Shattered Pixel Dungeon news & patch notes

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey folks! Sorry for the extended wait, I'm back with some news on v4.0 and a new ETA! Unfortunately v4.0 is still a little ways out, it's ended up as a much bigger update than expected! Currently I estimate that v4.0 will ready for beta sometime in July, hopefully earlier in the month. In this blog post I'm going to share a quick update on the vault quest, then go over some very exciting things also coming in v4.0. (Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update!)

Vault Quest Progress Update

Last time you heard from me in early March I had progressed the vault tester area to the point where I was finished updating it publicly. Basically everything about the quest has been expanded on since then, but a few highlights are: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/8c9442ff823a61f8bdbfb7ced1b8f802b1b9a102.gif

• The vault now has a variety of enemies, heavily based on existing enemies in the prison, caves, and city. This makes it easy to tell the threat level of each enemy at a glance. I would like to at least make sprite tweaks though so they're a bit more distinct before release.
• I've added more rooms to the vault since the tester area's last update, and also made several tweaks to level layout so that the vault is a little more interconnected. Finding a good room quantity and level shape is crucial so that the quest isn't overly long.
• The vault is now filled with much more purposefully placed loot, giving the player a nice progression of gear and consumables as they get stronger. I do plan to do more tuning here though, as there need to be a few more guardrails to prevent cases of bad luck.
• Dwarf Tokens are making a return as guaranteed loot from each vault enemy! I plan to make tokens an important part of vault progression, tieing into a powerup you'll receive in the back-half of the quest.
• Lastly, I've started proper concepting work on the quest's boss! I have a very promising idea here, but for now all I'll say is that the vault does a good job of ensuring players enter the boss with a variety of ways to deal damage, and I intend to make you use them!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/353bacc822c67ed7281ee1b879928cbeb404cc5e.gif

New Enchants

v4.0 is coming with more gameplay content than just the quest though, there are also going to be four new weapon enchants and two new curses! For these I've tried to emphasize two things: bringing back old enchantment effects that were previously removed in v0.7.2 (~7 years ago!), and trying out more enchantments that grant bonus damage with downsides that have to be managed (like blazing). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/f3c5e6abe12d3666c5dcfe589ea5542877a76a6b.gif

• Venomous is a returning common enchantment that now applies stronger stacking poison, but on a new three turn delay. The delay encourages 'hit and run' style tactics.
• Vorpal is a returning uncommon enchantment that now has a chance to replace all damage with non-stackable bleeding. This is more overall damage, but delay like venomous.
• Eldritch is a returning uncommon enchantment that now applies fear to enemies nearby that aren't your primary target. This helps manage multiple enemies at once.
• Crystal is a new rare enchantment that gives a big damage boost, but at the cost of your weapon having durability. Crystal weapons self-repair over time, but permanently break if you lean on them too much at once.
• Pressurized is a new curse that has a chance to create a geyser of water, pushing away both you and the enemy. The geyser's push direction is random if using a thrown weapon.
• Wondrous is a new curse that lets weapons tap into the same random cursed effects as wands. That's 32 different effects in total, and yes this will work with arcane resin!

New Pixel Art!!!

New enchantments are exciting of course, but there's another addition coming in v4.0 that lots of you have waited for. v4.0 will include the first wave of new art that I've been teasing since 2024! Since the start of 2026 I've managed to get the pixel art improvement project started back up thanks to the help of two artists. Firstly, an artist who previously worked on new item and character sprite art has returned! PumpkinVolt has done almost all of the item sprite improvements you've seen in blog posts from 2026 and 2024, and is returning now to continue that work! I'm planning to release this new item art in waves, with v4.0 focusing on standard consumable items: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/43acec45c4e5821e03622fa8d10269e887330632.png Compared to last time, there have already been various improvements to coloration and tweaks to outlines, but we do plan to make a few more adjustments to this art based on feedback before release. The symbols on the new scrolls were a common point of criticism, and so here's a WIP of a tweaked scroll design that better preserves the original symbols: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/f5a7c2e40af3854c6951f518bd126a65aeffdbab.png Next, Aleksandar Komitov, the game's splash artist, is now also working on new pixel art and in-game art direction! Currently Alek's primary focus is on environment art, with an emphasis on expanding the environmental art assets without changing the style. Just like with items, I intend to release this art in waves, here's what we're hoping to have ready for v4.0: We're not going too hard on universal art changes just yet, but one specific effect being added is a light shadowing where wall meets floor that enhances the depth of the game's 2.5D visuals. This subtle darkening is easy to apply to the whole dungeon once implemented: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/09fb5c6cc634c488ac5a32a0faa7539298642f17.gif As v4.0 is adding a new quest in the dwarven halls, there's also work being directed at quest areas (old on top, new on bottom): {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/6796959450a3ff2f92fdc207a240b6e3a07c275e.png ...and the dwarven halls themselves! In particular we're experimenting with a new alt floor tiled visual, and then eventually migrating carpets to be something that can appear in every region with different colorations. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/20ca550dabc9e8add53188562720a0879e4403f6.png There's also a whole bunch of blueprinting work done on the various special and secret rooms of the dungeon. A lot of this will take time to implement though, and so they probably aren't coming in v4.0. Here are a few highlights: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/6c2456b389d2009da470b1e1a0bfd8dc53ba605f.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/f3ed29c0dc95084858c90e0642bc3e098469fc16.png You can select each image to zoom, old on top, new on bottom. I'm very excited to get this project back going and finally make good on the almost 2 year old promise of new in-game art! Hopefully v4.0 is the first of several updates that will include new and refreshed art in the game. Feedback is a crucial part of the process as always, so please don't be afraid to let me know what you think!

Anything Else?

As always, there are lots of little things being fixed and tweaked too. One notable QoL tweak I'm making is a change to health bars. They will now visibly darken to show the total amount of incoming damage from damage over time effects. This is especially helpful for the returning venomous and vorpal enchantments. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/3a4ae7b4cb5636548260d4da30ca69949f2491e2.gif There's also a significant change being made to the swarm intelligence challenge. Currently the rules for when swarm triggers are pretty inconsistent and experienced players have found a bunch of ways to avoid triggering the challenge entirely. I've decided to remove those inconsistencies, but also change up the challenge so that the alert range starts low (just 2 tiles, instead of 8) and grows the longer you stay in enemy line of sight. Even breaking sight for a moment resets the alert range. This way tricky strategy is still rewarded, but as a proper part of the challenge instead of an unintended quirk. I do wish that v4.0 was ready sooner, but this is an exciting time for Shattered nonetheless. I expect when v4.0 does release it will have been worth the wait! If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter (recently migrated to a better provider!) - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey Rat Punchers! Here's one tiny final patch for v3.3, mainly just a little internal cleanup and fixes for a couple minor bugs. A quick note to macOS users: after updating to macOS 26.4 (which releases soon) You'll start seeing a warning about 'support for intel-based apps' when launching Shattered. No need to fret about this, I intend to update Shattered to fix this well in advance of the deadline, which is still over a year away. Probably this warning will be addressed after the initial release of the next major Shattered update. I'll hopefully be starting up on sharing more incremental updates about the next major update on social media soon, so take a look over on any of these channels if you'd like some updates before the new quest is ready for beta! - Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Mastodon - Bluesky Here's a full list of changes:

