v0.8.b_15 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_14 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github.

Exploration

Loot

Misc

• Harpies may be found with a variety of added DrawBanes. Those with additional DrawBanes get a free Feat (depending on the DrawBane) to make them more challenging.
  • Alpha Harpies have one added DrawBane.
  • Harpy nests added to Beaches- Harpies in nests accumulate DrawBanes over time. If the Harpy is killed without the nest being destroyed, a new Harpy will move in over time.
• Skeleton Knights appear in graveyards.
  • Locked Coffins (which use the new loot system) may have a Skeleton in them, guarding the rewards.
  • Skeletons appear as Shadowy Figures.
• Lootable statues and chests in dungeons regrow into new events.
• Wandering randomly in roads and admiring ports passes a small amount of time.
• Gravediggers in Graveyards have more fluff dialogue.

Building

• Lots can build more Feature types, providing coverage of all Punishments. This includes: Appraisers, Oracles, Enchanters, Beaches, and Docks. (These Features don't offer free services, this may or may not be changed in a future update.)
• Lot Features are mutually exclusive with all others of that Feature, not just the ones you own. (so no building a Garden in a town that already has a Garden.)
• Some Features have requirements to be built- Mines can't be built in Pocket Dimensions, Groves require a Forest, while Docks and Beaches require a Port.
• Building Features in Lots takes more time. (it was never increased after the update to increase travel time between towns.)
• Built Gardens no longer scale by level- instead they adapt to the town's flavor tags. Towns with Farms have increased grow speed, while Desolate Towns have reduced grow speed. Some tags also result in the passive seeds being reagents instead of food.

Quality of Life

Options

• AutoSip option automatically sips from your potion without asking at the start of each battle.
• Display options include defaults for all the 'Auto-' options, new characters that are created will have each option set to the default you have selected.
• Disabling Display Autobattle removes "AI chose X" in autobattles, which makes them occur instantly without waiting for input each attack choice.

Menus and Mechanics

• Brewing displays the type of Potion you attempted to make, as well as how many sips it has. This may not be the actual potion you ended up making- making any potion with Wood (to increase the number of sips) has a chance to fail and make Curse instead, for example.
• 'Society' menu renamed to 'World', 'Map' moved from inventory to 'World'
• Punishments inform you when you suffer them. (This was occasionally unclear in certain world events.)
• Current Potion added to inventory menu, you can view what type and how many sips are remaining, as well as discard a potion you don't wish to use.
• When looting armor/weapons, among other, smaller changes, excess line breaks have been removed, 'take' has been clarified to 'equip', and indentation has been increased to make it more obvious.
• Display for elemental resist mult on armors has been removed- these stats aren't used anywhere in the game since several versions ago.
• Effects that cannot overheal use clearer language to indicate this.
• Added hint text for empty player menus.
• One-off typo and wording fixes.

Misc

Balance

• Living Armor grants Parry On Crit. Formerly granted +8% armor flat On Crit. (Change aimed at reducing long background fights.)
• Toxic Brews adds one additional sip per Botch reagent (ie wood or any other that could potentially ruin your potion and make it Curse). Formerly added one more sip.
• Potion Brewer doubles sip amount. Formerly added two more sips.

Known Issues

v0.8.b_14 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_13 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github.

World Attribute Contests

v0.8.b_13 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_12 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github. Polishing for the full version 8 release is continuing. The tutorials in this update are a step towards that, as well as many small bugfixes.

Consequences

• Wounded - Now sets body condition to half at start of battle. Cure at Doctor or District.
• Damaged - Repair at Blacksmith or Appraiser.
• Cursed - Lift at Enchanter, Oracle, Shaman (node event), or attuned Altar.
• Tired - Rest off in Tavern or Library (rented rooms).
• Burnout - Resolved at Wounded, Cursed, or Tired locations.
• Bees - Wash off in exploration water or Bathe in Tavern (rented room).

Graphical Settings

NPCs

• Wolves, Bears, Bats, Drudgers, and Ents have unique name generators as opposed to a one-token list. Stock Drudgers that get promoted will receive an honorific, not a title.
• Drudgers, Harpies, and other Sapient but non-personable creatures no longer have lootable meat.
• Exceptional Honored Drudgers can have captives and better rewards to loot.
• Dead NPCs seeking retribution have a wider range of intros, reducing the chance that they receive no power boost for their revenge.
• Lumberjacks always carry Wood.
• Dryads use a new armor type- Grown Wood. This is lootable.

Locations

• As mentioned above, Oracles, Libraries, Districts, Appraisers, Altars, and Enchanters can resolve certain Punishments.
• Districts have a Heat system. Player characters that poke around too much will have services (attacking Crime Lord, healing, etc) denied until the Heat cools down.
• Altars accept more drawbanes. Monster organs (Bat Wings, Mimic Guts, Sinew) count as Meat. Sky accepts telescope, and non-Forest Forces accept Living Flames.
• Features have a tutorial entry in the Glossary Manual.

Tutorials

Misc

• While playing a Cheating Save, you can disable out-of-battle Punishments by enabling it as a Game Setting in the Player Menu. Punishments will still be applied in battle (mostly Curse), but will not persist between battles.
• When playing from the Terminal, input 'i' to see the player's display and 'o' to see the opponent's display- which is already displayed visually in a the Graphical, giving the two more parity.

v0.8.b_12 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_11 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the Steam Forums or the Audiogames.net Thread. You can find a more detailed change manifest on Github. This is planned to be the last major Beta before version 8's official release. Trawel v8b12 will (hopefully) go into a polishing stage for a couple updates, before a final v8 is put out. After, normal updates will resume again with v9 betas.

Graphical Updates

Consequences

• Wounded - Cure at Doctor. Suffer Bleed every Impactful attack taken.
• Curse - Cure at Doctor. Have 50% less MHP.
• Tired - Rest off at Inn. Halved dodge multiplier.
• Damaged - Repair at Blacksmith. Start battles with 50% armor condition.

Displays

Freeplay

Exploration

• new area! The Beach is a new Node Exploration set. Beaches have a large branching area that contains gated Dungeons and linear Caves. The Dungeons must be unlocked by slaying a randomly occurring encounter character, whose death will inform the player of which Beach has a new area for them to explore, intending to draw players in from across the map, or back afterwards so they witness the Beach Regrow (see the Regrowth fix).
• new behavior! Clarity can be used to unlock doors and chests, rounding out the usages of Attributes in exploration.
• new behavior! DrawBanes cap at 5 attraction/repelling for each type. Cloth hides Wealth, reducing the amount of Bandit ambushes when traveling. Wealth and Blood calculations have also been tweaked slightly to avoid scaling too quickly.
• fixed behavior! Node Features regrow their contents after being expended. Regrowth has received a larger balance pass as well this update. Now, what features are regrown into are fully weighted and more events are valid for both regrowth and to regrow into, and the time it takes to regrow has been made longer on average. Groves, Caves, and Beaches see the most change, Dungeons mostly see more guardposts, and Mines eventually dry up. Graveyards do not regrow at all, this has been intended.
• new behavior! The 'Casual' node event which is used in many Node types has been changed so that the Persons within can grow irritated with the player and attack them. Peaceful Persons were not affected.

NPCs and Rewards

• new behavior! Bosses and some minibosses now have tempered equipment, making them both more difficult but also more rewarding.
• new behavior! Many NPC Jobs now have starting Archetypes, which makes them prefer certain builds that go with their equipment. Creatures can no longer learn new Archetypes, causing non-Person enemies (Wolves, Bears, Bats, etc) to be restricted to Feats valid for their starting Feat Types, meaning they won't become potion brewers/armor specialists/etc.
• new behavior! NPCs that spawn with stronger abilities more consistently spawn with more World Currency and Bonus Drawbanes to loot.

Achievements

Backend Updates

v0.8.b_11 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_10h3 (patch notes here) has been pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums or Audiogames.

Wound Adjustments

Materials and Magic Stances

• Mythril had its base resist reduced from 15 to 14. It remains easily enchantable and with solid all around resists.
• Adamantine had its base resist lowered from 20 to 16, but its sharp and pierce resist raised from 1.1x to 1.2x. The enchantment rating was also reduced, from 1.5x to 1x.
• Sunsteel is now allowed to generate for armors. It is not enchantable (because it is steel), but has 16 base resist. This makes it better than Mythril without considering enchantments, as the other high end materials tend to not have full resistance to all physical damage types.
• Solar Gold had its blunt resist increased from 1.2x to 1.3x. It still has poor resists in general but a very high 3x enchant.

World QoL

Skills, Feats, Archetypes

Archetypes

• Rune Blade: Grants Runesmith and Runic Blast.
• Cut Throat: Grants Open Vein, Deadly Aim, and Quick Start.
• Comestible Critic: Grants Chef, Big Bag, Bulk, and Potion Brewer.

Feats

• Heavyweight: Grants Big Bag and Bulk.
• Swift: Grants Aggress Parry and Blitz.
• Cocooned: Grants Salvage and Living Armor.

Skills

• Fetid Fumes: When Attacked: Force a contested Clarity check at half Clarity to apply Miasma. Attackers already inflicted with Miasma suffer a -10% hit roll.
• Fever Strike: On Attack: Force a contested Clarity check to apply two stacks of Miasma. When targeting opponents already suffering from Miasma with physical attacks, deal +10% damage as Decay damage.
• No Quarter: Combines Twinned Takedown and old Press Advantage. On Kill: Gain Takedown effect and two stacks of Advantage. Takedown applies Knockout on hit once.
• Bulk: +5% Strength as MHP.
• Big Bag: Gain 3 Drawbane slots, for a total of 8.
• Press Advantage: On Any Crit: Gain one stack of advantage.
• Runic Blast: On Impact Crit: Apply a wound of the elemental on-hit enchantment.
• Open Vein: On Impact Crit: Apply Hemorrhage to prevent Bleed stacks from healing, if already Hemorrhage, apply Bleed.
• Aggress Parry: On Any Crit: Grants a compounding 1.2x dodge roll against one attack.
• Living Armor: On Armor Block: Boost your armor by +8% flat.
• Salvage: On Impactful Crit: Boost your armor by +12% flat.
• Chef: Hearty potions have double sips and apply a Padded stack on Sip.
• Ignite Boost: On Elemental Wound: Gain a compounding 1.2x dodge roll against one attack.
• Frost Boost: On Elemental Wound: Boost armor by +10% flat.
• Elec Boost: On Elemental Wound: Add 4 instants to target's action.

Misc World Additions

• Locked Doors are now an attribute contest that applies Burnout on fail instead of always succeeding. You can use Dexterity or Strength.
• Sky Cults were added to Mountains.
• Bumpers (random encounters) can steal currency from you, so Bandits on the road are still a threat even if Curse has been removed from their ability set.
• Rubies are more common from chests while Emeralds are more common from veins. You get free Rubies after leaving a Node Exploration Feature, after killing a boss.

Graphical Only

v0.8.b_10 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_9 (patch notes here) had been pushed to default a few day ago. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums or Audiogames.

