The Ground Gives Way v2.5 is out!

I’m happy to announce that TGGW v2.5 is now officially released! It probably has the longest changelog so far!

I suggest you start by playing the “new in v2.5” tutorials to familiarise yourself with the changes.

I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the following people for the incredible feedback I’ve got during the testing period! In no particular order, thank you: bob, hedoNNN, almalam, evren, gza, muxog, chexwarrior, jiyvajelly, Roneitis, waymaking, Martin_pl, Rhoefr, cheapmiami, saltwaterterrapin, Denis D and Kyzrati. Thank you so much for your suggestions, ideas and bug reports. It really made a difference from how v2.5 looked a month ago!

Of course I’m also grateful to all of you who have made suggestions and bug reports earlier, for v2.4. You all help making the game better, so thank you very much!

For those who tried the testing period, the changelog for the individual updates are shown below (because a lot of these are not included in the final changelog, as they are not changes compared to v2.4.2). There were quite a lot of changes between the official release and the devE version, which you can see detailed below:

 


v2.5 Final (2019-03-27)

Changelog compared to v2.5 DevE.

Content

  • Tutorial is updated with the newest stuff
  • Things which already have shield pummel/riposte will not get enchantments that gives it [gza]

Gameplay

  • Changes to aliens
    • Aliens now appear as soon as you leave a level
    • Aliens can now reach items even if you stand on them
  • Food will no longer rot when on the map
  • You can no longer activate features (such as stairs and portals) when overburdened [gza]
  • Bursts are now only blocked by features that block both vision and movement

Interface

  • Altered display of derived attributes to fit better. Also clarified special conditions [Martin pl]
  • Being overburdened or having an ineffective melee attack causes status window to be red [hedoNNN]
  • On hit information of weapons is now always visible [hedoNNN]
  • Identify effect now has better message and name [gza]
  • Treestumps now uses the symbol ‘8’ for visibility
  • Turning a valve will now prompt and display ep cost [gza]
  • View items category clarified (view meditations & spells)

Bugfixes

  • Fixed pluralisation when buying ammo from an NPC
  • Fixed shield pummel random direction knock back [waymaking, almalam]
  • Pressing ‘x’ on a spell on equipment no longer tries to identify it [cheapmiami]
  • Filling an empty bottle with full inventory is no longer buggy [Roneitis]
  • You can no longer teleport outside of the castle [almalam]
  • You can no longer see cold-based monsters with infravision
  • Fixed pluralisation of spoiled milk
  • Upgrades and rusty items no longer gives extra penalties to martial arts [Roneitis]
  • You can no longer upgrade an enchanted item to an unenchantable upgrade [Rhoefr]
  • You can now meditate even when confused [Rhoefr]
  • Autopickup works even when slimy
  • Reading a skill book will take effect immediately rather than after one turn [gza]
  • Long standing bug: food can not change twice when resting (food could previously thaw and rot on the same rest).
  • Fix crash when making a character sheet with many statuses [Rhoefr]
  • Reporting of value of inventory when winning now accounts for items in containers

Balance

  • Buff magic consumables
    • night leaves now restore 10mp
    • night leaves now upgrade to magic boost potions
    • lesser magic potions are removed
    • greater magic potions are now common and renamed to “magic potion”
    • magic boost potions restore 10mp as well as give tmp 5 mp
  • Modified cooking prices [bob]
  • Slightly nerfed dragon mails [gza, bob]
  • Dungeon generation attempts to put stairs further apart in lab [gza, evren, almalam]

 


v2.5 DevE (2019-03-19)

  • Show a much clearer warning in status window when martial attack is ineffective [hedoNNN]
  • Slimy effect now only prevents equipping/unequipping and nothing more.
    • This solves a lot of issues with slime which was annoying in many ways.
  • Slime monsters now dissolve items by picking them up.
  • You can no longer rest when overburdened [almalam]
  • Monsters no longer talk about items that you have picked up.
  • Ice armour no longer reduce martial combo.
  • Most healer NPCs can now cure bleeding.
  • Some glass is no longer shoot/see through [Rhoefr]
  • Adjusted price of green and red tunics.

v2.5 DevD (2019-03-13)