Misc. Changes

- Updated various internal code libraries - Updated translations

BugFixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3: - Various cases of area-effects that affect terrain not applying properly - Necromancers summoning skeletons into solid terrain in specific cases - Various rare crash bugs

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey folks! v3.3 released a little while ago now, and (after the holidays) I've been busy with expanding the tester area for the new quest in patches to v3.3. v3.3.7 is releasing today, and with that the tester area has progressed to a point where I think it's time for me to stop releasing patches and lock in on putting everything together into a complete quest. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png You can try out everything I mention here in the tester area in-game. You can get it right now on Steam, or on any of the other platforms Shattered is distributed on. In this blog post I'm going to go over all of the things I've added in v3.3 patches, and how I think they're going to fit together into a new quest!

Level Shape

Firstly, as I've already shown when v3.3 went to beta, the new quest area exists in a new type of level that uses a unique grid-based layout. This features new 9x9 rooms that all fit into the grid shape. Things have progressed a LOT since the initial tester area though, which was basically just rigidly coded: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ef79f252658ed5d0ada25cef4847c6aee39b093d.png The area now uses proper level generation logic and supports all the sorts of variance that regular dungeon levels can have. There's also a load of new rooms designed to use the new features and hazards of the quest area: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/acfe607a0b4aac09e41f2dba50b9e750a553a5e8.png There's still quite a lot more for me to implement before a proper beta, but all of the things I've added in the tester area give a pretty good idea of where things are going, so lets go over them in a little more detail.

New Enemy Behavior

Stealth is a major part of this quest, as the player starts out with no gear and has to work their way back up. Enemies will be present obviously, but the existing enemy AI doesn't really work in this case. The existing AI is designed around the player almost always wanting to fight, and so enemies are pretty sticky. That doesn't work so well here, so I've made two major changes just for enemies in the vault. The first major change is a new enemy AI state: investigating. Enemies will now investigate when they first notice you instead of immediately starting to hunt you. Investigating enemies still move toward you, but won't attack and will give up earlier than usual if they lose sight of you. In most cases this gives you 1-2 extra turns to duck behind a door or corner to shake an enemy before they start pursuing you more aggressively. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a97c8fb5ab2c5f7adb9535bdbef6d9f0a8798b02.gif Second, enemies that are nearby but behind walls can be 'heard' in the vault. This is represented as some VFX that play as enemies move in tiles outside of your FOV. This gives you a way to know enemy movement without exposing yourself to them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/3bf1fd2c81b8cc580d57fd8d0a9b3f2187d4db08.gif Lastly, enemy detection chances are different in the vault:

• Detection chance is a bit lower across the board.
• Sleeping enemies won't notice you at all outside of 3 tiles of distance. Silent steps talent still reduces this to 2 or 1 tiles.
• Enemies often patrol in pre-set locations while wandering, and won't notice you outside of 2 tiles behind their movement direction.

These changes reduce the chance of detection if you keep your distance, and also create much more opportunity to sneak around/behind enemies as long as you time your movement well. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5ccf23c598405e142490eb5da26763161e9e98d6.gif Currently every enemy in the tester area is just a simple rat, but the full quest will make use of a variety of enemies at different levels of strength. Some enemies will be able to be tackled early on, while others are best avoided until you've geared up.

Static Hazards

Of course a big vault needs some static hazards too! I've added three new hazards that test positioning skill: Firstly we have Scanning Sentries, which act a bit like a classic security camera. They sweep the environment using pre-programmed cone patterns. The number of cones and pattern locations are highly flexible. I've yet to decide what the penalty for being spotted will be, something like a lightning shock to the player, or an alert to nearby enemies, sounds likely. Here's one example that puts a sentry in the center of a room: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/25eeea84026e1306832c59de13923b02b2b26f04.gif Next we have Fire Vents, which ignite anything on their location based on a pre-programmed delay. They can only threaten one tiles each, but can be placed a lot more flexibly. Here's an example that covers a room and vents fire in an alternating pattern: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/87adcebe7886946c5c3115309f2c26f2023b8e1c.gif Lastly there are Laser Sentries, which act a bit like scanning sentries but with a single laser beam and potentially more variable cooldown. Like fire vents, these work a bit better for coating a room than scanning sentries, and can make a pretty complex hazard pattern with a bit of randomness: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/150fa3d46f225a5da4ea5c9ee160da30cab17067.gif Of course these hazards can work to just make regular traversal more tricky, but they're at their best when they're guarding something!

Treasure Rooms and Progression

While some loot will be found just laying around, single-entrance treasure rooms are going to be the primary way that the player finds better gear and progresses through the quest. In many ways this is a bit of a remix of how special rooms work in the normal dungeon, which is very much intentional. However, there needs to be some stratification to the types of treasure rooms and treasure room rewards. Some rooms are going to need to be solvable right away, where others are going to require certain gear (or at least be extremely difficult without that gear). Currently this is forming into three tiers: Tier 1 treasure rooms contain low tier loot and are mostly going to make use of hazards or prison-level enemies that can be avoided or defeated fairly easily. As an example, this treasure room looks intimidating with its waves of progressive fire traps, but can be solved purely through positioning. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/f240dca5dc570695486c454bfe26f459d4544659.gif Tier 2 treasure rooms will have mid tier loot and involve a couple caves-level enemies or hazards configured in a way that the player will need some better equipment and/or a consumable to overcome them. As an example, this room uses bookcases to hide its real loot, so you'll need an item capable of burning them down. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/665277aab71cca0357bc0ff718beb306fcfe227f.png Tier 3 treasure rooms will have the best loot, and so will be substantially more difficult. They'll likely have multiple city-level enemies, or hazards that require a specific high-value consumable to overcome. As an example, this room is filled with more than enough sentries to make looting impossible. You'll need a high-value item like a potion of invisibility or the Rogue's cloak of shadows. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/1621e14898ac995d24ec56baae9c61f54d6499df.gif My goal is for these tiers of treasure rooms and variance of enemy strength to create a nice gameplay flow through the quest. The player starts out by sneaking around, identifying the rooms they can solve, and steadily gets stronger and becomes able to confront the hazards they previously avoided. All of these things lead up to bigger enemy hazards, regaining unique hero items, and eventually a quest boss and quest reward! Expect more coverage of that in the next blog post in about two months, when the quest will hopefully be close to completion. (Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don’t hear from me by the ETA, it means I’m still busy with the update!) If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey folks, I've just released Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.3.6! This patch has a couple bugfixes and another significant expansion to the new quest tester area. There are now a variety of implemented hazards, although they aren't currently harmful and I still need to work on more rooms types for them to appear in. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/25eeea84026e1306832c59de13923b02b2b26f04.gif Here's a full list of changes:

Quest Tester Area Hazards

I've added three new static hazards to the quest tester area! There are now sentries which scan in a pattern, sentries that periodically fire lasers, and floor vents that periodically vent green flames. At the moment none of these hazards actually harm you, instead they just show '!!!' above your character if they hit you. I think these are enough hazards to cook with, so next I'm going to focus on more variety of room layouts and a better overall level layout (Currently room placement is mostly random). I expect there will be 1 or 2 more v3.3 patches and then I'll move onto making the new quest properly.

BugFixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3.5: - Gladiator's combo lasting much longer than intended after defeating an enemy - Rare enemies appearing much less frequently than intended - Some items in the quest tester area spawning as cursed

Hey folks, I've just patched Shattered Pixel Dungeon to v3.3.5! This is another relatively small patch, with most of the changes under the hood. One major addition has been made to the tester are for the upcoming quest though, there are now some enemies there! They mainly exist to test out new enemy AI logic that's meant to better facilitate stealth gameplay. Here's a full list of changes:

Quest Area Enemies

The quest tester area now has a tester hazard: Marsupial rats! The rats won't put up much of a fight of course, even with your gear removed, but you can use them to get an idea of how enemies will work in the vault. Enemy AI in the vault has been changed to be much more exploitable for stealth gameplay, including a new 'investigating' AI state and wandering enemies not being able to see very far behind themselves as they move. There's also a few new room types in the tester area, to demonstrate enemies in different situations. Expect to see more room layouts and tester hazards in future patches.

Misc. Changes

- The in-game randomize buttons now blink white as a reminder if the player is currently qualified for the randomized victory badge and outside of the very start of a run. - Slightly improved the visual for the existing 'alerted' and 'target lost' thought bubbles. - The Gnoll Geomancer is now willing to switch targets if its current target isn't within attacking range. - Necromancers will now move their skeleton (instead of trying and failing to push) if they attempt to summon on top of an immobile enemy.

BugFixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3: - Rare freeze bugs when descending to the vault tester area - Rare crash bugs Existed prior v3.3: - Exploit where Warrior could refund his shield cooldown by unequipping armor at the right time - Exploit where Gladiator could cancel fury partway through, refunding remaining combo - Distortion traps never spawning certain rare enemies - Grass generated from ember after a garden room burns not being burnable until after save/load (speed of grass recovery has been adjusted to prevent permanent fires) - Rare cases where liquid metal could have a quantity of 0 - Specific cases where helpful tipped darts could deal damage to allies

Hey folks! Another small patch today as I continue to make incremental improvements to the tester area for the new quest, plus fix a few bugs and make a few small other changes. I expect the next patch will feature some more significant new additions to the tester area, though it will still be pretty barebones until the next major update. Here's a full list of changes:

Quest Tester Area

I've made more improvements to level generation in the vault tester area. The layout is still pretty random, but the vault area now uses some basic new vault-specific rooms and the level builder it uses is now a lot more flexible. Now that these levelgen basics are down I'm going to start looking to add some more active details such as hazard testers (without any danger) and treasure rooms instead of spreading loot randomly.

Misc. Changes

- The game scene now attempts to persist more item windows (item selection primarily) over scene reset. This should sharply reduce cases where things like rotating your device cause scrolls to be lost. Note that items can still be lost if the game is terminated while item selection windows are open. - Improved clarity on Skeleton Key's curse text - Updated translations

BugFixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3: - Wand of regrowth appearing in vault tester area again - Vault tester area resetting charge count on Duelist's weapons - Trinkets briefly visually persisting after being energized Existed prior v3.3: - Slimes always taking damage in multiples of 8 when ascending - Rare cases where area effects that blocked terrain could persist forever for large enemies - Arcane Bomb particle fx persisting when they shouldn't in a bunch of specific cases - Thrown weapons not IDing properly in very specific cases

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Rat Punchers, Happy New Year! As always, I like to write a blog post at the start of the year to recap, summarize my current plans for Shattered, and share what my main priorities are for the coming year. This post starts with a year in review, and then lists the major changes and additions that I have planned for Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2026 and beyond! I've written one of these posts every year since 2019, you can take a look at the previous ones here: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.

2025 in Review

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/4c378b747ceb68307ebe63b699753932098d3bd1.png I released 4 updates and one big patch in 2025, which covered 2/6 of last year's items, started on one more, and covered about 1.5 major updates worth of things that that weren't on the 2025 list:

• v3.0 released in February, with Shattered's second new hero: The Cleric!
• v3.1 released in June, reworking the Warrior plus making various smaller improvements.
• v3.2 released in August, overhauling thrown weapons to work based on 'sets'.
• v3.2.4 released in September, modernizing how Shattered displays on phones.
• v3.3 released in November, with a WIP tester area for the new quest and smaller additions.

Last year I said I covered 70% (3.5/5) of what I wanted to. For this year, I think it's reasonable to say I covered 2.5/6 major updates worth of items that were on the 2025 list, plus 1.5 items that weren't on there initially, giving us 4/6 items, or 67%. 2025 also featured quite a few visual improvements by (as always) Aleksandar Komitov! His work this year resulted in a complete overhaul to the game's title graphics and substantial improvements to the older hero splash arts. It's quite heartening to me that most of the screenshots I shared a year and a half ago showing Shattered's visual progression have already become outdated. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ed384319f72726c53e8ea00f1bf0f250433fa698.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/cfb1552d1713ac74f1ce2e11ad93670ae0cccc49.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/1e6141b6f6bf035d875eb4e0d7f7e75af4b6b770.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/2c4bc29de751fee2128965210d48670ec4de3561.png New title and splash art. You can select each image to zoom, new on right, old on left. I know many of you might be asking about new pixel art as well (which I also talked about a year and a half ago), I'm going to cover that a bit later in this blog. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ecd4fb04a8c875f3b606c709d9f8f8661e9bcd93.png Lastly, on the business side of things Shattered has had another great year, passing 200k total units sold a couple of months ago! While there's likely no more huge growth in store for Shattered, it's very encouraging that it continues to do just a little bit better year over year.

Plans for 2026

Here are the major pieces of content I'm considering for Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2026, sorted roughly based on the order of priority. Just like with previous years it's unlikely that I'll manage all of this in 2026, and new things may also pop up and shift priorities around a bit.

City Quest

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/42e5d04af5f05764788427ab0c3c341d61273cd0.png It's taken longer than I would like (though I did expect it would), but my most immediate plan for 2026 is to implement and release a new quest for the city. This will include more incremental improvements to the tester area in v3.3 patches, and then a major update afterward with the quest itself!

