As any apprentice worshipper would be able to tell you, the Glowing Guardian and Dracul don’t really get along too well. They tend to disagree on pretty much everything, particularly when it comes to touchy subjects like “unholy magic” and “the walking dead”.

The Beard Above has grown quite tired of leaking followers to The Undying One, and recently instituted a strict training regimen to ensure that his faithful remain vigilant against the darkness. In other words: hey look, new puzzle pack!

The astoundingly well-photoshopped image above also hints at some new glyph developments, and active forum members may have heard some mutterings about it. BLUDTUPOWA has been transformed into “the evil LEMMISI” (we were trying to think of a more creative term, but it’s been a long week). Not only will the new glyph become waaaay more applicable to a broader variety of character builds, but the Bloodmage itself synergises with the ability a little more effectively. Or so we’d like to think. Here’s holding thumbs.

A fair handful of dungeons and status effects have received nip-tucks here and there: fast regeneration counters poison, lifesteal rules are changing (again) and more gold incentives have been added to the Bronze class challenges to encourage education and exploration. We’re also trying our best to educate new players a little more about the joys of regeneration-based fighting without hitting them over the head with it, so you may notice a couple of rebalancing efforts that go in this direction.

So much done, so little time to test! There’s some important changes this week, but a lot of little stuff has been tweaked, too! Here’s our extensive list of strangeness:

Fixes:

• BLUDTUPOWA changed from a passive toggle to a castable glyph. It now uncovers 3 tiles without monster or player regeneration. Costs 3 health per player level, and awards 1 + number of uncovered tiles mana.
• Assassin damage bonus versus poisoned monsters increased to 40%.
• Gods now provide 20 piety when first met, and successfully completing their trial.
• Booster swap preparations replaced with booster charge preparations.
• Magnet preparations are now available at Wizard Tower level 2, and booster charge preparations are available at level 3.
• Fixed a bug where under rare conditions, items could not be lockered.
• Added some functionality to stop very old save games from breaking.
• Changed enemy lifesteal (again), now always steals a percentage of your current health on reveal.
• New puzzle pack: Glowing Guardian
• Pactmaker Consensus threshold lowered, no longer excludes other pacts
• Tikki Tooki prep penalty applies piety loss on ALL damage taken
• Tikki Tooki overall damage penalty increased
• Tikki Tooki yields a little less gold
• Binlor correctly refers to “visible” walls on boon failure message
• Earthmother/Tikki unlock order switched
• No more double appearances of the same god subdungeon on one map
• Paladin boon cost strangeness on Naga City fixed
• Fireball retaliators with DP no longer state “safe” on lethal attacks
• A WHUPAZ strike no longer pops off its own poison
• Fast Regen creatures are partially resistant to poison
• On-strike poison should now apply correctly to desert trolls
• Some lifesteal bosses adjusted
• West, North and East regional gateways made slightly easier
• Early game “Banker” boss tweaked to encourage regeneration fighting a bit more
• Grimm’s Grotto now labelled as a “Hard” dungeon
• First “regional” dungeons now have text recommendations in their description
• Bronze Challenges yield gold on first victory
• Bronze Fighter, Warlord, Priest, Monk, Paladin tweaked slightly
• Silver Sorcerer challenge boss health lowered by 50% (first incarnation)
• Silver Bloodmage challenge boss resistances lowered by 25%
• Gold Assassin boss is now undead, lifesteal removed
• Slime Pit 10% easier
• Ick Swamp spawns a wider non-random enemy variety, occasional spoon drops and extra Warlocks
• Random crashing on Northern dungeons resolved
• Rock Garden bosses spawn in more open areas, fewer spoons dropped by plants (average half)
• Physical resistances removed from the Avatar
• Earthmother no longer objects to Sanguine use