Dungeonfans,

I’m going to take a moment to appeal to your better natures, as great heroes with hearts of courage wrapped in a noble countenance of compassion.

A fellow player, Will Daring, has been dealt a genuinely awful, unthinkable hand by the whims of fate. Unfortunately, he is now facing the end of the road. This came to my attention during a conversation on the Steam Forums, which I’ll link below:

Here’s where he first mentions his illness,

http://steamcommunity.com/app/288120/discussions/0/540743032578041210/?ctp=82#c143387886727430982

And here’s the update where he explains how the story will end.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/288120/discussions/0/540743032578041210/?ctp=85#c135511655650674144

I’d like to share with you a link to his fundraising page.

https://www.gofundme.com/26ucsuc

Will is no longer collecting this money for life saving surgery, as that window has closed. Instead, funds raised here will go toward the myraid expenses of end of life care. Read it over, think about it, spread the word, and if you are willing and able, pitch in a few bucks to help out.

In addition, I’ve added an item to the bugfix patch that will drop later this month. I’ll admit that it almost feels trite to reduce a story like his to an item in a silly video game, but on the other hand I imagine the gamer in him is happy to know that his story fuels what will be one of the most lucrative drops for players looking to build out the perfect hero.

The good ol’ Southern Gentlemans has always been an outlier in the collection of various Dungeonmans classes. Designed as a fresh take on the Barbarian playstyle, the class provides large amounts of power for people willing to play recklessly and endure some randomness. Over the life of the game, there’s been enough data collected and feedback generated to help paint a picture of how SG could be a more entertaining class to play.

The goal of this refresh is to make the various Southern Gentlemans masteries more useful as parts of other builds, as well as solidify the class to build a core strong enough to base a build around. Let’s take a look!

New Class Features:

Rank: Just like the Psychomanser, Southern Gentlemans now has a ranking system. Each point you put in one of the three masteries will increase your rank by one. Your SG rank ties directly into two new class features listed below.

Ire and Irked: When you have 50 or more Ire, you are now Irked, and do additional damage in combat. This is a flat multiplier applied to all basic melee or ranged damage. The multiplier increases based on your SG rank.

Refreshing Beverages: Killing an enemy or damaging a Champion tier monster may result in a Refreshing Beverage falling onto the battlefield. These drinks immediately restore some health (Iced Tea) or stamina and mana (Mint Julep). The amount of resource restored is based on your SG rank.

Decorum:

Decorum now takes up one less button on the hotbar and is way more useful at shutting down powerful opponents, especially high-output melee enemies.

Rapier Wit: The bleed applied has been toughened up considerably and scales with Science.

Disarming Smile: This power is now a PASSIVE and adds a Despair effect to Rapier Wit. Check out Despair below.

Refreshments are Served: The heal has been improved slightly, but most importantly the visual effect has been made much clearer. Every counter attack provides a Refreshing Beverage visual.

Fire and Brimstone

These powers are now driven by Spellpower (and therefore, Foom) and have been made much less random in execution. Also, they no longer start tantrums, which will allow these powers a bit of depth that they were lacking before.

Blazing Vituperation: The F-Bombs now seek out enemies nearby and are no longer completely random. They also make an explosion on impact as well as continue to burn over a few rounds. The overall damage is about the same, but some of it has been moved forward into the explosion meaning that the F-Bombs can be used to kill an enemy before they get that last hit in. Also, the number of F-Bombs tossed increases with SG Rank. The cost has gone up to 20 Ire.

Icy Vitriol: This power no longer fires in a random direction but rather targets a nearby enemy and shoots a cone in that direction. Enemies hit by Icy Vitriol are Frozen in place and Scathed, reducing their damage output and increasing their damage taken. Take note, Icy Vitriol no longer deals damage. If you have to kill a pack of bees right-the-heck-now, this is the wrong power to use, but if you need to stall some foes while a power comes down off strain or to make a get away, this will help.>

Blasphemous Tirade: The damage has been improved slightly, but also scaled to work better with your stats. Survivors of the initial attack are knocked around at random. Be careful when shouting out words in a language you can barely comprehend, there could be trouble…

Sound and Fury

Unchanged. You either like chaining furious keybinds together or you don’t. Remember, roaring in real life at the keyboard totally helps.

