Hello everyone, here is a big one for you horror lovers!

This update comes with many adjustments, balancing and new features to various party members.
The goal here is to balance them out - weaken the really overpowered stuff and strengthen the weaker characters, make them more interesting wherever we can. We want to have the roommates on a more even footing before we tweak the game to be overall harder in its second half. There are also some preliminary balance changes on some late game enemies, but nothing too complicated yet.


Warning, there are spoilers for secrets in the update notes!

New Content:

• Ernest now has a little friend with him. (this is in preparation for the next, bigger Ernest-related update.
  
• Added a new friend next door. I didnt realize until now that I forgot to put this guy in. whooooops.
  
• The funny fungus man makes it out alive now. You need to meet him before you kill the spore queen.
  
• New monster shows up in the taxidermy apartments' depths. Another guy who existed before but I forgot I didn't put in anywhere!
  

Balance Changes/Tweaks:

• Expanded the system that makes weapons less likely to break early: some weapons (especially rare or unique weapons, treasures from beating some bosses etc) now have a number of "safe hits" that make them very unlikely to break. (divides break chance by 10)
  
• Durability roll is now skipped entirely if break chance is too low. The threshold for this depends on difficulty level.
  
• Reduced the amount of money you need to spend at Eugenes' for him to expand his inventory.
  
• Increased the starting level of roomates Ernest, Morton, Hellen and Roaches
  
• Changed slingshots to be one-handed missile weapons.
  
• Increased max HP of Stretchface
  
• Increased max HP of Garbage worm
  
• Did some preliminary re-balancing to many mid to late game enemies and bosses. More to come in the next patch.
  
• Made the boiler beast much more dangerous.
  
• Enabled selling items with a few more traders.
  
• Made enemies in the taxidermy apartment much more dangerous.
  

Misc Tweaks:

• Slowed down the speed of the battle text log.
  
• Added warning to low level characters when entering the plant-infested apt
  
• Added warning when leaving behind earth disc after obtaining mars disc
  
• Toned down the bright flash when a battle encounter begins.
  

Balance Tweaks to roommates:

Changes to Joel

• Teething ability no longer goes away when taking damage.
  
• Joel's skills have been generally improved to deal more damage, hopefully making him more useful in the late game.
  
• Joel's Teeth Armor skill has been changed to Biting Armor - it makes him counterattack with Bite.
  

Changes to Leigh

• Made her Grinning Beast ability less dangerous to use, she is now out of control for only one turn instead of several turns.
  
• Once she is the Grinning Beast, she has access to a few monster-only abilities. This is not new, but the monster-only abilities were made easier to find in the battle menu; they were pushed down before so many people missed them.
  
• Leigh had various balance changes to her monster skills.
  
• When she becomes the grinning beast, she now properly loses access to her normal skills and ranged weapons.
  
• Leigh now should properly untransform at the end of battle.
  

changes to Dan

• Dan no longer resets his viewers at the end of battle, instead his viewers go down every hour. Rebalanced Dans skills for this. They may require further balancing.
  
• Dan's streaming skills have been streamlined, there were too many.
  
• Reduced Dan's access to elemental damage. His angry/offensive skills now often inflict negative statuses on himself.
  

Changes to Hellen

• Massacre skill costs more STM, and puts her in a new state, Fallow Will, that disables Massacre for the rest of the day until resting, lowers her attack , makes it very difficult to heal her, but also lowers her damage taken.
  
• Can remove Fallow Will early using the skill Salt The Earth, at the cost of 90% of her remaining HP
  
• When in Fallow Will mode, have access to 3 new skills that use up her remaining HP to either do more damage, give her HP to an ally, or turn her HP into Stamina.
  
• Fixed issue with Hellen's abilities being disabled on two-handed weapons.
  
• Hellen now puts back her mask at the end of battle.
  

Changes to Rat baby

• Now gains the skill Copy Dad. This makes the rat copy Sam's latest action at the end of the turn, including using items or special skills Sam has learned. The rat baby can also still perform actions on the same turn as they copy Sam.
  
• More stuff is coming for the rat baby later.
  

Changes to Roaches

• Roach swarm effect is now in 3 tiers, like bleeding, and each tier drains enemy HP and heals the Roaches
  
• Roaches now gain some new abilities that deal more damage to targets afflicted with roach swarm
  
• Final Roaches ability is a group heal that is stronger the more roach swarms are in effect in the battle
  

[*] Changes to Ernest

• Ernest has tamed a rat from floor 1, Colonel Squeakums, who randomly comes to assist in battle.
  
