Contacts and Retainers
All contacts and retainers may now be viewed in the Window room (left to the main office).
The contacts are all personally connected to members of your team. For now, this is important for global events (see next section) and because the related team member has 50% discount on contact services. In general, contacts are already cheaper than retainers, and do not charge for any equipment that may not be used in a specific encounter.
At the beginning of each chapter, the contacts will each issue a special offer from their district. The offers may be accessed via the office phone, and will be purchased using your office cash, not the funds that the districts have raised.
There will be more gameplay elements revolving around your allies, as I will be focusing on that in my next release.
Aiding an npc (either retainer or not) when they are attacked will automatically make them contact for the reporter that offered help.
Global events
Each chapter now begins with a global event. The exception to this rule is Easy level, which has the first event to occur in the second chapter. An event will conclude upon the end of the current chapter, unless the player finds another way of concluding it before that.
Some events are personal. They involve one of the contact and one of the reporters they are related to.
Some events, such as quarantine, police investigation, seanse, funeral etc, are related to a specific location. To complete such event, send a reporter there.
Most events have some overall impact on the game. Those effects are listed on event card, which can be accessed in the Window room by clicking on the window. Even when an event is personal or linked to a location, the effects will be global nevertheless.
New damage types
On Medium and Hard levels, there is now a bunch of new damage types that depend on enemy, situation, enemy's abilities and even equipment that the reporter is using. All damage types save for "injured" are debilitating and force you to send the reporter to office. The costs are:
- Injured: $25
- Wounded: $250
- Burned, Frost-bitten: $500
- Poisoned, Infected: $750
- Broken/Critically injured; $1000
Creatures and spells
On Medium and Hard levels, some creatures now have ability to cast spells on themselves or other face-up challenges.
The spells include boosting a creature with some new ability, like "protected" (no conventional weapons may be used against it) or "tough", raising a protective obstacle around it, or summoning a gang of henchmen or lesser creatures to protect it.
Minor updates
The cost of training, therapy and hospital is now displayed on the reporter's sheet when in office.
Did some rebalancing of the equipment and artefact prices, fixed the overpriced allies bug, added some new equipment types.
Investigation is now tighter and faster due to witnesses, monsters, zombies and phantoms now giving twice as much information in one bit, as long as information is connected. You might notice, for example, that witness statements are now sometimes made of two sentences.
In the shop, spells are now conveniently sorted by power, from left to right, starting with least powerful, allowing for a much easier selection of the cheapest reagent to use.
Modding
The game is now as moddable as I initially planned it to be. While I am currently too busy with coding to write the tutorials, most of the stuff can be deduced from the txt files in "mods" folder.
The list of elements that can be modded:
- All supernatural creatures
- Equipment
- Artefacts
- Creature & obstacle abilities
- Barriers
- Gangs
- Monster spells
- Player spells
- Reagents and sample types
- Events, Parades, Troubles & Lemonades (!)