New Status Effect: Despair

This is a new debuff the player can put on to enemies, either through Rapier Wit + Disarming Smile or rare scrolls found in the mid to late game. Despair will strip an enemy of all buffs and shields, reduce their damage output, increase damage taken, and Addle them for a few rounds as well. The primary use of Despair is to have an ace in the hole against surprise Champions that your particular build might not be suited to handle.

Balances Changes / Bug Fixes

• Protection From -Whatever- scrolls last for 30 rounds instead of 10.
• The Academy Warchest now tosses loot into the world rather than just handing it to you.
• AI attacks and reflected/tossed weapons now deprioritize inanimate objects.
• Cleaned up input and text centering during the start of Ironmans mode.
• 5th rank Mysterious Artifacts now show up at the Museum, starting with your next hero.
• Volatile Liquidity only costs 1 Deadpulse now, really.
• Lots of Hotbar fixes involving dragging items onto them. Less green squares, and (hopefully!) less swords being lost forever because you bound them to a key.
• Sound effects added to a whole bunch of spells that were missing them, whoops.

Ironmans Mode!

Veteran players with something to prove can now start new Academies in Ironmans Mode. What does that mean? The Academy is a ruin! Nearly all of the Academy Items are useless, and you have no access to any of the Academy NPCs. However, Proofs of Stremf are still valuable, and there may be other secret Ironmans-only boons out there to be discovered. When your Ironmans hero dies, the entire overworld is forever destroyed. There is no progression from one Ironmans hero to the next. 

Ironmans isn’t for everyone, it’s a different game without the Academy and not necessarily a better one. But people have asked for this challenge and I’m happy to provide it. Good luck!

New Legendary Gear!

8 new weapons, 8 new pieces of armor, and a shiny new ring. Each of these unique, named items has exceptional functionality and in some cases all new art. Some of these items are mid-range legendaries that will show up starting around level 5. Also there’s a hammer which is actually just a giant stone fist.

Medium Armor

Medium Armor needed a little love to increase the mobility and flexibility aspect of the style. Having high dodge is great, but it’s also nice to be able to stay out of trouble entirely.

• Quick Dash has been adjusted to allow for one extra tile of movement for every point of Strain applied to it. For example, your first Quick Dash can move you up to two tiles away, at which point the power is Strained and costs 2x Stamina to use. If you use it again, you may move up to three tiles away, and the cost will increase to 3x, and so on up to 5x range/cost. Once Strain clears from the power, the range resets.
• Quick Dash also grants you one round of the Arrow Time buff, allowing you to deflect ranged attacks that you dodge back to the attacker.
• The Arrow Time power has been redesigned as Ready For Anything. It still allows you to deflect ranged attacks with the Arrow Time buff, but if you are forcibly moved during the duration of the buff, the strain on your movement powers is immediately cleared. Those include Stick and Move, Shield Rush, Storm Driver, Dashing Charge, Seize Opportunity, and the Unstable Effect debuff will be removed.

 

Monster Balance

Monsters level 10 and up have been rebala– they’ve been nerfed. They simply won’t hit as hard, although their health pools remain the same. In short, they damage output for late game creatures was balanced around bad data, and this resulted in a number of relatively unfair deaths for players. It’s not right to get one-shot in an Adventurous dungeon.

Volatile Liquidity

Corrected to actually take an action to cast. Mostlies created by the toxin are now Barely Mostlies, which shamble around at full speed for 5 rounds before being destroyed. It’s fun for a little while to have a big cloud of Mostlies following you, but when it quickly becomes the only way to play Necromanser, the fun wears off. Volatile Liquidity is still a powerful curse, so use it often!

Bug Fixes

• Camps now properly appear on the Overworld again.
• Fallen Castles will properly remove trees that get in the way of your exploration.
• You can choose your own Academy name at creation again. Sorry about that.

 

A New Bee

There is a new bee.

Introducing the Psychomanser!

Once but a distant stretch goal during the Kickstarter, the Psychomanser is finally here! A powerful martial artist combined with potent psychic powers, Psychomansy allows for all new interactions with the game world. The Psychomanser is a brand new Dungeonmans class, built around the idea of the Martial Mentalist, a warrior who uses mind and body to become the perfect weapon. Three truly unique Mastery lines blend together to create a powerful finesse class, but like all Dungeonmans masteries you can mix and match them as you please.

