Scattered Evil News

Scattered Evil 1.9 is now available on SourceForge and ModDB.

New Armor System

• Armor now comes in three basic classes. The stronger the armor, the higher percentage of damage it absorbs but there is also more weight to carry.
• Armor now has resistance slots for Fire, Frost and Poison. Any class of armor can have any combination of these resistances, which absorb up to 99% of the incoming damage without losing any armor durability.
• Armor can be restored to pristine state by a master blacksmith in a town. You can also purchase or loot an Armorer’s Hammer, which allows you to repair your armor (to what degree depends on the RPG complexity setting).
• You need to keep an eye on your armor’s degradation as once a piece is completely depleted, not even the best blacksmith can restore it.
• The old Hexen style armor has been discontinued. You might still find some battered pieces in the wilderness, but besides the metal itself being worth a few coins, there is no use for them any more.
• There are rumors about an armor worn by ancient kings that is supposed to be better than anything today’s blacksmiths can craft.

New Feature: Carried Weight

• Inventory items (including money) now have a specific weight and depending on your character’s stats, sooner or later you’ll become Overburdened, a state in which you move slower, tire faster and get hungry sooner.
• Playing on Old School RPG complexity, with even more weight you become Extremely Overburdened, a state in which these negative effects become crippling. On the flip side, if you keep your carried weight beyond a certain threshold, you gain Lightfooted, a state in which you move faster and take longer to get tired or hungry.

New Feature: Banking and Finances

• You can now open a bank account at Ocadia’s Counting House and deposit some of your cash in it, both lightening the load in your backpack and earning interest with time.
• The Journal now includes a financial overview page that lists not only your cash and your current bank account balance, but also your real estate holdings (if any) and the estimated sale value of your more valuable inventory items.

New and modified Class Abilities

• Cleric: Levitator is a new prayer that allows you to lift all nearby enemies high into the air, then splat!
• Fighter: Phalanx is a new martial skill that blocks all incoming damage for a short time, but the fighter cannot move during its duration (he can still attack).
• Mage: once advanced sufficiently in his studies, the mage can now summon monsters to do his bidding (there is a small chance this can backfire).
• The mage’s Arcane Shield (defensive spell) now only reflects missiles and offers no protection against melee attacks.
• The cleric’s Healing prayer now costs significantly more and heals somewhat less in the beginning, but scales much better with the player’s Charisma score in later stages.
• The red haze during the fighter’s Berserker rage now obstructs the view to a lesser degree. A few other class abilities (Phalanx, Arcane Shield) now also have a faint coloring of your view during their effect.

New Dungeons

• Rebuilt from scratch, The Rift is open once again, connecting The Canyon to the Dark Conclave.
• Hytesthani Ravine is now the target of Senior Wizard Robert’s quest for the ultimate weapon.

Miscellaneous

• You can now punch trees.
• In Thystes Fortress, soldiers can now be pushed out of the way.
• The Journal now includes a new chapter on Old School RPG complexity, Tasks (the first entry appears as soon as you talk to your order’s representative in the first town).
• Cost of ability booster potions reduced to a quarter of their previous value.
• The text-based setup utility now allows you to set the screen ratio along with the resolution and it writes these parameters in a separate text file, making it easier to add your own command line arguments to ScatteredEvil.bat/ScatteredEvil.sh.
• Added status marks for more conditions (still disabled by default, you can enable them in the Gameplay Options menu).
• New visuals for the Mage’s Fireball spell cast.

Bugfixes

• Fixed: gold bars dropped by monsters flying off into the blue wild yonder.
• Tears of the Gods damage massively increased, bringing it to the level it was meant to have.
• Fixed Jodisec Mine keys disappearing from inventory.
• Fixed incorrect player name being shown if multiple characters have been set up.
• The Fighter’s Journal on Old School RPG complexity now shows the Spellbook chapter as soon as he obtains any of the combat spells.
• Potential fix for enemies trying to cast a spell on a dead player, crashing the game.
• Corrected the map scroll coordinates for The Canyon.

Scattered Evil 1.8 is now available on SourceForge and ModDB.

New feature: The Mansion

• Purchase a luxurious mansion in a prime urban location that comes with a staff of servants
• Unless playing with RPG complexity turned Off, you receive a property sorely in need of improvements, allowing you to unleash your inner decorator
• Travel the breadth of the province to buy, steal or otherwise acquire various pieces of furniture and artwork

New feature: Map Scrolls

• Press a key and up pops the map of the region or city you are currently in (provided you have that region or city map in your possession), automatically showing your current position on the map
• If you don’t have a map of the current region or city, the newly added province map is displayed instead, showing your current position in the world (there is also a switch in Gameplay Options to always show the province map)
• Configurable option whether map scrolls should show annotations
• The collection of maps in the Journal is newly called the Atlas and it now always contains at least one map at game start (the province map)
• Configurable option whether maps in the Atlas should show the current player location
• Most Coach Stations now sell maps of the region or city they are located in
• Added souvenir stalls at city entrances, selling city maps

New dungeons and monsters

• Three new dungeon maps: Gonos Fortress, Isle of Ancient Kings, Tomb of Ancient Kings
• Updated questlines for class leaders in Thystes Fortress and Thystes Cathedral, now once again requiring the player to travel to a dungeon
• New monster type: Afrit Dominator (see the Bestiary for details)
• AI and attribute tweaks for several existing monsters

Interface improvements

• New unified look for the Main, Game and Option menus and their submenus
• Pressing J while the Journal is open will now close the Journal, no matter what subpage is open

