DD#157 The Floor of Wind and the Cave of Dreamers news - [Neolithic]To the End

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.

This week's content update is still focusing on Qinuyi areas. Those areas are as follows:

The Sealed Palace
The Floor of Wind is now almost complete. When you enter this area, the Dark Elf King will briefly tell you what to expect.

The entire floor is an illusion of the once-floating Sky Island the dark elves once inhabited. The guardian of the floor is too proud to forget their lost glory. His regrets and hatred become the storm that periodically blows through this floor even to this day. You will need to take shelter if the wind grows strong.

The Floor of Wind is also the home of those creatures known as Dorabis.

They will attack any interlopers just like other creatures on the other floors. You can capture them and turn them into your pets. Defeating them may also reward you with the Golden Stones of Xuanhuang.

On the Floor of Fire, Melton Golems may now provide additional challenges to your adventure.

You can also turn them into your pets. Defeating them may reward you with the Ruby Stones of Shenhong.

On the Floor of Water, you may now do some fishing.
On the Floor of Earth, trees now grow and become a new feature.

That's all four floors before the Thron of the Dark Elf King with their unique mechanisms.
That's all four floors each has a ring left by the Four Knights of the Dark Elf King.


The Cave of Dreamers
It's another familiar location for any SAPC++ or Stone Age Online players. During this week's updates, we now have a part of it accessible all the way to the Mages Guild. However, to reach the Mages Guild you will need to solve two puzzles and defeat a guardian. Just like in SAPC++ and Stone Age Online, the cave's entrance will lead you to two different locations depending on when you enter it. Daytime and nighttime each has its own puzzle. You can access the other one once you solve your current puzzle. There will be more to come as there is an entire Mages Guild awaits.

In addition to those two locations, we also have some other updates:
Counter-Silence Methods
It's quite annoying if you get silenced as a spell caster. As we are currently focusing a lot on spell casters, I also took the chance to add some additional solutions for you to counter enemies who love spamming their silence skills. Here are some examples:
Eloquoria

It's based on real-life medicine for ASD. However, because of some complex rating reasons, I didn't put its real-life name here. We are mainly using its side-effects here as the medicine can cause overtalkative which is to "remove silence" in the game. Yet, I'm still going to use this in the game. It's another reminder that life is simply unfair beneath the "nice and beautiful" facets. There are people who suffer from ASD from an early age. There are people unable to have a social life that others consider "normal" because of this disorder. Some may keep their distance from them while I will not. Everyone is welcome in this game for myself is also a freak who updated this game for almost 20 years.

Beak of Heroic Speech

It's another item with some old memories. The name of this item has a history back in the day of SAPC++ and even Koei's old classical game Uncharted Waters 4. That's almost as old as this game. However, Koei never made an English version of UnCharted Waters 4 even after they made a remake.
So, it's likely something people never heard about anywhere outside the Far East part of the world. So, I decided to add it to the game with English localization to describe its anomalous effect in our game. Of course, there are some changes to fit our game. But, you can get an idea about what this strange artifact is. Functionally, your enemies will find it quite hard to stop you from spell-casting as you can gain a lot of state resistance.

Egypt Polishing
Thanks to 渺兔‘s streaming on his journey to get through Chapter Two, I did some polishing and bug-fixing in Egypt areas when I watched. For example: You can now use Ultrasonic devices to blow The Sphinx Boss into pieces as it's stone after all.


That's for this week. Time goes by so fast, it's already at the end of the first month of 2024. I hope everyone is having a happy and productive January. :)


This week's full update logs:
20240120
English
############Content################
[Earth Golem]Increased their burning resistance.
[Enemy]New Enemy: Molten Golem
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Fire]Added Molten Golems
[Loot]Added a loot table for Molten Golems. (They may drop Ruby Stones of Shenhong in this area.)
[Pet]Molten Golems can now be turned into pets.
############DEBUG################
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Fire]Fixed the incorrect battle background image.


20240121
English
############Content################
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Earth]Added some trees as a floor mechanism.
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Earth]"Yaers's Approval" is now hidden behind a line of trees.
[Tilemap]New Tilemap: Wind Cave. (To be used on the Floor of Wind.)
[Tilemap]Added new battle background image for Wind Caves.
[Prefix]New Prefix: Fanatical-Befriender's (Increase Binding Skill Level Up Speed. It's a generic prefix that may appear on most weapons or equipment.)
[Prefix]New Prefix: Kleptomaniac (Increase Pick-Pocket Skill Level Up Speed. It's a generic prefix that may appear on most weapons or equipment.)
[Wonderland Travel Agency]If there is any boss in a random cave, the mini-map shall now mark their spawn location with a skull icon. So you can hunt them down much easier.
#############System###############
It's now possible to add customized marks on mini-maps through code.