Roll Punishments

Display Improvements

• new colors! Damage Types have their own colors.
• new colors! Feature Service Usage have colors for free services, aether services, world currency services, both currencies, and special payment; to ease understanding menus. Quest Board areas also have a distinct color.
• new colors! Inward/Outward have their own colors, and the already present colors for interacting options now use more prominent colors.
• color usage! Results now use the Fail/Pass/Warn/Error colors more frequently.
• usage tweak! In some cases interrupting colors will try to revert to the prior color instead of blank white. [olist]
• Nodes revert to the visit indicator color instead of uncolored when their names include special colors, such as veins of ore/gems and plants.
• Weapons and Armor revert to the prior color after displaying their material colors.[/olist]
• bugfix! Time passing now correcting gives Background Color at night again.

Bumper/Reaction Rounding Out

• bugfix! Bumpers rolling code was formerly bugged which made them much rarer than they were intended to be under most circumstances.
• new behavior! Daytime now discourages Vampires from showing up, and some other monsters to a much lesser extent.
• new behavior! World Currencys now attracts bandits and pirates.
• tweaked behavior! Removed most level requirements. These were intended to prevent farming bumpers at low levels, but it was meaningless since 'low level' is relative.
• tweaked rewards! Hunters in more locations award Amber when beaten, to allow it to be collected outside of Quests.
• new deathcheaters! While not standard bumpers, Deathcheaters got more primal types to complement mountain Oreads- there are now Forest, Grove, Breeze, Fountain, and Sea druids, named after various Nymphs of greek myth.

Quests

• tweaked behavior! Cleanse quests now work almost universally on Persons independent of their location, with a few exceptions for units that respawn near a boss/higher level enemy. No matter where a bandit or Wolf is, you'll get credit for the kill now!
• new targets! Drudger, Fell, Monster, and Animal have been added as Cleanse quest types. Animals include Bears, Wolves, Bats, Unicorns, etc; while Monsters are more intelligent creatures who are hostile to civilization, such as Harpies, Drudgers, and Vampires. Fell currently only includes Fell Reavers, which are also Monsters.
• new targets! Witch Hut Collect Quests now target more Drawbanes.

Currency Usage

Misc

• fast-travel! With your Map you can take the route presented in the Compass to any town you've been to before. This is equivalent to doing the inputs listed on the Compass yourself, so any combat or social encounters on the roads/seas will remain.
• tweaked behavior! The first node in a Node Exploration Feature will not start with forced combat, and the first few layers will have less/no chance for certain loot and 'obstacle' enemy groups.
• tweaked behavior! Owning an Inn ensures you don't have to rent a room- you own the entire thing, after all.
• bugfix! Mines didn't weight their contents properly. They weighted it and then randomly selected from a node between 1 and the content they rolled.
• bugfix! Turning in Feat Fragments in a library will no longer destroy your other drawbanes as well.
• bugfix! log.txt will include an error stacktrace, not just the error message.
• tweaked behavior! Deadly Aim now is a damage multiplier instead of scaling on attack time, so it should stay viable at higher levels.
• bugfix! Graveyard now behaves better when you have nightvision.
• bugfix! Donating Lots to the town for Community Stalls no longer crashes the game next time time passes.

v0.8.b_9 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_8 pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums.
Pictured: Slice of Greap Debug Map. Greap has a more vertical layout versus Eoano, and lacks teleporters. The upper grouping of towns is mostly barren at the moment. This update has been cooking for a while now! While it lacks a centralized theme, it can be grouped into a few categories.

Worldgen

• new towns! Greap now is filled with towns. Half of them are not yet featured, but you can still travel between them, and build your own Lots.
• notable towns: [olist]
• Lunek, a creepy port city home to the Hunter's Guild and Witch Hut.
• Gopuo, with a Rigged Tower Lighthouse.
• Reahe, a merchant stall town with a Blacksmith and Enchanter.
• Mikol, a palace town with a Dungeon, Hero Guild, and Merchant Guild.
• Beola, a bustling city with a Doctor and Library.
• Xeyn, a farming town beset by unseen forces.
• Eaqu, a partially complete small town with a Graveyard.[/olist]
• new connection types! In addition to normal Roads, you can travel on small Paths or hitch a ride in a Caravan. These have different travel times, and Caravans require loading, just like how Ships require loading and unloading, and Teleports need a ritual to be completed.
• World distances increased to make travel more meaningful and progress the world state a bit quicker when moving about. Remember that you can turn off realtime displays if watching the sunlight proves annoying!

Town Features

• new feature! The Enchanter: Can enchant weapons and armor for world currency and Aether. Can also convert Aether into world currency at prices better than what Stores will offer normally.
• new feature! Hunter's Guild: The additions here will be gone into more depth in the 'quests' section, but this Guild's gem of choice is the Amber, and they focus on Cleanse quests, primarily against vampires and harpies.
• new service! Forest variant of Altar, with its own offering behavior and blessings.
• new service! Blacksmiths can Temper Armor to remove negative qualities for a price of world currency and Amber.
• new service! Inns can now have their rooms rented out, which comes with Bathing and Waiting.
• misc! Witch Hut has tweaked potion recipes, Corpsebloom fungus is a new plant.
• new node shape! Rigged Tower implements a Lighthouse.
• changed services! Traveling Features no longer just copy other features: Celebrations let you get free drinks by scavenging and watch duels, Fights give you a breadth of opponents to choose from, Oracles ramble for free, and Stores still act like stores.

