Nyris Vine

A mysterious vine of otherworldly origin has begun appearing throughout the wilderness and within dungeons.

While most commonly found in forests, this strange vine can also spawn in other biomes, such as deserts and mountains, as well as inside dungeons like castles, temples, and ancient crypts.

(Warning: spoilers and mechanics explanations below.)

The plant begins as a single seed and slowly grows, spreading its vines and spawning Virelings to defend itself. Initially weak and easy to manage, the Nyris Vine becomes exponentially more dangerous if allowed to grow unchecked. Destroying seeds clears nearby vines and weakens the plant's overall strength.

Entities stepping on the vines risk being strangled and mutated by the plant. Attacking the vines frees them from entanglement, but their mutation remains (how to remove mutation we'll leave to you to discover!).

If the central seed fully matures and is destroyed, it summons the Nyris Maw, a powerful elite enemy. The Maw's strength scales with the size of the vine network, making it highest level monster in the game when fully empowered.

• The Nyris Vine begins as a single seed, gradually spreading over time.
• Destroying seeds weakens the plant and clears nearby vines.
• Virelings spawn to protect the plant and assist in spreading its growth.
• Entities stepping on vines may become overgrown and mutated, turning hostile and gaining enhanced abilities.
• Flowers bloom near the vines and can be harvested for new crafting ingredients.
• The Nyris Maw spawns when the central seed matures and is destroyed, presenting a high-risk, high-reward encounter.
• New items and crafting recipes tied to this event provide valuable rewards.

New Quest: Blooming Dread

Accompanying the Nyris Vine is a new quest, available to all adventurers. A local town in Greenhaven is seeking assistance to investigate the growing threat.

The quest is added to a random town in Greenhaven. If you're continuing from a previous save, it will be added automatically upon loading your game.

Insanity

Insanity is a new mechanic that causes illusions to appear. The higher your insanity, the more likely you are to see things that aren't really there.

This effect can currently be gained through the Nyris Plant but will be integrated into more areas of the game in future updates.

Expect the insanity mechanic to evolve over time, with new types of illusions and surprises being added as development continues.

Other Changes

• Items in your inventory that apply an effect even while not equipped, such as Decay Orbs, now will display a wound icon to clearly show an effect is being applied, and have had their tooltips updated to clearly state their "Carried Effect".
• Flying creatures (Hawks, Bees, Dune Flyers) will no longer set off traps.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed displayed energy cost on toggle ability tooltips not taking into account energy reductions.
• Fixed "Sparks" enchantment giving 100x too much stun chance (500% instead of 5%, 700% instead of 7%).
• Fixed weapon swap speed stat displayed as a flat number instead of a percent.
• Fixed "Mindmeld" enchantment giving 10x too much weapon swap speed.

• Fixed exception when fighting Null Champions, due to their attack sound failing to load.
• Add new art for the Blooming Dread quest reward item.

• Fixed game crash on load when loading a v0.5.11 save, where player is standing the overworld.

• Improved the reliability of Steam Cloud syncing between devices. Zone files are now directly replaced instead of being saved and renamed, preventing Steam from mistakenly detecting deletions.
• Added new system for playing sound effects that streams sounds directly from your hard drive for faster performance and reduced memory.
• Added a "Sound Effect" option in the audio settings, allowing you to select the audio engine for sound effects, with the ability to switch back to the previous audio engine ("Java Clip") if needed.
• Fixed an issue where deflected arrows still dealt damage despite displaying "Deflected."
• Fixed a crash when targeting out-of-bounds tiles using lunge abilities.
• Fixed "Tumbling" ability never triggering.
• Fixed "Escape Attack" stat not causing entity to step back as intended when an attack is escaped.
• Fixed "Between the Eyes" ability at rank 3 not removing the speed debuff as intended.
• Fixed "of Grace" enchantment granting 100x less dodge than intended.
• Fixed an issue with Blood Worms. In some situations, after saving and loading the game Blood Worms could remain in partially loaded states causing them to become invisible.
• Fixed the "mutation effect" item, which was not intended to be accessible, dropping when a quest NPC was killed.
• Studied book completion percentage will no longer round up to display as "100%" when the study is not yet complete.
• Fixed some abilities giving reduced XP when upgraded. Upgrades that reduced cooldowns or energy costs were unintentionally lowering XP gains, as the calculation used upgraded values. The system now consistently uses the base 'root' ability for automatic XP calculations.
• Fixed swapped point costs for Pie and Cake Baking (Cake Baking should be 3 points).