• The Diamond Self is a mobility line that combines strong offense with quick escapes, but requires careful positioning. It also contains a passive that lets you shake off Debuffs as you fight.
• Telekinesis allows you to use normal-tier items in your inventory as resources, hurling around weapons and armor with the power of your mind. Battlefield control is the key element, the powers help clear enemies more rapidly as well as create meaningful obstacles for foes to overcome.
• Hymns of the Old Century is a punching-based line of martial arts stances. With your empty hands you can pick up and throw enemies, punch down walls, and launch lightning-quick blows that leave your enemies Already Dead. These powers are fueled by a new resource called Verve which is generated by punching foes.
• Every point spent in Psychomansy increases your overall Psychomansy Rank, which in turn increases the damage of your bare fists as well as the maximum amount of Verve you can store.

Defense Adjustmenerfs

At mid to high tier play, Heavy Armor and Shields were simply preventing too much incoming damage. That build is designed to wade into combat and take lots of hits, but it got to the point where there were no meaningful threats remaining unless a monster did a tremendous amount of bleed or starlight damage.

Block and Parry have been modified to no longer prevent 100% of incoming damage! Small Shields now block 30% of incoming damage, Large Shields block 60% of incoming damage and can also block magical damage. Parrying blocks 20% of incoming damage. Enemies with the ability to block attacks now block 50% of the incoming damage.

Armor Damage Reduction is capped at 60%. Run the numbers, and a fully armored warrior with a large shield takes 40% damage on the average hit, and 16% damage on blocked attacks. Combined with the stamina based armor powers that reduce incoming damage, heavy armor builds are still super rough and tumble tanky Dungeonmens.

Staminerfs

Across the board, stamina regen powers have been reduced in effectiveness, and cost scaling with level has gotten steeper. The average player with 40+ stremf at high levels will still be ahead of the curve, however the goal is to avoid situations where players end up with 85% of their stamina remaining after using six powers in a row to fight a room of 20 monsters.

Sword and Board Improvements

Shield Rush now has a targeting ray to make it exceptionally clear where you’ll end up when rushing. The damage and addle effect have been improved.

Hammer and Anvil now executes an AOE attack against all adjacent enemies at the end of the move. If there are any enemies within two tiles after using Hammer and Anvil, the power does not trigger Strain and does more damage if used again the next round.

Necromanser Improvements

Redistribution of Health now drains an unlimited number of enemies within a radius based on the number of Deadpulses the caster has. Enemies who are hit by this power now also suffer a bleed effect.

Volatile Liquidity now consumes 1 Deadpulse + mana, has a range of 5, increases duration based on science and scales damage based on science and weapon.

Messenger of Oblivion is an all new ranged curse that Addles a foe and strips them of all buffs while cursing them to take additional Dread Purple damage when hit by any source.

Blood Futures is in the trash, where it belongs.

Bare Handed Combat

Your empty hands can be used as weapons. Fists deal minimal damage, but the damage increases with every point in Psychomansy. High-tier Psychomansers have incredibly powerful punches. Eventually the game will include fist-wrapping type items to allow you to enchant your two glowing hands.

Heroskins now have an additional property, “skintone”, which will determine what color the fists should be. 0 represents a caucasian skin tone, 1 a more olive/yellowish color, and 2 dark brown.

Random Name List

The next time you load the game, you’ll find a file called random_hero_names.txt in your save folder. Follow the instructions inside if you want to create a prepackaged list of random hero names for your adventures.

Bosses, Ancient Kings and Warlords

• HP increased from 300% to 1800% depending on monster level.
• Warlords now drop special weapons and items based on their Warlord class. These items are Tier 4+, and scale based on the level of the Warlord.

 

Balance Changes

• Block and Parry are now calculated before Dodge, which will raise the likelihood of counterattacks from powers such as Tempo and High Guard.
• Dodge is capped at 90%– every enemy has at least a 10% chance to hit you.
• New Armor enchants have been added for Tier 2 and 3 Bolster scrolls. No longer will you be stuck with Deft, Fluid and Sturdy.
• Searing Bloodragers now do 40% less damage.
• Battle Fervor no longer replenishes Stamina on kills.
• Purpleated Trigers now have a level scaling range of 12 to 15, instead of 15 to 15. Whoops.
• Enemies with multiattack powers can now be blocked, parried and dodged.

