i love the new enchants and curses, and im genuinely so excited for the visual updates, the game in its present state is nice and practical, but the planned changes will actually make the game look alot more like eye candy. hope i get to see it go live.

welp looks like i won't be able to use troll blacksmith room as a steakhouse anymore

I've been keeping and eye on these posts forever now, and its hard to believe that we're almost here! A few thoughts:

On the Quest: The tester area, the few times I've gotten to check it out, have been fantastic. I've always found the avoidance gameplay to be just as interesting, if not moreso, than the direct combat, and I'm sure anyone who's played FIMA (not to mention higher-challenge runs) sees the appear as well. That being said, I almost wonder if there could be some enemies that are completely unkillable and thus are more akin to a permanent hazard, sort of like the Crystal Guardian from the Crystal Caves Quest. Are there going to be normal any wandering mobs in the vault? That might be interesting if that interacted with Swarm Intelligence (although I feel that Swarm Intelligence might not generally work well with the different mob logic, although we'll have to see what effect the new balancing for that challenge has on the quest if enabled). Based on the way you were talking about the dwarf tokens, it feels almost a given that those are only going to be dropped by mobs that spawn on floor generation, and not afterwards, right?

The other thing I noticed was that you alluded to a "boss." I can't help but wonder at the implications there. For all the previous quests in the game, there were different versions, whether those be different minibosses, different subregions, or different goals entirely (old cave quest, for instance). I know that there is quite a bit of variety in the vault already from standard procgen, but I'm not sure if that alone would help prevent it from being less interesting than the Prison or Caves Quest, if the bosses and enemies are all the same, and I'm strongly of the opinion that each quest should be more involved and varied than the previous, and I think you are as well. I'm wondering what your plans are for addressing this? (As an aside, I always hoped that one day down the road, a challenge would exist that would incorporate all quest versions in a single run.)

On the Enchantments: I did have my reservations on these at first, just because I was well aware with your rationale for removing some of them, even if I didn't start playing until 1.0 myself. That being said, I do find your logic fairly compelling. I'm also aware that despite the power of blazing, some newer players don't know how to play around it terrain-wise, and sometimes even insist that it should be a curse as a result. I think that Vorpal and Venomous are more approachable for new players as a result. Eldritch (misspelled? as Eldtrich in the blog post but hopefully not the game) seems like a fun utility enchantment; Crystal I'm just sort of neutral on.

Pressurized is a cool enchantment, and reminds me of the time I died to an Aqua Brew. Will it deal any damage (a la Explosive) aside from taking knockback against a wall? Wondrous seems chaotic, and does make me wonder if it will make Cursed wand effects less interesting by comparison. Seems like a wondrous throwing hammer, for instance, will often be better than a cursed wand.

How will the transmutation cursed effect interact with thrown weapon stacks? When a melee weapon turns into another item type, that would work the same as a cursed wand transmutating currently does, but for a thrown weapon, does that affect the item that was just thrown or the stack in the inventory? For that matter though, I feel like the cursed wand version of that effect might make sense to just always transmute the wand into a wondrous weapon at this point.

On the Graphics: I'm not sure the item sprites are working for me, I'm sad to say. I know that there was some amount of pushback when you first announced you were looking into changing the art style of the mod a few years ago, and I don't see anything meaningfully different now. Based on the comments you made on the scrolls, I do think that the version that you showed in the graphic was outdated, but it's not something I anticipate liking once the final version gets revealed. The one improvement that I do see coming out of this is the fact that Blinding Darts will finally appear meaningfully different than untipped Darts. The similarities between those two sprites have always been confusing.

The tiles visuals, though, are a lot more promising. I think its cool that the different treasure rooms are finally going to have actually unique aesthetics to differentiate them, and it seems like the logical next step after all the work you did on the ordinary rooms. You were right about all the new room types and terrain features making the normal rooms more varied and less boring; now this does the same for loot rooms. Are there plans on making the Secret Alchemy room different than the normal one? right now that difference is down to the extra energy crystals and the location of the pot, and based on the teaser image the pot location changed, so I imagine there will be other differences?

