Below the Abbey: update 3.514 (changes since 3.482, the update on itch.io this morning)

The Hollow Grasslands: language and the four cities

• All the dialogue in the grasslands is gibberish until the party has found the four books from the wizard. Hollow words now follow the style of the city names.
• A fixed hollow vocabulary: common words such as I, city, house and work always get the same hollow word. 536 words in all, found by reading every line of dialogue in the grasslands.
• A word you meet twice can be asked about. Ask the folk, and the word is solved, added to the new Grassland Tongue glossary in the menu, and always understood from then on.
• When you learn a word, it now shows at once in the message that taught it. You can only learn words from what people say, and buying an item teaches you its name.
• The folk now talk at length. Vendors tell you about their wares, and philosophers walk the streets saying interesting things. The long speeches make the books worth finding.
• Market stalls in the four cities now sell fruit and vegetables (six ranges across the markets). More townsfolk shop and tend the stalls.
• Each city has a pet shop. The sellers have eighteen little companions from the grasslands, and small versions of the giants. Up to three follow the party, and each gives a small gift: more armour, a better chance to hit, gold from fights, a bigger bag, or a little healing each round.
• Townsfolk and small creatures walk more slowly with a gentler bounce, and a seated person no longer turns to face a new way.
• The big creatures of Exsce are kept apart, in a large middle section where they live. The peacock no longer vanishes when you walk near it, and the giants no longer flash. Each city has two mazes instead of four.
• The Bell Tower of Lanterns has a chest at the top and a teleport stone at the top and at the base.
• The Hollow Grasslands map shows the painted frog-whale picture. The Spindle Tyrant's stray claw is gone, and the stilt-walker ostrich has its face on the front of its head. Planets lift over buildings instead of passing through them.

The Orange Spire

• The spire was rebuilt. It has 1 room on the first floor, one more on each floor up to 10 on the tenth, then back down to 1 on the nineteenth. The twentieth floor has 2 rooms with a small labyrinth between them. More tall pointed windows with a dark view outside.
• Floor 20 is a deathtrap labyrinth. Hidden plates in the floor send slow fireballs down the passages, spike tiles wait in the corridors, and figures jump out in the dark. Little alcoves in the side walls give you a place to step out of the way.
• The fireballs fly at half the old speed, and the plates and spike tiles are armed again every time you enter the floor.
• Before you enter the labyrinth the heroes talk about the death trap. One of them has read a book about a place like it, and the others know the book.
• The thief has a new power, Sense Traps, which shows the traps nearby.
• The Messenger of Death now waits on floors 18 and 19, not 17. His letters are hidden in... well, that would be telling, wouldn't it.
• The Orange Spire vampire no longer heals itself.
• The plaque at the foot of the Violet Tower now has a portal to the Hollow Grasslands instead of a dead end.
• Floor 19 is now in the Go to area list on the title screen.

Fighting, healing and difficulty

• Hero health grows with level as fast as enemy health does, so a level 70 hero is as tough as a level 70 place expects. Older saves are brought up to the new rule when they load.
• Heals now restore a share of the patient's own health: 28 percent plus 0.9 percent per power level for one patient, and 12 percent plus 0.6 percent per level for a party. The listed amount is the minimum.
• Healing powers now cost about 30 percent more mana, so a healer runs dry in a long fight and needs a mana potion.
• The potion message shows the health actually gained.
• A new difficulty selector in the Gameplay menu. It moves in steps of 10 percent, from 80 percent easier to 200 percent harder. Enemies hit harder, take a little more to kill, hit more often and are hit less often. Gold and XP move with it.
• The difficulty page shows a worked example for a real creature nearby: its damage, hit chances, hits to kill, and the XP and gold a kill gives, now against Normal.
• The fight rating can read Hard for a creature below the party's level.

Controls and the screen

• Right-drag looks left and right as well as up and down, further and faster. Look up and down works everywhere: right-drag, V for mouse look, the right stick, two fingers on a touch screen and a look slider. Left and right are inverted by default, with a switch in the Gameplay menu.
• Hover your mouse over a button or icon to see its shortcut key.
• The controller pointer and its gold frame are drawn in front of the stone buttons.
• The butterfly catch button is at the bottom right of the screen, is off during battle, and there are 40 percent fewer butterflies.
• The quest log lists the newest quest first, with a box of the main quests at the top.
• The inventory torch looks like a normal hand torch. The big A in the title logo is larger and sits a little lower and to the right.

Fixes

• The cutscene of leaving the abbey now plays once, not after every wild dungeon.
• Herbs picked from the ground now count for every quest that asks for herbs, so the Cave Witch no longer says you have none.
• The Oldhaven quay opens to the sea on the west. Bubble helms cost 800 gold, and a party can dive with fewer than four helms, but a hero without one drowns.

Books

• Fifteen books lie in rooms, tower tops and hidden corners of the four cities. Pick one up and read it page by page, from 2 to 20 pages. Ten of them raise one stat of each hero by 1, once for good. Five are plain tales. Books can be sold: the ones that raise a stat fetch 400 to 800 gold.