Greetings, mighty gladiators!

In today's update, the long awaited enchanting and forging systems have arrived in-game.

Any blueprints or runes you have found on your travels or bought from shops can now be used at the forge and the enchanter.

At the forge, blueprints can be used to strengthen both armour and weapons. You can use up to two blueprints per item. A spatha could become a 'Strong Spatha', and then a 'Strong Spatha of Kings', for example.

At the enchanters, you can etch runes upon your weapons to enhance them with things like fire damage, poison damage and so on.

A word of caution - if you find any of your existing runes / blueprints playing up ( crashing the game ), sell them at the shop and buy new ones. This *probably* won't happen for you but I did encounter it early on in testing, I think I put a workaround for it but let me know if it doesn't play nice.

There are also the usual bugfixes and balances, I hope you like this patch. Next week I'll be bringing some new champions into the game!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

V 0.5.6.A Patch Notes

--- NEW FEATURES ---
• Forging and Enchanting services are now available at the armourer and enchanter! Buy blueprints or runes ( or find them in your travels ) and take them to these shopkeepers to enhance your weapons and armour with powerful magic.

--- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Holy Smite damage reduced to 1.5 points per 1 alignment (down from 2)
• Fixed a bug where random enemy gladiators all generated stats from the same pool (str focused)
• Changed shield block power to scale with shield level ( so rare/epic versions of simple shields now have better shield block power')
• Reduced the essence cost of all skills in the Warfare tree by 20%
• Reduced debuff duration of Hex and Little Fat kid from 6 turns to 4
• Greatly increased damage done by Honoured Salute

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES ---
• Fixed a bug where enemy gladiators could use Holy / Unholy Smite no matter what
• Added slight delay while enemy walks to you after battle is over
• Fixed a bug where Holy Smite appeared in your 'use items' panel after use
• When the Relentless talent procs, you will now regain essence but not see the 'essence' icon appear as it can obscure how much damage you took.
• Fixed a bug where you could not use many skills while missing shield arm
• Fixed a bug where enemy gladiators could whirlwind with a bow

--- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES ---
• Improved NPC weapon selection, especially at high levels ( more likely to use two handers )
• Very long item name descriptions on the Vital Stats panel are now truncated with […] for legibility
• Fixed a bug where buying runes from Enchanter did not save the type of rune bought (could crash game)
• Changed SFX for thunder rolls during ambient storms
• Changed the Fight Selector's default greetings sound "Power up!"
• Fixed some text bugs on holy/unholy dialog
• Fixed missing translation on several buttons /text boxes
• Fixed a bug where StatText errors were thrown on XP Bars for some users
• Fixed a bug where Arcane skill options were temporarily unselectable
• Fixed a bug where Gunteria and Warmhaven music could not be heard
• Made rain sound loop smoother
• Reduced alignment shift from adventures dramatically ( never more than +20/-20 per adventure
• Moved Ak'Kash Steppes slightly north-west on map