Quests

• new venues! Hero Guilds, Rogue Guilds, and Hunter Guilds now offer quests, with different chances of different types of quests! Notably, their Fetch quests differ in both the legality and rewards. This also applies to existing quest board locations like the District, Inn, and Merchant Guild!
• rewards! All Quests now grant larger amounts of currency. Amber is offered as a reward for Hunter quests, and Reputation rewards got increased overall.
• new target! Cleanse quests now offered for Unicorns.
• new reactions! You can now get stopped by bandits wanting to ruin hero's movements, competition that seeks to take your ill-gotten gains for themselves, and vampires who wish to slay those who might slay them. These all count for Cleanse quests, which should make it slightly easier to complete those by doing other quests in the meantime!
• Quest Reactions grace period was lengthened to avoid besieging you with events back-to-back. Reactions are now weighted, lowering the chances of getting told directions over and over.
• Quest Targets now prefer certain Features over others (Districts, Inns, etc)- and more importantly are less likely to be in the same room as the person who gave you the quest. They can appear 0 to 5 towns away, preferring the middle range band.
• reputation! Reputation for killing world entities has generally been increased, especially positive reputation. This should feel more accurate to how much presence you are exerting in the world, with higher level enemies giving smoother scaling than before.

Misc

• 'Really Fight' and 'Really Attack' let you view a preview of the opponent's equipment, so you can choose to back out with this information.
• Wounds reworded for clarity.
• new wounds! Blackened, Jolted, Shivering.
• Added new Skills: Life Mage, Armor Mage, Belly, Deadly Aim, Potion Chugger.
• Added new Feats: Glutton, Shaman.
• Combat attack notes are now a separate option from combat debug, and on by default.
• The Expanded Bag now lets you melt items within it into Aether, either from the Player Menu or when looting if your Expanded Bag is full.
• Added Simplified attack display type that displays hit roll, total delay, and total damage.

v0.8.b_8 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_7 pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums.

On Announcement Naming:

Notes

• Arenas received updates, the menu is modern, and there has been a major behavioral change around time. You can no longer take part in fights that are super far off, preventing accidentally advancing time. Instead, you can wait 24 hours at a time, even when there is a fight soon. The new rematches include NPCs that fought without you being there (which now happens if you don't make a bout), and they will leave after they train and level up enough.
• Furthermore, multi-round arenas now once again simulate all the rounds, even the ones you don't see. This used to be a mechanic before Trawel was even a game, but it was simplified into faking it at some point. They can take rematchers as contestants, but never in the first round against a player, to force the game to give the player a chance if they have (probably unwittingly) fed an NPC.
• Lot menu has been updated as well, and the behavior of collecting money from owned features has been standardized and the values have been tweaked.
• All features can now support fluff intro/outro text. Right now this is mostly used for named Inns and Stores, but some Doctors, Libraries, and other features use it as well. This can be disabled as a display setting.
• Saves no longer display sub-second values, and display day of week and timezone instead.
• Autosaves now occur within node exploration features. They do not occur in any other feature, and like with normal autosaves, it will only check once you enter a scene. In this case, this is having the node menu display.
• Lances, Drudger fishing spears, and Drudger anchors updated to have their own attack stances. This means that only Shovels and fists (for flesh golems) need migration to the new attack system. Unicorn horns will likely use lances as their base forever.
• Tactics have been broadened to allow for attack effects outside of skill usage. No attacks are set to currently do this due to AI balance concerns, but Takedown was added as another effect.
• A few new skills such as Twinned Takedown and updated Counter.
• Two new archetypes, Hired Hatchet and Fighting Fury.
• Archetypes now come with 2 skills + tactics/skill stance/3rd skill, as well as stats. Previous player-capable archetypes adjusted. Archmage archetype remains distinct.
• More fluff insults added to the species of Trawel to try to give the world a sense of history.
• As always major but unnoticeable bugs like materials that didn't have weapons never being rolled for armors; as well as more impactful niche bugs like deleting but not replacing skill configurations leading to oddness.

v0.8.b_7 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_6 pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums. Unfortunately, this sprint saw several developmental blockers, like the wiring in the main PC falling apart and Java 17 resisting (very successfully). The pace of updates has also been slowing down overall, so unless something changes, expect them to be closer to two weeks instead of one week. The former has been dealt with but Trawel is still stuck on Java 8, for now. Sad Patch Notes:

• Changed the way the game saves. This may have been a downgrade, the main intention was to allow updating to Java 17+, and that is still out of reach, so this might need to be reverted if saving has new issues.
• Node Features display 'inward and outward' to show if you are moving away from or toward the entrance in most cases- this is technically just displaying the 'floor', but in all current Node Shapes besides Tower, that is just how far away from the entrance you are.
• All Eoano towns (besides one intentionally left out town) have town lore snippets now. Hemo and Beal had their map location moved a bit to make more thematic sense.

v0.8.b_6 has been released to beta, v0.8.b_5 pushed to default. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums. Known Issues Updates: Currency rewards in node features are still mostly out of date, but exploration features did get fixed. There are still a few unintentionally unbalanced multifights in the game, such as wolf packs. Partial Changelog:

