v1.2.62
New skill - Pra(y)er of Might - The first of the new cleric changes, this skill replaces Turn Undead as the base good cleric skill. For a short period, the cleric can chant a prayer to his god, filling himself with a zealous rage. During this time, melee damage is greatly increased, as is defensive rating. When the prayer ends, the cleric is unable to issue another prayer for a period of time. Improving Willpower increases extra melee damage, defensive boost, and prayer length, and decreases the time needed before you can pray again.
Balance change - Turn (u)ndead is now a baseline skill for clerics, available free to all three alignments. As always adventurers do not gain base skills, and thus this skill is now denied to them (and the other 3 classes as well).
Quest system - The first iteration of this system is in place after some work this weekend. Previously, you had to find a boss creature each level in order to advance. I have expanded on the idea, and given each level a random objective. Now, you may still need to find a boss creature to advance, or possibly a key, or maybe some kind of switch puzzle. Right now, only a few are in, but I will be working on expanding these numbers over the week. It's a little light so far, as I have been working getting the code structure in place, but expect more very shortly, as the backbone is complete.
Certain levels will now have 'themes' (such as fire creatures, swamp creatures, etc.) , in line with the changes to monster classifications.
Bug fixes and balance changes continue to be worked on (the sound addition was just taking a break from bug hunting), thanks in huge part to Sunrise and some extremely helpful criticism and comments.
New item - One of the long deceased Lords of Darkhall wielded a mighty hammer, blessed with the power of the sun to smite the undead. Somewhere below lies the legendary hammer 'Sunrise'.
Balance change - There are more 'mace' types in the game now (hammers, clubs, mauls) to improve the relative weapon drop rates for clerics (as they are the most limited weapon users in teh game so far.)
Balance change - Spells can no longer 'miss'. They can still be resisted, however.
Balance change - Ice armor - Previously, Ice Armor provided you with a shield that drained your mana instead of your health when you were attacked. This proved to be counterintuitive to how a mage should work - draining the very thing he needed for combat, and forcing him into meleeing, his weakest ability. Now, Ice Armor works more like a traditional shield - for a fixed cost in mana, you get a damage buffer that absorbs a set number of points of damage before falling. However, the shield slowly wears out whether you are taking damage or not. So, if you cast it and immediately fight, you may have it absorb, for example, 50 points of damage. But if you cast it 10 turns earlier, and then encounter an enemy, it may only absorb 10 points before falling (number do not reflect actual damage reduction.) Ice armor still provides ice resistance.
Balance change - LONG overdue revamp of weapon and armor values. While they weren't too badly off, there was some inconsistency. I have now set up the tiers more rigidly, and armor values/weapon damage/prices/weights are now based on linear formulas. There should no longer be any wondering over whether or not piece of armor/weapon is worth wearing - total armor value is a rigid value based on a mean of several attributes.
Bug fix - You can no longer simply walk through locked staircases.
Bug (sorta') fix - With the new monster classification system, certain monster were endowed with conflicting elemental attributes. For example, while a red skeleton, being a fire creature, was naturally resistant to fire, it was also weak to fire as it was also undead. I have tried to resolve some of these conflicts.
Bug fix - Wand can now be generated cursed. Watch out for the backfire!
Bug fix - Removed the descrition text from the inventory screen for unidentified items.
Balance change - The maximum enchant value that you can enchant to has been reduced to five. Also, please note that on items with a special property, such as rooting, stunning, poison, etc, enchanting them with a scroll DOES improve the property, it just is less obvious as it doesn't change the items name. I couldn't think of a decent way to do this 'Wand of More Rooting??' 'Brass Longsword of Stunninger??' Yeah, seemed silly, as without a number, assigning a quality (more, greater) is meaningless without something to compare it to. I may reconsider.
New monsters
More to come tomorrow. I am looking at making some major changes to godd and neutral cleric lines to bring their early game up to par. Also, I have a MASSIVE list of excellent ideas from Sunrise, that I am working through implementing. He has yet to send me anything but great ideas and suggestions.
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