Changelog

Aim your skills, and see them land

• Skills that go somewhere you choose (shots, Charge, Blink, Disengage, Chain Lightning, Spike Trap) are aimed first: press the key and you see where it will go, how far it reaches and what it will hit; left-click (or press the key again) to use it there, right-click or Esc to put it away. Options > Skills > Quick cast uses them at the mouse at once, as before.
• Fireball and Smoke Arrow burst where you aim (or on the first enemy in the way), Charge runs up to where you aim, Spike Trap is set there, and Chain Lightning starts on the enemy nearest it.
• Blink is a true teleport now: you vanish and appear where you aimed, never through a wall, but you can blink across a pool.
• Every skill has its own effects: Shield Bash, Cleave, Heavy Blow and Whirlwind sweep and crunch, Charge tears a track in the floor, Ground Slam sunders the ground for a few seconds, Frost Nova leaves rime, Power Shot looses a wind-wrapped arrow, Chain Lightning crackles between its targets, and more.
• What the townsfolk say shows as subtitles even before their lines are voiced.

The Open Grave

• A new character starts with Oswin the gravekeeper. His first quest, the Open Grave, teaches the game as you play it: a short prompt at a time (walking, wearing gear, attacking, rolling out of a blow, the shield, looting), with your keys as they're bound. The rest of the town's quests and the world's dungeons open once it's done. Characters you already have aren't affected.

And

• Ysolde the Runecarver looks like herself at last: an old woman under her hood, grey braids down her front, a carver's apron white with bone dust, carving her runes into bone-stone.
• The Corsair Grotto's corsairs give a little less experience, so the Spider Hollows level you a little faster and the Grotto is the place for gear, like every other pair of zones.
• While the game logs you back in, a spinner takes the login form's place instead of fields you could type into for nothing.
• The character sheet fits without scrolling: your character beside the gear slots is smaller, and the turn arrows are gone (drag across it to turn it).

Sound for everything

• Every monster has a voice of its kind: it cries out as its group wakes, as it winds up an attack, when it's hurt and when it dies, deeper for the big ones.
• Swings, shots, globs, lances, strikes from above and calls for help each sound like what they are, so you can hear an attack coming from off screen.
• Your hits sound like what they land on (flesh, bone, metal, stone, glass), and every attack and skill has its own sound; a bow is heard drawn, a spell gathered, a shield raised.
• Each dungeon has its own music, ambience and echo; bosses bring their own fight music; the town has its square, the Smith's anvil and the Runecarver's chisel.
• Options has volume sliders for Master, Music, Ambience, Effects, Interface and Voices.

• Haldrin, Ysolde and Maelis tell their stories anew: what the forge's cold is, what the carving stone listens to, what the first rune really was.

Oswin, the gravekeeper

• A new face in town: Oswin keeps the graveyard at the end of the west street, and the dead there aren't staying buried. His quests are the story of the town: rats fat on the dead, rings from the flooded cellars, an ossuary with too many bones, and who is buying bone-stone.
• The Drowned Crypt now opens with Oswin's last quest, Bone-Stone, as well as your level.

• Quest items: some quests want things monsters carry. They drop only for whoever is on the quest (each of a party rolls their own) and go into your quest pouch, not your bags. Ysolde's Drowned Shrine now wants five Drowned Rune-Shards from the zombies.

• Quest markers: a gold ! over whoever has a quest for you, a ? over whoever you owe one (gold once it's done), and a ! on the map over the zones your quests lead to.

• The quest log (L): every quest you've taken, what it asks and how far you are, who else has work for you, and what waits for a level. A count on its button says how many are done.
• The quest tracker: your quests and their objectives on the right of the screen, in town and in dungeons, counting your kills as they happen.
• Quests are handed in: once a quest is done, go back to whoever gave it to you for the reward. Their window shows what the quest asks and how far you are.
• Story quests are played alone: leave your party to enter a quest's own dungeon.

Each class wields its own weapons

• Fighters use swords and shields, archers bows, wizards staves. Armor and jewelry are still anyone's (their attribute requirements decide).
• Another class's weapon says whose it is ("Archers only") and can't be equipped: it's for selling or trading. If your character was holding one, you'll find it in your bags.

Staves: Firebolt on the right click

• A staff's left click is now a smack: a weak swing that knocks enemies well back, to make room. Hold the right click to cast the staff's spell, Firebolt, as before.
• Your four skill slots stay free for skills.

Seven skills a class for four slots

• Every class has three new skills to choose between. Which four you put on your bar is your build. Fighter: Charge (rush where you aim and strike what you reach), Ground Slam (stagger everything around you), Shield Throw (your shield hurled through two enemies). Wizard: Frost Nova (slow everything near you by half), Blink (a near-instant step), Static Field (lightning that staggers). Archer: Crippling Shot (an arrow at the legs), Disengage (a leap back), Smoke Arrow (a burst of smoke that makes enemies lose you).
• New gear can carry bonuses for the new skills.

