v1.2.54
A HUGE thanks to Sunrise!!
New skill - Schiltron - Like the name (possibly) suggests, this skill upgrades Phalanx, adding a damaging component to the defensive stance. Enemies creatures which attempt to attack you in melee will possibly damage themselves in the attempt. Schiltron improves with your strength rating. Quite effective for the defensive player, as phalanx buffs your defense against groups of enemies, while schiltron will wears them down, essentially attacking the enemy back without using your turn, all while the player is free to drink potions, fight back, or use magic items.
New skill - Mana Tap - The final skill in the healer line is a simple skill that helps drive many others. Mana tap allows you to possibly drain some of your target's life essence when every you strike them with a melee attack, and return it as a bump in your mana pool. This skill does not work on the undead, or certain other creature types (though magical constructs do indeed contain magic which can be drained.)
New monsters
New hotkey - shift+S will read a town portal scroll without having to open your inventory.
Improved UI - Minor upgrades, such as now showing whether an item can be equipped on the inventory screen, in addition to the store, and suppression of certain irrelevant messages.
Bug fix - Mages erroneously were set to not be able to use wands.
Balance change - More stat points awarded on level up.
Balance change - Experience required to advance at higher levels has been reduced.
Improved Save Game Files - Save games will now retain whether or not you have cleared a level, whether you have killed that levels boss, and whether or not you have rescued any allies. (Not compatible with save game from prior to version 1.2.50.)
Balance change - Store goods have been tuned slightly to offer more level appropriate gear.
Balance change - Store will no longer sell stat increasing potions. These must be found.
Balance change - 'Garbage items' will no longer drop.
Extensive Rebalancing
Balance change - Autopickup will ignore garbage.
Balance Change - Exploding arrows damage increased.
Balance change - The look command (shift mouse click) will identify whether a creature is undead or not.
Balance change - Many creatures have been altered so that certain status effects are meaningless to them (ie, blindness on eyeless creatures, confusion on mindless creatures.) Keep in mind that undead creatures still have something that they use for vision, and some kind of magical intelligence, so blindness or confusion would still work against a skeleton, for example.
Bug fix - Fixed an error where the look command would identify the item being examined.
Bug fix - Recoded extensive parts of the identification system. What I originally had was too complicated, and I was unable to resolve certain bug without a very messy code structure.
Bug Fix - Fixed an error with how the experience bar was being drawn.
Bug fix - Fixed an error with lower level NPCs being unrescuable.
Balance fix - You can voluntarily jump into holes using the > key.
Bug fix - Crystal maces were incorrectly flagged as maces.
Bug/Balance Fix - Pets will now attempt to follow your through teleporters, though you will leave them behind if you use a teleport scroll/skill. Changing levels (via stairs or falling through a hole) will take you out of range of pets that require control (skeletons or elementals, possibly dominated creatures), while a wolf is smart enough to try and follow you. (There is a message to clarify this as well.)
Bug/Balance Fix - Undead can no longer be poisoned.
Bug Fix - Pressing <i> now acts like a toggle and will close the inventory screen in addition to opening it.
Bug fix - Fixed an error where pets/enemies where incorrectly labeled as friendly.
Bug fix - Exploding Shots/Rooting shots does not work with wands.
Bug fix - Monster and pet line of sight when facing each other should be working correctly now. (Previously, pets and monsters could shoot each other through walls, even though player/monster line of sight was working correctly.
Bug fix - Fixed an issue where certain potions where being flagged incorrectly, and the player was unable to drink them without going into the inventory and manually clicking them.
Bug fix - Fixed some odd tiles on level 5, including blank tiles and incorrectly impassable tiles.
Bug fix - Fixed one of the crash bugs where the turn counter was exceeding the maximum numberical assignment.
Bug fix - Incinerate could sometimes generate a negative number when facing high level enemies. Fixed.
Bug Fix - Statues were being generated in incorrect locations
Bug Fix - There is now a limit to how many arrows/bullets you can conjure at a time.
Bug Fix - Using a town teleporter warps you on top of the receiving porter rather than 1 space below (and potentially on top of a creature).
Bug Fix - Open doors no longer block line of sight.
Bug Fix - Exploding Shot no longer works when you are blind.
Bug Fix - You can no longer see spells/shots when you are blind.
Bug Fix(?) - Still at a loss as to why certain overflow errors are occuring (I have yet to replicate one), I have added more robust error handling to the program. Hopefully, this will eliminate the worst offender. (crosses fingers)
Bug Fix - Heal Pet and otehr pet functions previously did not apply to the wolf upgrade properly. Now fixed.
B-