The most immediately obvious addition this update is a new main menu background created by Felicia Lobo! Much more fun and inviting than the plain black screen we had before! There is a 4K version of the brackground, but I personally don’t have a 4K monitor so I can’t test it. If someone with a 4K monitor notices something wrong with it, please let me know!

Overview

• Added a background to the main menu.
• New follower control panel that let you issue orders to your followers.
• New ancestry: Brainiac. A floating brain with increased magical aptitude and ability to learn a few unique psychic abilities, but weak, fragile, and unable to wear most equipment.
• Many improvements to the inventory screen, notably it now shows all current followers’ equipment and lets you manage the equipment of multiple followers at once.
• The HP of most creatures has been increased, as well as base spell damage.

Follower Commands

• There’s a new panel that shows you current followers and their health. Hovering over it or pressing the “Issue Orders” button (same hotkey as the one used to assign jobs in the tower) exposes a list of commands you can issue to your followers.
• You can command them to attack a specific target, mark targets off-limits, order them to stand down, hold position, or guard an area.
• In addition to commands in the field, you can set various behaviors, such as how close they stay to you, or their default hostility towards known factions.

Inventory Screen

• Selecting an item no longer brings up the full examine panel, but a smaller and quicker menu of actions. This is the same menu that was previously available by right-clicking, but with more options.
• You can also press certain hot keys (examine, use, drop, equip) while an item is highlighted to perform that action even more quickly.
• The equipment of all current followers (or selected followers, if opening it from the loadout screen) is displayed in the equipment sidebar under your own. These sections are collapsible. You can equip items to your followers from the inventory screen using the menu described above.
• You can now use items displayed on the inventory screen that aren’t in your inventory.
  • Yes, if you use an owned item without picking it up, you still get the same suspicion and hostility as if you took it. Nice sneaky thought, though.
• You can mark an item as no-sell or no-study, which will hide them from those screens; or no-stash, which keeps it in your inventory when you push the “Place all in Stash” button or when you return home with it for the first time.
• Description boxes now show at a designated X-coordinate, and should no longer block items in the current inventory column.
• The old item pickup screen has been removed. Instead, the inventory screen now appears showing items available for pickup.
• If you swap equipment in the field while your inventory is full but not overloaded, the old item now goes into your inventory rather than being dropped.
  • When unequipping items from followers in the field, they go into your inventory if you have space for it. If you don’t have space then they DO drop it.
  • Unequipped items go into the stash when in the tower in pretty much all cases, even if you have space for them.

Creature Changes

• Followers now use both your vision range as well as their own. Previously, followers with poor eyesight would lose their targets frequently even though you could see them.
• Follower morale decreases when they’re damaged, especially if damaged by you or if they’re not allowed to attack their attacker back. If it drops below zero they’ll stop following you and attempt to return to the tower, and will become hostile if you harm them.
• Tower residents with negative morale don’t leave immediately. They’ll stick around as long as their morale is improving, but will only do leisure “jobs” and will leave if their morale ever drops to a lower negative.
• Non-faction creatures in inhabited locations are now either wild (hostile towards everyone), or tame (function as residents).
• The HP for most creatures has been increased. Summon spell HP has been adjusted to match (only for those who don’t already know the spell, unfortunately).
  • Damage done by non-weapon-using creatures and base damage of most spells has also been increased (again, only for those who don’t already know the spell).

Miscellaneous

• Added the Brainiac ancestry.
• Items dropped by wild creatures in inhabited locations don’t count as stolen when you take them.
• Curses can now generate on non-artifact enchanted items, and artifact equipment is rarer than it was before.
• Curses are more likely to be related to the element of the map they’re found in.
• Random cursed art items are no longer scattered around ruined towers (can still be found in chests there though).
• Magic books can now occasionally be found in non-magic libraries, though they’re more rare than in towers.
• Stepping into the ritual circle on top of the tower now inflicts contamination instead of damage.
• Max value for paintings increased.
• Wizards pay less for most weapons, armor, art, and luxury items.
• Cults pay more favor than anyone else for elementally-aligned items, though you still can’t trade it for money.
• Flame turrets are no longer immune to acid.
• Upgrading your carrying capacity now increases it 1 point at a time, and the cost has been changed.

New Difficulty Settings

• Increase/decrease player max HP.
• Increase the number of visits to a location it takes to increase the difficulty, or make it so it never does.

Other UI Changes

• Added a background to the main menu.
• Faction/Store Screens: Can type 4 digits into amount fields.
• Faction/Store Screens: The “Highest Known” label shows if applicable on items you sell for favor.
• Study Screen: You now need to press enter twice if using the keyboard. Once to select the “Study” button, once to activate it.
• Crafting screen/learn recipe screen: Added an “Examine” button next to craft results.
• Crafting screen: Typing numbers into amount boxes now appends the number instead of replacing it.
• Morale of residents is now shown on the target when hovering over them.
• The “highest sell cost” in the popup now ignores factions that are hostile to you.
• The return home warning popup displays the reputation you’ll lose for stealing the items currently in your inventory, and warns you if non-permanent followers have any items that will be lost when returning home.
• Quest targets, both items and creatures, should all be highlighted when they’re in your field of view (unless in a closed chest).
• You can review the most recent news from the mailbox. (Reviewing older news still planned, but need to make the UI for it)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed error in Celestial Overcharge condition.
• Filter buttons and icons would disappear when text was added to the inventory screen.
• Fixed error using a lockpick on display cases.
• Unworked farms no longer grow weeds where there are already weeds.
• Foreman and construction workers heal when away from tower.
• The “Life-Harvesting” enchantment now properly fires when it kills something instead of every time it damages something.
• Selling animals to factions or stores would cause an error.
• Ingredients that provide multiple properties now only provide the property they’re selected for (eg for the sandwich recipe, a mushroom added under “protein” does not also count as being added under “savory”).
• Fear increase from witnessing a friend dying was applying to all creatures on the map, instead of just witnesses to the death.
• The “Confiscate Forbidden Tome” mission was generating the tome in any tower, not just the specified tower.

Known issues

• Some animals in current save games may have full equipment slots. Animals in games going forward shouldn’t, so let me know if any show up.
• Map hazards thrown items, and conditions haven’t had their damage adjusted yet, and might be too low for the new creature HP levels.

What’s Next?

I’ll be changing many of the self-buff spells to also be castable on your allies. Didn’t think of it until the end of the month so didn’t quite have the time to do it this update unfortunately.

I had started working on a new location at the beginning of this month before pivoting to the follower improvements, so that’ll probably be coming next update.

I’d like to build out ally training a little better so you can pick their stat and spell upgrades rather than them just auto-leveling, but that’ll involve some new UI so will take a bit of time. Nice thing is this would also mean a better interface for upgrading stats and perks for your own character. We’ll see if I can get it done, but since this update didn’t have any new content I think the new location will be the focus next time.