V15: Balance & QoL


This update mostly focusses on new items, new enemy balance, and quality of life changes, but also adds a demo. The demo ends when you reach a level 2 adventure, or have had a combined 15 adventure runs and/or deaths. You can continue your save in the full version.

Balance changes

Powerful enemies that used to exclusively deal bleed or venom, axe skeletons and spiders, now deal a mix of the status damage and regular damage. Regular enemy damage now scales, albeit slowly, boss status damage now scales at a medium rate, and boss regular damage scales at the same rate as before, but starts slightly higher. The bezoar now only increases the rate at which toxin status effects decay, with the toxin resistance effect being moved to the new potion of toxin resistance. Originally the potion was going to do the exact same as the bezoar, but was changed in tandem with the status damage changes to address the issue that it completely shut down non-boss spiders, and was basically required to play against high level boss spiders. The other damage changes were done for similar reasons; later on the bleed from skeletons became the only thing a skeleton could do that actually mattered, with the great sword skeletons being considered reprieves. This is somewhat important, given that now that adventure RNG seeds are fixed, axe skeletons can actually be bosses.

Quality of life changes

  • You can now travel directly to any overworld node with a valid path.
  • The estimated damage a word will deal is now allways displayed rather than requiring hovering on the attack/submit button.
  • Added colour differentiation for sell value and total owned values in the inventory to match the shop.
  • The item rewards screen now gives better indication for which item is selected, and has the old hover effect returned.
  • Empty potion bottles now get moved to the end of the inventory when you finish an adventure.
  • Campfires that can still be used now have a colour tint so they're easier to see.
  • The 'continue' button at the end of adventures has been renamed to 'fight on'.
  • Text on lore screens and the debug info text now have a black outline so they can be seen on any background.
  • The 'spider warning' event now sells toxin resistance potions, the bezoar, and can now longer be left without shopping first.
  • The tiles and buttons now only ignore mouse inputs other than mouse 1, 2 and touch.
  • Lore screens now ignore keyboard inputs that aren't either enter button or spacebar.
  • Added an autosave icon.

Other changes

  • Wandering shop events now stock random rare potions.
  • Wizards towers now sell spell books and scrolls.
  • If you're running out of gear rewards that can be given to you, the end of mission rewards screen will now offer a pile of gold.

New consumables

Antiserum
Converts a ! tile into a wildcard. 6 uses.
Potion of four-sight
For the rest of combat the tile queue is revealed and tile refresh at the start of your turn queues an additional 4 tiles.
Potion of eight-sight
For the rest of combat the tile queue is revealed and tile refresh at the start of your turn queues an additional 8 tiles.
Potion of toxin resistance
For the rest of combat, toxin makes you lose 1 less life to a minimum of 1.
Scroll of vowel movements
Submitting the tiles AEIOU or AEIOUY in any order will give you 3 or 4 wildcard tiles respectively.
Scroll of four-heal
Submitting 4 of a kind will reduce bleeding and heal you for the score value instead.

New gear

Falcon quill
Your first word each combat scores double.
Roc quill
Words on every 12th turn have double score.
Raptor quill
Words on every 5th turn score 40% more.
Black inkwell
Bonuses from quills have 5 higher base score, before multipliers.
Trapping kit
Entering combat in a forest or jungle heals you for a quarter of maximum health.
Jade idol
Defeating an enemy queues a wildcard tile.
Wood idol
Defeating an enemy with a word that only contains wooden tiles heals you for an additional 8.
Gold idol
Defeated enemies drop more consistent gold.
Monstrous jade idol
Defeating a flagged enemy queues a gold tile.

In addition to those 9, there are 15 intermediate crafts for the infinitives gauntlet; every variation of 3 or 4 gems, of which you will only ever see at most 2, because crafting is permanent.

Fixes

  • Fixed shops not correctly showing stock sold to them if it was something they didn't normally carry.
  • Fixed button inactive tooltip triggering if the button is hidden.
  • Fixed a world gen issue that could allow a bad connection between two locations half way across the world.
  • Fixed adventures using effectively the same seed.
  • Fixed a stutter caused by autosave by moving file IO into a thread.

Files

SternlyWordedAdventuresV15.zip 9 MB
Apr 25, 2023
SternlyWordedAdventuresV15.love 5 MB
Apr 25, 2023
SternlyWordedAdventuresV15Demo.zip 9 MB
Apr 25, 2023

Get Sternly Worded Adventures

Buy Now$5.00 USD or more

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.