The artifacts of plant and time,
crust and fuzz with lossy compression,
doze in moonlit marble beds,
touched by august muzzles.
The past is unwritten as the future,
And what is left, broken and changed,
to be tended by the point Colossi and their swarm.

-Daughter Erinna, Modulo Moon Stair and the Tree of Life

This major feature arc adds the last late-game region, a new leg in the main quest, new UI, all new sounds, and more. Here are the full patch notes.

NEW QUEST IN THE MAIN QUESTLINE

• There is now a new quest after returning from the Tomb of the Eaters. Talk to Barathrum in his study to learn more.
  
• Added a new system for the creation of [redacted] in support of this quest.
  

NEW LATE-GAME REGION

• Added the last late-game region: the Moon Stair.
  
• Added new creatures: zero jell, unimax, dawning ape, n-dimensional starshell, dreamcrungle, glow-wight apotheote, monad, and dream wren.
  
• Added a new village-like location -- Chavvah, the Tree of Life -- with several new NPCs.
  
• Added a new side quest at Chavvah.
  
• Added psychic biomes, limited to the Moon Stair.
  

UI

• Added a new Pixel Perfect mode, which forces zoom to snap to a perfect multiple of the pixel art. You can toggle it in the General options menu.
  
• Added a new Docked mode that locks the combat log, nearby items list, and minimap. You can toggle it in the General options menu.
  
• Added a new 'Flip' mode to the modern dock. It has behavior similar to the original text sidebar.
  
• Added a new mouse cursor and an option to disable it or choose an alternate color scheme (Options > Overlay UI > Mouse cursor).
  
• Added a new option for "Play area scale" with three choices.

  
  

  • Fit - fits the whole play area on screen. May necessitate letterboxing.
    
  • Cover - ensures the play area covers the screen. Minimizes letterboxing.
    
  • Pixel Perfect - sizes the play area to an integer multiple of the pixel art. Maximizes sharpness.
    
  
  
• Changed the default setting for the modern UI play scale from Fit to Cover.
  
• General UI note: if the camera is zoomed in so that the whole play area doesn't fit on the screen, you may notice the UI switching to fullscreen Fit mode when you take certain actions that still have unfinished UI elements (like Interact nearby). This is done to prevent the old UI elements from becoming unreadable at the zoomed in scales. As we add continue to add modern UI elements, it'll stop happening.
  
• Added new UI for target pickers.
  
• Added new UI for examining things with the Look function.
  
• Added a new target reticle for some contexts.
  
• The information bar when using the look/target pickers is now at the top of the screen.
  
• The ability bar is now fully functional.
  
• The selected ability bar button is now only highlighted if the "Use Ability" command has an active bind.
  
• The User Interface option "Pressing shift will hide the sidebar" now affects the modern UI dock and undocked windows.
  
• Added a new UI for the Options screen.
  
• Added a new UI for the High Scores screen.
  
• Added a new UI for the Help screen.
  
• Added tooltips and highlights to attributes with bonuses during character creation.
  
• You can now look at who you're talking to from the conversation UI.
  
• Added binds for page up and page down.
  
• Added a new option to disable the mouse-clickable zone transition arrows that appear when the map is zoomed in (Options > Overlay UI > Disable mouse-clickable zone transition border arrows).
  
• The mouse cursor now hides itself when the mouse is stationary.
  
• Added an option to disable mouse zoom.
  
• Removed option to show tooltips when looking. It's now always works this way when the modern UI is enabled.
  
• Tooltips shown by mouseclick now hide when keyboard or joystick buttons are pressed (please report any tooltips that do not behave this way).
  
• Added a tooltip to the window layout lock button
  
• Look now is now bound to left stick button by default in the modern input manager.
  
• After firing a ranged weapon, your target for future shots is now more reliably what you shot at instead of what you hit.
  
• Added two options for filtering the nearby items list to only takeable items and only items in the current tile (Options > Overlay UI > enable Show overlay nearby objects list). When both are enabled, the behavior approximates the legacy UI "only show contents of the current cell" option.
  
