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Sternly Worded Adventures is a roguelite word puzzle RPG inspired by Bookworm Adventures where you travel through a forested peninsula with Yorkshire-sounding place names fighting monsters with the power of words.

Post news Report RSS V23: Tiles Rework

This update comes with a rebalance and rework of tiles. This includes changing the rarities of tiles, changing the score/materials of some tiles, nerfing the score of gold tiles but increasing their chance, and allowing tiles to have arbitrary materials independent of the letters default material. Most of the other changes are as a direct result of this.

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This update comes with a rebalance and rework of tiles. This includes changing the rarities of tiles, changing the score/materials of some tiles, nerfing the score of gold tiles but increasing their chance, and allowing tiles to have arbitrary materials independent of the letters default material. Most of the other changes are as a direct result of this.

The old tile rarities were based on an analysis of letter frequency used for deciphering text encrypted with substitution ciphers, so it was biased towards bodies of text, rather than individual words. The new tile rarities are based on an analysis of the in-game dictionary, weighted based on source word length with a bias curving towards 7 letter words.


As you can see from the above graph, the biggest changes that resulted from this, are H and T are much less represented, and a few consonants have danced arround a few places. Gold-bordered silver is no longer a naturally spawning tile material, and only appears as a result of gear or events, dull gold tiles are now always worth 10, and shiny gold are worth 20 if it's X, 30 for J, and 40 for Q. Other changes related to the tile changes:

  • Shrine rewards have a chance to be 1 gold wildcard, instead of 3 gold bordered wildcards.
  • Monstrous jade now gives a dull gold tile with a letter following the above distribution on a boss kill, instead of only Z, J, X, or Q.
  • Silverware teacup now gives a silver tile with as above, instead of only letters that would naturally be that or better.
  • For each tile gained in a refresh, you have a 1 in 10 chance of it being a fully random wooden tile.
    • Q tiles gained this way are Qu tiles instead.

Other additions

  • Added a confirm button to the 'desecrate' button at shrines if you're not on the 'evil route'.
  • Added chain coif graphic for demonkin.
  • New gear: Bronze bonsai.

Other fixes

  • Fixed a WebGL shader error.
  • Fixed a web save-file load error.
  • Fixed the game trying to go full screen from the start on web, when it might not have permission.
  • Fixed the inactive tooltip of the village loot button saying 'unimplemented'.
  • Fixed 0-scoring submissions that only consisted of wildcards counting as a hint on save/load.

Sternly Worded Adventures V23 Demo (Win64)


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