Thanks for the feedback,

I agree that a lot of the original art is iconic, but it’s also true that Pixel Dungeon’s art has always been basic. This isn’t the first time that I’ve made in-game art changes, and if past trends are anything to go on then there will be some change resistance and eventually people will view the new visuals as a strict improvements in retrospect (as long as I get it right, of course). The 2.5D walls are the best example of that, initial feedback on them was fairly mixed.

The goal with the new item sprites is to try and make better visuals, but keep the style the same or similar. A LOT of attention has been paid behind the scenes to try to come up with new sprites that are more of an extension of the current style than a replacement for it. Think of it a bit like the new title screen visuals that released last year, it’s grander and higher detail but the core ideas are still the same.

So you’re the second person to mention preferring the wavier scrolls, which is interesting to me. As I mentioned in another comment, the earlier feedback I got on them was that players overwhelmingly preferred the flatter symbol design, even though it does cheat the perspective a bit. The wavy symbols were too big of a change and too hard to read vs. the flat ones.

So you agree that there’s a design motif, but don’t see a problem with breaking that motif? Based on your table, seeds and darts wouldn’t vary by shape, which is already how they are. If I added shape variance then seeds/darts would also appear in the same cell as stones.

I agree that adding icons is a bit redundant for stones (immediately discernible by shape), in the exact same way it would be redundant for seeds and darts (immediately discernible by color), but there are some cases where it may be helpful for players who have a hard time discerning by color (colorblindness, in the extreme case), and it would be inconsistent to add symbols for seeds/darts and not also for stones.

As for the ‘elevated’ bit, in general I don’t want to add a lot of specific and awkward to explain gameplay interactions like that.

Adding details that are mostly cosmetic in order to make game spaces feel less empty or ‘liminal’ is sort of the point here. I agree that there’s a risk of over-detail though.

Seeds/Potions/tipped darts only differing by color is intended unfortunately. There’s a duality to the consumables where potions/seeds differ by color and scrolls/stones differ by symbol. The darts are going to differ in shape between tipped and untipped, but otherwise will be the same. Probably if I were to ever improve the differences here it would be by adding icons to seeds/stones/tipped darts like potions and scrolls already have.

You’re the first person who’ve said they prefer the wavier scrolls actually. The common argument seems to be that the curvier symbols are just too hard to distinguish versus the simpler flat ones.

Those hero sprites are fairly outdated at this point, they will likely be changed a fair bit before being re-shown.

I’m not really sure what you mean by the newer sprites having less depth, are you referring to items or environments? Are there particular ones you like more or less?

Thanks for the feedback! To quickly go over each point:

• The vault doesn’t have random enemy respawns, fully wandering mobs, or mobs you can’t kill. Partly this is for gameplay fairness (enemies need to move in predictable ways for stealth gameplay to work) and partly because powering up and being able to clear the vault is part of the fun of the quest.
• The vault quest is a lot more variable than other quests, so I’m not planning to have multiple bosses this time. The design for the boss is not final yet, but how you fight it is going to vary based on what gear you find, which should keep things interesting between runs of the quest.
• Yeah it should be eldritch, there are always a couple typos. Mainly I removed old venemous and vorpal because most players just took them as extra damage and didn’t try to change up their gameplay at all. I’m hoping that won’t be the case this time.
• Pressurized essentially creates geyser trap effects, so there is no innate damage. Wondrous also won’t have a 100% trigger chance, so cursed wands will still produce random effects much more consistently. Transmutation will change the whole stack, and excess items on the ground or similar will crumble to dust when you try to pick them up.
• There’s always a mix of positive and negative feedback when it comes to changing visuals, I expect environment art will get pushback once we change some of the existing texturing too. It’s tricky to evaluate that feedback as quite a bit of it is always change resistance, the 2.5D walls got a mixed reception when they were first introduced. I’m not necessarily looking to change the style though, just extend it by enhancing the quality of the art, and a LOT of time has been spent behind the scenes on that with focus groups.

The room images are all blueprints and aren’t final in-game visuals just yet. The fire in the blacksmith’s room will likely have some simple effects on it.

If the troll does get changed it would be later on when we start focusing more on character art. Keep in mind though that the image is a blueprint and not and in-game visual, so it’s not exactly how it will appear once implemented into v4.0.

The spyglass generates a totally random floor loot item, which does mean there’s a chance of something valuable like equipment, but the most common things are gold or basic consumables.

The curses will be mentioned in the upcoming blog. They’re both weapon curses, will likely do a similar glyph expansion in a future update.

Yeah Lemmy seems to be continually having issues with uploading GIFs beyond a certain size =S, I’ll directly embed the image in the post.

These specific changes, yes.

Combo badges like YASD are partly used to tidy up the badges list a bit, if you saw literally every badge you unlocked then it would get VERY cluttered. I do have an idea to show ‘lead-up’ badges in the details page under the one you’ve currently unlocked, but that isn’t a priority right now.

The random option is still there basically, you just see what it will be now. This was done as I want players to have a little more choice as I keep adding trinkets. Probably the end state there will be three choices with the ability to reroll those choices once.

I do plan for both of the new curses to have some niche benefits or at least some ways to be played around. I’ll give you two hints: aqua brew and wondrous resin.

Sacrificial probably does need to get seen to at some point (but it is also nice to have some curses be harsher than others), but wayward does at least have some counterplay (compared to earlier iterations where it would just nerf your accuracy and that’s it).

Arcana will increase the damage bonus from crystal.

Currently crystal weapons are totally destroyed when they break, but there are warnings leading up to it.

I absolutely understand the frustration, but I’m not interested in giving Shattered built-in cheats or difficulty settings. Shattered is meant to be a more approachable roguelike (compared to, say, Nethack), but I also don’t want it to be very watered down, and IMO letting people play an easy mode is watering the game down. Nothing wrong with games that choose to do that of course, but it does change what sort of game they are.

It’s honestly not designed with vanilla PD in mind, but yeah I think a durability system will hopefully work well as an enchantment tradeoff.

They will recover durability as long as you’re in possession of them, you don’t have to get them almost broken. Assassin probably will like crystal, but the durability loss is normalized based on attack speed, so slow weapons will last for fewer attacks. The crystal bow does still have durability, and CAN break and be lost atm (same for crystal mage’s staff).