  • fixed typo [saltwaterterrapin]
  • Rusty armour no longer give double hp [Rhoefr]
  • New inventory system (see post)
    • Burdened status
    • Improved autopickup
    • Automatic stacking
    • Containers overflowing
    • Fix items disappearing on full inventory/bag [waymaking]
  • Adrenaline is back, but it now only triggers when you open containers while seeing sleeping monsters, not when picking up items from the floor [almalam]
  • Pit traps no longer lead to crashes/duplicated items later on [almalam]
  • Game no longer crashes when pressing ‘c’ in an empty equipment slot [almalam]
  • Spiked collar can now be upgraded by armourer [almalam]
  • Autorun now stops before getting close to items [almalam]
  • The game no longer crashes when triggering a trap on a fire floor [almalam, Denis D]
  • The game no longer crashes when reading a scroll of summoning [Denis D]
  • Strawberry patches no longer occur in levels with red fluorescent fungi [muxog]

v2.5 DevC (2019-02-23)

  • Fixed crash when text that changes melee attribute is shown (when goblins flee etc) [Rhoefr, Roneitis, Waymaking]
  • Castle guard dialogue is back [jiyvajelly]
  • Goblin monks no longer reduce martial combo [hedoNNN]
  • A ‘v’ shortcut reminder is added to the menu.

v2.5 DevB (2019-02-21)

  • Censers spawn on the floor [muxog]
  • worn rope, rusty daggers fixed [muxog, cheapmiami]

Comments

  1. Congratulations for all the hard work and thank you always again for this amazing FREE game you spoil us with! πŸ˜€

    1. Thank you πŸ™‚ And thank you very much for your continuous feedback and enthusiasm for the game!

  2. Ooh, suggestion for new way to get into the castle vault. Make a new service for the guard standing in front of the door: bribe!

  3. It was nice to see the process how you keep fixing bugs and add new things during this release cycle. Such an interesting journey.

    1. I agree! I think I will try to put out development versions earlier to receive feedback while developing. It helped a lot in both finding bugs and to fix inconsistencies and to cover things I hadn’t thought about. Thank you very much for your help during this last cycle πŸ™‚

  4. So happy I found this.. it’s been a couple of years I’ve tried to remember the name of this roguelike (ever sincle playing it in the 2015 600+ RL collection that circled around the internet).

  5. Bug? I can buy a stack of e.g. 40 arrow from a below average warrior for 36 gold and sell it for 40 gold and can seem to do this forever until I get all the gold from the warrior.

  6. Hello! I’ve been playing a lot of TGGW and am loving it so far. Totally addicted!

    I think I found a bug?

    In the poison orb chamber in Lab, is there supposed to be a poison orb?
    The walls were green, the floor was slimy and I had to face off against a poison elemental but my prize was a lone pickaxe?

    Intentional or error, I never know in this game ?

    1. Hello Blue, Happy you love the game πŸ™‚

      The elemental chambers are not guaranteed to have an orb or any treasure. But you are right, probably there ought to be guaranteed rewards in those rooms.

      1. Oh that’s interesting- yeah definitely in the guaranteed reward camp, those rooms are nasty enough to warrant it I think.

        I also found the poison chamber a couple more times since I messaged you and every single time it’s been empty, I’m starting to wonder if the poison orb even exists! The fire, earth, water and ice orbs all seem to spawn no problem on my end but the poison chamber is always strangely empty..

        Also there should be a tooltip regarding surprise damage not applying on mindless enemies, assuming that’s intentional of course. (It made the whip very underwhelming in Lab onwards. ?)

        Finally, what do bedrolls do now? I remember they used to help you rest but now I can’t interact with them? Yet the map still marks them as significant… maybe I’m doing it wrong, let me know!

        1. > I’m starting to wonder if the poison orb even exists!

          I think you’ve just been unlucky. Just took a quick glance at the code, there’s a 75% chance for orbs to be in any elemental chamber, and I cannot see any reason why there would be an exception to poison orbs (although I cannot promise there’s no bug..).

          > Also there should be a tooltip regarding surprise damage not applying on mindless enemies

          Yep, I’ll update the reference document, I see there’s no info about it there (but yes, it is intentional).

          > Finally, what do bedrolls do now?

          If you rest when you are on them, you won’t consume food. It does not work on “broken bedrolls”.

          1. Hmm.. I’ll take your word for it; hopefully my luck will change soon, I just got my 4th empty poison chamber in a row ?.

            Thanks for all the help so far!