New Items

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/169f94670c88ba7ec9cd146a992778c7cc52ad1a.png The recent item additions in v3.3.0 have made me realize that I've gone quite a long while without adding new items to the game in a bunch of categories. I don't expect any one update will focus on these new items entirely, but I would like to put a bit of an emphasis on adding a few new items to the game over the course of the year.

Hero Lore

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/add2eb34bf48f1fb8a3743ca9a6130d58e3ea020.png Now that all six of the game's heroes are released, there's finally opportunity to start fleshing out the game's characters and greater lore a bit! This lore could include backstories in hero select, journals written by the heroes from their perspectives, or documents that describe interactions and conversations between the heroes.

Better Armor Variety

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/449b62c0a65344e1c7b210a50ce338e80bba6434.png I'm quite happy with the changes I made to thrown weapons in v3.2, despite them not being in my initial 2025 plans. It's gotten me thinking about doing an overhaul to armors as a class of item as well. It would be really nice to have more variety of armor, even if adding more types doesn't actually change up gameplay much.

More Subclasses & Talents (pt.1)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/e3e11a457851e36df3f3aec6c6bb7a261b145919.png While I don't currently have plans for more heroes, I do think there's room to expand the current six further. In particular I have some early ideas for a 3rd subclass and more base class talents in tiers 1 to 3. This would almost certainely release over multiple updates, with each focusing on 1 or 2 heroes at a time.

What About New Pixel Art?

I want to make progress on better in-game pixel art this year as well! I'm not going to put it down as a 2026 goal though, as progress isn't just determined by me. This is something I initially gave a big teaser on about a year and a half ago, so I want to explain what's caused the slowdown. Back in mid 2024 I was expecting that progress on new art would continue at a steady pace and it could start appearing in updates in 2025. Unfortunately for various reasons both of the artists I was working with are no longer able to dedicate time to the project. Combine that with me dragging my feet on looking for new artists, and suddenly a bunch of time has passed with little progress. There was some new WIP art created in late 2025/early 2025 though, which you can see below. I've also got a promising lead for a new artist who should be able to start work in the coming month, and if that doesn't work out I plan to actively seek out new artists ASAP. While I can't make any guarantees, if you're a pixel artist and would like to express interest in doing commission work on Shattered Pixel Dungeon feel free to reach out. One way or another I really hope that improved pixel art can start to appear in the game in 2026! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a493b215aac8eb8dd4c2e9fae5d5b84b23854b45.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/53a60acdedf85b638a4e24cfefb959afa0dc671e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/b3998cb9231d8ec6d058d2e9bc9b32cc0db6cc2a.gif New WIP pixel art for seeds & potions, scrolls & misc items, and some enemies. You can select each image to zoom, new below and old above. These are still WIP, so feel free to send me feedback on any of these!

Longer Term Plans

And here are other major pieces of content I'd like to add to Shattered that I'm definitely not going to have time for in 2026. Think of these as possible longer term ideas or 'stretch goals'. The earlier an item is on this list the more clearly defined my idea is for it, and the more likely I am to do it in future years.

Halls Quest

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/68958f009ed6ebb1cfd928f8e285e0e1cf412772.png While I don't want to make the game overly long, a bit more gameplay at the tail end of the game is sorely needed to give players a bit more time with finished builds and time to make use of armor abilities. I have a few ideas for interesting quests that could test an endgame character.

3rd Caves Quest and Better Shops

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a7c33429a31d8712f05256646af55c043f55f288.png In previous posts like this I've talked about both a 3rd caves quest variant and also expansions to the game's shops. Neither of those ideas are gone, but I have de-prioritized them in favour of other content. In particular I still think new more specialized shops could work very well if executed properly.

Endless Mode

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/3187f50da9b9dd6c68eca32dc37b2d2799f43e99.png Some form of endless mode is a very common request. This partly ties in to the last region of the game being the shortest, but also there's just a desire for players to see how far they can get with strong character builds. I have a few loose ideas for how endless might work, but want to focus on other things like new quests first.

More Dungeon Variety

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/e62c3e434a54b8674497f4f7ad797ecec91e31af.png In earlier years I've talked about alternate dungeon paths. I've been reconsidering that, due to time commitment and because some alt path ideas have now been used elsewhere, like quest sub-floors. I still think new environments, enemies, etc. are a good idea, but I'm now considering them as new elements within the existing regions.

Something New?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/824b698a6f66075285f9f82694406d5bea6b219f.png Lastly, you might have noticed that the lists on these posts have been slowly shrinking over the years. Eventually everything here will be cleared, and it'll be time for something new! This is still a ways off though, and I have no current plans for what form this may take, it could be more ideas for Shattered, or something else entirely. …and those are my plans for 2026 and beyond! As always, thank you so much for sticking with me on this journey, and for all the support that has let me continue working on this game for over 11 years now! If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

(Update Jan 5th: I've just released v3.3.3 as a quick followup patch to fix one serious bug introduced in v3.3.2, sorry for the trouble!) Happy New Year Everyone, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.3.2! I've made some progress over the holidays on the new quest tester area. It's now entirely generated by the game's levelgen system, whereas the previous iteration was mostly hardcoded. There's also the usual bunch of patch fixes and other small tweaks. There's still quite a bit I plan to do in future v3.3 patches as well. Here's a full list of changes:

v3.3.3

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3.2: - Crashes caused by resurrection via unblessed ankh while holding a skeleton key."));

Quest Tester Area Progress

I've made some progress over the holidays on the new quest tester area. It's now entirely generated by the game's levelgen system, whereas the previous iteration was mostly hardcoded.

Misc. Changes

- Shocking Enchantment now has a flat 1/3 chance to trigger (instead of (lvl+1)/(lvl+4)), but damage ratio increased to 50% from 40%. Previously shocking effectively scaled based on weapon level twice, which made it disproportionally powerful at high levels and/or with arcana ring. - Glyph of Swiftness now requires a distance of 2 tiles from an enemy, up from 1. This effectively reverts its power to what is was prior to v3.3's change to speed boost logic. - The main target is now prioritized for sniper's mark if a force cube hits multiple enemies - Remains no longer appear in the vault tester level - Updated translations and translator credits

BugFixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3: - Monk energy starting at 10 instead of 0 after subclass is chosen - Game showing a warning about save file errors in more cases than it should - Rare cases where keys would be discarded when they shouldn't be - Landmark for distant well rooms not being cleared when the skeleton key is used to open their door - Various rare crash bugs - Various minor textual errors Existed prior v3.3: - Crash on launch on old iOS devices with A7 and A8 processors - Cases where the Steam version could hang on launch on Linux - Reclaim trap counting as being cast for talents even when it isn't consumed - Pickaxe being marked as seen before it is given to the player - Specific cases where ghost ally could regenerate past max HP

