Shattered Pixel Dungeon v2.4.0!
Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered v2.4.0 has been released! You can get it:
- On 
Google Play
- On the 
App Store
- On 
Steam, 
GOG.com, or 
Itch.io
- On 
Github for Android or Desktop.
Shattered is also on sale for 33% off right now on Steam, and on GOG.com!
You can discuss this blog post on the 
Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community, or on the Steam Community Forums!
What’s new in v2.4.0
v2.4.0 features a new category of item: trinkets! They are more about tweaking gameplay variables than giving direct power or utility. There are also a bunch of smaller additions and tweaks, most notably to the Duelist and to Alchemy. Be sure to check the changes screen for full details.
I talked about this update in two previous blog posts:
Here’s the full changelog for v2.4.0! Click or tap on each entry to read more. Note that this changelog may become slightly outdated as patches are released, so check the changes screen in-game for the most up to date version.
New Content:
Developer Commentary
- Released May 15th, 2024
- 118 days after Shattered v2.3.0
Dev commentary will be added here in the future.
Trinkets!
A new category of item has been added: Trinkets!
Trinkets are a new item type produced and upgraded via alchemical energy, and are more about tweaking gameplay variables than giving direct power or utility.
Look out for a trinket catalyst in the early stages of the game, which you can use at the first alchemy pot to produce one of three trinket options. There are 11 trinkets in total.
New Rooms
New standard rooms have been added to the various regions of the game!
This includes one totally new room per region, and two new variants of entrance/exit rooms per region. Rooms that are mostly empty rectangles are now much less common, and there’s a bunch of variety for which rooms can have entrance/exit stairs in them.
Entrance rooms are now also capable of merging with other rooms in a dungeon floor, but there are some guarantees so that enemies won’t ever be near you right after descending to a new floor.
More Holiday Items
I’ve added more holiday items for the rest of 2024!
Expect to see some new temporary holiday overrides for cornish pasties for:
- Pride in late June
- Shattered’s Birthday in early August
- Pixel Dungeon’s Birthday in early December
- New Years in late December and early January
This is in addition to the usual pumpkin pie around Halloween and candy cane around the Winter Holidays.
…I may have also added a tiny little surprise for Rat King’s birthday, but that won’t appear until 2025.
Changes:
Duelist Weapon Abilities
I’m making some overarching changes to the Duelist’s weapon abilities, to make them stronger and feel more impactful:
- Weapon ability charge speed down by 33%
- Weapon ability charge cap reduced to 2-8, from 3-10
- Weapon abilities buffed across the board
- Some talents adjusted to account for weapon charges being less frequent
- Weapon abilities now directly state their damage ranges Check the buffs and talent changes section for specific weapon ability and talent changes.
There are also some changes to the Champion subclass to go along with this:
- Champion’s two weapons now share a charge count, but Champion gets boosted max charges and charge speed.
- Champion’s secondary charge talent has been replaced with a new talent that encourages varied ability use.
Alchemy Changes
I’ve made a bunch of changes to the alchemy system to streamline things and complement the addition of trinkets:
- Catalysts have been removed entirely, recipes that required one now simply cost 8 or 9 more energy.
- A new unstable brew and spell have been added, which give random potion/scroll effects.
- Aqua Blast and Featherfall are now a brew and elixir, otherwise unchanged.
- High value potions/scrolls now grant a little more energy if they are energized.
- Alchemy pots now always spawn on the 3rd or 4th floor in each region.
- Various UI improvements have been made to the alchemy screen.
Various specific alchemy items have also received changes to their energy cost, output quantity, or mechanics. Check the buffs and nerfs section for more details on those.
Talent changes
Duelist talents have been changed to account for adjustments to weapon charge mechanics:
- Aggressive Barrier shielding increased to 3/5 from 3, threshold changed to 50% from 40%/60%.
- Focused Meal charge boost reduced to 0.67/1 from 1/1.5.
- Weapon Recharging boost reduced to every 15/10 turns from every 10/6 turns.