            Few new things:

            — Regarding the blocked off treasure vault in the Castle, I found the loose brick once but never again… is high Thievery required to even spot it or is it just certain generations of Castle that have it? I would think every blocked off vault should have the brick at least.

            — Regarding the shimmering staff, the tooltip says it catches fire easily but it doesn’t have a rF malus? Or does that weapon maybe have a secret transformation.. I never equipped it so I wouldn’t know! ?

            –Regarding the Discovered Items tab, it would be a neat addition if when the item is located with a merchant the menu would also show the price of the item, would save on a bit of backtracking!

            More soon!

            1. > 4th empty poison chamber in a row

              Ok, that does sound unlikely (but still possible) and warrants a bit more thorough investigation. There might be a bug there.

              > Loose brick in castle

              If it is there you will always spot it regardless of thievery. However, it is rarely there (as you noticed). There are other ways of getting in, however, that requires access to certain items so there is never a gurantee to be able to enter in any given run (in fact, you rarely can).

              > shimmering staff

              Inconsistency in the description (will fix). A few versions ago the rF malus was removed from magic staves.

              > discovered item tab

              Yeah, but I think an even better way would be to be able to preview available NPCs and their services from the menu. I had something like that planned for a while.

              Thank you again for your input!

              1. Hello, me again!?
                Now that I’m on a new set of save files, I’ve decided to look a bit more critically at the underground I find myself in time and time again — don’t worry though, still thoroughly enjoy the game!

                — Are the chances of an NPC outside the Castle just vanishing a set chance of happening every time you rest or is it affected by something else as well? It’s a bit frustrating to be slowly pinching pennies only for the warrior with the gloves you want to buy to just disappear. Maybe a notification after you rest or some warning could be nice.

                — I feel like basic thievery weapons (daggers, whips, light bows) should provide a small (+1) thievery bonus on equip; at the moment, you find at least one thievery weapon every run but getting them online isn’t always feasible. Compared to melee and magic weapons which you can just pick up and force a build around any run, thievery just seems like a “hope I get lucky and find x item” scenario. Of course, once you get thievery online, it’s really good… almost *too* good but I digress. ?

                — Frostflies are *way* too strong for where they are in the game. I’d go as far as to say that they are the strongest cold monster in the game, stronger even than the frost elementals in Lab. They have an overwhelming amount of perks including a passive cold aura (-25% resistance), a very fast speed giving them multiple attacks to your 1, a pretty big MP pool helping them resist spells and giving them ample ammo for their painful (2 cold dmg) magic attack which they fire off about 5-6 times in a couple turns with a chance to slow you every shot. And to top it all of, they can spawn in groups! Compared to that, even the lategame frost elementals’ pale in comparison.
                I’d say maybe cut their MP pool to a similar size to flaming bats (9 mp?) so they get maybe one big ranged barrage off instead of an almost unmanageable 3-4 turns.?

                Hopefully all this doesn’t sound like I’m not enjoying the game — if you drop by the discord sometime you’ll see that’s definitely not the case ?

                Till next time!

                1. Hey Blue!

                  > Now that I’m on a new set of save files

                  Ah, you are blueSriracha on reddit of course? Didn’t realize that at first πŸ˜€ Again, really impressive!

                  > chances of an NPC outside the Castle just vanishing

                  It is completely random and a very small chance. Actually it is a bit of legacy, originally intended to make quick decisions. However, since it is quite an obscure mechanic that mostly seem to take players by surprise it should either be removed or refined (with a warning as you say).

                  > thievery weapons should provide a small (+1) thievery bonus

                  I think this would make them too strong. As you said, once a thievery build is online it is incredibly strong. I quite like that you in the early game have a few possible builds that you will commit to only later once you find more items.

                  > Frostflies are *way* too strong

                  Yes, maybe they need a nerf. I think a more interesting nerf would be to lower their hp to 1. And regarding their magic resistance, my current plan is to remove the maxmp-magic resist connection. I don’t quite like it.

                  > Hopefully all this doesn’t sound like I’m not enjoying the game

                  On the contrary, I see detailed feedback such as this as proof that you do enjoy it πŸ™‚ Do not worry about being critical, it is such feedback that can improve the game the most, and I am trying to make the game as good as I can. I am only thankful!

              2. P.S.Regarding the locked castle vault

                >There are other ways of getting in, however, that requires access to certain items

                Can I get a little hint on what these other ways are? Sometimes seeing all those silver chests with greed just out of reach is just way too tempting…. ?

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