lesser Arcane Resonance/of Arcane Resonance/of Greater Arcane Resonance.

- New Monster Variants: Infected Pseudo Dragon, Potion Thief, Drunken Hill Giant, Blink Mage, Dark Mistress, Electromancer, Jinxing Jester, Pyrobooka, Spiderfolk Queen, Spell Thief, Dark Elf Moonchild, Half-fiend Fatetwister, Battle Ogre, Corpse Master, Portal Gnome, Odious Orc, Voodoo Spectre, Winged Wolf, Boar of the North, Centurion, Legionnaire, War Master, Mercenary Captain, Desert Thief, Giant Tremor Worm, Dark Phantom, Guardsman, Keep Zombie, Vampire Warrior, Dragon Cultist, Dragon Cult Missionary, Dragon Cult Assassin, Unholy Faerie Dragon, Watchdog, Dragon Cult Officer, Baneful Wight, Crypt Creature, Tower Ghoul, Dark Dwarf Veteran, Pit Wight, Hell Larvae, Bloody Bones, Night Shade, Sewer Ghoul, Blood Bat, Blue Slime.

Minor Improvements:

- Updated game manual.

- Rephrased queries of the Destiny Miracle or the Destiny Prayer to mention that it lets you return to life on the Temple “with Health at 1/2 Max Health” instead of “at 1/2 Max Health”, to make it clearer that your Max Health itself will be unchanged.

- Infinite Spell Book will now regenerate 1 to 3 Uses per new map entered (to a maximum of 3), instead of just 1. This was done because it was otherwise identical to the Crystethian Grimoire, which is only a mid power Magic Item, vs. the Infinite Spell Book’s high power status.

- Book of Dark Pacts is now a low power Magic Item instead of mid power, and half as common as before. Its power tier was lowered because it was otherwise just a blatantly inferior version of the Crystethian Grimoire, and its commonality was lowered because despite its inferiority to the Crystethian Grimoire, it’s quite powerful for a low powered Magic Item.

- Monsters struggling to escape Web will now make the sticky struggle noise, volume keyed to distance.

- Using a Medallion of Demon Contact in an occupied square (where it won’t work) will no longer toggle the Medallion to Inactive status.

- Clarified in query of Sewer Ogre that it will only lay Stench in Empty Space.

- Clarified in query of Horn of Plenty that it cannot be used in a space already containing 25 dropped items.

- If you’re losing spells for the specific reason that you have too many spells, it will no longer remove a Cantrip, since these won’t affect your number of spells anyway.

- Bonus Strength Damage is now calculated more accurately and will round off any result instead of dropping fractions.

- The Philomanthy Perk has had its effects increased, because it felt underpowered as it was.

- All armours of Divine Influence/of Divine Intervention/of the God’s Will have had their bonuses lowered from providing 5/10/15% of your Faith in Defense to 3/6/9%, since without a ceiling to Faith, they could just get insanely powerful.

- Gloves of the Dwarven Temple, High Judge’s Boots and the Celestial Boots of Tarranee have had their Defense bonuses based on Faith adjusted correspondingly.

- All weapons of Divine Influence/of Divine Intervention/of the God’s Will have had their bonuses lowered from providing 5/10/15% of your Faith in To Hit bonus to 3/6/9%, since without a ceiling to Faith, they also could get insanely powerful.

- Added missing “Odds of climbing out:” red text notation to queries of Known Pit Traps, Known Bottomless Pit Traps and Open Bottomless Pit Traps.

- The Magic Draining Beam Trap has been nerfed from a 50% chance that each of your magical items gets drained/destroyed to a 25% chance. This was done because the vicious effects, in my experience, could sometimes be even more frustrating from a player perspective than a trap that kills you outright. Hopefully this keeps the trap a threat, but not an enjoyment killing one.

- Previously, the maximum number of dropped items the game could keep track of on a map was 200. It was a high enough number that I thought it would never be breached, but... turns out if someone really, really tries, they can. And since anything dropped after that number could literally corrupt game data, the maximum number of dropped items the game can keep track of has now been raised to 1000. If you drop more than that on a single map, the 1001st item+ will be destroyed (and you’ll be informed). There may still be rare instances where this number could be breached (like if you’ve dropped 1000 items and then something scatters your inventory), but seriously, what the hell are you doing that you’ve managed to generate 1000+ items on a single map in the first place? Smarten up.

- Added 2 more loading screen tips.

- Paralyzing Gas will no longer interrupt autowaiting if you’re already Paralyzed.

- Novice’s/Wizard’s/Archmage’s Rings and Amulets will now round off the amount of Spell Points they restore to you instead of just dropping fractions.

- Mage Potions have been made slightly less common than previous, because they felt quite powerful.