• Added ability bar navigation and activation keybinds to the legacy input manager.
  
• Refactored the imposter system for visual effects. This fixes many bugs where visual effect artifacts remained on the screen improperly.
  
• Removed code and unused bits of Overlay UI that have been replaced with the Modern UI.
  
• Removed the unintentional fade-in effect when tooltips appear.
  

SOUNDS & MUSIC

• We're in the process of adding all new sound effects to the game. Several hundred have already been added. More to come.
  
• Added ambient environmental sounds. For now: to Joppa, salt marshes, desert canyons, jungles, subterranean caves, the rust wells, rust biomes, and slime biomes. More to come.
  
• Added a new toggle and volume slider for ambient sounds to the General options menu.
  
• Added a new music track in the Moon Stair.
  

NEW THINGS

• Added new cybernetic implants: grounding shunts and social coprocessor.
  
• Added new items: palladium weave tabard, dazzle cheek, psychodyne helmet, black mote, leyline puppeteers, magnetic bottle, gigantic chassis plate, dream rondure, crystalline halo, and crystalline jile.
  
• Added a new liquid: warm static.
  
• Added a new skill: ?????
  
• Added a unique encounter to the bottom of the Asphalt Mines.
  
• Added a new book: Module Moon Stair and the Tree of Life.
  
• Added a new signature dish: Crystal Delight.
  
• Added a new harvestable: noisegrass.
  
• Added new cooking ingredients: wild rice and dream smoke.
  

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

• We made some balance tweaks to the attributes of merchants.

  
  

  • Stiltground merchants are now higher level and have more Willpower.
    
  • Legendary merchants are now leveled appropriately for the difficulty tier their workshops are found in.
    
  • More kinds of merchants now have hired guards.
    
  • Adjusted the number of hired guards for several kinds of merchants.
    
  
  
• We changed how the item mod 'gigantic' works and classified some creatures as 'colossal'.

  
  

  • The following creatures are classified as colossal: salt kraken, star kraken, great saltback, great magma crab, Rodanis Y, chrome pyramid, and [redacted].
    
  • Colossal creatures can no longer wear non-gigantic gear.
    
  • Non-colossal creatures can no longer wear gigantic gear, with the exception of gigantic weapons, which can be wielded in twice the number of hands they normally take to wield.
    
  • Most types of items can now be gigantic.
    
  • Gigantic weapons deal additional damage and may have other effects, depending on the weapon class.
    
  • Gigantic vessels now store twice as much liquid.
    
  • Gigantic grenades have double the radius.
    
  • Gigantic gems and precious nuggets have 5x the trade value.
    
  • Gigantic energy cells have twice the energy capacity.
    
  • Swarm racks are now gigantic and no longer occupy back or arm slots.
    
  
  
• The Quantum Jitters defect is now worth 4 points.
  
• The following cybernetic implants all had their bonuses raised from +1 to +2: bionic hands, bionic arm, bionic heart, dopamine synth, and beautiful visage.
  
• Beautiful visage now costs 3 license points.
  
• Svardym are no longer considered a sultanate faction.
  
• There is now a teleport gate in the rusted archway.
  
• You can no longer trade with creatures who are engaged in melee combat.
  
• Having an adjacent inanimate object as a target no longer counts as being engaged in melee combat.
  
• Charging Strike for axes and Charging Strike for cudgels are now the same skill.
  
• Robots with the Wings module can no longer fly while EMP'd.
  
• Set the region tier of the Six Day Stilt to 2.
  
• We made some balance changes to blast cannon.

  
  

  • Increased accuracy.
    
  • Increased damage.
    
  • Increased concussive force on impact.
    
  • Increased cell energy cost per fire.
    
  • Changed the cooldown from 1d4 to 2.
    
  
  
• Krakens who have a party leader no longer wander in the characteristic kraken style.
  
• Item-based bonuses to throwing range are now functional on geomagnetic discs.
  
