DemonCrawl v2.4.0 is now available on the Windows stable branch.
This update features the long-awaited Arena Season 2, finally elevating the gamemode out of Beta. It includes 5 new homelands, 4 new Arena-only stage mods, the stats panel, bot overhaul, new cosmetics, and tons of fixes specific to Arena.
We preserved the Season 1 player ratings and you can now filter the leaderboards by season. Everyone starts fresh again at 500 MMR.
More details below. Full patch notes are available at the bottom of the post.
Mac and Linux builds expected to follow within 72 hours.
Thank you and have a great day.
🎁 New Rewards
Climb the ladder and unlock five new avatars:
FISTICUFFER, BLOBETTE, RON JAMBO, SHROOMCASTER, and LAST LIVING SOUL.
You will need to meet both thresholds of minimum wins and minimum rating to earn each reward.
Additionally, if you achieve a Legendary rating of 2000, you can find Season 1 avatars in Arena Prizeboxes, as well as 3 new avatars that are exclusive to Legendary.
🤖 Better Bots
We want Arena to feel alive and available no matter what time of day or region you queue from. To that end, we spent some time making sure the bots resemble human opponents in new and hopefully interesting ways.
For example, bots now spawn with various "personality traits" that influence their playstyle and social etiquette. A chatty bot will use emoji more often. A frugal bot will be less likely to spend coins on frivolous upgrades. A desperate bot who suspects death awaits him on the next round may abandon his own personality in order maximize his odds of survival.
MMR will also impact personality rolls. Case in point: a highly-skilled bot will often roll higher on the "risk aversion" trait, leading to strategically superior choices such as skipping chests when inventory is deemed "good enough" (avoiding risk of acquiring an omen.) What a smart robot.
By associating MMR with personality, we can shape the difficulty curve in an "organic" way. Arena bots don't cheat or rely on rubberbanding mechanics - they just get better at using the tools that are available to them.
We will monitor the balance and adjust the trait algorithms in case any MMR bracket feels too easy or unfair. We also have a few more traits planned, but we want to see how bots perform before making their behavior more complex.
📊 Stats Screen
You can finally review your Arena stats in detail.
From this panel, you can see placement information and metadata about your recent games (e.g. MMR change, selected Mastery, selected Homeland.)
There are also tabs for Seasonal Records and Trivia, the latter of which contains entries like Max Damage Dealt, Favorite Homeland, Longest Game, and so on.
Additionally, this panel displays your current league. If you click on the helmet icon, you can pull up the seasonal rewards.
🏆 Season 1 Champions
Congratulations to the following players for climbing to the top of the Arena leaderboards during our slightly-overlong first season:
You da real MVPs!
New Features
- Arena Season 2 begins!
- Added 5 new seasonal Arena avatars to unlock
- Performed MMR reset and allow filtering of Arena leaderboards by season
- Players who reach legendary (2000 MMR) can still find Season 1 avatars in Arena Prizeboxes
- Added 3 new legendary-only avatars in Arena Prizeboxes
- Added Arena Stats screen
- New Arena homeland: Ash - "Reduce the chance of finding drops by 10% times the homeland tier."
- New Arena homeland: Elysium - "When you win the stage, this homeland gains max power equal to your mastery charges, then attempt to use your mastery."
- New Arena homeland: Fungus - "When this homeland is upgraded, it gains a copy of each of its different Arena stage mods."
- New Arena homeland: Machine - "When this homeland would gain its first Arena mod, it gains 5 copies instead."
- New Arena homeland: Skies - "When this homeland is upgraded to tier 5, double its power and stage mods."
- New Arena stage mod: Fightclub - "Stage contains 3 additional monsters times the homeland tier."
- New Arena stage mod: Nailbiter - "While there are 20 or fewer seconds left, monsters deal extra damage equal to the homeland tier."
- New Arena stage mod: Roadwork - "If you lose or win this stage with 20 or fewer seconds left, lock a random stage in your next Detour phase."
- New Arena stage mod: Humility - "If you are the top player in the lobby at the start of the stage, lose half of your max lives and revives."
