Hello! Wanted to check in and comment. Haven't had as much time to playtest all the new updates, but I have a handful of things I've noticed:
Current to 0.37 confirmed:
Enemies Not dying: Still around, though cases are notably reduced. I think I've found the key though, it most commonly occurs when I (the player) am standing on a door or floor!
Early dominion raids:
Dominion raids are here, and even early game they're pretty brutal! I've had them pop up as early as day one in the starting town. I think around 0.34 I remember reading something about the requirements being like moving 85 tiles from spawn? My information is poorly recollected, and probably flawed in some way, but I will note that in the grand scheme of things, 85 tiles is not a lot. Depending on where your starting town is and whether you have enough wood to chop near your starting campfire/water, it's really easy to hit that by like mid-morning day 1. Though the early raids aren't spawning siege ogres anymore, they soldiers they send tear down my walls fast enough on their own - Usually they've broken through my wood walls by the time I've stepped like 5 tiles. I also don't know how scouts tie into raids (if they do at all), but IF they do then I've found its actually easier to avoid being raided later than it is earlier. Admittedly, haven't had the chance to build a homestead, so that might be a factor here.
Likewise, while I know there's supposed to be a text warning when they're coming, I don't think I've noticed it. The flavor window with text on the left side has so much passing by all at once, that its easy for any given thing to get lost! Maybe there should be color-coded text for different events? Like red for raids/danger, blue for look/tutorial text, and green for weather or something? Just spitballing, but might improve visibility and readability.
I'm also still having my saves sieze up and freeze ocassionally, but while I might have some insight I think ultimately it's a hardware issue on my end - Don't see too many others having the issue to this extent, and my computer almost crashed when I tried to stream Shattered Pixel Dungeon to a friend, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Don't worry about fixing it for me (depending on just how screwed my hardware is, might not even possible), but I can still provide some insights to see if there's small inefficiencies you wanna tackle - at the very least, others might have a smoother experience! For what it's worth, I think it might have something to do with how world data is saved - every time now, it happens after exploring a certain portion of the world map (usually just after reaching a tier 2 city and hunting for a tier 3), and it appears that having a lot of items spawned in at once from having a full inventory and picking fights seems to exacerbate it. Probably small on other systems, but figured I'd bring it up!
Haven't had a chance to test farming changes yet, though I'm excited for them! When I was on 0.34 or 5, I couldn't get my farm plots to be watered by water barrels nearby, but I noticed a lot of the changes had to do with homesteads and farms in one of the more recent patches, and figured I'd pitch in that I actually haven't really set up a homestead yet! With the amount of stuff in tier 3 cities (particularly, certain NPCs and goods) It's really worthwhile to have one in walking distance, and while I've set up larger bases before hitting the road, at the end of the day I still ultimately end up hitting the road and trying for a T3 city, which is quite the journey. Maybe there could be smaller, less stocked, lower ranking NPCs similar to the T3 ones in T2 towns, selling a smaller inventory for higher prices? Like, instead of a healer or priest, you can find a monk or medicine man who can sell some low-tier consumables, and like maybe an affineur's nose at a high markup? just an example, but I've found usually by the time I've journeyed to a T3 settlement, the enemies are dropping rinds.
Which I think also brings me to early game gear and curses. First, glad to finally meet the skeletons! I've been wondering where the hell they were since there were still only a handful of dungeons and I was still getting quests to kill them lol. Are they supposed to drop bones? I collected a recipe in my last playthrough for the bonepicker set, but could never find the mats to craft it.
As for gear, identification, and curses, I have a couple of thoughts. First thing's first, cursed gear is auto-equipped on pickup if you have nothing in the slot, same as regular gear. Usually not an issue, but I've accidentally equipped a cursed item or two in the early game specifically because I had nothing in the slot to start with and it was one of the first pieces of gear I picked up. Maybe having just like, some workman's wraps, a farmer's cap, and some simple statless jewelry to start? What's more, I know Affineur's nose is probably meant to help identify cursed equipment, but at least in my playthroughs it's always started dropping AFTER I've already equipped at least one or two pieces of cursed gear. Early game you kind of need every spare scrap of stats you can get, so you're inevitably going to put on the first thing you see, curse be damned. Likewise, while I was initially motivated to travel to t3 cities by curses and rumors of healers, I've found that purging rinds generally begin to start dropping before I've even gotten there. I know they're part of the roguelike experience (and from the roguelikes I've played closest to the original rogue, if I had to hazard a guess they're probably featured in the original Rogue, so I'm really interested in seeing curses preserved as part of the game, but right now they're more an annoying thing that happens sometimes, rather than anything I feel like I can play around nor something I'm super punished for. I'm sure there's interesting gameplay buried in there though, and I'm keen to see it!
Anways, I initially intended this to be short, but I'm about as long winded as usual. Hope some of this helps. Every update the game is shaping up more and more, and it's in a state now where I'm safely recommending it to some friends, so I'm happy to see it keep growing!
Rapid-fire Replying to myself because as soon as I read the comments and booted the game I remembered some stuff my ADHD ass is inevitably gonna forget:
Save issues: Looks like it's not just me, but the issue is most pronounced on lower-end hardware. Just saw Squirrels's comment.
Enemies not dying: Another thing that has sometimes triggered it is having enough walls/structures built causes enemies in the enclosure to stand still - I noticed this when I built walls around the starting town on one of my saves in 0.34 to protect them from the dominion, and I saw many of the ghosts, frogs, etc just... stand there and eat hits, even out in the open. Just saw something possibly similar happen with a wraith in my save, which made me think of it.
Compliments to: The cheese magic system. Seriously, the fact that casting the spell lets you specialize and get some perks is super cool, and makes the magic of terroir feel not just like drawing power out of the land, but out of cultivating your own relation to it! Would love to see the concept expanded on, maybe through like affinage, or perks of some kind? Come to think of it, Terroir is also heavily associated with wine... Similarly, casts are often pretty limited and inventory can be hard to manage - maybe like a utility belt slot, where you can hold some smaller wedges? Or even like profession tailored pouches, (E.G. Caster's pouch, gatherer's pouch, hunter's pouch, etc) which can help you hold specific kinds of gear? Backpacks seem a little impractical and are probably already covered by pack animals, but having some playstyle-specific utility could be cool. Just spitballing though, and for all my Ideas, I've found even more pleasure being surprised by the things I wasn't even expecting every update, so above all take care of yourself and keep creating the game you love, and I'll be happy to taste the samples!
Let me return to this reply to address the more substantive reflections about Terroir and affinage - absolutely agree, and I have added your comment into my notes for the future work developing these areas. You're right - it's a rich vein waiting to be developed further. In the meantime, I've made some immediate changes in this patch to address some of the more mechanical stuff - e.g., adding more backpack upgrade options that are easy enough to find from NPCs and from loot drops. You'll see in the devnotes for 0.3.8 that there's a lot in there thanks to your suggestions
Hey Bird Iron, wow, just wow. This is unreal feedback. That's huge! Just to let you know, it is very well received and I am replying to you now having addressed all of these issues, so fingers crossed they are resolved in the next patch (coming very shortly tonight). It's hard to express how grateful I am to see such a depth of engagement with the systems of the game and that you took the time to report it back in such detail. Hopefully the game continues to improve day by day and bring more fun and epicness to people.