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Highlights

• Added level 4 spells.
• You now start at level 2 in your major arcana instead of 3.
• Tweaks to spell stats and upgrades.
• Expansion of corruption system, adding mutations instead of flat modifiers.
• Adding Mutant starting ancestry.
• Added more item enchantments, including curses.
• Wizard Tower ruins added as a map type.
• Added a new faction.
• More interactions with wizards in towers, and missions available from the Wizard faction.
• Can now sell luxury items to Vampire faction and can become Authorized to visit vampire crypts. Vampire faction teaches Bloodletting skill, which lets you drain blood from corpses.

More detailed notes:

Spells

• You can now advance your Arcana to level 4, and learn a variety of powerful level 4 spells.
• You now start at level 2 in your major arcana instead of 3.
• Spell upgrade point costs now start at the level of the spell rather than 1.
• Upgrades and stats for almost all spells have been modified.
  • Most spells now have more upgrades available than they did before, but each upgrade adds less.
  • Generally speaking, area-damaging spells now do less damage than single-target spells, with specific-enemy-type spells doing the most.
  • Damaging spells have generally have their charges reduced, and curses, buffs, and environmental spells generally have had their charges increased.
  • More spell upgrades now have arcana level requirements.
• The number of upgrades you can apply to a spell is now limited by your level in the spell's arcana. The default is 1 + arcana level, but there are a few ways to increase them.
• There are some significant changes here, so please let me know what you think of them and how you feel they're balanced! There will probably be more tweaks to this in the future. The game was a bit too easy but I'd like to make sure I haven't swung it too far in the other direction.
• The thought pattern behind these changes:
  • Make the player less powerful out of the gate, incentivizing actually going for upgrades, rather than only focusing on what's most monetarily valuable.
  • Make it more of a decision as to what upgrades you want to apply to a spell and to make it take a bit more time and effort to do, rather than being able to just max out all your spells easily with a handful of tomes.
  • Make Arcana level more important, even for lower-level spells.
  • Make advanced knowledge items more valuable to incentivize the costs and risks of getting and using them.
  • Starting without AOE spells requires more careful, tactical play and makes achieving them a big power boost to work towards.

Corruption

• Rather than corruption providing a flat set of modifiers, whenever you gain corruption there's now a chance to gain a random mutation.
  • There's a large list of mutations, some that apply across all corruption types, and some that are specific to a corruption type.
• In addition to things that cause corruption directly there are some things that cause Contamination buildup, such as contaminated areas or cursed items. Exposure to too much contamination causes Corruption.
• Added the first player ancestry aside from human: Mutants.
  • Mutants start with a physical mutation of their choice, and are guaranteed to gain mutations when they gain corruption, but get to pick from a list of 3 rather than it being totally random.
  • Mutants start friendly with the Undercity Dwellers, but some other factions hate them.

Item Enchantments and Curses

• Added several more item enchantments.
• Artifacts can now be cursed. Curses are enchantments that have a negative effect, but cursed artifacts also have an extra positive enchantment.
• Cursed items can be studied to grant Unsettling Hypotheses, which can be combined into Forbidden Knowledge if you have enough.
• Updated the artifact creation code so artifacts should now have all open enchantment slots filled rather than just having 3 random enchantments.
• Elemental enchantments are available under a single option at Forging Destiny, rather than having a separate service for each damage type. Forging Destiny can now also enchant ammo with elemental damage, and torso armor with elemental resistance.

Tower Ruins

• Wizard tower ruins have been added as a new location type.
• Tower ruins are filled with powerful enemies and dangerous environmental features but also contain powerful or valuable cursed items and are a more reliable source of Forbidden Tomes than normal towers.
• There's a new faction to discover whose members you may encounter at tower ruins.

Factions and Stores

• Most factions buy healing items now.
• Items purchased for favor are now cheaper than items purchased for money.
• The automatic decrease of faction reputation at the end of the day now only occurs if you haven't interacted with the faction or gained reputation with them during the previous day. (Negative reputation going away over time still happens no matter what)
• Stores and factions no longer add items sold to them to their inventory.

NPC Behavior

• You regain your Blending In status if there are no longer any residents on the map hostile to you.
• Creatures will now actually used ranged weapons if they have them equipped.
• Changes to mind-altering conditions like enraged/confused:
  • Attacking or being attacked by enraged/confused/etc. creatures no longer causes you to lose Blending In, or for their friends to become hostile to you. Killing them still results in a reputation drop though.
  • The enraged condition forces NPCs with it to become hostile to the nearest creature regardless of faction.
  • When confused or enraged creatures lose that condition, their hostility to everyone resets (though any other NPCs they've pissed off will still be mad at them).

