This patch contains a few quick fixes to the last update. I received a lot of feedback and there are some bigger things that need addressing, and I'll discuss them tomorrow in a separate blog post.

• Made combat slower by decreasing overall damage dealt in each hit.
  
• Made bandits and dwarves a bit weaker.
  
• Removed knights and archers from human cottages.
  
• Fixed a bug that made retired dungeons not count toward victory condition.
  
• Fixed a crash caused by a team member dying while travelling between maps.
  
• Added missing healing spell to female Keeper.
  
• Added "it was just an illusion!" message when attacking illusions.
  
• Retiring in endless mode generates a highscore entry.
  
• Fixed screen movement in control mode when playing in ASCII.

This patch contains a few quick fixes to the last update. I received a lot of feedback and there are some bigger things that need addressing, and I'll discuss them tomorrow in a separate blog post.

• Made combat slower by decreasing overall damage dealt in each hit.
  
• Made bandits and dwarves a bit weaker.
  
• Removed knights and archers from human cottages.
  
• Fixed a bug that made retired dungeons not count toward victory condition.
  
• Fixed a crash caused by a team member dying while travelling between maps.
  
• Added missing healing spell to female Keeper.
  
• Added "it was just an illusion!" message when attacking illusions.
  
• Retiring in endless mode generates a highscore entry.
  
• Fixed screen movement in control mode when playing in ASCII.

It's my pleasure to announce that KeeperRL Alpha23 is ready. It took four months to finish and because it consists almost entirely of gameplay changes, it's a very, very juicy release!

The new features can be divided into three major groups. The first one redefines progression in the game, making it more dependent on conquest. Mana is no longer generated in the library, but is instead awarded for conquering enemies. A lot of construction and item prices were rebalanced to accommodate this change. You can optionally turn on mana generation in the library in the 'free play' mode, for those who will miss the old system. You can read more about these changes here.

The second set of changes involves combat and training. Combat has been made more deterministic and slower, and creature attributes were changed to empower spellcasting characters. There are also health-bars!

A major addition to combat is the 'full control' mode, in which you control every minion in the team. This redefines the combat experience in KeeperRL in a major way, making it much more tactical and fun.

The last big addition is the 'endless mode', where you are tasked with defending your dungeon from incoming enemy waves for as long as possible. This is a game mode for players who don't necessarily enjoy venturing out and exploring the world. Conquest is optional. The highscores for this mode will be based on how many turns you were able to survive.

If you would like to continue your saved game from Alpha22, you can opt-in into the "Alpha22 save compatibility" BETA branch under the game's properties in Library. Make sure to opt-out of the branch to go back to Alpha23 when you're done!

The full change log:

