Changes since the 3.565 update.

The Underlevel

• The black water now moves. It rolls in slow waves with pale crests, painted, not drawn in code.
• The walls are jagged dark rock, sharp cracked facets lit on one side and in shadow on the other, instead of plain brick.
• About once a minute a line of text appears: the dark, the heavy air, the snarling of demonic creatures all round, or how your heroes feel about it (it uses their names). There are about 50 lines, each shown once, in a random order.
• About 60 stone statues stand in the dead ends and the middle of the rooms: demons and sea horrors turned to grey stone on plinths.
• The Bogeyman haunts the Underlevel. Every two to six minutes a quiet line warns you about the dark behind you, then he springs from directly behind with a full-screen jump scare, and you fight him at your own level. Never while another monster is close.
• New: the Potion of Escape. Drink it in the Underlevel and the whole party is carried up to the surface of the maze, at the foot of the nearest ladder down. Anywhere else it does nothing and is not used up. The potion sellers of the maze sell it, and about 20 lie in the dead ends of the Underlevel, one near each ladder.

The Deeper Hollow maze

• Vermin circles: the dashed red circles on the map are now challenges, 27 on the surface and 14 in the Underlevel. Walk into one and a counter shows how many creatures are left. Clear it for a "free of vermin" banner, a green circle on the map, a reward (a strong potion, a weapon, a gem and gold), thanks from the people nearby and an achievement. Clear every circle for a final reward: a high grade piece of armour and 2000 gold on the surface, 4000 in the Underlevel.
• The four quarters have names: The Lantern Reaches (north-west), The Gilded Heights (north-east), The Cairn Warrens (south-west) and The Hedgefoot Approaches (south-east). The name shows on the map and as a banner when you open a quarter.
• Shops are easy to find. Each of the 40 shopkeepers and 8 inns of the eight maze towns has a painted stall behind them that shows what they sell, and a gold $ floats over every shopkeeper. On the map, shops show as a gold $ when you zoom in a little, with the kind of shop written under it when you zoom in further.
• Every maze town has a church near its shops: a painted chapel and a frog priest who heals the party for a small gift (4 gold per level plus 10), raises a fallen hero (40 gold per level), lifts curses and hauntings, and cures sicknesses for 30 gold each. Churches show on the map as a white cross.
• High level gear: the weapon shops of the maze towns sell every weapon of level 50 and over (14 of them), and the armour shops every piece of armour of level 50 and over (32 pieces, up to the Godforged set).
• The nine weapons of level 60 and over (the Stinger Blade, the Mandible Axe, the Sunfire Blade and the six level 70 fire weapons) cost 8000 to 9000 gold.
• The six level 70 fire weapons and the Sunfire Blade have painted flaming icons, each burning in its own colour.
• The Drowned Maze is finished: a thicker green murk, moss and long hanging algae everywhere, about 1,400 more underwater plants, and 62 more freshwater creatures, so all ten kinds live there. A chest that blocked the passage out of the first stairs has moved, and no chest can cut the maze in two.
• The Swamp Crocodile is a painted crocodile seen head on, with its jaws opening when it attacks, and it is smaller, so it no longer clips into the walls of narrow channels.
• A more natural floor: the open books and melted candles are gone, small props and floor items are 15 percent smaller and lie to one side of the square, never in the middle, and passages vary from bare to holding a few things.

Fights

• Monsters hit far more often. Armour used to make creatures miss nearly two times in three: any party in decent armour sat on the lowest hit chance from about level 10, and the armoured goblins of the Orange Spire missed constantly. Armour now protects much less, and is judged against what is normal at the creature's level. A creature of your level now hits a front-line hero about 70 percent of the time, and the back line a little more often. Dodge from gear, powers and spells still helps, a hit chance never goes below 35 percent, and nothing hits more than 95 percent of the time.
• Creatures hit harder than before.
• From level 28 up, creatures take longer to kill. Their health is set by how many hits they take: about 13 hits for an average party at their level, about 10 for creatures below it and about 20 for creatures above it, each kind a little different. A party with better gear kills them faster, as a reward. Bosses and great creatures are unchanged, and so are levels 1 to 27.
• Weapons of level 16 to 29 grow stronger on a smooth curve, so your damage no longer jumps all at once at level 30.
• Mana runs out faster: every power, spell and special costs half as much again (Fire 6 instead of 4, Power Strike 6 instead of 4). Mana also comes back half as fast: 1 point every second round in a fight, and the mana regeneration of armour and powers is halved. Resting and mana potions are unchanged.
• Food heals: each food now heals a share of the hero's maximum health (water 3 percent, bread 6, pottage 12, meat pie 20, roast mutton 25) as well as filling hunger. The item card shows the percentage.
• Skeletons hit more often, and the Tomb of Sut has four more skeletons and two more mummies in the Hall of Eternity, the big hall in the middle, spread out so they do not all attack at once.
• The 52 desert dungeons are now the level of their desert (the Sand Road 36, the Red Dunes 41, the other deserts 45), and the Golden Pyramid is level 45. Saint Elen's Monastery and everything in it is level 55, like the Pilgrim's Path around it.
• On the abbey grounds, the skeletons stand farther from the wolves, so their two scenes no longer play one straight after the other.

The party

• 21 new faces on the party screen, 91 in all: a frog-folk man and woman of the Hollow Land, a yellow toad, a green frog, a proud black goat, a goat in spectacles, a goat in a turban, a goat in a wizard's cowl, a white llama, a brown llama, a lobster creature, a crocodile, a man with a goatee, a young man with brown hair, a young woman with short black hair and big blue eyes, an older woman with silver hair, a pale girl with big curly hair, a slim white Khao Manee cat with one blue eye and one gold eye, a slim grey cat with a white neck, a young Russian Blue, and a feisty young woman with fierce blue eyes and peroxide blonde hair.
• A new ready-made party: Sigrid the Warrior, Gruff the Thief (a goat), Sorcha the Mage and Wulfric the Priest. A party you made yourself is not changed.

Sound

• The short rising tune for a level up, a waking teleporter, a shrine and a few other moments is now a gentle arpeggio of soft notes. Before, a party built at a high level (for example when starting at the Orange Spire) played one copy for every level gained, all at once, which came out as a loud, distorted blast.

Fixes

• Hitting a creature at the left edge of the picture could stop the screen from drawing for a moment. Fixed.
• The letters of the Messenger of Death are counted per level. Letters seen in one place (such as the Orange Spire) no longer show as found in the Underlevel.
• Some creatures had a fraction of their proper health and died in one hit. Fixed.
• The camera no longer dips up and down when walking over hills and dunes.
• Opening a hero's inventory no longer prints a line about their afflictions.

The trailer

• There is a new trailer: https://deepspace000.github.io/Below-the-Abbey/trailer/