Progress Update for Preview 6

Not going to make a July 1st release. Not that it's something I promised, the first of the month is just an internal deadline I try to hit with releases. This has been a busy month for me at my "real" job, and the update's ended up getting pretty big. Which is good, I think you're going to like it!

Here's what I've been working on this month. I've been focused on curses and corruption, and more powerful magic.

The first area I wanted to focus on was expanding the corruption system. Currently corruption is just a series of modifiers that goes up as you gain corruption, but I wanted to make it more interesting. Now, when you gain corruption, you have a chance of gaining mutations, some positive, and some negative. This part is pretty much done, and I've added plenty of them.

Next, I'm adding a new map type: Ruined towers. The homes of wizards who studied forbidden knowledge too deeply and became corrupted.

I'm still working on differentiating them from regular towers and adding more content for them, but ruined towers will have greater amounts of both treasure and danger than regular towers, and an increased chance of finding forbidden tomes and cursed items.

There are some new creatures you might see there, as well as a new faction:

I mentioned cursed items. Now, artifacts might be generated with a curse, which is an enchantment that has negative effects. The upside to cursed artifacts is that they do gain an additional positive enchantment "slot" as well, and when studied grant an Unsettling Hypothesis, which can be turned into Forbidden Knowledge if enough are gathered.

I've also added many more enchantments.

Finally, I'm adding an additional reason to want to become corrupted by acquiring forbidden knowledge anyway: Level 4 spells!

It's now possible to increase your arcana to level 4, granting access to some powerful spells. But level 4 spells can't be learned just through spending secrets, they also require some sort of advanced knowledge, the most common type of which is Forbidden Knowledge. There's also a new spell purchase screen that lets you use different combinations of items to purchase spells rather than just plain secrets:

I'm still implementing all the level 4 spells but there are some interesting ones in there. I'm also hoping to get to adding "cursed upgrades" to spells that use Forbidden Knowledge, but that may end up being pushed back to another update.

So, all that said, what still needs to be done?

Corruption and Mutation: Basically done, aside from maybe adding more mutations.
Cursed Items: Basically done, aside from maybe adding more curses and enchantments.
Level 4 Spells: 13/20 planned spells are done.
Tower Ruins: This is the bulk of the remaining work. I want to make sure they feel different and offer unique benefits and dangers compared to normal wizard towers. I'm also implementing missions and interactions with them offered from the Wizard faction (and the new Purifier faction teased above).