Update 2.3 of Caverns and Dryads! "Fortune favors the bold"

Great news! I’ve been able to implement an update I had wanted to make for a long time.

I’ve called this update, 2.3, “Fortune Favors the Bold” because it is a combat update for Caverns and Dryads, my dark fantasy game.

And this update introduces two new combat actions, precisely for players who like to take risks.

I’ll explain each new feature below.

NEW ACTIONS: PARRY AND CHARGE

There are two new action buttons in combat. These are now the options: 

On the image above, on the left side, there are 4 buttons for the combat actions. From top to bottom and left to right they are: charge, parry, attack and defend. On the right part, as usual, the potions for life, mana, and below them escape and magic.

- Parry: defending yourself by closing distance with the enemy or deflecting their strike, in order to attack next turn in a deadlier way.

This means that in this turn you give up attacking. In this turn, your defense gains a bonus. 

On the next turn, you receive an attack bonus. The attack button will blink red on that next turn. If you press it, you are more likely to hit the enemy than with a normal direct attack. You can see it in the image below:

Parry is useful against a very powerful enemy if you don’t want to give up defense. It lets you attack less frequently but in a more lethal way.

- Charge: You throw yourself at the enemy without fear, attacking with reckless boldness.

In this turn, you do not defend yourself. This means the enemy will always hit you if they survive your attack.

The advantage you gain is double: a strong bonus to both attack and damage.

The entire charge action happens in this turn. 

Charge is an attack for desperate situations, or for delivering the finishing blow, or when you are confident in your superiority. 

- Defend: The defend button changes slightly. You give up attacking but receive a larger defense bonus.

This is useful to protect the heroes, for example, against a very dangerous monster that is hard to damage, perhaps while Sioul casts spells.

- Attack: this is the usual combat action, a simple attack balancing offense and defense. 

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE COMBAT LOG

Many people didn’t read the combat log because it provided little information and was confusing. There were inappropriate moments when it was cleared to make room for very long texts.

Here above you can see the combat log in the center, which shows who's got initiative (who attacks first), how powerful is the attack of Tamzyn. It shows that Tamzyn got a 42 with his attack, the opponent rolled 19, so she hits, dealing a damage of 13. Then the foe attacks and gets 28 against the defense of Tamzyn that gets a 23, so the foe hits and deals a damage of 10. The damage numbers also appear on the heroine and monster pics before they fade out.

So I’ve made several improvements:

- I’ve revised all texts to make them shorter and more informative.

- I unified the colors. Your actions are yellow. The enemy’s are gray. Fumbles and fatal errors are red. Warnings are violet. Initiative is green. This makes it harder to miss something important and easier to read.

- I added icons to the text to make it more attractive, visual, and explanatory.

- The texts show the rolls + stats of both the player and the enemy. Internally, Caverns and Dryads works through opposed rolls of stats + dice.

The values you see are the total sum. So now you see the opposed rolls of attack vs enemy defense, for example.

If you surpass their defenses, you see the damage roll + strength + weapon damage. 

This gives you an idea of your strength vs the enemy’s.

In the image above, Sioul casts a spell of fireball against the monster, which hits the foe with a damage of 58 (got a very good roll), and kills the monster. His actions are in yellow, and the monster's are in gray.

Monster stats will never be shown directly for several reasons. One is that this is what the Bestiary DLC is for, giving you all the data. Another is realism: the tension of not knowing everything, just like in a well‑run tabletop RPG session.

Additionally, damage values now appear floating with a soft fade‑out over the heroine or the enemy, both for weapons and for powers or spells. Weapon damage appears in red, and everything else in yellow.

You can see here above the attack of the monster, a plasma bolt. It hits Tamzyn with 8 damage points. Then she counterattacks and hits the monster. As her life is low, the life bar and the red potion glow in red.

USABILITY AND AESTHETIC IMPROVEMENTS

The red potion blinks red when life is low. The blue potion blinks blue when mana is low. This way they remind you of the situation so you can use potions or these buttons to exchange mana for life or vice versa.

The life and mana bars also blink in those same circumstances, reducing the chance of dying by carelessness.

The attack icon now shows the weapon you are holding. This way you don’t need to open the inventory to check it.

This attack icon also blinks orange‑red after a parry maneuver to remind you that if you press it now, you’ll have a stronger attack. 

In the weapons screen, the actual thumbnails of your current weapon and armor are shown instead of a generic image. See this image:

BUGFIXES

I fixed an issue that made monsters use the same frequency for special powers and special attacks. In reality, there is one frequency for special powers and another for special attacks.

I also fixed a bug that protected you from fire. It treated your normal armor as protection against fire. This no longer happens, so be careful with dragons and other fire creatures, as they are now much more dangerous.

WHAT I WILL DO NEXT

I’m not entirely sure. I will probably continue working on the procedural quests involving boss monsters. That means finishing the palaces and kings of the other cities. It also means a lot of illustration work, so it will take time.

It’s possible that in the meantime I’ll release several smaller updates with some improvements.

I also have two long chapters of the story left. Before implementing the new parts of the story, I need to support features like having a house. Houses are something very exciting that I hope to implement by then.

It’s also possible that among all this, toward the end of the year, you’ll see a piece or preview of Book I of my Caverns and Dryads story. Maybe a chapter as a teaser. I think it will be a novel fans can enjoy. There is still a lot to revise. And I write it by hand and revise it the same way, without AI and without an editor, so it takes me a long time. I won’t publish it until it’s perfect. 

I’m not like all those people who decided to write this year. I’ve been writing all my life. So I’m not in a hurry, and I know what to do. I don’t aim to sell it or be popular, and fame actually gives me a certain disdain. I aim to create and express, and for it to be something important and exciting for whoever reads it.

Thank you very much, adventurer, for diving into the world of Caverns and Dryads! You make my world alive.