- Added 4 new Arena emotes
- Added numerous Arena bot traits that shape their playstyle/decision-making logic
- Arena bots also now have a "chatty" trait that determines how much they like using emoji
Quality of Life
- The Arena sign editor now hides locked sign parts by default
- The Arena Homeland Upgrade shop now automatically unfreezes after all three rolled upgrades have been purchased
- The Arena Homeland Upgrade shop can no longer be frozen when all rolled upgrades have been purchased
- The Arena Autosweeper now has partial glean awareness: it will take advantage of the fact that a gleaned `0` has no nearby monsters
- The Arena Homeland HUD tooltip now shows your monster density and damage you dealt last round
- Remade Mithril armor sprites to make them more distinct from Steel
- Remade existing avatars: Bandit, Desert Prophet, Doggo, Dragonfire, Dwarven Elite, Dwarven Scientist, Dwarf Master, Flame Sprite, Flamingo, Gargoyle, Gilded Bishop, Granny, Hooter, Horsing Around, Kingpaw, Malice, Merry Lass, Mummy, Quite Batty, Palm Tree, Sabertooth, The Goat, Tree Ent, The Chef, Water Sprite
- Touched up several other avatars
- Each boss now has a unique dialog when you win the stage without killing them
- Finding an omen in a chest as a Witch now produces the "legendary" sound effect instead of the "uh oh" sound effect
- Barricade text-only change: "Spawn a familiar near target visible cell, then enchant the target cell: block living objects and fizzle projectiles."
Balance Changes
- Improved Autosweeper logic so it can prefer Burning cells when a random guess is more dangerous
- The Arena Autosweeper will avoid chording a Burning cell unless it's the only cell that shows progress
- Adjusted Arena league MMR thresholds
- Overhauled Arena bot difficulty scaling
- Completely reworked how Arena bots use items and the effects it can provide them
- Arena bots are far less likely to acquire duplicate non-consumable items
- Arena bots now have a small chance to come from a different MMR bracket, for variety
- Arena bots now have a small chance to make a "catastrophic blunder" during play
- Implemented server-side bot models for a handful of stage mods instead of generic difficulty approximation
- Stage mods that impact Arena bots in unique ways no longer also increase their estimated board pressure
- Charge Coin price reduced from 25 to 19 coins
- Gardener III nerfed: Ability charge cost increased from 2 to 3
- Reduced Shopkeeper sassiness
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Arena mastery icons sometimes showing the profile tier instead of tier 3
- Fixed the Arena low-time warning sound replaying after screen transitions
- Fixed an Arena input softlock that could occur when a treasure chest opened exactly as a round ended
- Fixed Dagger and similar monster-click weapon effects in Arena Autosweeper Division
- Fixed a missing Sunscreen status-removal message when Canteen cleared it
- Fixed Banker II not consistently sending Arena players to the Bank after a regular stage
- Fixed Banker II forcing Arena's selectable Detour special stage to be the Bank
- Fixed Arena's Finish button reappearing after the player was already waiting for other players
- Fixed Arena bug that could incorrectly consider you as in a party after simply opening/closing invite screen
- Fixed stale Arena HUD buttons overlapping the game over screen
- Fixed the Dumb stage mod failing to restore masteries in Arena
- Fixed Smoke Bomb relocking an incomplete Arena special stage after leaving it
- Fixed Farm and Mountain not showing up in Arena homeland pool
- Fixed visual glitch related to monster count after upgrading homeland tier
- Fixed issue related to Arena ending brag message
- Fixed Hellwether boss not performing its quadrant check correctly
- Fixed server-side issue related to the Beef arena mod
- Fixed Arena issue related to Banked items not unlocking between rounds
- Fixed visual issue with Graveyard arena effect where minimum power could exceed maximum power
- Fixed issue with Bank not firing certain "on item loss" effects
- Fixed a few situations where the Autosweeper could get stuck or fail to see progress
- Synced Arena server stage mod difficulty data with the client
- Patched multiple effects that could incorrectly spawn Mrs. Claus out of season
- Hardened server-side player ID checks to avoid uncommon server issues
- Speculative fix for Larceny and Toll Arena mods incorrect player attribution
- Supporter Pack DLC: Fixed missing legacy background art for Item Shop and Bazaar
