It’s my pleasure to announce that KeeperRL Alpha23 is ready. It took four months to finish and because it consists almost entirely of gameplay changes, it’s a very, very juicy release!

The new features can be divided into three major groups. The first one redefines progression in the game, making it more dependent on conquest. Mana is no longer generated in the library, but is instead awarded for conquering enemies. A lot of construction and item prices were rebalanced to accommodate this change. You can optionally turn on mana generation in the library in the ‘free play’ mode, for those who will miss the old system. You can read more about these changes here.

The second set of changes involves combat and training. Combat has been made more deterministic and slower, and creature attributes were changed to empower spellcasting characters. There are also health-bars!

A major addition to combat is the ‘full control’ mode, in which you control every minion in the team. This redefines the combat experience in KeeperRL in a major way, making it much more tactical and fun.

The last big addition is the ‘endless mode’, where you are tasked with defending your dungeon from incoming enemy waves for as long as possible. This is a game mode for players who don’t necessarily enjoy venturing out and exploring the world. Conquest is optional. The highscores for this mode will be based on how many turns you were able to survive.

As always, the update is already available on Steam, Itch.io, and Humble Store. You can also get the free version from here.

The full change log:

Gameplay

• Endless game mode: no conquest objective, recurring enemy waves, survive as long as possible.
• Mana is awarded only for conquest or defeating enemy waves in the ‘endless’ mode. (Except optionally in the ‘free play’ mode, where you can enable mana generation in the library.
• ‘Crafting’ tech is acquired by default.
• Added spell damage and ranged damage attributes.
• Added ‘magic missile’ spell which deals damage based on creature’s spell damage attribute.
• Removed strength, dexterity, and accuracy attributes.
• Removed missed attacks.
• Removed backstabbing (while invisible, opponent blind, etc).
• Removed minimal strength requirement for some weapons.
• Removed projectile items, ranged weapons have infinite ammo.
• Added 3 experience types: melee, spell, and ranged.
• Melee training in training room, spell in library, ranged in archery range.
• Fixed upper limits for each kind of experience for every creature.
• Added 3 library tiers: wooden, iron and gold with increasing training limits.
• New spells are learned at specific spell experience levels.
• Added ‘Heal other’, ‘Summon elemental’ spell.
• Available minion tasks based on skills and traits, and not hard-coded.
• Imp morale affects their speed. Imps can be whipped.
• Bleeding only as an effect of some weapons and after limbs are cut off.
• Creature attributes don’t decrease when low on health.
• Combat more deterministic and slower.
• New formula for gaining experience from combat.
• Added vulnerability and resistance effects for each damage type, acquired via rings, potions or intrinsically by some creatures.
• Minion statues and throne cost mana, Demon shrines consume gold, portal consume stones, and eyeball consumes wood.
• Imps and potions cost gold.
• Removed first-aid-kits except for the adventurer.
• Vampire lord wakes up hostile!
• AI doesn’t panic so easily when wounded.
• Only imps can whip
• Prisoner execution at a gallows construction.
• Full control mode where you control every creature on the team.
• Shared visibility between all minions and eyeballs.
• Vultures much less common.
• Made giant spider webs invisible.
• Dragons cast spells.
• Tweaked how courage and morale works on panic during combat.
• Made AI make better use of circular blast.
• Tweaked cost of navigating around friendly creatures in pathfinding.
• Fixed handling of simultaneous elf and night visions.
• Reimplemented elf and night visions as effects: now available through rings and inherited by doppleganger.
• Reimplemented sunlight vulnerability as an effect.
• Added magical weapons, which use creature’s spell damage attribute.
• Demon Den, Unicorns villains.
• AI will try to break choke points by digging or destroying walls.
• Added ‘destroy walls’ scroll to some enemies in endless mode.
• New demon shrine and throne sprites.
• Silver elven bow artifact.
• ‘Alchemical conversion’ tech which allows changing gold into other resources, and iron into gold.
• Artifact potion that regenerates all limbs.
• Ants and dwarves can dig through walls when attacking. (but not through reinforced walls)
• All enemies dig through any walls if the Keeper is completely cut off.
• Health regenerating ring and mushroom, intrinsic regeneration for some creatures.
• Potion of telepathy, and melee resistance.
• Ring of magic resistance.
• Allow naming individual items.
• Minion morale is no longer maxed-out when in a team commanded by the Keeper.
• Added “satiated” effect that prevents minions from eating and improves morale and defense.
• Added “rested” effect that prevents minions from going to sleep and improves morale and defense.
• Added rings of wakefulness and satiety.
• Keeper is allowed to sleep.
• Removed ‘stun ray’ spell.
• Decrease production time of steel and steel goods.
• Redefined civilians and fighters in enemy villages.
• Dogs can no longer be leaders of villages.

Interface

• Big optimizations of rendering code.
• Added health bars.
• All villains visible in the ‘villains’ tab.
• Animations for some offensive spells.
• Nicer map object hints with more information.
• Nicer minimap when fully extended.
• Removed tooltips for items on the right side of workshop window.
• Optimized splash screen.
• Improved item counts display in workshops UI.

Bug fixes

• Excluded bogus outdoor tiles from some caves territories.
• Fixed crash involving items destroying themselves.
• Fixed throne unicode symbol.
• Fixed crashes when trying to load some incompatible save files.
• Fixed a few retirement crashes.
• Fixed messages for dying from fire, silver, acid and poison gas damage.
• Fixed deadlock when game window is closed during world generation.
• Fixed issues with locating pigs in pigsty.
• Fixed various small issues in pathfinding.