Update 0.13

Hello everyone!

This is the first of a two part update mostly focusing on trying to hammer the talents into place prior to the Web-Release. Like with so many things, there's so much more I'm planning on eventually doing with talents and abilities but for now I just want to get everything relatively complete. This means trying to get all of the classes to have an equal number of talents at each tier and to make sure that none of these talents is a complete throw away. The more I look at the various upgrades given to talents at Rank-2 the more I'm convinced that the game will eventually need to have multiple upgrades per talent so that the player can choose how exactly the talents are upgraded.

• Trying to give each ability a bit more nuance or alternate ways to be used. Just a bit more to consider when targeting or using the abilities. 
• Trying to make the Rank-2 of each ability a bit more interesting rather than just 'more powerful'. Its here that I think that multiple upgrade paths could be quite interesting.
• Generally trying to balance out each classes talent set so they have a good balance of passive, active, cool-down, and charged abilities.

TALENTS AND ABILITIES:

• Power-Strike moved to Tier-2 for the warrior.
• Reduced Bear-Trap duration by 1.
• Improved the heal of Recovery: 30,60 => 40,80
• Precision moved from Tier-2 to Tier-1
• New Tier-2 Rogue Talent: Sneak Attack
  • Rank-1: Physical attacks against sleeping enemies are critical hits. This gives a good synergy with Sleep-Bomb and gives the Rogue a bit of burst damage potential.
  • Rank-2: Physical attacks against unaware enemies are critical hits.
  • I definitely don't want to go down the RFIII route where every attack against unaware enemies was a crit which tended to end fights before they started. I'm hoping that by restricting this to physical attacks and requiring a talent to unlock that this effect is mostly minimized.
• Burst-of-Wind (Rework):
  • Can now be targeted anywhere.
  • Compressing the blast radius against walls or into tunnels increases the knockback
  • Rank-2 of Shroud-of-Wind makes the player invulnerable to the damage so can be used to 'rocket jump'
  • Can still be used on top of yourself to replicate the old version.
• Shock:
  • Moved to Tier-2
  • Stuns for 1T at Rank-2
  • I have other talents planned for next week to complete the Storm-Mages kit.
• More interesting Rank-2s:
  • Trying to add a bit more nuance to how these otherwise simple abilities can be used. Giving the player a bit more power, especially the classes effected is also fine given the current difficulty of the game (we should still be trending towards a bit easier).
  • Fire-Ball: 50% stronger at the center
  • Lightning-Bolt: 50% stronger at the tip
  • Cone-of-Cold: 50% stronger at the first tile
  • Power-Shot 50% stronger if used in melee range
  • Tunnel-Shot 20% more damage for each enemy hit.
  • Mirror-Image: player can shoot through his own mirror image.
  • Blood-Portal: a small heal when blinking to blood.
  • Recovery: the cooldown reset is only at Rank-2
• Cannibalise (Rework):
  • Now works like a stronger meditate but uses HP each turn you build up the charge.
• Aura-of-Death:
  • Added 20%,30% toxic resistance
  • At Rank-2 the player becomes immune to Poison-Clouds

ITEMS AND EQUIPMENT:

• Archery Goggles give +1 protection (they are weighted like leather armor). Might need a bit of a redraw.
• Magic Power (Ability Power) is now added to the stats of item abilities. Will need to see if this is absurdly broken.
• Runic-Staff-of-Death: lifetap projectiles => heal ability.
  • Unlike the poison effects, I think I prefer the lifetaps for the player to be activated heals.
• Got all the descriptions working correctly for item-abilities including showing the modified stats of the ability.

MECHANICS AND BALANCE:

• Falling down or descending pits will unagro monsters (unlike using stairs)
• Frost-Vortex, Ice-Elementals, Ice-Statues are all now immune to Freezing Clouds.
  • Apparently Freezing-Cloud immune did not even exist until now.
• An enemy slept by Sleep-Bomb will now have a 50% chance to 'shout'  each turn which simulates his buddies noticing he's suddenly being knocked out.
• Obsidian Golems are now healed when in lava.
• Ants have protections and use the Swarm-Melee attack
• Spider Queen can now Jump
• Golems break into rubble when killed.
• Added coal to the list of objects that bear-traps can replace (I'm sure there's more).

BUGS AND CRASHES:

• Fixed the invisible Tentacle Terror... tentacles
• Included freezing cloud in all checks (monster spawning, player exploration avoidance, stair exclusion etc.)
• Jumping down a pit in Yendor will no longer cause a crash.
• Fixed: cursed floors could replace the stairs if the player was standing on them.

Pretty much full steam ahead next week with the rest of the talent changes I have planned. Still got a ton of stuff on my todo list in this area that I'd like to get done prior to Web-Release. I'm still planning on roughly a Nov. 20 release date so we've got about 6-7 weeks remaining of development prior to then. Once I get the talent stuff wrapped up I think its mostly just a matter of polishing everything and continuing to add new generators, vaults, maps and general level content until the release date.