- Counter Ability now grants up to 1.5 charges, instead of reducing cost.
I’ve made some changes meant to improve some of the least popular T1 talents:
- Cached Rations now awards a smaller number of unique ‘supply rations’. These rations grant a little healing and cloak charge.
- Test Subject and Tested Hypothesis have been replaced with two new talents that grant small combat bonuses.
Plus one change to an unnecessarily complex T1 talent:
- Hearty Meal has been simplified, now just has one threshold at 30% HP
Miscellaneous Changes
Highlights:
- Potion and Scroll talents can now trigger from elixirs, brews, and spells
- Ankh resurrection window now warns if two items aren’t selected
- Trying to attack an enemy that has charmed you now shows a warning
Heroes:
- Gladiator and Monk now include brief ability descriptions in their subclass descriptions
- Ability descriptions for Gladiator and Monk now change if their abilities are empowered
Items:
- Thrown weapons now state when they break in the game log
- Tipped darts now last forever when reaching 100 uses, like other thrown weapons
- Dried rose now includes the ghost’s strength in its description
- Plant effects (e.g. fadeleaf) now trigger before traps when time freeze ends
Misc:
- Updated various code dependencies
- Slight optimizations to memory use
- Improved the error message on Android when native code is missing
- Removed the power saver setting on Android 4.4+ devices, if the user hadn’t already enabled it. (Power saver was always meant for very old Android devices. It gives no real benefit for more modern ones.)
Bugfixes
Fixed the following bugs:
Highlights:
- Ruins rooms in the last region using incorrect wall shapes since v2.2.0
- Rare cases where some victory badges would not save if game was immediately closed
- Rare cases where game actors could continue to process for a moment when hero falls into a chasm
- Various cases where characters would not play death animations if they died while paralyzed
Enemies:
- Newborn elemental boss rarely firing its attack through walls
- Rare cases where the final boss could command minions to attack themselves
- Gnoll geomancer and sappers potentially dropping boulders next to entrance
- Gnoll sappers granting armor to corrupted gnoll guards
- Necromancer skeletons not following necromancer’s aggro in some cases
- Teleportation effects not accounting for large characters in specific cases
- DM-300 not becoming supercharged if exactly damaged to the supercharge threshold
Items pt.1:
- Armband not working on hiding mimics
- Chilling enchant reducing chill duration in rare cases
- Rare cases where lucky enchant wouldn’t trigger
- Runestones affecting terrain when thrown at a character
- Thrown weapons sticking to downed ghouls in some cases
- Camouflage glyph not working if hero uses ethereal chains to move into grass
- Sandals of nature incorrectly interacting with artifact charging
- Various specific errors with artifact charge boosting
- King’s crown not preserving armor hardening
Items pt.2:
- Brimstone glyph not benefiting from glyph power boosts past +50%
- Errors when leaving/entering blacksmith’s area while a boomerang was circling back
- Transfusion not benefiting from wand damage bonuses
- Dwarf King’s crown automatically IDing armor
- Armband allowing more than one steal in specific cases
- Swiftness glyph ignoring nearby enemies in specific cases
- Stone of fear applying to hero and allies
- Spike ability overriding elastic enchant in some cases
- Geyser traps and aqua brew not extinguishing flames
Heroes:
- Duelist’s swift equip not working during time freeze
- Monk’s flurry of blows not using projecting enchantment when empowered
- Various battlemage on-hit effects not showing as magical damage
- Empowered strike talent not working with blastwave
- Challenge ability incorrectly working on neutral mobs
- Seer shot talent not working in blacksmith quest area
Misc:
- Various minor visual and textual errors
- Various rare crash bugs
- Specific cases where unbreakable traps could spawn in halls in the caves
- Music not properly pausing in background on desktop in some cases
- Various rare errors when game launches in fullscreen