• Cheap credit wedges are now excluded from dynamic encounters.
  
• Raised scorpiock's level and lowered their AV.
  
• Made some tweaks to Crystal of Eve.
  
• Pathfinding now considers standing next to dangerous gases to pose some fraction of the danger of standing in them.
  
• Firing ranged weapons now more accurately targets flying creatures rather than the trash beneath them.
  

MISCELLANEOUS

• Added more Barathrumite dialogue for late-game quests.
  
• The preferred water ritual liquid for highly entropic beings is now warm static.
  
• Replaced deathlands worldmap tiles with the Moon Stair.
  
• Autoget can now unload weapons and empty liquid containers.
  
• Campfires and torch sconces are now avoided to a much lesser degree by pathfinding.
  
• Sometimes pilgrims you encounter are now lost. You can give them directions.
  
• Teleport gates are now points of interest.
  
• If you're controlling a turret tinker or miner, you can now deploy a turret or mine as an activated ability.
  
• Horns now regrow properly if you do not have a head and then grow a new one.
  
• All creatures with proper names who are not player companions are now considered points of interest.
  
• Artifact functionality that displays status indications in item descriptions, such as (nonfunctional) or (unpowered), no longer does so in context of tinkering item descriptions.
  
• Added a new tile for diplomacy droid.
  
• Added a new tile for recoilers.
  
• Changed leering stalker's ASCII color to bright red.
  
• Gibbons are now correctly classified as apes.
  
• Twinning and trining lamprey are now correctly classified as fish.
  
• Reclassified some robots.
  
• Deploy Turret, Flaming Hands, Freezing Hands, and Freeze Breath can no longer be used on the world map.
  
• Robot sensor arrays and hardpoints may now be marked as scrap independently of each other.
  
• Non-takeable items that theoretically have a reputation modifier (such as painted or engraved immobile furniture) no longer show the reputation modifier in their description.
  
• Relic containers are now considered important.
  
• Added a "Wait Menu" keybind to the legacy key mapping.
  
• Removed the outdated "Display a background image when letterboxing" option.
  
• Improved performance when moving through liquids, particular during autoexplore.
  
• Particle simulation now has a fixed timestep.
  

BUGFIXES

• Fixed a bug that prevented legendary creatures from awarding extra XP in some contexts.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused legendary creatures to have too little XP for their level.
  
• Relic missile weapons with the vibro effect now get any penetration bonuses they may have applied on top of the vibro effect.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused armor categorized as Clothing to auto-equip as held in hand rather than worn.
  
• Fixed a bug in pathfinding that caused occasional mishaps, in particular inexplicable penchants for walking through fractus.
  
• Fixed a grammar error in some messages resulting from you decapitating your companion.
  
• Legendary villagers no longer sometimes erroneously have two names.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused collecting liquids from the ground to not update your carried weight immediately.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused you to turn blue.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused psychic hunters to spawn over pits that'd cause them to immediately fall to their death.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some popups in the classic UI to cut off the last word.
  
• Fixed an issue where Suppressive Fire wasn't showing up in the abilities menu.
  
• Fixed a bug that made morphogenetic weapons apply the compute power of their target to their effect rather than that of their wielder.
  
• Fixed a few crash and a few other bugs with the Continue screen when there were invalid or corrupt info files.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused autoact to be interrupted when a follower's maximum HP changed.
  
• Fixed an issue with ability bar navigation improperly respecting the alternate modifier button.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the message log to sometimes not scroll fully to the bottom when passing nearby objects.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented right-stick look navigation in the prerelease input manager.
  
• Fixed a bug that made Barathrum clocks with Q Girl pendulums disassemblable for no bits.
  
• Fixed a rare exception in village generation.
  
• Fixed a bug where some creatures were incorrectly receiving bonuses for mutations they had as if they were rank 1 instead of the rank they actually were.
  
• Fixed a bug with autoget while flying that required landing to take items on the ground.
  
