SPEARS are now one-handed weapons. This is to correct an original design issue that has always bugged me. Spears and Polearms are unique in that they are the only melee weapons that can reach two grid squares, but polearms have always felt much superior to spears because they do more damage and both have an equal chance of knockdown. Spears also don’t have as much blocking as polearms, plus polearms have a higher bleed chance. So to balance this out, I changed spears to a one-handed weapon. They’re still pretty much the same otherwise. But this allows you to also use a shield in your left hand, which is an advantage all its own that polearms don’t have. And they still reach two squares.
I integrated a requested feature into an existing feature. F9 now toggles status bars (stamina/health) between three modes: Display All, Display None, and Display Only the Selected Character. This last mode is the new one. The selected character is usually the character whose turn it is, but if you click on a monster, or another character, they are selected and they display their bars over them in this mode. This can help during battles where a lot of creatures are packed in adjacent squares and the status bars overlap.
F7 now toggles the grid lines on the ground on or off. This was in at some point but I think got inadvertently disabled.
If you get PUSHED BACK, you lose half your MP on your next turn.
The relative amount of XP granted for monsters is now displayed on the BESTIARY page. This will give you a general idea of how much a given creature is worth compared to others. The actual amount of XP can still vary by level. x1.0 is considered “average”.
Any creatures that activate SURPRISE as they initially appear when combat starts will get a 2x INIT bonus when calculating the turn order.
Few other minor bug fixes and tweaks. The full list can be seen in the release notes: