Hello and welcome to another weekly update for Krasten, the single-player "MUD-like" RPG! There's been a lot of improvements over the last week of development, so let's get to the meat of the new release: the sanity system!
The world of Krasten is a pretty grim place, and the new sanity system reflects this -- various actions or sights in the game may cause one of three types of sanity loss: terror for things that frighten even a grizzled mercenary, harrow for the unsettling and disturbing, and disgust for truly revolting sights and deeds. Sanity will slowly regenerate over time, and sanity loss can be offset by drinking heavily, as well as being resisted by the new Mettle skill which measures your character's ability to cope with sanity-reducing effects.
As seen in the screenshot above, certain effects in the game -- such as drinking too heavily, ingesting too many drugs, eating raw meat, and more -- can cause your character to vomit. There are other negative penalties from sanity loss and blood toxicity, but those remain to be discovered by you, our intrepid adventurer.
The second big feature in this update is the addition of a couple new special abilities -- currently, only the Thief and Soldier class have class-specific abilities, but this will be extended to other classes soon. The Thief is able to use the Lady Luck ability to roll up some random combat buffs, while the Soldier can use the powerful Hellfire ability to unload their weapon's entire magazine in a storm of bullets.
In addition, there's a whole host of new, smaller improvements to the game:
- 115 new items -- mostly loot and treasure, but also some new equipment to use
- Getting Started page -- the in-game wiki finally has the Getting Started page, detailing the basics of gameplay
- Unarmed buff -- Unarmed attacks are now far more viable than they were before, though still not as good as using a real weapon. Be aware, however, that being parried by a melee weapon will hurt!
- Improved sounds -- Dozens of new sound effects have been added to make combat sound much more exciting and visceral, along with completely new firing sounds for the bow and crossbow.
- Improved corpses -- Flies will now buzz around corpses that are going to disintegrate soon.
- Seasonal jack-o'-lanterns -- These will spawn around the world in the week leading up to Halloween, and can be used as light sources.
- Numerous bug fixes -- Not the most exciting thing to report, but there's been numerous bug fixes and performance improvements, including fixing the previously-broken gamepad/joystick controls.