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.3.1! Nothing really exciting to note with this patch, it's just some bugfixes to various reports I've received since v3.3.0 launched about a week ago. I expect to be making larger patches in the future with improvements to the vault tester area, though the upcoming holidays may delay that a little bit. Here is a full list of changes:

BugFixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.3.1: - Skeleton key not triggering on-artifact effects - Tomahawk bleed damage not scaling with ring of sharpshooting - Vault tester area being enterable with a lost inventory, causing a softlock - Buffs from ring of might persisting outside of vault tester area - Wand of regrowth spawning and being usable to healing in quest tester area - Uncommon cases of cracked spyglass making thrown items hidden - Feint afterimage lasting longer than 1 turn in some cases - Various textual errors

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.3.0 has been released! You can get it right now on Steam, or on any of the other platforms Shattered is distributed on. Along with this update, Shattered is 45% off on Steam for the next week! You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

What's new in v3.3.0

v3.3 includes a tester area for the upcoming overhaul to the city quest, new items, and a bunch of smaller tweaks and improvements. I talked about this update in one previous blog post: - Coming Soon to Shattered: Imp Quest Tester Area! Here's the full changelog for v3.3.0! Click or tap on each entry to read more. Note that this changelog will become slightly outdated as patches are released and dev commentary is added, so check the changes screen in-game for the most up to date version. (The sections below contain expandable text boxes, you may need to view the post directly in order to see them properly.) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/07e941d42bd7e0b29d76f333823ee407beaffe6c.png New Content:

• Dev Commentary - Released December 4th, 2025 - 122 days after v3.2.0 (66 days after v3.2.5) Dev commentary will be added here in the future.
• Initial Imp Quest Tester Area While v3.3 does not include the new quest, it does include a tester area for it, similar to the tester area that existed before the new caves quest! This tester area can be accessed from a new room that spawns in the city, this room also contains the Imp who gives his old quest. Simply walk onto the large vault entrance to be offered a teleport into the new area. Currently the new area has fully functional storage of your current items, very basic level generation, and no quest hazards. I intend to continue iterating on and improving this tester area during the release of v3.3 and in followup patches. The quest itself isn't coming in a patch however.
• New Artifact and Trinket! Two new equipment items have been added to the game! The Skeleton Key is a new Artifact that grants the player new ways to control the dungeon environment! It can be used to open almost any lock in the dungeon, lock doors that weren't previously locked, and create temporary magical walls! The existing skeleton key item (dropped by Goo) has been renamed to 'worn key', The Cracked Spyglass is a new Trinket that's a sort of milder version of the Mimic's Tooth. It generates extra items in the dungeon, but those items are very hard to see, so keep your eyes peeled!
• Randomize Options It's now possible to play runs with randomly selected game options! This includes a random class and challenges (optionally) in hero select, and random talents, subclass, and armor ability within the game! This add some replayability for experienced players, or just another option for people who aren't sure about what they want. There's also a new badge to earn! To get it you need to win a run with a random hero, talents, subclass, and armor ability.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/e645466d8b42c94ad54a2a477ee03f5c3b63f64e.png Changes:

• Hostile Champions and Albino Rats I'm making a few early game tweaks, mainly meant at smoothing out difficulty spikes caused by hostile champions and floor 1 albino rats. In exchange though, the hostile champs challenge is getting a bit harsher later in the game. Hostile Champions: - The following enemies can no longer spawn as champions: Crabs on F3, Thieves on F4, Guards on F7, and Bats on F9. - Champion enemy spawn rate now scales up to 1/6 as dungeon depth increases, instead of always being 1/8. Albino Rats: - HP down to 12 from 15 - Bleed damage now always starts at 2-3 if the rat did damage, instead of being based on damage dealt. This means it no longer benefits excessively from bonus damage effects.
• Chalice of Blood Upgrading The Chalice of Blood has received significant changes to how its upgrade mechanics work. Previously the player was given no direct info about the damage it would deal when upgraded, which led to most people just looking the numbers up on the internet. The player is now told the damage the chalice will deal, but the chalice deals a range of ~83% to ~117% of its current static damage. The player is told the exact % chance this damage has of killing them before damage-reducing effects are considered. Additionally, damage from the chalice is now reduced by ALL damage-reducing effects, instead of just ones that apply to physical damage.
• ~20 Misc. Changes Highlights: - The 4th trinket option is no longer hidden until selected. - Damage-dealing Cleric spells (holy lance, most notably) now disqualify for the "No Weapons in His Presence" badge. - Hitting an enemy no longer resets Gladiator's combo time down to 5 if it was above 5 already. - Hero movespeed is now calculated based on the terrain the hero is moving toward, not moving from. Levels: - Slightly tweaked gold generation in the caves quest. The player now always must find 1/2 secret rooms to reach 40 gold. This eliminates cases where the player had to find 1/1 or 2/2 secret rooms, which could be excessively frustrating. - Gardens and magic well rooms are now locked and require an iron key. - Large or giant sewer pipe rooms with only two doors now lay themselves out with a 3rd phantom door to ensure they aren't overly tiny. Characters: - Tengu now has a one-turn delay before he starts attacking - Warrior's shielding buff now has a dedicated icon and description if cooldown is negative - DM-200s and Golems are now more willing to swap targets if they can't reach their current one - Characters spawned due to an action occuring on a partial turn now have their time moved forward to the next whole turn Items: - Added vfx to movement-speed influencing glyphs to show when they are active - Heavy Crossbow now more directly shows the damage it grants to darts - Elixir of Honeyed Healing recipe cost down to 2 from 4, energy value down to 8 from 12 Misc: - Removed support for runs in progress from prior to v2.5.4 (Oct. 2024) - Added a warning when the player attempts to energize their trinket - Adjusted ascension challenge text to make it more clear whether the player has killed any enemies so far - Updated various internal code libraries - Shattered's Windows version now requires Windows 10, up from 7 - Sharing gameplay data on iOS now requires iOS 15+, up from 12+
• ~20 Bugfixes Fixed the following bugs: Highlights: - Freezes caused by enemies dying to DOT effects while thrown weapons were attached to them - Exploits that could result in certain Imp shop items being free - Rare cases where thrown weapons would not disintegrate when they should Characters: - Cleric's holy ward not applying to damage from bone explosions or Chalice of Blood - Characters being able to wander into the entryway of toxic gas rooms - Monk not gaining energy back if she kills with an ability while at full energy - Mimics being susceptible to surprise attacks after they surprise the hero - DM-200s and Golems not switching from targets they can't reach - DM-300 still sometimes using abilities right out of supercharge - DM-300's gas shot dealing damage instantly in specific situations - Demon Spawners not being recorded as alive in very specific cases Items: - Transmuting tipped darts destroying the original dart stack - Unstable Spellbook not triggering Siren's Song effect properly if the hero is also under time freeze - Charge count on Duelist's weapons being always set to 2 in rankings - Spirit Form not properly working with ring of force Misc.: - Compass pointing to exit staying visible if exit becomes hidden - Very rare cases where doors would not properly hide and then reveal in the tutorial - Extremely rare cases where the game could hang while generating the wandmaker's quest - Specific cases where Goo's pump up warning vfx could be in incorrect positions - Very rare cases where tunnel rooms could generate tiny tunnels to nowhere - Various minor errors with multi-touch and scrolling panes - Various cases where translations did not fit in the UI and could be shrunken or repositioned - Various minor visual and textual errors