Gameplay

• Endless game mode: no conquest objective, recurring enemy waves, survive as long as possible.
• Mana is awarded only for conquest or defeating enemy waves in the 'endless' mode. (Except optionally in the 'free play' mode, where you can enable mana generation in the library.
• 'Crafting' tech is acquired by default.
• Added spell damage and ranged damage attributes.
• Added 'magic missile' spell which deals damage based on creature's spell damage attribute.
• Removed strength, dexterity, and accuracy attributes.
• Removed missed attacks.
• Removed backstabbing (while invisible, opponent blind, etc).
• Removed minimal strength requirement for some weapons.
• Removed projectile items, ranged weapons have infinite ammo.
• Added 3 experience types: melee, spell, and ranged.
• Melee training in training room, spell in library, ranged in archery range.
• Fixed upper limits for each kind of experience for every creature.
• Added 3 library tiers: wooden, iron and gold with increasing training limits.
• New spells are learned at specific spell experience levels.
• Added 'Heal other', 'Summon elemental' spell.
• Available minion tasks based on skills and traits, and not hard-coded.
• Imp morale affects their speed. Imps can be whipped.
• Bleeding only as an effect of some weapons and after limbs are cut off.
• Creature attributes don't decrease when low on health.
• Combat more deterministic and slower.
• New formula for gaining experience from combat.
• Added vulnerability and resistance effects for each damage type, acquired via rings, potions or intrinsically by some creatures.
• Minion statues and throne cost mana, Demon shrines consume gold, portal consume stones, and eyeball consumes wood.
• Imps and potions cost gold.
• Removed first-aid-kits except for the adventurer.
• Vampire lord wakes up hostile!
• AI doesn't panic so easily when wounded.
• Only imps can whip
• Prisoner execution at a gallows construction.
• Full control mode where you control every creature on the team.
• Shared visibility between all minions and eyeballs.
• Vultures much less common.
• Made giant spider webs invisible.
• Dragons cast spells.
• Tweaked how courage and morale works on panic during combat.
• Made AI make better use of circular blast.
• Tweaked cost of navigating around friendly creatures in pathfinding.
• Fixed handling of simultaneous elf and night visions.
• Reimplemented elf and night visions as effects: now available through rings and inherited by doppleganger.
• Reimplemented sunlight vulnerability as an effect.
• Added magical weapons, which use creature's spell damage attribute.
• Demon Den, Unicorns villains.
• AI will try to break choke points by digging or destroying walls.
• Added 'destroy walls' scroll to some enemies in endless mode.
• New demon shrine and throne sprites.
• Silver elven bow artifact.
• 'Alchemical conversion' tech which allows changing gold into other resources, and iron into gold.
• Artifact potion that regenerates all limbs.
• Ants and dwarves can dig through walls when attacking. (but not through reinforced walls)
• All enemies dig through any walls if the Keeper is completely cut off.
• Health regenerating ring and mushroom, intrinsic regeneration for some creatures.
• Potion of telepathy, and melee resistance.
• Ring of magic resistance.
• Allow naming individual items.
• Minion morale is no longer maxed-out when in a team commanded by the Keeper.
• Added "satiated" effect that prevents minions from eating and improves morale and defense.
• Added "rested" effect that prevents minions from going to sleep and improves morale and defense.
• Added rings of wakefulness and satiety.
• Keeper is allowed to sleep.
• Removed 'stun ray' spell.
• Decrease production time of steel and steel goods.
• Redefined civilians and fighters in enemy villages.
• Dogs can no longer be leaders of villages.

Interface

• Big optimizations of rendering code.
• Added health bars.
• All villains visible in the 'villains' tab.
• Animations for some offensive spells.
• Nicer map object hints with more information.
• Nicer minimap when fully extended.
• Removed tooltips for items on the right side of workshop window.
• Optimized splash screen.
• Improved item counts display in workshops UI.

Bug fixes

• Excluded bogus outdoor tiles from some caves territories.
• Fixed crash involving items destroying themselves.
• Fixed throne unicode symbol.
• Fixed crashes when trying to load some incompatible save files.
• Fixed a few retirement crashes.
• Fixed messages for dying from fire, silver, acid and poison gas damage.
• Fixed deadlock when game window is closed during world generation.
• Fixed issues with locating pigs in pigsty.
• Fixed various small issues in pathfinding.

It's my pleasure to announce that KeeperRL Alpha23 is ready. It took four months to finish and because it consists almost entirely of gameplay changes, it's a very, very juicy release!

The new features can be divided into three major groups. The first one redefines progression in the game, making it more dependent on conquest. Mana is no longer generated in the library, but is instead awarded for conquering enemies. A lot of construction and item prices were rebalanced to accommodate this change. You can optionally turn on mana generation in the library in the 'free play' mode, for those who will miss the old system. You can read more about these changes here.

The second set of changes involves combat and training. Combat has been made more deterministic and slower, and creature attributes were changed to empower spellcasting characters. There are also health-bars!

A major addition to combat is the 'full control' mode, in which you control every minion in the team. This redefines the combat experience in KeeperRL in a major way, making it much more tactical and fun.

The last big addition is the 'endless mode', where you are tasked with defending your dungeon from incoming enemy waves for as long as possible. This is a game mode for players who don't necessarily enjoy venturing out and exploring the world. Conquest is optional. The highscores for this mode will be based on how many turns you were able to survive.