- ‘taste vengeance’ badge not being earnable in a run after unlocking it
Buffs:
Weapon Ability Buffs
- Lunge damage up
- Cleave damage up, is now instant if it kills, but no longer chains
- Heavy Blow damage up, non-surprise penalty changed to no bonus damage
- Sneak charge cost down to 1 from 2, invis duration now scales
- Combo Strike damage up, combo duration now resets on hit (like gladiator)
- Spike damage up
- Defensive Stance charge cost down to 1 from 2, duration now scales
- Harvest charge cost down to 1 from 2, bleed amount dealt is now constant
- Sword Dance charge cost down to 1 from 2, duration now scales, ACC boost up to 50%
- Block duration now scales, now keeps blocking until you attack
- Lash now deals bonus damage and is guaranteed to hit all targets
- Spin charge cost down to 1 from 2
- Runic Strike enchant boost now scales
- Charge Shot AOE up to 7x7 from 5x5, dart durability boost now scales
- Retribution is now instant if it kills
- Brawler’s Stance now deals bonus damage, reduces recharge speed instead of costing charge per hit
Alchemy Buffs
Firstly, many items have received simple energy cost reductions. Note that all energy costs are after accounting for catalyst removal
- Caustic Brew cost down to 1 from 2
- Blizzard Brew cost down to 8 from 11
- Shocking Brew cost down to 10 from 14
- Aqua Brew cost down to 8 from 11
- Elixir of Dragon’s Blood cost down to 10 from 14
- Telekinetic Grab cost down to 10 from 11
- Beacon of Returning cost down to 12 from 15
- Magical Infusion cost down to 12 from 13
- Recycle cost down to 12 from 17
Some alchemy produce has also received bigger buffs:
- Elixir of Toxic Essence cost down to 8 from 10, spreads gas quicker, and gives 5 turns of lingering gas immunity
- Elixir of Icy Touch cost down to 6 from 14 and now applies 3 chill each hit, up from 2
- Wild Energy now requires a regular scroll of recharging, instead of mystical energy
- Reclaim Trap cost up to 8 from 6, but output quantity increased to 5 from 4
- Alchemize has a new recipe, it is now much cheaper to make
- Summon Elemental cost down to 10 from 15 and buffing the spell now persists after use
Ghost and Blacksmith Enchantments
I’ve given a slight boost to the rewards of the Ghost quest and Blacksmith’s smith reward, aimed at making enchantments/glyphs more likely. this should hopefully make these rewards a bit more interesting more.
- Ghost reward enchant rate up to 20% from 10%
- Blacksmith smith reward enchant rate up to 30% from 0%
Nerfs:
Alchemy Nerfs
- Elixir of Might cost up to 16 from 14 (after account for catalyst removal)
- Phase Shift cost down to 10 from 13, but output quantity down to 6 from 8
What’s coming next?
- The next update to Shattered will likely be v2.5.0, which will be a fairly small update focused on following up v2.4.0’s changes and making some interface/QoL tweaks.
- v2.4.0 ended up being a pretty massive update balance-wise, with a new item category and sweeping changes to both the Duelist and alchemy. More fine-tuned adjustment will definitely be needed once the dust settles a bit, and so I expect that will be an important aspect of both v2.5.0 and v2.4.0’s patches. Ideally most of the followup changes will be buffs, but we’ll have to see how everything shapes up.
- Given that v2.5.0 won’t have a new content focus, I’d also like to take the chance to make some smaller interface-driven changes that players have been asking me for. I can’t guarantee what will be in v2.5.0 specifically yet, but frequent requests include better journal functionality (landmarks, catalogs, notes, etc.), a bestiary, and better support for controller users and keyboard users.
- The next major content addition I have planned is the Cleric, coming in v3.0.0. While I do think it’s a good idea to do a small v2.5.0 update first, I will start actively designing the cleric now behind the scenes, so keep your eyes peeled for info on that as well!
I expect v2.5.0 will have a shorter dev time than usual, what with it being more about smaller changes. Hopefully things will have shaped up enough for me to make a blog post about it and commit to a release date sometime in July. Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update!
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