INTO EVIL Update 1.7ea - The Unshackled Mind Update

Salutations from below, o delvers!

I am finally back, to bring you another update! It has taken (much) longer than expected, but at long last the update is here: improved AI and stealth! Read on for the patch notes:

AI Improvements

• You can now discover cages of prisoners during a Descent, and free them. They will fight alongside you, but are easily slain. They heal from Vitae (just like you) and will accompany you between levels!
• Enemies and NPCs are now generally smarter and will behave more convincingly.
• Unconstrained intelligent enemies can now open doors.
• Summoned creatures are now more intelligent.
• Particularly intelligent creatures will now lead their targets when firing, making them much more accurate against moving targets.

Stealth Improvements

• It is easier to sneak around unaware enemies (unless your footsteps are loud).
• Rainbow stones can now be hurled a longer distance, and will fascinate unaware foes.
• New items can be discovered that can aid stealth.
• You can now discover abilities to sense what other creatures are aware of.

Other Changes:

• Entities (and you!) can now be rendered blind, deaf, and dazed.
• The camera follows bosses less aggressively, and shows a directional indicator when they are offscreen.
• Magically produced arrows no longer leave arrows that can be picked up.
• Hatchets and rings will no longer behave oddly when descending to another level while stowed.
• Thrown items such as Javelins and Hatches will no longer receive conflicting item modifiers.
• Masterwork items will no longer show an extraneous “projectiles deal increased damage” trait unless they actually launch projectiles.
• Rainbow items now have more stable colorations and do not perfectly sync with each other (leading to more organic effects).
• The summoned storm elemental is now stronger.
• The barrage ability of the Shortbow now fires more rapidly.
• Merchants can no longer be killed by any means.
• Some new tutorials have been added.
• The InControl input plugin has been updated.
• The Steamworks API has been updated. This should fix some issues related to the friends list and remote input in multiplayer.

Whew! The patch notes may not be as long as some prior updates, but they contain a LOT of new systems that were a lot of work - I hope you enjoy the new changes! But, I have to admit: this update took a lot longer than I would have hoped! There are some reasons for that (a lot of travel, as well as the AI stuff being harder to get working well than I anticipated) but the biggest problem is that I am behind on the major content update! You see, I've been releasing these smaller updates while also working on the "big" update (another region, ~doubling the length of the game) in parallel. I've gotten a decent amount of stuff done for the update, but it is not close to completion unfortunately. Each of these updates has ended up taking more focus than I hoped, and so the "big" content has languished. So, with this update I need to change my approach: this will be the last content update before I release the next region. I need to focus 100% on getting that out, instead of slowing things down with more small content releases.

That may take a while! Until then, enjoy the new update!