- Conjure Potion will now take into account each Potion type’s rarity when randomly determining what type of Potion to conjure. This brings it in line with other Conjuration spells, like Create Mundane Item, but was primarily done to address the potential feedback loop of Conjure Potion conjuring Mage Potions which could be used to restore Spell Points that could then be used to cast Conjure Potion. With this new system, the likelihood of Conjure Potion conjuring a Mage Potion has dropped from about 14.29% to 5.9%.

- Standardized a few text outputs where the words “Immobilize” and “Paralyze” were being used interchangably. “Immobilize” will now only reference the permanent inability for a monster to leave its square, while “Paralyze” is the same thing, but temporary.

- Anti-Magic Auras have been renamed Disruptive Auras. This was done both to avoid confusion with the Fairy perk “Anti-Magic Aura” and because it was bugging me that they removed more than just magic effects.

- For that last reason, the Anti-Magic Vortex event has been renamed “Disruptive Vortex”.

- Instant Weapons will now play the “wear off” noise when they fade away, rather than doing so silently.

- Chimes of Hunger can now be activated a maximum of 5 times per level, to prevent abuses of it in combination with things like Conjure Food.

- Half-fiends have had their Unique Racial Deficiency made far more impactful, going from a -40 to hit penalty vs. Diabolics and Goblinoids to a -100 to hit penalty vs. Diabolics and Goblinoids. This was done because the Race was simply feeling overpowered, with the penalty casually overridden by their Unique Racial Ability (+45 to hit when their Health is less than or equal to 1/2 their current Max Health) or by the Perks they can unlock that grant them bonuses to hit as monster bodies pile up.

- Pantos’ Faith penalty for leaving a map without first having prayed has been lowered from -20 Faith to -10 Faith. This was done because bad luck with Pantos could drive your Faith down fast, and because He’s been feeling like the most difficult deity to follow. Hopefully this helps balance Him out.

- When you use the last charge in a Trapbreaker Charm, you’ll now hear the sound of the Charm shattering, and if your text prompts are Intermediate or Basic, you’ll receive textual notification.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed 15 different cases where the Sense Danger perk was causing problems when springing Boobytraps. If you didn’t have it, traps that should have given you a chance to avoid the outcome, based on your Attributes, were no longer avoidable. If you DID have it, it was performing integer math instead of floating point math, making the perk weaker than it should have been. The end result of all this is that any Trap requiring any sort of an Attribute test, should now be much easier to avoid (the way they were meant to be, in the first place).

- Fixed serious error causing Carnage’s Boon to have no effect in combat.

- Fixed error allowing you to search Abandoned Trader’s Carts over and over again without end.

- Fixed bug allowing you to continue freeing Damsels from Sacrificial Stones over and over by successfully picking the locks on their manacles manually (not by spell).

- Fixed bug causing Electric Touch spell effects to instantly drop to 0 turns remaining after you cast the spell, to have no effect whatsoever, and to leave the icon for the spell indefinitely visible.

- Fixed multiple bugs where Cold Resistant armours of all types were making it less likely you’d catch on fire, and Heat Resistant armours of all types weren’t.

- Fixed bugs where Elm Wood and Oak Wood armours were not reducing your chance to avoid catching fire.

- Fixed bug when you inflict Sleeping Sickness with a Cause Disease spell or Malady’s Touch that would actually inflict Cellar Sight, instead.

- Fixed outdated bug allowing you to automatically break free of Web when your Strength was only at 2/3 the amount that should allow you to do so.

- Fixed bug making it impossible to query the Falter icon when you have that debuff.

- Fixed bug causing the game to place an Alpha Wolf every time it was supposed to place a Tundra Wolf.

- Fixed bug preventing Dragon Mistresses from being generated.

- Fixed bug preventing Brutish Ogres from being generated.

- Fixed oversight making it impossible for the Speak with Dead spell to reveal the locations of Concealed Doors.

- Fixed error causing Cracking/Rending/Shattering weapons not to have their effect if wielded in the offhand, unless you were wielding a similar weapon in your main hand.

- Fixed error causing the Gluttony Miracle to appear as available to cast in the Miracle list if you only had 15 Faith, while it actually requires 45 to cast.

- Fixed errors causing Talltioward to be pleased (and for you to gain Faith) if you were put to sleep in combat by a Bogie or a Pantosian Slaver. (She's only supposed to be pleased if the sleep is voluntary).

- Fixed bug preventing Cursed Adventurers from actually draining Faith on hit.

- Fixed bugs that caused missing queries for the Weaken Poison and Eradicate Poison spell books.

- Fixed bug displaying the wrong graphic for the Falter spell when you query it.

- Fixed error preventing Letter of Favour from working properly.

- Fixed oversight causing Stymphalides to lower the condition of all armour in your Inventory, not just your equipped armour.

- Fixed error calculating incorrect odds for some characters to successfully use a Crystal Ball.