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/cdb15713ec44a424fc4119b8f5a3b93aa9c0a0a6.png Buffs:

• Thrown Weapon Talents A lot more data has come in after v3.2 increased thrown weapon usage, and there's room to buff up some of the changed talents after that update: - Projectile Momentum bonus damage nerf reverted, damage bonus up to 15/30/45% at +1/2/3, from 10/20/30% at +1/2/3 - Durable Projectiles nerf reverted, bonus durability up to +50%/+75% at +1/+2, from +33%/+50% at +1/+2 - Point Blank Shot Accuracy boost up to +25/50/75% at +1/2/3, from +20/40/60% at +1/2/3
• Thrown Weapon Buffs Thrown weapons are mostly in a pretty good place balance-wise since the patches to v3.2, but I'm making two targeted buffs regardless: - Telekinetic Grab is now cast instantly if the only items it picks up can be instantly collected (i.e. throwing clubs and throwing hammers) - Tomahawk bleed now has its own damage range, instead of being directly tied to damage dealt. Bleed amount increased by ~20% on average.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/30b2e35151d96ed299461bf250d812cb84ad910c.png Nerfs:

• Bolas and Boomerangs There are also a few targeted nerfs to specific thrown weapons: Bolas continue to do really well despite their nerfs in v3.2. Clearly the cripple effect they have is almost worth it on its own, so I'm scaling back the damage further: - Bolas base damage down to 4-9 from 6-9, damage scaling down to 0-2 from 1-2. Boomerangs also continue to do extremely well, especially for the Huntress. I'm holding off on larger changes here for now, but in general it seems like the circle back effect is so strong because of how dependant thrown weapons can be on the telekinetic grab spell. - Boomerang circle back delay increased to 5 turns from 4.

What's Coming Next?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/2db406b00ddcaf3b119158fbf94c4b96cea60c78.png

• Overview and ETA The next major Shattered update will be v3.4 or v4.0 (I haven't decided on a version number yet) and will, finally, feature an overhaul to the Ambitious Imp quest in the metropolis! While work has started on the new quest, I do still expect this update to take some time. You'll hear from me in patches to v3.3, and early in the new year with my usual year in review blog post. I expect I'll be able to give a more solid eta in one of those. Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don’t hear from me by the ETA, it means I’m still busy with the update!
• Expanding Tester Area in Patches Just like with v3.2, I expect that v3.3 is going to have a longer than usual patch cycle. I've purposefully designed the new quest tester area such that it can be iterated on and expanded in patches to v3.3. This lets me make relatively quick experiments relating to the layout and some of the hazards in the new quest area. I don't think that the tester area will end up looking complete in v3.3 patches, but it's going to get a whole lost closer than it is currently.
• Imp Quest Overhaul After v3.3 patches are done and the tester area is getting closer to finished, It'll be time to step back, take a bit longer, and eventually release the overhauled imp quest as primary content in the next update! As mentioned before, the new quest will have you infiltrate a dwarven vault full of danger and treasure! It's going to be a new kind of challenge, as you won't be able to take your existing items with you, but I expect the reward will be well worth it!
• Other Changes I expect the next update to be fairly light on smaller changes, as I want the focus to be on the new quest. There will surely be the usual amount of smaller tweaks and bug fixes though, and in particular I expect there will be at least a little balancing to follow up on the new items and item changes in v3.3.

If you'd like more frequent incremental updates, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Dungeoneers, it's been a couple of months since the last patch for v3.2, so it's time for an update! Previously my plan was to release the new city quest in a single large update, almost certainly in 2026, but I've decided to change my tactic on that in favor of a more incremental release. That does mean that v3.3 is going to be a much smaller update, but also means that it's ready for beta right now! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png The beta for Shattered v3.3.0 is live right now! To access it on Steam, go to your game library, right click on Shattered and select 'properties' then go to the 'betas' tab and select the beta from the dropdown list. In this blog post I'm going to go over the reasoning for this change, and what's coming in the now-smaller v3.3 update.

Why Shrink v3.3?

There are three major reasons why I've decided to break the new quest into multiple updates: Firstly, a particularly nasty bug in v3.2.5 surfaced shortly after I moved onto development for v3.3.0. The bug only affects certain users, and causes the game to hard-freeze if characters die while a projectile is attached to them. This flew under the radar initially, but for a small % of users it happens every time and is pretty game-ruining. I would really rather not leave this unfixed for even more time. Secondly, and this won't come as a surprise to long-time readers, I have regretted trying to release huge updates all at once literally every time I have done it. Releasing updates in a more incremental fashion (when it's possible to do so) has always been the correct choice previously and this time is no exception. It doesn't substantially reduce my development speed, gives me time to course-correct based on feedback, and is honestly just a lot less stressful. Lastly, a lot of the work on the new quest has been concepting that hasn't turned into actual game content yet. While doing this concepting I have also been doing my usual rounds of smaller content tweaks and additions to the game, and it seems a waste to keep them locked behind finishing the city quest when they have nothing to do with it.

City Quest Beginnings

Okay, so then if the full quest isn't coming, what quest content is coming in v3.3? v3.3 will contain a sort of 'tester area' for the upcoming new quest, just like with the (https://shatteredpixel.com/blog/coming-soon-to-shattered-subfloors-and-digging.html). This includes a new dedicated room for the Imp to appear in, where the new quest will start: The Imp is standing aside the forcibly-opened entrance to a massive dwarven vault. eventually he'll have you go down there for the quest, but for the moment he'll give you the same quest as in v3.2 and before. In addition to completing that quest as normal, you can walk onto the vault door to be teleported down into the new tester area below... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ef79f252658ed5d0ada25cef4847c6aee39b093d.png Eventually this area will be filled with all the hazards and loot you might expect from a quest, but for the moment things are pretty barren and it's mostly just a demonstration of how I'm planning for these levels to be structured. You'll note that this quest uses a very grid-like level structure, with all rooms of a set size. It would get a bit repetitive if regular dungeon floors did this all the time, but it works perfectly for one floor for a quest. Players are free to walk around and explore this empty space as much as they like, before returning to the previous floor. Part of this tester area is also an implementation of storing and retrieving the player's inventory. You'll have an entire separate inventory in the quest area, which is scrapped and swapped back to your old inventory (fully intact of course) once you choose to leave. Feel free to play around with the items in the tester area, but you can't take them back out ;).