20240122
English
############Content################
[Enviornment]New Battlefield Environment: Sky
[Sealed Palace]The Floor of Wind is now accessible.
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Wind]Added a new mechanism for this location.
[The Legend of an Elf King]Stroy continues when you enter the Floor of Wind. The Dark Elf King will explain the mechanism of the Floor of Wind and why this floor looks like this.
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Wind]Added a chest that contains "Wyande's Approval."
[Butterfly]You can now teleport from any floor in the Sealed Palace to any other floors you have previously visited.
############DEBUG################
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Fire]Fixed some localization issues in Chinese localizations.


20240123
English
############Content################
[Boss]The Sphinx Boss in Egypt is now considered a "Stone" enemy. Thus, a certain invention of Dr. Kyoryu can cause great damage to him.
[Skill]Cleansing can now also remove Acid Burn.
[Boss]Reduced the Aten High Priest (Shaded Version)'s HP regeneration.
[Item]New Equipment: The Beak of Heroic Speech
[Outside the Grand Library]Added a new encounter with an Anomaly Smuggler. The Beak of Heroic Speech is the reward of this encounter.
############DEBUG################
[Lost in the Sand]Fixed the issue that a part of the mission log misses Traditional Chinese localization. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )
[Lost in the Sand]Fixed the issue that a part of the mission dialogs misses Traditional Chinese localization. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )
[Oasis Teahouse]Fixed a Traditional Chinese localization issue in the bartender's dialog. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )
[A Slave and a Deity]Fixed 2 missing dialogs. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )
[Bandits]Fixed a bug that successfully intimidates sometimes does not make them go away. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )
[Maze underneath the House near the Paddy Field]Fixed a tileset bug about the stairs. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )


20240124
English
############Content################
[Enemy]New Enemy: Dorabis
[Loot]Added a loot table for Dorabis (You may get Golden Stones of Xuanhuang if you defeat them on the Floor of Wind.)
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Wind]Dorabis may appear on this floor.
[Pet]You can now turn Dorabis into pets.
[Item]StimShot now also removes silence.
[Item]New Prefix: Deadly. (Increase critial chance. It's a generic prefix that may appear on most weapons or equipment.)


20240125
English
############Content################
[Sealed Palace - Floor of Water]You can now do some fishing here.
[Qinuyi]New Location: Cave of Dreamers
[Butterfly]Once you have visited the Cave of Dreamers, you can teleport there from Qinuyi.
[Butterfly]Added butterfly support to teleport out from the Cave of Dreamers.
[Cave of Dreamers]Depending on whether you enter the cave during the day or night, you will end up in different locations in the cave. Butterfly Wings also respects this rule.
[Cave of Dreamers]Added to relatively easy puzzles.
[Item]New Medicine: Eloquoria (Cure Silence and Fear. It's now sold in many different hospitals.)
[Marinas]Added a hospital sign on the hospital building.
[Lost in the Sand]If you ally with the Illuminati, when you besiege the Black Pyramid, the Illuminati Quartermaster outside the Black Pyramid now also sells Eloquoria.
[Item]Reduced the price of RPG missiles.
############DEBUG################
[Lost in the Sand]Fixed a typo in Chinese localizations. (Thanks to 渺兔's streaming )


20240126
English
############Content################
[Cave of Dreamers]Add new BGM.
[Cave of Dreamers]The color of the cave now constantly changes.
[Cave of Dreamers]Added a Stone Guardian. He will give you a final test before you can enter the Mages Guild.
[Cave of Dreamers]After defeating the Stone Guardian, you can now talk to him to get more information.
[Cave of Dreamers]You can also turn the light on/off by talking to the Stone Guardian after defeating him. (Based on feedback, some like it, and some do not. So, it's all up to you to have the light or not.)
[Cave of Dreamers]Added a Guild Trainer who teaches some spells.
#############System##################
[Enemy]Moved fire slime's enemy generate code from the troop generate to data overload.
[Enemy]Moved Statue of Philosopher's generate code from its old function to data overload. This function is also removed.