Greetings fellow gods,

Today's patch brings 2 major additions - Difficulty Settings before starting a new game, and Data tables for modding.

We have 4 tweaks that you can customize for both Easy and Hard difficulty modes.

For easy difficulty, you can reduce enemy stats and health to make them easier or speed up combat encounters if you feel they are too drawn out. You can start with a couple of Phoenix Feathers if you're not a big fan of permadeath, each feather will heal you to full just when you're about to die. And last but not least, you can bump the durability of items if you don't feel like replacing your gear too often.

All of the easy difficulty tweaks will reduce your final score, but all achievements can be unlocked.

The normal difficulty remains as it was, and the hard difficulty offers 4 more tweaks that cannot be combined with easy difficulty tweaks.

The increased number of spawn groups will make the world denser in a couple of places, especially in the early game where there's a lot more variety in types of enemies in different regions. Additional abilities can be added to every enemy, which will make the opponents that are known to be easy, a bit more unpredictable. Trust me, Brown Bears are really not that scary on Normal, but Brown Bears casting Winds of Decay and Dragon's Breath are. The abilities will match the enemy level when possible. The next setting, item quality, will make it so enemies will have better gear on themselves, which is a double-edged sword since that will make them stronger, but also means you will acquire better gear quicker as you go on your murderous rampage. This setting will reduce the benefit of crafting, which also means it won't be as easy to gain that extra advantage over your enemies by creating extra items. And the final setting is for those of you who prefer a more impactful survival mechanics - an increase of consumption systems like hunger, thirst, bloodthirst, golem resource consumption, etc.

The second major addition is mainly for modding, but also for people who feel the need to play with a wiki with all the answers. We've added Data tables with a lot of information regarding mods data files - listing all enemies, items, resources, and abilities, with a lot of information about how to acquire them, or which crafting recipes use them. To access modding editors you'll need to start your own mod by following the instructions provided with the game inside the Soulash/data/docs/index.html file. As you're there, take a stab at making a mod, it doesn't require any coding, you can create your own maps, items, enemies, and abilities by simply duplicating and tweaking what already exists.

Below is the full changelog.

Added

• New difficulty selection screen when starting a new game with customizable difficulty settings for additional easy and hard modes. Tweaking these options will affect the final score.
  • Easy: The durability selection screen (100% - 500%) will increase the base durability of items in the game.
  • Easy: Pick starting Phoenix Feathers (0 - 3) to prevent death.
  • Easy: Change enemy health (100% - 50%). If you would like to speed up the fights, be aware, however, that his option affects summons as well.
  • Easy: Change enemy stats (100% - 60%). If you find enemies too difficult to progress in the game, this option will reduce their base stats resulting in lower damage and resistances. This option affects summons as well.
  • Hard: Spawn groups per region (1 - 3). More enemies will spawn when more than one alternative spawn group is available in the region. This will result in a more dense world with more enemies in some areas.
  • Hard: Enemy random abilities (0 - 2), every enemy created during world generation receives additional abilities. This affects regular enemies and minibosses but does not affect summons or gods.
  • Hard: Enemy gear level (0 - 10). The quality of items used by enemies depends on their level. This attribute will bump that quality by up to 10 levels, giving them a higher chance to wield magic and artifact items.
  • Hard: Extra consumption (100% - 350%). This setting affects how quickly hunger, thirst, bloodthirst, and other consumption-related mechanics will be reduced.
• Data Table option is now available in Mod Editors, providing a lot of information about entities and abilities in the mod. Beware, this screen contains massive spoilers! You can access Entity Editor from these lists by selecting a specific entity.
  • List all AI actors with the ability to filter them by level. The list includes their health, stats, speed, and worn items.
  • Abilities list is split by profession and level, as well as universal level 0 abilities available only on items.
  • List of all weapons in the game with additional filter by type, including all weapons statistics and information about who wields them.
  • List of all armors in the game with additional filter by type, including all statistics of armors and information about who wears them.
  • List of all resources in the game with information about the value, weight, and their usage in crafting.
• Added Spawn Group editor documentation in Soulash/data/docs/index.html modding documentation with instructions on using modding tools to create new enemy groups.
• Added Affixes documentation in Soulash/data/docs/index.html modding documentation with instructions on adding your own prefixes, suffixes, and artifacts.

Changed

• Changed the Stone Stairs graphic to be more visible in the Forgotten Temple location.
• Candles and Lanterns now have durability.
• Draw All Glyphs is now selected by default in the mod creation screen so that Core GFX works correctly by default. It should be disabled for ASCII mods.

Fixed

• AI no longer constantly attempts to summon a zombie on top of an existing zombie.
• Giant Spider no longer leaves a humanoid corpse.

I hope the patch will make the game more enjoyable for you guys, and keep providing us with that valuable feedback! Please let everyone know about the game if you do enjoy it!

Artur