New Version 18.09.03

Hello, we’ve just pushed a new version to Steam and itch, 18.09.03. We’re just two months away now from leaving Early Access, so you may not hear from us for a while as we batten down the hatches and work hard on tying up loose ends and fixing various bugs before release.

We’ve added two major feature sets: magic redesign and steamworks mod support.

Magic Redesign

We overhauled the magic system. Wizards are now magical crafters, healers and potion makers. The concept of the research tree has been removed, as have spells. We think this fits the core design of the game a bit better.

Magical Objects

Wizards can now build Summoning Circles. Dwarfs can use the summoning circle to teleport and get out of tough situations.

They can also build magical towers that grow plants faster or heal nearby dwarfs.

Wizards can now also summon the magical helper directly. The magical helper lasts for a day and then disappears.

Potions

Wizards can brew potions at the Apocethary. Dwarves then take potions and put them in their backpack until they are needed. There are healing potions, disease cure potions, and potions which increase the strength or speed of dwarves.

Innate Abilities

Wizards gain new innate abilities when they level up. Starting at level 2, wizards can heal their fellow dwarfs. Their healing power increases as they continue to level up. Starting at level 4, wizards can cast a fireball spell, which also increases in power as they level up.

Steamworks Support

You can now upload and download mods from Steamworks. Note that this will only work if you are running the game through Steam, and it hasn’t been tested on Linux or Mac. There is a single example mod in the Workshop that we have made. If you would like to start modding the game, you can read our tutorial here.

New Art

We’ve made art for all the new stone types, and we’ve also valued them differently depending on their strength. This artwork is a WIP

There is also some random new artwork including better splash particles.

Context Commands

There are two new context commands. While selecting dwarfs, you can now set their allowed tasks. You can also right click on some tasks and assign them a new priority.

Changes

• Magic redesign. Potions, magical objects, and innate abilities.
• Add ability to refine mana so you can more out of each mana rock.
• Wizards can now train at bookshelves.
• Steamworks support, ability to upload and download mods from Steam.
• Turrets now detect cloaked creatures.
• Fix bug that prevented dwarves from having hair.
• Fix “paused” text displaying incorrectly.
• Fix various crashes on Mac and Linux caused by incorrect PNG library.
• Ensure threads are cleaned up in Mac and Linux on game exit.
• New difficulty settings including the ability to spawn starting underground.
• New icons and particles.
• Fix GUI layout issues caused by adding unicode support.
• Fix bug in determining which factions claim your territory.
• Make labels on the worldgen screen more readable.
• Limit max number of dig/farm tasks to 1024 to prevent players from killing their computers by assigning too many.
• Add priority assignment to context menu. Add dwarf allowed tasks to context menu.
• Fix exploit caused by building a larger room on top of a smaller one.
• Force animals to stay inside non-square animal pens.
• New stone artwork.
• Vary price of stones.
• Normalize height of the world so that the highest point is always 58 blocks. This will make the ground much deeper in most areas, but will limit the maximum height of structures on the tallest points to just 6 blocks.