The new version of Dungeon Mercenary is finally available for download. Yay \o/ It contains all the things I’ve been talking about in the last few months in this devlog. So enjoy!

If you like it, think about voting for Dungeon Mercenary in GameJolt’s competition for the 2016 games: http://jams.gamejolt.io/thejolties2016/games/dungeon-mercenary/151692

Thanks to my three beta testers for last week’s feedback: Robert B, Damien Casoni, and VedVid!

Here’s the full changelog:

New features: terrain and maps

• Added a new kind of terrain: pits (aka depths in Brogue). Added flying monsters (see below) with that. And handled that things thrown down pits will appear in the next level.

• Added a new kind of wall: bookshelves, that can hold items, like level 1’s rack. I’m tagging bookshelves as walls, as they are impassable.

• Added a new kind of terrain: benchs, that are passable, but where every move consumes two turns.

• Added a new kind of special rooms: throne rooms, that contain red carpet, bookshelves, chests, and a goblin king or queen; as well as a variety of goblins. Throne rooms can be abandoned, in which case they contain no items (empty bookshelves, empty chests) and red carpet is partly missing.

• Added three special levels: the goblin bridge, the wizard’s office, and the dragons’ den.

• Added 4 new depths, 3 of which with a new forest color-theme (that’s where you’ll find the brand new ogres and trolls (see below)).

New features: monsters

By the order in which they appear in depths:

• Added a neutral monster at depth 1: a ghost that wanders for eternity above the dungeon’s pits.

• Added the chaos fairy, a support flying spellcaster. Its spells are healing, teleportation, slowness, and protection.

• Added the kobold wizard that has three spells: firebolt, slowness, and teleportation.

• Added ogres and ogres shamans. The latter is a spellcaster: it has slowness and healing.

• Added trolls and mountain trolls. The latter wields a weapon with a force runic.

• Added adult dragons, that have magical spells in addition to their breath. There’s a platinum achievement to obtain if you manage to kill one. Adult dragons are always spawned sleeping (as in brogue).

New features: potions

• Added the potion of negation that:

  • Removes all effects and spells when drank or thrown.

  • Instantly kills creatures animated purely by magic in the throw’s splash area.

• All potions can now be thrown. When a creature is covered by the potion’s liquid, it has exactly the same effect as if the creature was drinking the potion itself. For now, it only makes sense to throw the potion of negation, because all other potions have a strictly positive positive; but when Dungeon Mercenary becomes a local coop roguelike (yes that’ll happen), it’ll make sense to throw potion at your allies.

Gameplay Changes

• Made the use of altars less of a win/win situation. Instead of doubling a runic, they now “only” add +3 to a runic. So they work as follows:

  • War altar: add +3 to an offensive item (boost or branded runic), at the cost of 33% of your life.

  • Chaos altar: add +3 to an equipped item (boost or branded runic), at the cost of cursing this item (you’ll never be able to unequip it).

• Cursed items cannot be melted in forges anymore

• Opening a chest now contributes 32 to the score, instead of 1.

• Probability of branded runics has been increased, it is now 1/2 (was 3/7 before). This means 50% of generated runics are branded (i.e. non boost).

• More things are visible under the fog of war. First I was suggested to make doors visible. Then I generalized by making visible everything that doesn’t move, which include tombs, doors, chests, forges, altars, etc.; but rule out barrels and monsters. Items are the exception: they are visible under the fog of war, despite that they can move (like barrels), because I think it is nice for gameplay.

UI Changes

• Transition between levels is done with fadeout/fadein animation.

• The area affected by throwing a bomb or potion is shown before throwing: video (see the pink cells around the point of impact ?).

• Added a help

Bug fixes

• Corrected a crash when selecting the ‘Cancel’ button of an altar’s menu offering the choice between multiple eligible items.

• Corrected that ‘Drop’ wasn’t greyed out in a cursed item’s menu (but it wasn’t dropping the item anyway ^^).

• Corrected the cause of the message ‘Unexpected state: monster foo is trying to get to an uncreated level’ that could appear in the log.

• Corrected that the gradual field of view could be incorrect (making the shadow effect look weird).

• Corrected that barrels could block the path between stairs.

• Changed the terms “Elf forge” and “Dwarf Forge” to “Elven forge” and “Dwarven forge” (thanks VedVid).

• Benefited of the correction of a performance issue in SquidLib’s pathfinding that I spotted. Thanks Tommy Ettinger for correcting it. To my knowledge the game should never lag, so let me know if it does!

• Corrected that opened chests containing an item had a greyish color instead of the item color.

• Corrected that the dash malus of heavy shields and armors wasn’t applied.

• Corrected that opening a chest when its content could not be picked would not change the chest’s color until the next turn (thanks VedVid).

Tiny Changes

• In menus, Tab cycles through entries (like arrows/vim keys did so far).

• Changed the color of elven forges to a greenish color, as it was previously looking too much like the human forge (thanks VedVid for the feedback).

• Text in the “what you see panel” is aligned to the left, to make it easier to parse (thanks Joshua Day for the suggestion).

• Corrected that the ‘I’ in the inventory label (atop the inventory on the right) wasn’t highlighted as a shortcut, whereas it is one.

• Made shallow water less white in “mud” levels.

• Some monsters do not bleed anymore when hit: skeletons and mud golems. New monsters that do not bleed either: chaos fairy and white ghost. Thanks VedVid for pointing this out.

• Changed color of already opened chests, to be the one of walls; so that it is better visible at all depths.

• New achievements:

  • Reach depth 11

  • Reach depth 12

  • Reach depth 13

  • Reach depth 14

  • Goblin king/queen slayer

  • Dragon slayer