Other Stuff

As I mentioned further up, v3.3 is also releasing now as I've got a decent bit of side content finished. Here are the highlights: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ca05a01342d7ea9b65bb8ad0cced0b6a657f0c1f.png v3.3.0 is releasing with Shattered's first new artifact in over a decade! The Skeleton Key grants the player new ways to control the dungeon environment. It can be used to open almost any lock in the dungeon, lock doors that weren't previously locked, and create temporary magical walls! There are a lot of cretive ways to make use of this, and it opens up entirely new interactions with all the dungeon's various doorways. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/dc0ef9f0d141d5524795b3a3b6afe8760578a611.gif There's also a new trinket coming in v3.3.0. The Cracked Spyglass is sort of a milder version of the Mimic's Tooth. It generates extra items in the dungeon, but those items are very hard to see, so keep your eyes peeled! The GIF below has three different environments with 2 hidden items in each, can you see them all? (the sewer one is especially tricky) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ddc8ba0403ea218572ef9464ac7a52da49429034.gif Shattered now has options for picking random progression options as well! You can select a random hero, challenges (optionally), talents, subclass, and armor ability. I expect this to both help people who've got a bit of analysis paralysis, and offer a new gameplay option for experienced players who want to mix things up. There's even a new badge for winning a purely random run! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/856022180224a00369497b6010fdd9377fd150dc.png Lastly, as always, this update includes a bunch of smaller fixes and improvements. This time around there's an emphasis on adjusting various little points of annoyance that have been reported over time. This includes things like secrets in the caves being a bit too hard in some cases, the Chalice having an upgrade mechanic that almost demands the player look up numbers, and difficulty spikes on early floors caused by albino rats or hostile champions. v3.3.0 is already content-complete so I expect this beta to be very short, v3.3.0 should release fully in very early December! If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development (such as announcements for every patch release), you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.2.5! v3.2.5 contains a couple more minor interface improvements, and a bunch of smaller fixes for various things reported since v3.2.0's release last month. This should hopefully be the final patch for v3.2 as I move on to early work on the next update! Here is a full list of changes:

Interface Changes

Two additions have been made to the game's UI: - The Boss health bar is now larger on full size UI, taking advantage of the bigger space. - The main menu now has a button to hide the interface, letting players look at the new background. Further tweaks have been made to the game's UI: - Health bars now display shielding in addition to HP, instead of on top of it. - The Hero status pane can now extend to the right to avoid cutouts on the top-left of the display, if there is room to do so. - Improved how the hero buff bar handles large cutouts like the dynamic island - Further increased the permissiveness of what cutouts the game tries to render around - Brightened the background of the game version indicator to make it look less like an empty health bar. - Fixed cases where Shattered would attempt to draw into cutouts when they weren't properly reported by the device.

Misc. Changes

- Updated code libraries used to build Shattered's macOS distribution. This should fix the game taking unreasonably long to launch on some newer macs, but also means Shattered now requires at least macOS 10.12 Sierra, up from 10.10 Yosemite. - DM-300's rockfall attack now deals 6-12 damage (10-20 with badder bosses). This is for consistency with the rockfall attack done by the gnoll geomancer, and to prevent specific exploits where DM-300 couldn't damage hiding inorganic allies. - Levelling up the dried rose while the ghost hero is summoned now heals it for the same amount that the upgrade increases max HP.

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.2.X: - Thrown weapon merging prioritizing properties on weapons already stuck to enemies, instead of incoming ones - Thrown weapons not being properly set to ID-ready by wells of awareness when hero has the shard of oblivion - Rats attacking the hero when they should be neutral in specific cases - Picking up throwing clubs and hammers taking time if done during time freeze - Various minor visual/textual errors - Various rare crash errors Existed Prior to v3.2.0: - Specific cases where bits of hidden walls could be seen through the fog of war - Specific errors with inter-floor teleports - DM-201s retaliating to corruption dmg - Crossbow's charged shot melee not triggering in some cases - Tab cycling not working correctly with inventory window - Golden bees not preferring potential targets affected by aggression debuff - Aggression debuff effect persisting on downed ghouls once they revive - Radiance stunning enemies are they are killed by it triggering illuminate - Prison guards being able to pull large characters into enclosed spaces - Various minor visual/textual errors

Hey Dungeoneers, as promised here's v3.2.4! This is hopefully the last patch with major technical improvements following v3.2, but it's a doozy. In addition to more mobile improvements, there's also a just recently finished overhaul to the title screen background! Note that both of the big new things in this update are likely to have a few quirks. If something seems out of place please let me know! I do expect to do one or two more patches after v3.2.4 to fix any minor issues that crop up. Here is a full list of changes:

New Title Screen Background!

Shattered Pixel Dungeon has a new title screen background, with art by Aleksandar Komitov! This new background is meant to both extend the classis archs, and tie the title screens more directly to the region splash arts! It features randomly selected floating fully rendered chunks of dungeon in front of an arch back-layer. Currently the background most strongly ties into the sewers region, but we have plans to add more variants in the future, one for each dungeon region!

Mobile Status Bar and True Fullscreen!

Shattered now renders in true fullscreen on most mobile devices! The status bar at the top of the in-game UI has been modified to work around small and medium sized hole punches and rounded corners on modern displays! This includes the dynamic island on modern iPhones. Thanks to these adjustments it's now possible for the UI to move up and for the game to display in true fullscreen during gameplay! Devices with larger cutouts like full-sized notches will unfortunately still have a dark bar on the top, as there isn't room for the UI. This also comes with a few other benefits for all mobile players. The XP bar has been moved and is now much more visible, and the hero buff bar now supports two rows, rather than compressing as heavily when there are many buffs at once.

v3.2.4 Beta Tweaks

During v3.2.4's short beta I got a lot of good feedback about the new UI, and have made the following tweaks to address feedback before full release: - The HP bar can now shrink and/or reposition slightly if it would otherwise be cut off by a display cutout. The HP bar should shrink by about 20% at most. - Adjusted buff bar layout logic to reduce cases of top row getting slightly cut off by display cutouts on Android. - The menu pane on the right will now move to the left if there is room to do so and it would otherwise be cut off by a display cutout. - Slightly increased the permissiveness for what cutouts the game will try to render into. This should let the game render in true fullscreen on some devices with hole punches that it couldn't previously. - Improved how buff bar layout handles iOS dynamic island at smaller scale values. - Renamed the 'fullscreen' setting to 'hide navigation bar' or 'hide gesture bar' on mobile.

