Quality Of Life Update 1.4.0.0

Learn the Tower

• A tutorial, whenever you want it. Play now opens a short menu: Tutorial, Continue, New game. The tutorial is a small fixed floor where the Spirit teaches you the basics.

UI rebuilt

• Every item opens a details column with three tabs: Details for what it is, Combat for its skill, unique effect and special, and Compare against the piece you are wearing.
• A condition bar on every owned piece, with the broken and borrowed notes written plainly.
• The merchant is a tab of the same screen now, so browsing your gear and browsing the stock no longer means closing anything.
• The anvil is its own screen. Upgradeable gadgets glow gold, repairable gear glows green, and the details column shows exactly what an item becomes before you pay. Repairs mid run cost twice the camp rate, and you can send a piece home for coins instead of dropping it.
• Boss portraits hang blank until you beat that boss, then the plaque names the run you finally did it on.
• Wiki Redrawn as an open book.

The talent tree

• "!" whenever the shop holds something you can actually afford.
• Ascension raises the bill. Every ascension makes the whole tree more expensive in coins and keys, so a later lap is a real climb instead of a copy of the last one.

Combat

• The sword swings a three hit combo. Swing, swing, then a backspin finisher that hits everything around you and pays extra damage. Keep the rhythm and the chain continues; stop and it resets.
• Sword echoes. Extra projectile stats send steel wind blades out with the swing, and pierce stretches the reach.
• The fire beam was rebuilt. Charge time shapes its reach, width and burn, the aim follows you while you cast, and it sets things properly alight.
• Specials hit harder to look at. Every special that lands flashes the monster in its own element and punches it back a frame.
• Boots do something now. Cinder Steps leave burning footprints, Stomper Boots send a wave out from the stomp.
• Staff pushback is a travelling ring with a bulge in the direction you aim.
• Challenge rooms pay properly. Goals are larger, rewards doubled, and every room type pays something. Clear one without taking a single hit and your drops double again, with a second chest in solo play.

Monsters

• The severed skull. A skeleton that dies can lose its head. It hops out of the corpse, scuttles after you and clamps on for a few seconds, slowing you while it chews. Several can hang off you at once, each on its own spot, each slowing you a little more. It has five times the skeleton's health and pays nothing at all: no score, no drops, no kill count. It is a joke, not a farm.
• Baderica fights differently. She strafes instead of hovering, lands with a gust, sends marching dives across the arena, and in her second phase mixes tornado gusts, blade and tornado together, and dive bombing bats.
• Leha shows you the lane. The charge telegraph draws the actual path on the ground before he runs it.

The light

• The clock starts after the first boss. Floors 1 through 5 are yours to learn in; the shard light only begins draining once stage 5 is dead.

Co-op fixes

• A monster that hit you no longer freezes on the joining player's screen. Leha recovers after slamming a wall, skeletons let go of their grab, and nothing chases you while facing backwards any more.
• Sword echo blades are visible to both players now.

Under the hood

• Shaders are compiled at load for every way the game draws them, so the first obelisk, the first burst and the first emitter no longer cost a stutter.
• The tip popup and item icons are warmed behind the loading screen instead of on the first chest.