Balancing this week has, for the most part, focused around bringing some of the more extreme elements of play mercifully in line. Some of the pesky gold challenges have been toned down a little. The revised Demonic Library has been toned down a little. And yeah, even the venerable old Rogue has been toned down a little.

Balance changes at this stage in development attempt to be a little less drastic (because radical shifts screw about with the rest of the system a little too much). We’ve actually been focusing on bugs, feedback improvements and interface tweaks more often — you’ll see some of ’em when you play your next dungeon. Still small stuff, for the most part (the radical Kingdom overhaul will still take some time) but we’re hoping that over the next month or so Desktop Dungeons will become a lot more tactile and satisfying in the details.

In other words: yeah, we’ll be tweaking some things, and we’ll keep making design adjustments here and there whenever we reckon it’s appropriate, but otherwise we’ll keep to the polish more and push for that elusive finish line.

We’ve fixed up some long-standing stability issues this week around, including a couple of edge cases that were emphasised by the revised Gaan-Telet. Also, Bloodmage Silver is easier (you’re welcome). We think some of the changes will be appreciated, especially those which have an impact on general game experience. Changelog follows!

Fixes:

• Optimized 2D mouse projection calcs.
• Extra items added to Fighter Gold.
• GETINDARE glyph removed from Priest Gold.
• Bloodmage Silver features more generous plant spawning.
• Nom Nom item now immediately applies health bonus.
• Demonic Library features slightly fewer death protection stacks.
• Default boss generation is weighted to be somewhat closer to the player.
• Higher-level monsters no longer follow the “choke” algorithm as strictly.
• Binlor offers a small amount of starting piety based on exploration.
• Slow Strike and First Strike player effects will cancel out when both in effect.
• Rogue damage bonus lowered to +40%.
• Puzzles now pop up messages when completed, and return you straight to the Explorer’s Guild.
• Tutorial 1 (puzzle version) now completes properly.
• List of enemy kills in score screen given animation.
• Bloodmage’s mana recovery now tied to correct attribute.
• Resolved potential crash problem when switching gods in Gaan-Telet.
• Volume settings are now saved.
• Fixed a bug in the Cursed Oasis where a boss message could appear at the wrong time.
• Fixed a bug where backpack items were appearing above things.
• Enemies with no “statue” sprite now revert to normal walls when petrified instead of being invisible.
• Proper particle effect played for petrification spell-casts once again.
• Fixed a rare crash bug that had to do with sound.
• Added a loading screen after restart confirmation.
• WONAFYT should behave a little less erratically again