Paths at level 20

• At level 20 you choose your path, under your talent tree. It's free, and a talent reset lets you choose again. Each path gives you its first piece at once; more of it comes at 25 and beyond. - Fighter: Sword and Shield (blows your shield stops come back harder), Dual Wielding (a sword in each hand, two strikes a swing), Two-Handed (walk while you Whirlwind). - Wizard: Fire (burns leap from the dead to the living), Frost (slowed enemies shatter), Lightning (Chain Lightning, a bolt that leaps between enemies). - Archer: Rapid Fire (a quicker draw, and every fourth shot looses two arrows), Stealth (Vanish, then a critical first shot), Traps (Spike Trap, which springs on whatever steps on it).
• A fifth skill slot, F, opens at level 20.

Torches

• In the dungeons you see by what's in your new light slot (on the character sheet, by your weapons). Every character starts with 10 torches; one burns at a time for a minute, lighting the area round you, and the next lights by itself. Out of torches, you see only a little round you.
• The Merchant sells torches, 2 gold each, and buys them back at 1. Right-click a stack in your bags to carry it; the HUD shows the one alight.
• Other players' torches light your way too.

• In town, the top left shows the same frame as in a dungeon: your portrait and level, name, health and experience. Your gold is at the foot of your bags.

Updates don't end your game any more

• When a new version goes live, the server you're playing on keeps you, runs and all, for up to 45 minutes. A banner at the top counts down; restart the launcher or refresh the page when you're back in town to move to the new version.
• You can still start new runs on the old server. If it closes while you're in one, the run ends and you keep what you've earned, as when you leave any run: experience, gold, kills and what's in your bags.
• New logins go to the new version; an old copy of the game is told to update, with the download link.
• Your account plays on one server at a time, so nothing you own can ever be saved twice. Logging into the new version while you're still playing on the old one asks you to close the old one first.

The changelog

• This page: what changed in each version of the game, newest first. It's linked at the top of runecarvergame.com.

• Behind the scenes: updates no longer restart the web server in front of the game, and the browser version switches to a new build all at once. (0.1.21 never went out.)

Trading

• Trade with other players in town: ask someone from their character sheet (click them in the town) or from the Party window; they accept or decline.
• Each side offers up to six things from their bags (items, or whole stacks of essences and runes) and some gold. Any change to either offer clears both confirmations; when both press Trade everything is swapped at once, or nothing is.
• Starting a run, disconnecting, switching character, Cancel, Esc or walking off to an NPC ends a trade.

Essences and runes in your bags

• Essences and runes are bag items now, in stacks of up to 20 a slot. Looting puts an essence on its stack or in a free slot; with no room it stays on the body, like an item.
• The Runecarver shows the essences and runes you're carrying; click one in your bags to put its rune on her bench. Dropping a stack on another of its kind tops it up.
• The Merchant buys them: an essence for a fifth of its rune's carving price, a rune for half.
• Your character keeps everything it had: whatever doesn't fit in your bags waits under them, behind a Take button.

• No changes to the game.

Playtest notes

• Press F8 anywhere to write a one-line note about what just happened. The game goes on while you type, and the note is kept with where you were: the zone, how deep, your health and what was awake round you. They go straight to us.

Sound

• Volume sliders for the whole game, music, ambience, effects and the interface, in Options and in the pause menu.
• Sounds come from where they happen: a monster winding up off screen, a party member's shot to your left.
• New sounds for fire and frost spells and their hits, Flame Burst and Fireball's blast, the bow, the sword's swing and its hit, and arrows landing. Giant rats squeak when they attack and squeal when they die.
• The town has its night (crickets, wind, a torch), and the caves their drips and rumble: the Rat Warrens, the Flooded Cellars, the Dire Wolf Den, the Spider Hollows and the Corsair Grotto.

Better drops, health that comes back, fairer bolts

• Elites drop loot twice as often. A boss always drops an item, and a better one: Superior 65%, Enchanted 25%, Rare 10% of the time.
• Out of combat your health comes back: 5 seconds after the last hit you took or landed, 3% of your health a second, up to full. The health bar breathes while it does, and a "Recovering" buff shows.
• Bolts hit where they're drawn, and homing bolts turn slowly enough to walk out of: the Acolyte's, the cultists', the Barrow Wight's and the Brood Queen's.
• Experience numbers are rounded to tidy values (no level or zone changes by more than a few percent).

• A better quality always beats Normal: a Superior, Enchanted or Rare item's damage, spell power, armor or shielding now rounds up, so it's never the same as the Normal one's.

runecarvergame.com

• The game has a home: runecarvergame.com, with the download page.
• The login screen shows the Runecarver logo.

• The launcher keeps itself up to date too, puts itself in your data folder with a shortcut (the Start menu and the desktop on Windows, the applications menu on Linux), and only trusts updates that are signed.

• On Linux laptops with both integrated and NVIDIA graphics, the launcher starts the game on the NVIDIA card.

The launcher

• A small launcher for Windows and Linux keeps the game up to date: it downloads the new version when there is one and starts it.
• An out-of-date copy of the game is told to restart the launcher or download the new version.

• Behind the scenes: the server comes back cleanly after a restart.

• F3 shows frames per second and, online, your round trip to the server. (0.1.7 is the same version, built again.)

Desktop builds

• Runecarver for Windows and Linux, a single file each, playing on the public server. The login screen shows which version you have. (0.1.5 is the same version, built again.)