• As always, misc unreported bug fixes.
• Steam Achievements received a quality pass, and several were added, along with new leaderboard items.
• World updates ('WorldGen'): [olist]
• Eoano gained 2 connecting towns on existing islands, 1 whole new island with 3 towns, and larger focus on lore and thematic design, including tweaking what features exist in many current towns.
• Greap got less attention than Eoano but was still changed, plan is to focus on its status as 'world 2' after the 'world 1' Eoano is mostly settled. [/olist]
• Feature updates included in World changes:
  • Districts can house sub stores and have a defined reformation feature. For example, the Better Futures Company Camp turns into the Better Futures Company Headquarters, a Merchant Guild office.
  • Gardens start filled and slowly replenish as the townspeople tend to them.
  • Node features had rarity tweaks to their nodes, and now display their level range along with their size. More significantly, nodes can now gate progress, although currently there is no reason to not break down every door you find, and no cost to doing so. The Ancient Queen boss was added to one of the towers in the new Eoano island.
  • Altars are now dedicated to different primal forces, in this update the Forest primal force was added to the old Sky force.
  • Doctors no longer charge to diagnose, cost lowered, use modern menu now.
  • Standardized internal code for exploration features, allowing them to have weighted odds and more detailed behavior without maintenance nightmares. (IE, they got both of those mechanics and any later added ones will automatically have those mechanics as well.) Events got cleaned up a bit, as mentioned in the currencies known issues update.
  • Blacksmith has better feedback text, pricing on upgrading items changed to aether AND world currency, but less world currency.
• Improved item and stat displays, especially in regards to breaking up their text with colors.
• Tutorial Text and Feature Description text separated, latter now displays in paren instead of on a new line, making it much less intrusive.
• Legacy adapter behavior extended to music, notably for the docks.
• Barely worth mentioning, but titles for town helper were added, and how champion title code works has been changed.

v0.8.b_5 has been released to beta. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums. Note: The previous beta was shown to be a bit less stable than expected after some live playtests, so it is not being pushed to the default branch this week. Known Issues Updates: Currency rewards in nodes/exploration features are still mostly out of date. Un-even fight balance was partially solved for dungeons, but not other instances. Partial Changelog:

• Many insidious bugs that crashed in certain contexts, or did not apply numbers properly in a way that was around correct, but not actually correct.
• Picking archetypes and feats shows which skills you already have.
• Looting now displays your current capacity usage.
• Saves now have a timestamp instead of date.
• Added an 'adventuring party' system to tower dungeons. (Can also be used on other dungeon types, but currently only tower dungeons have need of them.) You can hire companions for a token fee, and they will aid you in the 'high security' checkpoints in the dungeon, as well as the boss. They take a share of all the loot in the dungeon, but even the odds in the mass battles. They will leave if you do not visit the dungeon for a while. Fighting alongside them will increase the duration they wait at the dungeon for you before leaving. They die permanently and cannot be taken outside the dungeon, but you hire from the actual world occupants of that town, and after leaving, they return to wandering the world in their own story.
• Re-added random wandering behavior of AI. They tend to group around inns, residential districts, and dungeons with the party feature enabled.
• A deliberate balance choice to tweak neck and head damage multipliers from 3x to 2.5x was made. This may require further reduction, to reduce the 'neck meta' of unexpected instant kills.
• Legacy behavior was added to nodes and town features, most now have another feature designated as fallback art, and thus display time passing better.
• Examining weapons closely now has a more comprehensive display and itemization of attacks.
• Armor qualities have been re-added with more substance, and now are closer to weapon qualities, with the notable exception that partially negative qualities (flaws/traits/qualities) exist.
• Level display has changed from words to a number, the word tier now indicates the number of weapon/armor qualities. This means players no longer have to remember that a shoddy weapon is better than a crude weapon but less than a poor weapon to determine level, since examining weapons and armor displays their traits fully. This system was in place before, but only for weapons greater than 'legendary' tier, and it started at 'legendary' rather than level 1.
• Old leveling display adjusted to show traits/qualities/flaws at a glance.

v0.8.b_4 has been released to beta. Report issues and bugs in the steam forums. GitHub faux roadmap for the brave and foolhardy here. Known Issues: Local currency rewards (the ingame system that replaced gold, not related to the regional pricing updates from a few weeks ago) from Nodes and Explore town Features are still not up to snuff, but they're getting closer, same with mass battles with an uneven number of fighters. Going forward, the plan is to keep the main Steam branch at least the second latest version, and the Beta branch will be no more than one update ahead, if possible. This is more for upload management reasons than stability reasons, but none of the updates have been less stable than the ones preceding them, despite the shocking number of changes. I consider this more revealing of the inherently instability at this point in development than an accomplishment on my part, and am glad I choose to keep Trawel in early access. Expected earliest release of v0.8 has been moved from September 9th to the 17th of that month, but it may still occur even later than that. The intention of v0.8 is to be stable and fully featured landmark to start off post 2022 Trawel with. Actual Patch Notes: Changes from the last beta, in a VERY rough order:

• As always, many small bug fixes that weren't noticeable unless you looked very hard, or were to lesser used mechanics.
• Added 'pouch/bag', which lets you store up to 3 different pieces of backup equipment. Currently there are some issues with clearing up space if the thing you want is of a different type than what you have stored, but it works fine if you don't treat it as a full inventory and just an alternatives system. This may receive full inventory status later, but the goal right now is mostly so you can store more than one weapon. This also comes with the option to examine what you're comparing more closely, and swap what you're comparing with if you had alternatives in your pouch (which immediately equips the new item you're comparing with).
• 'You' menu categorized into different submenus, and is now accessible from Nodes, which you can save within. Saving in a Node will save your location in that node. Many of the options are new or reworked features: [olist]
• Settings menu includes display updates from last updates, and also three 'auto' options: AutoLevel, AutoLoot, and AutoBattle. These allow the player to opt out of those mechanics. AutoBattle does not resolve fights instantly, and instead shows the player what options the AI would pick before it does them. The player currently cannot stop the AI mid battle, and it doesn't instantly complete the battle to discourage fightspam.
• Character skill menu, which now has a list of all the player's current final skills on demand if they want to see the collation of their sources, instead of just telling you that that isn't implemented yet.
• Inventory with pouch, drawbanes, and a Map feature that lets the player learn the path to any town they've been in before, as well as look up lore and other information on each town they've been to.
• Society menu which holds Quests, Faction Reputation, and the revamped title system that has upgradable titles. This makes the Arena Champion titles much easier to parse.
• Saving, which works in Nodes now.
• A stats overview, mostly put in here so it's harder to press the next option instead of saving.
• Quitting to the Main Menu.
• A Glossary of game terms and mechanics. Includes explanations of mechanics and in-game-generated lists of Skills. Archetypes, Feats, Perks, Wounds, Effects, DrawBanes, Seeds, and Weapon Qualities. The scrollable menus implemented in the previous updates are put to good use in some of these. If in a debug testing save, this menu is replaced by a cheats menu. Includes the old Infodump tutorial as well.
• exit, as part of the '9 is back' reworks, many menus were made to have 9 be 'previous menu' or cancel.[/olist]
• Wound/Tactics: Added a 'tactics' mechanic which is closely related to some combat actions which now have secondary non-damage affects tied to them. Previously in Trawel, attacks could only express different mechanics through attached wounds. Wounds were overhauled to better display and handle their random chance to not roll (1/10th chance per attack, unless it uses a Keen weapon; the elementalist skills now do not reroll normal grazes), and some slight behavioral updates, especially to bleeding, which keeps getting reworked in the background every update as goals for it change. More impactfully, the wound internal management changed what wounds will roll on which body parts, and a few were cleaned up. 'Condition Wounds' are now branded as 'Injuries', and apply negative debuffs until the end of the battle, cementing their goal of acting as 'soft hp gates'. Normally HP systems have intense dissonance when a person goes from fully functional at 1HP to completely inactive at 0HP, Injuries help move the combat along by increasing the negative effects they take, and, somewhat uniquely to Trawel, avoid decreasing damage output of the inflicted when thematically possible to prevent combats dragging on forever if both participants have all their bones broken. 'Tactics' follow the same 'on attack' paradigm of wounds, but cover personal buffs or debuffs. Currently, there is a Dodge Roll, a Single Out, and a 'Challenge to attack me' tactic. Tactics are provided by some Skill Sources, but can also be called as part of a normal skill source attack. For example, Daredevils don't know any tactics and can only use them from their skill attacks, but Armor Masters can single out as a 'tactic action' from their battle menu, which doesn't deal damage, but applies the tactic effect without needing to roll an attack option with the tactic.
• 'Yore' boss added to the Dungeon of Fame. Yore's dungeon fight is a mass battle using the newly-detached-from-forts combat conditions, and you must delve his dungeon to disable them if you don't want to fight him at a severe disadvantage. This is meant to be a contrast to the Tower of Fate, which requires you to reach the top to do battle, because Yore's fight room is the first room in the dungeon.
• Cloth separated into Patchwork, Linen, and Cotton. All three, plus silk, have received minor stat changes.
• Terminal and Graphical have (for now) slightly different display options improvements. [olist]
• Graphical got several options to display time passing 'in real time'. In combat, this was already happening a fixed amount after every attack, but an alternative option to tie this the mechanical 'time delay' of actions was re-added (it was in but disabled and with bad numbers prior), instead of a pause after every action. Out of combat, a new option was added and enabled as the default: to show the world state time passing in features/towns. Theoretically this might display weird since the time could pass before or after an option is chosen, but in practice most of Trawel was configured to add time in an appropriate place, and the game just needed to get told to compute it more often. For example: when waiting for a fight in an arena, the game will now attempt to show 6 hours of waiting in 1 second instead of catching up instantly. Towns were changed to use the forest background, and this makes it much more clear when time is passing, and how much. WARNING: In most cases, 6 hours per second is quick enough that you won't be waiting long, but some Arenas only fight once per month, so you'll be sitting there waiting. Considering your character has to wait the time in more seconds conceptually, perhaps this will give you a better sense of scale- having to wait 2 minutes feels like a lot, but for them, that 2 minutes was 43200 minutes.
• Terminal got 'back out', which will likely reach legacy graphical in a later update. This attempts to leave up to 10 menus/cancel 10 options, and uses modern handling of Trawel menus to know when to stop. In most cases, the 10 is just a safety thing, since not all cancellations progress the game state, but many menus do not accept a 'back out' input in that case. You trigger this by entering '10', and '0' will back out once if you wish to do it step by step, as a safer alternative to spamming '9', which is sometimes a real choice.[/olist]

This update applied to both the default (stable?) branch and the beta branch, since stable was more balanced but less bug-free, so I decided that it would be more 'stable' to be updated. Known Problems: Balance of mass fights is out of whack due to overarching changes to combatant level power scaling. Node Town Features and other Combat Town Features need yet another quality pass, especially now that the new currency system has smaller values for money. This build used a different upload method than prior windows builds. If you haven't been keeping up with the beta updates, the last few patch notes have some major changes- but don't worry if you don't have time to read them, the goal of the last month or two has been to get the game in gear for a full, major, version .8 update, which should have a more coherent list of changes, after all the changes finish happening enough to comment on them. From the last beta, in no particular order:

• The tutorial has been migrated from the 'tutorial text' after each feature to a small blurb when you enter a feature type for the first time. This only applies in QuickStart and if you choose to not disable the tutorial in SlowStart. Old tutorial is mostly used to indicate the type of a place, which may be helpful if a shop calls itself "'A Cut Above'" instead of "Weapons Store".
• Saveable display options! You'll see a bit more about these below. The coolest stuff doesn't work in the graphical yet (and likely won't until the engine swap), but if you're playing text-only mode, these will be very interesting. Even the non-interesting ones add a bit of configuration to how the game presents itself, which can be nice.
• Level scaling has changed to be on 'effective level'. You can imagine that level 0 is now level 10, and levels are 10x less impactful stat wise, for most purposes. This mostly means a level 2 person is only 1.2x the baseline instead of 2x from level 1. (Note that, in this explanation, level 1 is 1.1x the baseline.)
• Some 'non-personable' semi-personable creatures can now shout insults at you and collect money. Only fully 'personable' creatures can loot equipment, and ALL creatures, including wolves, bears, and other beasts can loot aether- but this new class of creature can collect coins/notes.
• The Highest Contribution battlescore (which was never viewable without a closer look) has been updated to be the deviation from the expected instead of a number is independent of what the expected average should be. Basically, it now tells you that 'hey, this weapon has one attack is twice as important as if they were all equal' instead of 'there is an attack that contributes 66% of damage'- the latter of which is a lot less concerning if the weapon has 2 attacks, but a bit more concerning if it has 3.
• Potion brewing text and internal behavior got cleaned up, along with some other services. Mostly just cleaning house (as covers a lot of the 'fluff' text I write in the updates, there were a lot of maintainability changes and some minor behavior fixes/tweaks, but nothing to write home about, so I don't go too in depth.) Most of the other services changes are minor, but the Witch Hut change came with an expansion of Potions to allow npcs to buy (which was bugged for most of the update) and use the potions, with some funny text if they accidentally let loose BEEEEES.

• 'Flavor Text', covering random town flavor events, 'first arrival' flavor describing towns, and random taunting/boasting. All of these have no mechanical impact.
• 'Travel Text', which is mostly used to help signal how getting ambushed when traveling works. If you understand that fully, this is a reminder of what town you're going to and not much else.
• 'Locational Text' includes the current town and date. If you turn both this and Travel Text off, there won't be any indicators of the current town besides the contents and the option you selected to get there. Dates currently don't do much, but later there might be holidays.
• 'Own Name', which makes the game display 'You' whenever it would display your character's name. This lowers confusion on who you are (although one of the messages will now read 'You are you' instead of 'You are Jane'), but is often really grammatically incorrect.
• 'Other Combat Text', which just removes most combat text that doesn't include you directly. This makes mass fights a bit more restrained, but people will die and you won't be told. It is the most mechanically impactful of the display options, because there aren't other ways to get this information.

Continuing with the theme of regutting, many of the things that were partially replaced in the last beta now have enough substance to truly be called a rework.

Weapon Power Displays

'Classless', but it's just multi-multi-multi-etc etc classing

Examples:

Archetypes

Feats

Misc

Wrapping Up

Once again, the Stars are Right over homa and unun. Trawel is changing. The new major beta version, v0.8.X, (the X is expected to change as the update is iterated on) will be open for public testing during August. If interested, please submit feedback on the steam forums here or in the Github Issue tracker. If you are unsure how to opt-into a Steam beta, follow this community guide. This Trawel update will focus on modernizing and re-'gutting' the entire game. Trawel was designed to be a lot simpler than it ended up being, and internal growing pains were starting to become apparent. Here at realDragon (or rather, dragon and friends), we decided to take this as an opportunity to replace core systems, such as attacks, equipment, skills, and the like. Most of these systems have similar outward expressions at first, but the allowed depth has been vastly increased, so you should find that their mechanics have become a lot more meaningful. More concisely put, these things will look similar but be more impactful, in both the short and long run. Other systems are receiving more total reworks, such as the skill system and the 'Exotic Art' implementation, which are being fleshed out as an 'archetype' system, combining both the multiclass concepts into a more classless-oriented outcome. The graphical is also planned to switch engines for a variety of reasons, which should help the ability to update it and the art in the future. The art style is also expected to change. Here are some WIPs of a potential style.


Have you ever really looked at your sword? Like, really looked at your sword. Note that this will likely be revised as the 'cuts' for 'paper dolling' (layering the images on top of each other) are settled under the new swapping and layering methods. The art/graphical update is not expected to be completed by the time the mechanics of this beta hit stable. Due to the unique data format of Trawel, the old graphical will likely have partial support even after the new one releases. The Beta will be able to be found on the standard beta branch, which you can access from the game properties menu in Steam. The current version of Trawel has been added as a 'legacy archive' branch, as it is expected there will be at least some breaking changes in how the Graphical and Text portions of the game interact. Most versions of the game can somewhat handle mismatches between the two, and it is possible that the old Graphical won't be updated, but will still work, in which case that branch might receive gameplay updates. HOWEVER, go forward with the expectation that the old graphical will no longer work past late August, as that is the earliest time the new graphical might release. Regional prices have also been updated to match platform guidelines shortly prior to this announcement, as stated in the previous news post. In some regions, the price increases were substantial. These prices were set automatically back when the price of the game was halved, and have been set automatically once more. You can view the last committed changed on the source-available github, which has 'nightly' progress, but not stable builds. The github also has an experimental project roadmap. The Beta is expected to receive an update 1-2 times per week, or more if major errors occur. Patch notes are also here.