- Fixed error turning Icy Bottomed Pit Traps into Frigid Water if you fall in and break the ice (when it should turn it to a Frigid Water Filled Pit).

- Fixed rare errors that could allow dead monsters that had been completely removed from the map to be revived by virtue of a Dallerithian Shrine, Undead Uprising Event or use of a Memory Tree, and to be heard making noise from outside the confines of the map... there are likely other circumstances that can do this, too, and I’ll fix them as I remember them.

- Re-fixed old error that got unfixed where the Pearl of Power would activate twice if you cast a spell that then had you choose an inventory item.

- Fixed bug causing Cleanse Potion to charge you double spell points.

- Fixed error preventing 5 of the loading screen tips from ever showing up.

- Fixed bug where all 7 Forest Troll uniques were unnamed.

- Fixed bug preventing Gust of Wind spell (or things that mimic its effect, like the Bag of Winds) from dispersing Miasma.

- Fixed error not altering the text output for the damage you’ll do to a monster under the influence of a Grave Protection or Corpseform spell when querying them.

- Fixed bug causing Goat Skull Headdress listing to remain blue in your Inventory, instead of turning gray when its Inactive.

- Fixed bug causing an unidentified Sonic Boom scroll not to be destroyed when you use it with no target in your square, so long as you had at least Basic Runic Lore.

- Fixed bugs displaying wrong graphic when you query the icons for either the Irresistible Dance debuff or the Falter debuff.

- Fixed oversight in event of a character’s Race or Class changing that wasn’t thereafter unequipping anything the character should no longer be able to equip.

- Fixed bug during Character Creation listing the two Unique Class Abilities of Adventurers in reverse order for all but Humans, causing the queries of those abilities to be incongruous with what you were querying.

- Fixed bug causing wrong graphic to appear accompanying text output if you try to use a Restoration spell when you have no Diseases.

- Fixed bug playing wrong sound effect when you drink a Potion of Shadow Walking.

- Fixed bugs causing the graphics for Amulets/Rings of Lingering Words/of Unyielding Script/of Endless Verse to not be specially coloured despite the enchantment, and for Amulets/Rings of Unhindered Motion/of Free Action/of the Unbound to be given the wrong colouration.

- Corrected erroneous info in both the granting of and the query of the Hands on Learner Perk claiming it would increase your Experience gains from combat kills by 50% for 30 turns, when, in fact, increases it them by 100% for that duration.

- Fixed outdated info when querying the Willpower skill during Character Creation, not mentioning the fact that it will not only help you avoid Spell Point and Experience drain, but that, failing that, it will also mitigate the amount you lose.

- Fixed outdated info when querying the Druid’s Starting Gear during Character Creation claiming the Wooden Flute has a 50% chance of success (when it now only has a 25% chance).

- Fixed outdated info in query of Flask of Burning Oil and Oil of Fiery Burning, stating you can use them “once”, even though they’ve both long since been given multiple uses.

- Fixed error when interacting with Viean Shrine that could duplicate the text storing your odds, so that a 50% chance of success, for example would end up printing as a 5050% chance of success.

- Fixed outdated info in query of Medallion of Demon Contact claiming you needed Expert Magic Item Use skill to use it, even though it’s now a mid power Magic Item.

- Fixed typo in query of Medallion of Demon Contact.

- Fixed a few typos when Tsen Tsun Vie is angry and inflicts a disease upon you that you already have (saying “but you already have them!” instead of “but you already have it!”).

- Fixed multiple typos when you drink a Befouled Potion telling you “It’s contains” instead of “It contains”.

- Fixed typo in query of Inquisitor’s Crosier.

- Fixed typo in text output when you step on a Straw Covered Lava Filled Pit Trap, telling you you’d stepped on a “Straw Covered Lave Filled Pit Trap”.

- Fixed typo in query of Book of Artifact Lore.

- Fixed typo in title of Wand of Darkness (labeling it “Wand of Darknes”).

- Fixed typo in query of Magic Lockpicks.

- Fixed missing word in text output when you read North and Other Directions: Vol. 2.

- Fixed extra space in query of Wall of Stone Scroll.

- Fixed typos in both queries of and text output accompanying initial receipt of the Spearfishing Perk.

- Fixed typo in text output when you successfully free a Damsel from a Sacrificial Stone.

- Fixed typo in query of Foresight Spellbook.

- Fixed text overwrite in query of Cleansing Spirit Event.

- Fixed pluralization error when querying the Repulsion icon.

- Fixed text overwrite during Character Creation in query of Paladin’s Class Deficiency #1.

- Fixed typo during Character Creation in query of Paladin’s Class Deficiency #1.

- Fixed potential text overwrite in query of the word “Perks” in the Perks sidebar.

- Fixed typo in query of the word “Perks” in the Perks sidebar.

- Fixed typo in query of Fairy Unique Ability during Character Creation.

- Fixed typo in query of Thimble of Greed.