If you would like to continue your saved game from Alpha22, you can opt-in into the "Alpha22 save compatibility" BETA branch under the game's properties in Library. Make sure to opt-out of the branch to go back to Alpha23 when you're done!

The full change log:

Gameplay

• Endless game mode: no conquest objective, recurring enemy waves, survive as long as possible.
• Mana is awarded only for conquest or defeating enemy waves in the 'endless' mode. (Except optionally in the 'free play' mode, where you can enable mana generation in the library.
• 'Crafting' tech is acquired by default.
• Added spell damage and ranged damage attributes.
• Added 'magic missile' spell which deals damage based on creature's spell damage attribute.
• Removed strength, dexterity, and accuracy attributes.
• Removed missed attacks.
• Removed backstabbing (while invisible, opponent blind, etc).
• Removed minimal strength requirement for some weapons.
• Removed projectile items, ranged weapons have infinite ammo.
• Added 3 experience types: melee, spell, and ranged.
• Melee training in training room, spell in library, ranged in archery range.
• Fixed upper limits for each kind of experience for every creature.
• Added 3 library tiers: wooden, iron and gold with increasing training limits.
• New spells are learned at specific spell experience levels.
• Added 'Heal other', 'Summon elemental' spell.
• Available minion tasks based on skills and traits, and not hard-coded.
• Imp morale affects their speed. Imps can be whipped.
• Bleeding only as an effect of some weapons and after limbs are cut off.
• Creature attributes don't decrease when low on health.
• Combat more deterministic and slower.
• New formula for gaining experience from combat.
• Added vulnerability and resistance effects for each damage type, acquired via rings, potions or intrinsically by some creatures.
• Minion statues and throne cost mana, Demon shrines consume gold, portal consume stones, and eyeball consumes wood.
• Imps and potions cost gold.
• Removed first-aid-kits except for the adventurer.
• Vampire lord wakes up hostile!
• AI doesn't panic so easily when wounded.
• Only imps can whip
• Prisoner execution at a gallows construction.
• Full control mode where you control every creature on the team.
• Shared visibility between all minions and eyeballs.
• Vultures much less common.
• Made giant spider webs invisible.
• Dragons cast spells.
• Tweaked how courage and morale works on panic during combat.
• Made AI make better use of circular blast.
• Tweaked cost of navigating around friendly creatures in pathfinding.
• Fixed handling of simultaneous elf and night visions.
• Reimplemented elf and night visions as effects: now available through rings and inherited by doppleganger.
• Reimplemented sunlight vulnerability as an effect.
• Added magical weapons, which use creature's spell damage attribute.
• Demon Den, Unicorns villains.
• AI will try to break choke points by digging or destroying walls.
• Added 'destroy walls' scroll to some enemies in endless mode.
• New demon shrine and throne sprites.
• Silver elven bow artifact.
• 'Alchemical conversion' tech which allows changing gold into other resources, and iron into gold.
• Artifact potion that regenerates all limbs.
• Ants and dwarves can dig through walls when attacking. (but not through reinforced walls)
• All enemies dig through any walls if the Keeper is completely cut off.
• Health regenerating ring and mushroom, intrinsic regeneration for some creatures.
• Potion of telepathy, and melee resistance.
• Ring of magic resistance.
• Allow naming individual items.
• Minion morale is no longer maxed-out when in a team commanded by the Keeper.
• Added "satiated" effect that prevents minions from eating and improves morale and defense.
• Added "rested" effect that prevents minions from going to sleep and improves morale and defense.
• Added rings of wakefulness and satiety.
• Keeper is allowed to sleep.
• Removed 'stun ray' spell.
• Decrease production time of steel and steel goods.
• Redefined civilians and fighters in enemy villages.
• Dogs can no longer be leaders of villages.

Interface

• Big optimizations of rendering code.
• Added health bars.
• All villains visible in the 'villains' tab.
• Animations for some offensive spells.
• Nicer map object hints with more information.
• Nicer minimap when fully extended.
• Removed tooltips for items on the right side of workshop window.
• Optimized splash screen.
• Improved item counts display in workshops UI.

Bug fixes

• Excluded bogus outdoor tiles from some caves territories.
• Fixed crash involving items destroying themselves.
• Fixed throne unicode symbol.
• Fixed crashes when trying to load some incompatible save files.
• Fixed a few retirement crashes.
• Fixed messages for dying from fire, silver, acid and poison gas damage.
• Fixed deadlock when game window is closed during world generation.
• Fixed issues with locating pigs in pigsty.
• Fixed various small issues in pathfinding.

I've been back to working on KeeperRL the last week, and things are progressing smoothly. There are only a few bugs and some balance issues left to fix. I will also be defining endless mode enemy raids by hand. The automatic difficulty scaling method that I announced earlier proved to be too difficult (pun intended) for now. The raids will still be randomized, but their difficulty curve will be created by my trial and error, rather than a mathematical method. This is something to be fixed in future releases.

At this point my aim is to release Alpha23 this Saturday. This is the first time that I announce a release date ahead of time, I hope I won't regret it. :P

I've uploaded another testing build to the Steam 'dev' branch. Below is a summary of changes since the last upload on September 5th. Please report any bugs and other issues!

• Team members view in control mode sorts the members by their move order and highlights who's under control.
• Added "full control mode" step to the tutorial.
• A lot of optimizations of the rendering code, which means framerate should go up by up to a 100%.
• Much nicer health bar.
• Added option to generate mana in the library - only in the free play mode.
• Added a highscore table for endless mode, ordered by turns survived.
• Fixed issues with killing non-living creatures in combat (ents, golems, elementals, etc).
• Fixed a glitch that allowed destroying walls by bumping into them.

I've been back to working on KeeperRL the last week, and things are progressing smoothly. There are only a few bugs and some balance issues left to fix. I will also be defining endless mode enemy raids by hand. The automatic difficulty scaling method that I announced earlier proved to be too difficult (pun intended) for now. The raids will still be randomized, but their difficulty curve will be created by my trial and error, rather than a mathematical method. This is something to be fixed in future releases.

At this point my aim is to release Alpha23 this Saturday. This is the first time that I announce a release date ahead of time, I hope I won't regret it. :P

I've uploaded another testing build to the Steam 'dev' branch. Below is a summary of changes since the last upload on September 5th. Please report any bugs and other issues!

• Team members view in control mode sorts the members by their move order and highlights who's under control.
• Added "full control mode" step to the tutorial.
• A lot of optimizations of the rendering code, which means framerate should go up by up to a 100%.
• Much nicer health bar.
• Added option to generate mana in the library - only in the free play mode.
• Added a highscore table for endless mode, ordered by turns survived.
• Fixed issues with killing non-living creatures in combat (ents, golems, elementals, etc).
• Fixed a glitch that allowed destroying walls by bumping into them.

The work on KeeperRL Alpha23 is slowly coming to an end. The only things left to do are bug fixes and final changes to the endless mode. I was aiming to release this update at the end of August, because I'm taking 3 weeks off in mid-September. Unfortunately this plan has failed, so I'm going to finish as much as possible before leaving, and release when I'm back, in early October.

Players who play KeeperRL on Steam have had the opportunity to test Alpha23 for a while already, and today I've uploaded another testing build with the newest changes. It's the first build that has the endless mode enabled, even though some thing are not completely fleshed out yet. For now the attacking enemy waves are fixed, but the final implementation that I have in mind will have randomized villains with automatic difficulty scaling. My aim is to create a fair, but re-playable experience. It's actually an interesting problem, and the solution that I came up with can be used to balance the game in all sorts of other scenarios. I'll very likely write more about it in a future blog post.

You can opt-into the testing build through the game's properties in the Steam client (choose the "BETAS" tab). The build is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

I encourage everyone to try out the endless mode and share their opinion either below in the comments or in this thread.