 

UI / Art Improvements

• Right Click / Right Thumbstick Press now provides a context sensitive drop down menu of movement or inventory options.
• Right Click also includes Click To Move, if you like that sort of thing.
• Lots of cleanup in the stats screen, including finally pinning down the minor variance in average damage. I think.
• “Extra Action!” is displayed in the buff/debuff list over the stat block when you have 200 or more AP to spend.
• Bleed Resist is now displayed in the UI.
• Brand new art for Tower dungeons, and improved tilesets for Gray Dungeons, Crypts and Towns.

 

Partial List of Bug Fixes

• I Am Death Incinerator!, Rocks Fall, and Punk Molotov crashes fixed.
• Rare Banner crash fixed.
• Rare World Gen hang fixed.
• Tightened up restrictions on invalid character names to prevent crashes.
• Armor Passives are now disabled if not wearing the correct armor.
• Global resist penalties / bonuses no longer apply twice. Specifically, Pneumatized now has the correct 15% penalty and not 30% to all damage taken.
• Bleed resist powers (such as Bloodglue Brew) now give 9001% Bleed Resistance instead of 100%.
• Bolster Scrolls are now only usable on the appropriate item types.
• One Stood Against Many buff now correctly modifies outgoing and incoming damage.
• Anavrin now correctly misses every time.
• Saving and loading during a Traplord battle no longer causes the Traplord to enter an unbeatable state.
• Upgraded Libraries now correctly spawn books for new Dungeonmens at the Academy.
• Refreshments Are Served is no longer named Rapier Wit.

 

 

Major Bug Fixes

• Monsters that steal items or stats (like Stremf) will now correctly return those objects when killed, even if you left the area.
• Stat-bearing rings now grant their stats.
• Fixed certain Bleed, Melee and Ranged damage resistances not working.
• Players should no longer get stuck in Wooden Barricades.
• Items festooned in enchantments by greedy Dungeonmens will no longer cause the inventory to crash.
• Monsters with missing Monster Knowledge values have been updated, allowing them to populate the Museum.

Cosmic Enchanted Items

Be advised that items are now limited to one Cosmic enchant.

Trying to spoil as little as possible here: having 4 or 5 of those stacked on every piece of gear made the game completely trivial. To adjust for this, the power of the Cosmic enchant has been increased. Attempting to enchant an item more than once with Cosmic power will instead increase the magic modifier of the item by one.

Bandits, Brigands, and Towers

• Added three new enemy types: Duke of Distractions, Baron of Bones, and Marchioness Astromanser.
• Tower difficulty now ranges from levels 8 to 13.
• Bandit Kings are now level 13, and no longer appear earlier on as regular enemies.
• Brigand Strongmens should be appearing more regularly, and Champions have the power to disarm you!

Towers have been well received for their unique style of play, big rewards, and cool Warlord encounters. However, they didn’t quite scale well, to the point where Towers at level 11 or so became too easy, even when marked as “Legendary” depending on the location. This has been adjusted.

The new Bandit types will also appear in high level regular dungeons as well.

Balance Issues

• Decoymens can only be summoned one at a time now, and once a Decoymans is killed, all monsters who saw that event get wise to your tricks and might not be fooled again.
• Shield Rush no longer stuns Champions, Bosses or Ancient Kings, but instead throws them Off Balance for a round, weakening their attack damage.
• Bannermans has an extra mastery point in Cartography, Southern Gentlemans loses one in Bows, bringing both classes to 5 points at start.

 

Other Bug Fixes

• Mountain Scrobolds now bring rocks down on your head much faster.
• Fixed Door Spikes occasionally having no health.
• Fixed UI issue for Stellar Anvil.
• Fixed issues where enemy Blinks would result in them being in two different places.
• Fixed Tireless not always working for some stamina powers.
• Crash on loading/saving a Temple Map under certain circumstances.
• Fixed extra space between damage numbers and damage type in the combat log.
• Fix for Blinged Reaper save crash.
• Fixed occasional Detonate Deadpulse crash.
• Fixed the look of some broken doors in the Mountain Fortress.