• Ernest can use cheese wedges to make his rat more aggressive for 4 turns.
  
• Ernest used to be a roadie and plays music. He has some songs he can play that give passive buffs to the party.
  
• More stuff is coming for Ernest in the next patch!
  

Asset Updates:

• Tweaked Benjamins' on-field sprite to be more obvious at a glance.
  
• Tweaked the dead sprites of Toothlings, Confusion, Stretchface
  
• Added dead sprite for Centifingers
  
• Added improved version of Centifingers monster sprite (reworked by Stephen Challener)
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed the masked shadow leaving behind a gift with an invalid image.
  
• Fixed multiple issues with true Frederics' item reward.
  
• Fixed issue with the flicker transition when switching between sprites.
  
• Fixed toxic fred's splitting form being skippable if you do enough damage on the first turn of battle.
  
• Fixed Joel devouring some monsters that are not meant to be devoured.
  
• Fixed the rat baby changing its sprite to some random monsters when it falls asleep.
  
• Fixed the boiler beast being repeatedly fightable on the first screen you encounter it.
  
• Fixed the flamethrower and acid sprayer not properly calculating their damage.
  
• Fixed many locations not having a proper encounter background set up, which could lead to strange glitches, like the title screen appearing as an encounter backdrop.
  
• Fixed that when roaches eat food youve left out, it makes your next cooked food rot immediately.
  
• Fixed monsters at the ground floor bus crash appearing into the wall before they pop out of the bus wreckage.
  
• Fixed the hand monster corpses appearing in multiple rooms when dead or when flashing after a player escape.
  
• Fixed that Mortons quick heal abilities could be used out of combat without using up items.
  
• Removed redundant background sound effect error messages.
  
• Fixed final score count at the end of the game being glitched on normal mode.
  
• Prevented player from accessing menu during endings and credits.
  
• Put back the dying exalted four boss animation to the ending scene.
  
• Fixed that the Xin-Amon ending had a white background applied to it.
  
• Fixed issue where sometimes your party members would appear during an ending
  
• Losing party members or kicking them out now retrieves their equipment before they leave.
  
• Some party members that leave permanently could be re-recruited before when that was not intended.
  
• Fixed a bug where you would attack Emmanuel if you chose to ignore him at your first encounter.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not intentionally attack Emmanuel using the (attack!) option.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not unlock the Mycelihumor achievement if you killed the laughing mold, and it didn't look dead after being slain.
  
• Fixed issue where dying and reviving regrew the players lost arm. (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Increased pixel sharpness and forced clean scaling ratio (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Fixed an issue where you could skip over the later phases of The Face Stealer if you did enough damage to its first form.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could skip over the later phases of Shutterbug if you did enough damage to his first form.
  
• Fixed issue where the basement guitar player would keep playing if you attack him, and would not die properly if killed.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could partially walk into the hellride before it wakes up.
  
• Moved the hellride away from the room transition if you squeezed past it and are attempting to go back without fighting it.
  
• Added door opening sounds to a few ground floor doors where it was missing.
  
• Tweaked rat baby crib collision.
  
• Fixed centifingers getting stuck in a wall if you run through the store too quickly on your first time through
  
• Fixed collisions on a cabinet in the landlords apartment.
  
• Fixed a dialogue box where Emmanuel's name is shown too early.
  
• Fixed Mutt's Fish and Chips dialogue incorrectly stating the price of special offer items go up by 50% at every purchase (the increase is 25%)
  
• Fixed some issues with certain enemies not being targetable with the mouse in combat.
  
• Fixed many monsters' death sprites being incorrect initially when they die.
  
• Fixed the stargazers' sounds continuing to play after its death.
  
• Fixed coffee distributor machine's layering on the ground floor.
  
• Fixed the stargazers' corpse moving between rooms after death.
  
• Fixed taxidermy apartment having its door open from one side and closed from the other
  
• Fixed not being able to attack Beryl
  
• Fixed Leigh's attacks being disabled if transformed into the grinning beast while having a weapon equipped that changes the attack skill (like the rat tail whip)
  
• Fixed Scared Freds' sprite is flipped after he dies.
  
• Fixed error messages appearing when background sounds overlap.
  
• Fixed the shrunken head not being removed from your inventory after being used.