Besides Steam Workshop support, Alpha 29 is going to bring a large amount of new content and mechanics for your enjoyment!

New biomes

KeeperRL will receive two new enemies with their own biomes and even dedicated soundtracks! They are: thieves in the desert, and a white dragon in an arctic setting. Both environments come with new mechanics and some juicy surprises! You can’t build in different biomes yet, but it’s something that will definitely happen at some point.

Totems

Totems are structures that place a certain buff or debuff on all friendly or hostile creatures in a given radius. The player has a healing totem available to build, and some locations feature other totems, like bleeding or blindness. They will mix up the combat mechanics in the game quite a bit. This is a feature that was suggested by player Amaze, if I’m not mistaken. Thanks!

Special item ingredients

Some (mostly major) enemies will drop body parts that can be used as ingredients to craft special items. This is in line with my efforts to give the player more rewards for exploration. Some of these crafted items will be very interesting :). The mechanic is fully moddable, of course.

Freezing mechanics

Along the new arctic biome and the white dragon enemy comes the effect of freezing, which interacts with water and other creatures. The reverse is also true – you can melt snowmen and igloos using fireballs 🙂

Spying

Originally intended for a new type of demon, this skill allows you to infiltrate the enemy lines. Great for gathering intel or stealing stuff! It’s not clear to me yet whether it will be activated by a ring or by some other means, and I have to make sure it can’t be used to evade attacking enemies forever as the Keeper.

Shields and the parry mechanic

Shields have been present in the game for a few updates, but they needed an overhaul. Thanks to some helpful input from players, I’ve added a new combat mechanic that makes them more relevant. If a creature is attacked multiple times within one turn, its defense stat gets a penalty for each attack. This makes it easier to take down very strong enemies if you have a large team of average creatures. Shields counteract this effect, for example an adamantine shield will let you take on four enemies at once before your defense is lowered.

Plague effect

Plague is a similar effect to poison, but it won’t kill most creatures (and some are totally immune). It’s also highly contagious. Have fun with it :).

Enemy aggression setting

You can now switch between three enemy aggression levels, with the lowest one completely turning off enemy attacks. The medium level will keep the normal aggression, and the extreme level will cause every active enemy to attack within a few thousand turns, provided that their population is high enough.