Virtually all major systems in the game have been internally changed. The passage of time is a lot more complicated, and you might have to pass the argument 'nothreads' if your pc doesn't agree- but it should be fine. Of particular note, Attacks and Exotic Arts had changes but not enough time to refill their content (which is a recurring issue in Trawel, however this time it was for a different reason than normal- kernel upgrade issues nearly prevented this update entirely). As per normal, this beta is Windows only, but it probably runs in proton, and if you want you can snag the jar and try to get it working yourself. The biggest barrier to updating linux has been the Graphical, and the new engine will likely have no such issues staying up-to-date, but that's still a ways away. (I was able to somewhat get it working on my own machine, but reliability issues prevent me from being able to push it directly.) You can check out the roadmap here. Remember to report issues in the steam forums or in the github issue tracker! You can find instructions on how to opt-in to Steam betas in the full beta announcement which will be made shortly after this post. Priorities besides finding crashing are giving feedback on the state of damage vs armor balance, which is currently unknown, and needs work. We're at the point where we don't know if armor is too strong or too weak. Attributes also got somewhat added, and they properly replaced dodge multiplier on armor, however once again their other interactions are limited. Expect a focus on finishing the transfer of attack backend, and then a shift to the classless system, over the next week. (PS: giant pants bug might be fixed!)

Trawel has received major backend updates and systems changes, and the beta branch is expected to have a build ready as the systems solidify and are ready for the feedback phase of the changes. Additionally, regional pricing will be updated to the recommended prices for today- they were set years ago automatically. Regional price changes are expected to mostly be between no increase (+0%) and a 40% increase, averaging on the lower end of 15%. However a few regions will get a 40%-60% increase, and two exceptional cases will see an increase of around 500%. The price changes are based on the same base price of $4.99 USD- in this locale and several others there will be no change. The regional changes and further beta announcement will occur on Friday, August 4th, 2023, sometime after 12pm EDT. (This event will end one hour before the discount will, so likely within the 14 hours after that, which is displayed in your local timezone.) The actual release schedule of the beta will be announced then. Until then, the game will be on a 15% discount.

Autosaving and save slots have been added (and save time has been vastly reduced). The damage formula has also been adjusted, and the first backgrounds have been added (with a solar calendar and lunar phases!). There were also numerous small bugfixes, and some hefty display improvements. Unfortunately this update is windows only for the time being, but linux has all the required files on the beta branch.

Firstly, a huge thank you to the Gamemaker and Linux gaming communities for helping me through the errors I encountered; as well as my friends who talked me through debugging linux issues. Another important non-content change is switching from GMS:1.4.9999 to 2.3, which is like, two major versions ahead of what I was using. The two major features in this update are forts and factions. Forts can be purchased for money, and you can build features on them which increase their defensive or offensive potential. Defensive features give them advantages when defending against attackers that would seek to steal their gold, while offensive features generate gold passively. Factions are similar to merchant guild rep- right now there's the Heroes' Guild, which can turn reputation into knowledge fragments, and the Rogue's Guild, which can launder gems. Using drawbanes in forts (and alchemy, and older feature) can prove to be arcane, so I'll be writing up a few guides with which to make starting your path on this game routes a little bit easier. Trawel also got a new background artist, so hopefully you'll see some backgrounds in the near future! :D If anyone notices the giant pants bug in the new update, would you kindly send me a message through the discussion forums or github issue tracker, as I'm hoping but not certain that that engine upgrade stamped up that bug (but can't test it on my machines since it seems to be gpu related).

What goes bump in the night, you ask? Monsters! They lurk just beyond the fringes of towns, waiting to pounce! Drawbanes finally have their originally intended purpose released- to attract and repel monsters. Want to attract wolves? Bring some meat. Want to attract vampires?! Cover yourself in blood! Additionally, the skill system has been scrapped in favor of a more... class based one. Delve deep into the esoteric arts! Master hunting, witchery, the elements, and even being drunk! There are many other small additions to the game, just waiting for you to find them! The price of the game has also been halved.

Potions and Plants have been added to Trawel! Just find some seeds by talking to dryads about their forest, or even find some bee larvae in bee hives! Then, once you have some drawbane reagents, combine them at the witches hut in hemo! SFX has also been updated!

This small update adds blood to the inhabitants of Trawel, as well as numerous small improvements and fixes. Most notably, disk write errors shouldn't happen again. Ever. Finally, an 'old' branch has been introduced, which will hold the previous stable update, in case you want to save it, such as when you grow attached to a character.

Some minor but significant improvements were made to the graphical, including bloodstains, more easily distinguishable choices, and sounds.

Exploring the wonderful world of Trawel has never been better! With the advent of the travel guide, remembering those sprawl of towns has never been easier, and new landmarks in groves make it more feasible to navigate their branching paths. A merchant guild has opened in unun! As you may have noticed, you can no longer buy items above your level... but the merchant guild changes that. Donate to increase your reputation and stores will happily let you buy items that allow you to crush your foes! Currently, the only thing you can donate is 'DrawBanes' which will become more important in a future update ;)

As some of you may have noticed, Trawel has a beta branch! It can be located in the same way all steam beta branches can, in properties -> betas. This is a good way to preview the new content, or if you want to have the latest, cutting edge updates. Note that these builds are beta for a reason- they are much more likely to have bugs and crashes. If you'd like to contribute to the development of Trawel, feel free to contact realDragon about bugs found through the steam discussion forums or the github issue tracker! Although this announcement is a limited time event, Trawel's beta branch will be continuously updated, often daily.

Combat has been updated to include wound effects, which increase the depth of choice presented by combat. Additionally, the Tower of Fate and Stairs to Hell now have boss fights with corresponding achievements. Finally, wolves are no longer humanoid.

Music has been added to Trawel! Also yes, I am still alive.