Greetings Abalon Fans!

Thank you again so much for all wonderful feedback on the 2.70 Major Update to Abalon and Animal Gear DLC. Here's the 6th patch for this update with more fixes and changes you've requested.

I did receive a few more notes after I locked this build, so I might try and do one more patch before resuming work on the major update (and/or hold remaining changes to include with the major update instead).

News on Next Major Update

Abalon will be participating in back-to-back events: Roguelike Celebration and Scream Fest starting on October 21st and running through November 3rd.

I'm aiming to have our next major update (v2.80.0) released between these dates to coincide with these events. The focus of this major update will be adding Descent 20 which will feature an epic final boss fight, a major leaderboard upgrade, and several other important QoL requests.

v2.76.0 Release Notes

1. Fixed Bug where Vampire would not trigger his bite attack on backstabbed enemies when equipped with the Fire Sword. (Thanks m007kuzya)
   
2. Fixed Bug where two of the golden chests adjacent to an animal gear chest within a locked jail cell cannot be looted after looting the animal gear chest. (Thanks Peinan Cai and Kazbad)
   
3. Fixed Bug where an armored unit protected by a forcefield could be struck by a pierce unit (breaking the forcefield but dealing no damage) and then hit a second time by a non-pierce unit which would then pierce the armor. This occurred because the forcefield's damage prevention was not clearing the pierced flag set on the unit by the initial attack. (Thanks Avadhuta)
   
4. QoL: Unequipping an item that increases max health will not longer drop the unit's remaining life below 1. Max Life equipment differs from +0/+X effects in that filled heart containers are removed, while +0/+X removes empty heart containers first (if available) and only adjusts life remaining if it would exceed the unit's life attribute. The reason Max Life mechanic is different for equipment is to prevent the unintended effect of healing the unit by repeatedly equipping and unequipping the item. However, it felt bad to have characters accidentally defeated when removing an item, so that's why I made this change.
   
5. QoL: Unequipping an item that increases max health will no longer trigger a damage event. This ensures that unit's like Flesh Golem, Giggles, and Patchels do not trigger their body guard ability to absorb the life lost to the unequipped summoner.
   
6. Fixed Bug where Incubus Jacket and Tribal Harness were using a different implementation of the +X Max Life mechanic. All +X Max Life mechanics now behave consistently. Also wrapped the primary definition of +X Max Life into the 3 heart artifacts that increase max life (Arcane, Void and Celestial Hearts) so that they follow the same mechanics. This also fixes an issue where the +X Max Life description text wasn't appearing localized on some cards.
   
7. QoL: Fix the position of the room code in the mobile layout of Abalon Arena beta so it's not overlapping the playable area of the battle grid.
   
8. Potential Fix for game UI being cut off by black bars on select Android devices (such as the Samsung Galaxy S10, VivoY3 and Infinix X680B) while in portrait mode. If you have any of these devices or were experiencing an issue with UI being cut off, please let me know whether or not this updated corrected the issue via Menu -> Share Feedback. The problem is caused by inaccurate cut-out safe area (for the camera notch) being reported from device to the game and is remedied by a developer SDK update. It may still need another patch to fix it.
   
9. Fixed Bug where Chinese Traditional translation of the Heatwave encounter did not provide a miraculous clearing of the hostile weather option on roll of 20.
   
10. Fixed Bug where some items (such as the Wolf Skin Helmet) were generating duplicate copies when loading a save and/or selling items. This occurred due to the definition of how these cards were being stored as items or status effects. To fix this (and also reduce overall size of save data), I've changed all equipment to assume it's an item unless explicitly applied as a status. (Thanks Guest_130529)
    
11. QoL: Equipment functioning as a skin only (ex: Goblin Party Hat, Chronomancer Top Hat) are now designated as cannotBeRemoved and will no longer be removed from the unit skin when equipment is removed (i.e. from an enemy disarm ability), since these are meant as decoration only rather than functional gear. Additionally, any equipment with attribute cannotBeRemoved will not increment the numEquipment property of the unit.
    
12. Fixed Bug where Marauder Warlord (and any rally unit) could trigger their rally ability when a polymorphed unit of their rally type is defeated (due to it "switching back" prior to death) . (Thanks HiddenHearth)
    
13. Fixed Bug where Orb of Insight was displaying its description twice. (Thanks Guest_8084)
    
14. Fixed Bug where scrolling up and down within the run summary would yield different score results for the gold spent. The gold spent should always generate a score of 0. (Thanks Doberman)
    
15. Fixed Bug where Swipe was being flagged as removed when equipping a non-Swipe weapon to a humanoid unit but was still functioning. (Thanks Doberman) This was occurring because the unit could not fall back on the default melee action. To fix this, I now create an additional action for the base melee if the unit's melee ability is tagged as having an equipment context of rightHandWeapon. Then, if the unit is equipped with another weapon in their right hand, we skip using their default ability assigned action so that the base attack is used instead.
    
16. Fixed Bug where being knocked into the water with Power Overwhelming threw an exception because it was trying to locate the lightning emitter point from a unit no longer on the board. (Thanks otheofoolo, yokeee, kevinplus001, Guest_30379, Kazbad and DeathsAdvocate)
    
17. Fixed Bug where Celestial Shield spell was negating the falling into deep water effect, allowing the unit to remain standing on water instead of falling in. (Thanks Kazbad)
    
18. Fixed Bug where last enemy did not drop the lore contained on the map because the last unit defeated is their own unit summoned by a Dreamstealer stealing and casting their card. (Thanks 7u78)
    
19. Fixed Bug where game would fail to progress after defeating an enemy while the player was controlling one of the enemy units cast via Glyph of Nithsrot who had been polymorphed into a squirrel. (Thanks Guest_273898)
    
20. Fixed Bug where the player could become permanently transformed into a bear using the Savage Transform spell, which would also prevent the recruiting of guardians other than free-will and nature. (Thanks audarka)
    

Showing Your Support

I'm thrilled to share that we've hit my year-end goal of 500+ Steam reviews, thank you all so much for the wonderful feedback and support! Abalon can now qualify for an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating if it hits 95% positive. We're currently at 94%! Very, very close!

Please continue to share what you like about Abalon and where I can continue to improve and do better.

Also very important: If I've addressed your feedback, please do update your review as well!

Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and consideration :) ~Ross