Misc. Please Remove the Grim Reaper Badge.

Very welcome changes! Since you're doing sprite alterations now, I do want to point out something that's always bugged me about the seed and tipped dart sprites in the game. They're all basically identical apart from color. It was a bit annoying when I was initially learning the game, having to constantly tap on items to see what they were before using them because I couldn't tell which color did what, and to be honest, I still forget occasionally. Varying the shapes could make them easier to immediately distinguish, especially for folks who have trouble differentiating certain colors (and you could probably say the same for some mob variants). It seemed like you were doing this, at least for the tipped darts, in your original blog post about the sprite changes, and I feel like it should have been something that was kept. I suppose you could just add effect icons to them like you do for potions and scrolls, but that feels like a missed opportunity.

Talking about the scrolls, they look wonderful and, to be honest, I prefer the originally proposed designs for them. The altered designs just kind of have the symbols flatly superimposed onto a blank scroll sprite, while the old ones had them curve like they were actually on the scroll.

Also, I understand this isn't going to be in this specific update, but if it's still being planned, I do want to mention that the warrior's new design unfortunately seemed to tone down the big end-game "hero's armor" they're supposed to get. I like what was done with the other classes, but I wish the Warrior's old armor could still be kept while getting cleaned up.

As a last thing, I think it'd be cool if tiles like the stand tile in some book shelf rooms or all the new table tiles could be considered "elevated" and, if stood on top on top of, would give some advantages to ranged attacks and some disadvantages to melee attacks.

I find the new visuals really nice. The only thing i'm having trouble with is the blacksmith fire. In the images, it looks quite gritty (...?). Adding fire particles or lowering the contrast would help i think.

I was using these firetraps by the smith!

Bwawawawa

Solid update, thank you. The art is pretty sick. Keep up the strong work!

For the secret room layout overhauls, I feel they have become a bit eye cluttered. Same goes for the new sewers with the barrels btw, and prisons with cages. They are veeeery liberally spread and rarely shape gameplay substantially.

The new art looks amazing

I specially like the Troll quest area, I love blacksmithing so i know, everything looks like a proper forge now, the fire, the water, the tables, just perfect. I wonder if you are going to redesigned the Troll. He seems the proper proportions but I always found the anvil to not be noticeable, especially compared to the new tables and barrels. Maybe make him overall taller? It would be perfect if so

Either way, I'm glad we have a timeline for the next patch, i can't wait

Hello there! I am a causal but long-ish time player, and for once I decided to comment and give some feedback, if you'd have it. First off, I must say that I greatly enjoy Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It has been my long standing favorite mobile game, and I have been impressed by how much you have improved and added to the game over the years. Following that, based on the post, I am quite looking forward to the next update! For the most part, at least.

As most people are, I am excited for the vault quest and new enchantments and curses. I also quite like the look of the redesigns for the special and secret rooms, and feel that they give some more character to the dungeon without causing it to feel too cluttered since they are few and far between. However, also like most people here, I would be sad to to see the old sprites for potions, scrolls, stones, and seeds be replaced. I mean no discredit to the artists, the new sprites look just fine, but the old ones are a part of the identity of the game.

It may just be a sort of nostalgia, but thinking back to when I was younger and had first started playing, one of the core mechanics that I was interacting with the most each run was the scrolls and potions, collecting, identifying, and utilizing them with each new attempt. As things have been added more and more, the things that have stayed the same have been an anchor the game to what it is. I know it is only the textures, and of only a few specific sets of items, but I personally feel that those are one of the key identifiers of Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Of course, it is your game, and I'm sure we would get used to them if the new sprites were implemented. But, although the dungeon may change, it is the same player exploring it.

Thank you for reading, and I apologize if that was a bit much.
-Splotchy

yeah i seemed to have missed the part in the blog where you say you tweaked the designs, the original designs were much better, there was actual ''depth'' to it. i hope you atleast put them as an alternative setting perhaps