Miscellanous additions

• New and updated 3D models including climbable rope, animated rotisserie chicken and the Crown of Ancient Kings
• Status Marks are now available (you can turn them on in the Gameplay Options menu). They show up both in the player HUD and over monster’s heads for things like Berserking, Poisoned, Terror, Mana Burn etc.
• Berserker now has a new non-fighter-specific icon, since both the player and some monsters use the same ability
• Added a new artifact status icon for torches
• New system for tracking hidden mini quests, allowing a rapid expansion of small tasks that reward EXP (targeted at Old School RPG complexity)

Bugfixes

• Monsters now use the correct sound when poisoned
• Artifact status icons are now positioned and animated correctly
• Fixed the issue of pressing J while the Journal was open spawning a second Journal instance in the background
• Fixed the issue of some of the sailboat routes transporting the player to the wrong destination

Available now on YouTube,  this unedited recording using the latest 1.7 release shows how a newly rolled Cleric finishes the game in roughly 40 minutes on Easy difficulty, with RPG Complexity set to Off. The player is doing only one sidequest to get a ranged weapon, after that he is focusing exclusively on the main questline, demonstrating the FPS side of the RPG-FPS blend.

Scattered Evil 1.7 is now available on SourceForge and ModDB.

• Improved starting experience
  • The second weapon isn’t handed out for free any more, instead the player will have to fight a few monsters to obtain it
  • The first Legion quest given by Commander Orteg to obtain the third weapon now points to a new dungeon nearby, with the number and difficulty of the monsters tuned for a player just starting out
  • Observant players can gather several hundred crowns in the updated starting map and the new low level dungeon, allowing an early purchase of important items
• Travel system rework
  • Larger towns now have a stagecoach station, with rides available from any station to any station (on higher RPG difficulties, you need to first explore a location on foot before you can book a ride there), with prices depending on travel distance and RPG complexity
  • Similar to stagecoach rides, boat travel now has a price that depends on the distance and the RPG complexity setting
  • Common to both types of rides: varying scenery while traveling, possibility of being chased by bands of roving monsters, slight reduction to hunger and fatigue
  • Traveling on foot now incurs a hunger and fatigue cost unless RPG Complexity is set to Off
  • The portals between the three mage towers in the wilds of Charybdea have been removed (the portals in Daedalon’s tower have been repurposed)
• New and updated dungeon maps
  • Vermin Hovels is an all-new forest location for the early game, containing several secret caches of gold and goodies
  • The Canyon has been rebuilt from scratch and is accessible once again from The Chasm
  • The outside area of Pyramid of Krylu has been reworked to offer a somewhat different look and massively improved load times
  • Dark Conclave and The Reckoning are now difficulty aware, including the end boss; the end boss fight now uses a number of smart scripts instead of the previous infinite spawns
  • Forest Clearing (starting map) has been extended and now includes a significant amount of gold and an introduction to the new lock and key system
  • Is’hine Oasis has been updated with a new look and massively improved load times
  • A hidden arcade has been opened, allowing access to a hitherto inaccessible part of the town of Kreo
• New and updated items
  • Torches now illuminate a small area around the player (instead of increasing the light volume of all sectors to full, like the original Hexen torch does)
  • Crystal Vials now restore 10% of the player’s maximum health or 10 hit points, whichever is greater
  • Quartz Flasks now restore 25% of the player’s maximum health or 25 hit points, whichever is greater
  • Mystic Urns now restore 100% of the player’s health
  • Treasure chests and keys: look for treasure chest keys hidden in plain sight to be able to open treasure chests you stumble upon
  • Portable food: you can now buy apples, which reduce hunger somewhat and perk you up slightly, and loaves of bread, which reduce hunger greatly but also make you a bit sleepy
  • Wings of Wrath is now a powerup that activates on pickup and has a short duration
• New artwork
  • New high resolution NPC sprites for sailors and coach drivers
  • New animated models (horses, treasure chests, spinning coins, levers), including a high resolution horse skin explicitly created for SE
  • New models including stagecoaches and palm trees
  • New sand and rock textures
• Journal improvements
  • Quests are now organized by status, with finished quests listed on top, followed by active quests, followed by hints (depending on RPG complexity settings) for quests not yet picked up
  • On the Arsenal/Spellbook/class ability pages, weapons/spells the player already possesses are listed first, followed by hints (depending on RPG complexity settings) on how to get the missing ones
  • Improved readability for map annotations
• Interface improvements
  • Reorganized the main menu and some of its submenus, most notably adding a submenu for key bindings for many inventory items
  • The help screens can now be navigated with the arrow keys both forwards and backwards
  • The starting screen now displays the game version in the lower right corner, making it easier to identify the version installed
• Miscellaneous changes
  • Multi-platform distribution: starting with 1.7, the download includes Vavoom binaries, setup scripts and startup shortcuts for both Windows and GNU/Linux
  • On Old school RPG complexity, discovering new locations and talking to certain NPCs awards additional experience points
  • Church acolytes and monks now offer their healing services only on Old school RPG complexity and it costs a few crowns, but can be used any number of times; they are not available to clerics, who start the game with a healing prayer
  • Mages now offer their mana fillup services only on Old school RPG complexity and it costs a few crowns, but can be used any number of times; they are not available to mages, who can now learn their Create Mana cantrip the first time they talk to Spellmaster Sallazar in Thystes Academy (prerequisite removed)
  • The Legion’s gravy train has been stopped. No more free armor handouts!
  • When playing on RPG Complexity Old school and picking one of the extreme alignments (Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil), you can’t pick up certain quests, just like before. However, the dungeons linked to those quests are now accessible
  • After picking up Daedalon’s second quest, he now activates one of the downstairs portals so the player can revisit the ruins of the Heresiarch’s Seminary an unlimited number of times

The next version will be released most probably sometime this month. Below a few screenshots of new and updated areas.