• Fixed a bug when a non-player creature used a timecube that caused you to get messages as if you used it.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused imaginary objects to be flammable.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused imaginary objects to vaporize if they reached vapor point.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused particles to stack up in look and targeting views.
  
• Fixed a bug with item naming popups in the console UI.
  
• Fixed some auto collection bugs for liquids.
  
• Fixed ability bar buttons not greying out properly.
  
• Fixed "Wait 1 Turn" option not working properly in the wait menu.
  
• Fixed a bug where prerelease inventory UI screens were appearing below the play area.
  
• Fixed a bug where autoget would pick up fancy furniture.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused village merchants to fail to spawn.
  
• Fixed a bug where each village history entry in your journal contained histories from every village.
  
• Fixed a bug with arrow keys improperly paging through modern UI controls.
  
• Fixed the sizing of popup message windows with long scrollbars.
  
• Fixed a bug where "Take all" would fail to pick up everything if you had previously dropped any of the items.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some shale walls to become invisible.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused zones to stay in memory for too long.
  
• Fixed a bug with modern UI keybinds using modifier keys in the legacy input manager.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused music tracks to improperly restart when entering a new zone.
  
• Fixed a bug where having the "Enable additional overlay UI elements" on and then disabling the "Enable modern UI elements" option left the game in an unusable state.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Astral creatures to flicker in and out of phase while traveling on the world map
  
• Fixed an exception with throw animations.
  
• Fixed a rare exception in the "corrected vision" status effect.
  
• Fixed a rare exception in the "immobilized" status effect.
  

DEBUG & MODDING

• Added <mixin>  to object blueprints, allowing you to inherit and merge the properties of multiple blueprints together.

  
  

  • Load="Fill"  will prioritize properties from the Inherited blueprint, otherwise the mixin has precedence.
    
  • Include="part,stat"  can be used to only inherit properties that match a tag name.
    
  • Exclude="tag,property"  can be used to only inherit properties that do not match a tag name.
    
  • The mixins will be evaluated from top to bottom, unless a manual Priority="5"  is specified.
    
  
  
• The Examiner part has been overhauled. Instead of the fields UnknownDisplayName, AlternateDisplayName, UnknownDescription, AlternateDescription, UnknownTile, AlternateTile, and so, there are now two fields, Unknown and Alternate, which take the names of blueprints for objects to derive the unknown and alternate appearances of the item from. The property KeepTile supports the behavior of identifiable furniture where the text appearance changes but the tile does not. Also, the unusual Examiner behavior of tonic injectors is now data-driven and moddable; please refer to the configuration of tonics for more information.
  
• When using the debug option 'Show quickstart option during character generation, pressing the keybind now only works on the first screen.
  
• Autoget is now handled with the AutoexploreObjectEvent. Set E.Want = true and E.FromAdjacent = "Autoget". Users of the AutoexploreObjectEvent should now check the AutogetOnlyMode flag. You should only return "Autoget" (or equivalent) actions when this flag is true.
  
• Moved MenuOption class from XRL.CharacterBuilds.UI to the XRL.UI.Framework namespace.
  
• Removed old character code entries (Code="ab") from Mutations.xml, Subtypes.xml, and Genotypes.xml. Also removed the properties XRL.MutationEntry.MutationCode, XRL.SubtypeEntry.Code, and XRL.GenotypeEntry.Code.
  
• The ModManager UI has an additional tag for loaded mods which have Harmony Patches.
  
• Fixed overriding color palette in Display.txt
  
• Added some helper methods to make color string templates easier: Markup.Color(color, text) and StringBuilder.AddColored(color, text)
  
• ObjectBlueprints.xml now logs errors when setting a <part> parameter that does not exist, or if the value can not be parsed.
  
• Added 'findimportant' and 'fetchimportant' wishes.
  
• All XML files are now parsed based on their root element and can thus be reorganized within subdirectories and renamed to anything.
  
• Skill entries can now set the Hidden flag to remove them from the Skills menu until they has been acquired via other means.