Getting v1.2.0 to Beta | Patreon Weekly #145

Hey Patrons!

Firstly, there’s a new Patreon Poll! For poll #27 I’m letting you guys help me decide how to prioritize further desktop improvements after the launch of v1.2.0.

For this weekly, I’m going to share more progress on v1.2.0’s content development. It’s almost ready for beta, and I expect I’ll be making a blog post on Shatteredpixel.com a bit later this week.

Levelgen Improvements

I’ve now locked in the designs of all the new rooms and am almost finished implementing them. There will be six new rooms in total!

Firstly, two new rooms (and one existing room) will use crystal doors! These doors let you see through them and require a crystal key to open. Just like with existing crystal chest rooms, this opens up some neat possibilities, as seeing loot doesn’t mean you can go grab it yet.

Next, there are three new rooms with hazards that you’ll need to overcome. There are multiple solutions, just like other hazard rooms, but the default solution to each room requires a potion of purity, frost, or haste. Be careful, as the hazards in these rooms can deal some serious damage if you don’t properly mitigate them.

Finally, I’m reintroducing sacrifice rooms! These rooms are from the original Pixel Dungeon and granted a scroll of ‘wipe out’ if enough enemies are defeated atop the sacrificial fire. I’m changing up the reward these rooms give, but their mechanics are otherwise very similar to the original Pixel Dungeon.

Armband Rework

I’ve finished the design for the armband rework and will be implementing it over the next couple days.

The armband is getting some significant changes to make it more useful throughout a run, instead of just at shops. You can still steal from shopkeepers, but can now also use the armband to rob regular enemies! Doing this will give you an extra chance to get an item drop, and also briefly blinds the enemy. As the armband levels the chance for loot and the blind duration increase, at high levels it even briefly cripples! Robbing an enemy takes no time, so it has use as a utility combat action as well as a looting tool.

Advanced Alchemy Adjustments

As for more advanced alchemy recipes, I’ve settled on some changes to brews and spells, but have decided to hold off on elixir changes until later. Elixirs weathered the v1.1.0 changes quite well, and so there isn’t any room to make them stronger. I may decide to scale them back a bit in future actually, but for now I wanted to be mostly focused on buffs. Here are some of the most significant brew and spell changes, alongside a bunch of smaller cost reductions:

• Caustic Brew is getting a flat +1 to its damage, which should make it more effectively out-pace the damage from potions of toxic gas.
• Curse Infusion is going to boost an item’s level by a small % instead of just +1. This makes it a lot more worthwhile on highly-upgraded gear.
• Phase shift is going to actually properly clear enemy aggro and stun its target for 10 turns (bosses are immune). This makes it much more effective at delaying enemies, but also makes it verrry dangerous to use on yourself.
• Aqua blast is going to get a larger water AOE and will throw targets around like a geyser trap.
• Summon elemental is getting more uses and scaling stats depending on the dungeon region. Newborn elementals in particular are getting buffed to start at full health as well. I’ll be considering more changes to this spell in future updates as well, including letting the elementals follow you.