Here are the changes since the previous build released on August 16th:

• Endless mode is enabled, temporary fixed villains added by SoftMonster. (the final implementation will have randomized villains with automatic difficulty scaling, but I haven't finished that yet).
• Artifact elven bow.
• Alchemical conversion (gold -> wood, iron, granite, and iron -> gold).
• Artifact potion of regrowing body parts.
• Fixed navigation glitch when clicking on an inaccessible tile in control mode.
• Potions of telepathy, regeneration (same effect as amulet of healing), and melee resistance.
• Rings of magic resistance.
• Amulets of night vision and elf vision.
• Mushrooms of regeneration.
• Werewolf has intrinsic regeneration.
• You can persistently name any item in the same manner as artifacts are named.
• Fixed some line of sight issues.
• Fixed many crashes.

The work on KeeperRL Alpha23 is slowly coming to an end. The only things left to do are bug fixes and final changes to the endless mode. I was aiming to release this update at the end of August, because I'm taking 3 weeks off in mid-September. Unfortunately this plan has failed, so I'm going to finish as much as possible before leaving, and release when I'm back, in early October.

Players who play KeeperRL on Steam have had the opportunity to test Alpha23 for a while already, and today I've uploaded another testing build with the newest changes. It's the first build that has the endless mode enabled, even though some thing are not completely fleshed out yet. For now the attacking enemy waves are fixed, but the final implementation that I have in mind will have randomized villains with automatic difficulty scaling. My aim is to create a fair, but re-playable experience. It's actually an interesting problem, and the solution that I came up with can be used to balance the game in all sorts of other scenarios. I'll very likely write more about it in a future blog post.

You can opt-into the testing build through the game's properties in the Steam client (choose the "BETAS" tab). The build is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

I encourage everyone to try out the endless mode and share their opinion either below in the comments or in this thread.

Here are the changes since the previous build released on August 16th:

• Endless mode is enabled, temporary fixed villains added by SoftMonster. (the final implementation will have randomized villains with automatic difficulty scaling, but I haven't finished that yet).
• Artifact elven bow.
• Alchemical conversion (gold -> wood, iron, granite, and iron -> gold).
• Artifact potion of regrowing body parts.
• Fixed navigation glitch when clicking on an inaccessible tile in control mode.
• Potions of telepathy, regeneration (same effect as amulet of healing), and melee resistance.
• Rings of magic resistance.
• Amulets of night vision and elf vision.
• Mushrooms of regeneration.
• Werewolf has intrinsic regeneration.
• You can persistently name any item in the same manner as artifacts are named.
• Fixed some line of sight issues.
• Fixed many crashes.

Linux and Mac users can now download the new testing build. To do so, opt-into the testing branch through the game's properties in the Steam client (choose the "BETAS" tab).

Here's a list of changes introduced since the build uploaded on July 31st.

* Unicorn villains
* Demon villains
* Archery range
* Ants can dig into your dungeon
* You can cut yourself off with "fill up tunel" but if you do, all enemies will dig to get to you
* Enemies will try to destroy walls to break choke points
* Magical weapons
* Fixed night and elf vision combination
* Fire dragons, lava golems, fire elementals and fire spheres resist fire.
* Fixed game speed dialog
* Enemies don't panic on low health anymore
* Added proper spell icons
* Some new tiles (throne, demon shrine)
* Fixed memory leak reported above
* Fixed healing when sleeping on beds
* Fixed visibility issues
* Minions have common visibility with eyeballs

Linux and Mac users can now download the new testing build. To do so, opt-into the testing branch through the game's properties in the Steam client (choose the "BETAS" tab).

Here's a list of changes introduced since the build uploaded on July 31st.

* Unicorn villains
* Demon villains
* Archery range
* Ants can dig into your dungeon
* You can cut yourself off with "fill up tunel" but if you do, all enemies will dig to get to you
* Enemies will try to destroy walls to break choke points
* Magical weapons
* Fixed night and elf vision combination
* Fire dragons, lava golems, fire elementals and fire spheres resist fire.
* Fixed game speed dialog
* Enemies don't panic on low health anymore
* Added proper spell icons
* Some new tiles (throne, demon shrine)
* Fixed memory leak reported above
* Fixed healing when sleeping on beds
* Fixed visibility issues
* Minions have common visibility with eyeballs