v1.2.92
New skill - Dual Wield - This skill replaces a skill I feel is redundant, and unwieldy to use - charge (up a) stun. The rest of the charge line will remain the same. Dual wield will be followed by charge attack (rush forward and stun a single target), and it by battle-cry(give the charge attack an area-of-effect component). The skill it fairly self explanatory and functions as you would expect. If you do not have a two-handed weapon equipped, or a shield, you gain an extra attack wielding the weapon in your back-up slot as a second weapon. The second attack has a slightly lower hit chance, and reduced damage. Dual hand damage and attack bonus are listed on the character sheet.
Skill change - Toughness - Now that all the skills are in place, I am going back skill by skill and rebalancing and reevaluating them. Toughness provided a static armor bonus. This skill seems redundant to me now that Phalanx is a skill. As such, I have changed toughness slightly to provide a similar, but not identical bonus, as before. I still want the skill to provide a passive benefit, so instead, toughness now increases your total hitpoints, as well as the hitpoints you gain each level (so instead of a 1 time purchase for a set amount of hitpoints, toughness scales with your level and constitution.) In the end, the net change is that your survivability is improved, but also against status ailments and magic damage, unlike the old toughness which really only helped with melee attacks.
High Score List - It's a bit rudimentary at the moment, but the game will now record your high scores, including turns passed, name, class, score, and level died/max reached. I plan on adding the cause of death in the future, but the way I have player death coded at the moment does not pass the cause of death, and it looks like a considerable amount of work!
Skill point change - In order to give a little more character to the classes (no pun intended), but still allow you to customize your character, I have made a slight change to skill points. Buying a skill from your own tree costs 1 point, as before. However, buying a skill from another class tree will now cost 2 points. Eg, if you are a fighter, and you wish to learn to heal, or stealth, it will costs you 2 points, while toughness would still only be 1. Plan ahead!! Note that for the Adventurer class all skills cost 2 points - a significant drawback given their flexibility. However, they start with 4 skill points - enough to buy any 2 skills, giving them a little more early game flexibility in addition to their significant armor and weapon selection.
General UI Improvement - Help file updated with all the new info. Press ? in-game to get info on any commands, skills, or classes.
General UI Improvement - Destroying all the summoning obelisks is considered one of your primary goals as part of the stemming of the tide of monsters. As such , details of this objective (and others) are now tracked on the player screen. More info will follow.
General UI Improvement - The game will autoload your last saved game based on the name you enter at the start-up screen. You can still load games the traditional way if you change you mind about what you want to play later on.
General UI Improvment - Arrows and Bullets will consolidate in your inventory now, rather than having 3 stacks of Arrows (11), Arrows (5), Arrows (13), etc.
Graphics tweaked throughout - Slight spell animations and environment graphics improvements.
Balance change - Adventurers can no longer use 2 handed weapons; this is now exclusive to fighters.
Balance change - Evil clerics can summon a maximum of 3 skeletons at a time. In addition, the stats of these pets have been tweaked a bit. This leads to a general maximum of 5 pets at a time (1 Fire Elemental, 1 Wolf, 3 Skeletons). This is purely a balance issue, and, so far, it looks like it doesn't impact performance to increase the number of skeletons you can have. However, from a play perspective, my personal experience is than you can spam a huge army and roll through the game. Finally, the rate at which you gain the ability to summon these extra skeletons has been slowed a bit.
Balance change - Loot rates have been lowered a bit now that barrels can drop loot as well.
Balance change - The effect of Willpower as defense against magic has been increased.
New monster ability - Certain creatures are now covered in spikes, and you will hurt yourself trying to melee them. Pay attention, and fight safely from a distance!
Bug fix - Corrected a minor error with image compression as resolutions lower than maximum.
Bug fix - Some damage animations were showing up while blind - fixed.
Bug fix - Summoned skeletons were dropping loot - fixed.
Bug fix - One of the puzzles was not revealing the stairs correctly - fixed.
Bug fix - Fixed a reload error with the malfunctioning puzzle.
B-