0.49.4585 - 4 new monsters, 2 new items, 1 big bugfix and stuff

In the background there is still a new big feature in development: character species and poses, which doesn’t go as smooth as I could have hoped :) So, this is a smaller “keep-alive” update :)

First of all we have new monsters:

• Serial Shooter - using a new ability to fire shots in a sequence the Serial Shooter sends a long row of projectiles, stopping and resting for quite some time afterwards. While one doesn’t do much damage if all of them hit that can hurt… Evade the flamethrower exhaust and then while the opponent is cooling down attack it.
• Antigrav Guard - a new guard for disobedient prisoners who fires three projectiles at the player character in a sequence. If one hits - the heroine will get suspended helplessly above the ground for a second. If while suspended another projectile hits the unfortunate adventurer, she’ll be stripped of all her items and sent flying over the dungeon. Extreme caution required.
• Holder - a monster that doesn’t directly hurt the heroine, just grabs and immobilizes her until she struggles out. The less clothes she’s wearing, the higher her chances of evading being caught or breaking free from the hug are. Struggling will drain stamina rather quickly though, especially if there are multiple holders around - who will gladly help to strip the character naked and drain her strength to zero. Other monster kinds will also gladly make use of heroine’s immobilized state. When the victim is too exhausted to struggle, she will fall unconscious for other monsters to take advantage of. Overall, not too dangerous, just don’t get caught.
• Dream Catcher - this is a very nasty and likely annoying bug. It never spawns in the dungeon, but can rarely come with patrols. If meets the heroine will just flee, as cannot harm her in any way. However, dreams now can become way too sweet. Dream Catcher will strip the unsuspecting heroine naked and equip a Blindfold of Lethargy which isn’t a big deal except one problem - it prevents the heroine from waking up until her stamina fully regenerates leaving her completely exposed to and helpless against all well-known dangers of the dungeon.

Caution, Dream Catcher and Serial Shooter have been properly tested only in a “controlled environment”, it’s quite likely tests in “real life scenario” will reveal some problems with their balancing so expect a small update soon.

While we are talking about monsters - a big bad bug has been, well, not fixed but workarounded. Sometimes monsters would fail to reach the target to attack and get confused, which was significantly hurting Wisps behavior and was finally “caught” when debugging Holder’s behavior. As a side effect of the workaround, monsters now can finally try to surround the heroine. Not too smart yet, but still will not crowd into a single spot and will spread around a bit.

Now there are two new items.

• The already mentioned Blindfold of Lethargy prevents the character from waking up until her stamina fully regenerates or until she is attacked.
• Amulet of Stripper - a slightly “cut” version of Amulet of Nudist, has weaker bonuses, but doesn’t force penalties on a dressed heroine.

And the last but not the least. I guess it’s worth reminding that the project is Free (as in Freedom) and Open Source. Now our repository at https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike contains also instruction to compile the game from the source code yourself, and also contribution guidelines in case you would want to make a mod, your own version of the game or contribute to development of the main branch of the project.

Full changelog:

• New monster: Antigrav Guard
• New monster: Serial Shooter
• New monster: Holder
• New monster: Dream Catcher
• New item: Blindfold of Lethargy (new enchantment: prevents from waking up)
• New item: Amulet of Stripper
• Monsters can now shoot multiple projectiles in a burst
• Monsters now will try to surround the heroine
• Better Sleeping Blindfold image
• Improve Amulet of Nudist enchantments
• New attack mark for high-damage monsters
• Pincher won’t steal glasses in sleep, but will just unequip those
• Pincher will treat any blindfold as acceptable and wont unequip/steal it
• Blindfolds increase damage from embarrassment (like getting undressed or touched naked)
• Always heal characters in the settlement
• Workaround a bug when monsters failed to attack the target and became confused under some circumstances
• Reduce Wisp health from 5 down to 3.4 - so that it can be killed in one hit even by a moderately restrained heroine
• Fix some enchantments showing incorrect strength values
• Fix rare crash when showing logs during closing the game
• Fix UI bug with “Unconscious” action
• Fix bugs in wisps behavior when attacking restrained target
• Contributing guidelines and compilation instructions