Wizards

• There are more non-hostile interactions available in wizard towers.
• There's now a limit on the number of forbidden tomes that can be found in a non-ruined tower.
• You can offer magical knowledge to apprentice wizards to get them to follow you, or to bribe them to no longer be hostile.
• Added missions to the Wizard faction.
• Distracting ritual-casting wizards from their ritual now has some effects.
• Non-apprentice wizards now start with a number of upgrade points they randomly apply to their spells. They also start with levels in the "spell attack bonus" skill, applying bonus damage to all their spells.

Vampires

• The Vampire faction now buys art and luxury items, and sells Vampire Blood and invitations to their crypts.
• The cultists guarding the vampire crypt entrance are no longer hostile on sight. If you have a vampire invitation, or bribe them, you can become Authorized to enter the crypts, which makes the inhabitants of the crypts non-hostile as well.
  • Currently, there's still not much non-hostile interaction with vampires in the crypts, but more will be added in the future.
• The vampire faction now teaches the Bloodletting skill, which lets you drain blood from dead bodies if you have an empty bottle. The effects and value of the blood depends on the creature it's drained from.
  • Vampires no longer randomly drop vampire blood, but you can bottle it yourself using Bloodletting.

Items

• Wizard dress robes grant the well-dressed impression.
• Paintings take up 3 inventory slots.
• Many items are more valuable baseline, and item enchantments add more to their value.
• Robes of Resistance replaced with Robes of Protection, which provide a flat armor bonus vs the damage type rather than a % resistance.
• Spellbooks have the option to grant 3 Secrets of Magic if studied instead of upgrading/learning a spell. Not a very efficient use of them, but gives them a small use if you get one with no spells you're interested in.

Misc

• Mostly removed the "recently awoken" condition. It still applies to the player so the player doesn't get sleeplocked, but all other creatures can now be put to sleep even if they just woke up.
• Can now Train Hard in the training room to grant 2 physical development, but it makes you Tired or Exhausted.
• Added some more Cursed Perks.
• Certain conditions (drunkenness, rage, exhaustion) now cause a "miscast chance" on your spells. Miscasting is pretty simple at the moment, just fails casting and causes damage and contamination to you based on the spell's level.
• Number of guards that spawn in various places now changes based on number of times you've visited. Guards are now guaranteed to spawn in some mansion rooms where they didn't before.
• You can now sell drugs to epicurean nobles at mansions.
• The number of partygoers wandering around mansions differs depending on the time of day.
• Added the option to use a premade character on the new game screen rather than making your own.

UI/UX

• Equipped items are now noted on the crafting screen.
• Added Tome of Knowledge" section on menus, which will let you look up information on more things besides creatures. Just conditions for now, but will be adding more to it in future updates.
  • Conditions are added when you suffer them, inflict them, or examine a creature with thta condition.
  • Creatures are now also added to the Monsterpedia when you examine them, speak to them, summon them or control them. Previously they only showed up if you'd killed them.
  • Monsterpedia is no longer sorted by level, but alphabetically. You can type a letter to jump to creatures starting with that letter (also works in the condition codex).
• When moving along a path after clicking to move, you now move through allied creatures.
• Thrown items that will cause effects over an area now show the area they'll hit, like spells do.
• Items contained in trashed rooms are added to the stash when the room is cleared (eg books on bookshelves in the library).
• There's now a designated button and keyboard command for talking to people (defaults to T). Selecting it highlights which creatures you're able to talk to.
• The screen that lets you purchase new spells has been overhauled. It now shows possible upgrades, and lets you spend different types of knowledge items to purchase spells.
• The examine creature screen now shows the reputation change for killing a creature.

Bug Fixes

• A few spells' charge upgrades were adding to current charges instead of max charges.
• Death Jolt zombification wasn't firing if a creature was reduced to exactly 0 HP instead of negative HP.
• The zombification weapon enchantment was firing if a creature was killed by its wielder at all, even if it wasn't due to an attack with the weapon.
• Fixed error that could result from leaving a game and starting a new one without closing the application.
• Frozen creatures can no longer see and so won't become hostile to you committing crimes near them.
• The Find Rare Book mission now rewards 150 zorkmids like it says (was only rewarding 100).
• You can no longer drink or give away the "Sommelier Extraordinaire" bottle of wine, which would lock you out of completing the mission.
• Graves in the graveyard no longer have a 100% chance of spawning undead when approached.