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Dungeoneers, I’m still releasing patches for v3.2, and as a rare surprise, this one’s big enough to get a little blog post! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png The beta for Shattered v3.2.4 is live right now! To access it on Steam, go to your game library, right click on Shattered and select 'properties' then go to the 'betas' tab and select the beta from the dropdown list. In this blog post I'm going to go over what I've been doing in v3.2's patches, and what's coming in v3.2.4 in particular!

New Title Background Art!

Shattered has gotten some new title graphics recently, but that isn't the only thing Aleks and I have been working on. v3.2.4 will include a new background for the title screen as well! The new title screen makes use of several layers of fully rendered chunks of dungeon, floating in front of a classic arch layer (also now fully rendered). It's meant to both extend the classis archs, and tie the title screens more directly to the region splash arts. This first release has objects that relate mostly to the sewers, but we have plans for new object sets for each of the other regions too! This new title background will go everywhere the current archs go, and should react well to various screen sizes, from mobile portrait to ultrawide desktop displays. It has a lot of moving parts (both literally and in terms of code), and so I expect I'll be making little tweaks and refinements to it after launch. Let me know what you think!

New Title Background Art!

I'm modernizing various aspects of Shattered on mobile phones (now that I've dropped support for Android 4.0-4.4), and so I've been changing up how Shattered handles display cutouts (notches, hole punches, etc.) to let users play the game in true fullscreen! Currently the game just sticks black bars at the top, and the in-game UI looks like this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ecd156a117850b520399b2183380e1f85c3e14b9.png For most of the game's interfaces this is fairly easy, just keep the title lower and extend the background to the top. The in-game UI doesn't really have a background though. If I let the UI render up into display cutouts, it sorta works in some cases, but falls apart with larger cutouts like the iphone dynamic island: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/34d0c13a07b1548fbaab523a78d8b1ec0ab2c809.png There isn't room to make this work on displays with larger notches (they'll still have a black bar, sorry!), but most modern hole punches leave a decent bit of room above and around, which has led me to this changed up UI for mobile users: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/88f9211fd735b041753a6d702678b1a1127040db.png A few elements have been moved around here:

• The XP bar has been moved to under the hero portrait, which both gives it a bit more screen space and lets the entire UI move a couple of pixels up.
• The version info has been moved to the top and the menu buttons brought down a bit, this prevents them from being cut off on rounded display corners.
• The boss HP bar and hero level have moved out of the way a bit, which gives the buff bar enough space to exist on two rows. It now dynamically skips spots that are obscured behind display cutouts.

This now lets Shattered render the UI all the way to the top on the majority of mobile devices! Here's how that looks with cutouts of varying size: (Galaxy S24, Pixel 9, and iPhone 16) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/8bd57b293c11f52b526c4faf8645d193781a80f8.png This leads to a nice big fullscreen display for the majority of mobile phones! In lots of cases, with a black backdrop, the hole punch is hardly noticeable, even big ones like the dynamic island. Here's a typical earlygame scene on an iPhone 16 Plus: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/23e4ee3b86a897dbd0d7421dd4544e1d07883b32.png I expect this change will take some getting used to, given that the majority of users have been used to a black bar for years. There are also literally hundreds of different phones with slightly varying cutout sizes, so I'm sure there will be a few hiccups here for some users as well. If you run into issues or otherwise have feedback on this change then please let me know! Update (September 15th): Hey folks, v3.2.4 is now releasing publicly, and I've made one significant change in response to feedback. Users had a very strong preference for no part of the UI touching cutouts at all, even just small segments of the health bar. Based on that, I've made some adjustments to the changes mentioned above, the most significant of which is to the health bar. The health bar can now shrink or move slightly to the left to avoid display cutouts. Here's how that looks, on a Galaxy S24: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/77e52efcd3d630adb640cc4ca3b226fa35dee914.png There is no new text to be translated in v3.2.4 and the changes are pretty specific, so I expect the beta is going to be short, probably just a day or two. I do expect to do one or two more patches after v3.2.4 to fix any minor issues that crop up. Once all that's done I'll finally start moving on to v3.3 and a new city quest! If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development (such as announcements for every patch release), you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.2.3, with more tech improvements and modernizations for mobile users! This patch follows up on the previous one with some bug fixes, responses to feedback, and support for true edge-to-edge fullscreen on most game interfaces! I expect to be releasing one more major patch for v3.2 with further improvements, plus whatever else is needed for handling tech fixes. There might be a little visual improvement coming in that patch that everyone can appreciate as well.. Here is a full list of changes:

Mobile Layout Changes

- Shattered now renders in true edge-to-edge fullscreen on Android 9+ and iOS devices, with transparent navigation bars and rendering into display cutout regions! - All in-game interfaces have been adjusted to better handle true mobile fullscreen, including better insets on various UI elements at display corners. - Currently the in-game screen makes use of a solid dark bar at the top to handle display cutouts. This is temporary and that UI will be made true fullscreen soon for people with smaller display cutouts (e.g. hole punches). - Re-added some orientation control on Android in the form of a 'force landscape' setting. This setting may need to be removed in future Android versions. - Re-enabled 'fullscreen' setting on iOS (i.e. it can be turned off again), which now lightly raises UI elements to help prevent gesture mistaps.

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.2.2: - Windowed mode on desktop always defaulting to 1920x1080, instead of last window size - Various rare Android crashes caused by internal library updates - Fullscreen being incorrectly forced off on some older Android devices.

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.2.2! This is the first of those 'technical improvements' patches I mentioned previously. Several changes have been made to modernize some aspects of Shattered Pixel Dungeon on Android, as well as a few smaller changes on iOS and internal changes on other platforms. One more change that I'm delaying for another patch is adjustments to screen layout logic to better support hole punches and small notches. No promises, but I'd like to let devices with smaller cutouts (like hole punches) play the game in true fullscreen. This may also extend to iOS users and the compact dynamic island. Here is a full list of changes: Misc. Changes Android Changes: - Removed landscape/portrait setting, game now uses system orientation instead. This is more consistent with the iOS version, and will be required in the future by Google anyway. - 'Fullscreen' (hiding the nav bar or gesture bar) now defaults to on, and is forced on if no nav or gesture bar is present. - Shattered Pixel Dungeon now requires Android 5.0+, up from 4.0+. - Fully removed Power Saver setting, which was already hidden for Android 4.4+ devices anyway. - Sharing Gameplay Data now requires Android 6.0+, up from 4.1+. - Updated various Google Play libraries. Other Changes: - 'Fullscreen' (drawing over the home indicator) is now always on for iOS users, as iOS 26 is about to always auto-hide the home indicator anyway. - Updated various internal code libraries. - Desktop JAR build now requires Java 11+, up from 8+. - Slightly adjusted the visuals at the end of the prison region. Bugfixes Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.2.1: - Text resolution on mac retina displays being reduced to 0.25x from 0.5x instead of increased to 1x (sorry!) - Thrown clubs and hammers giving hero extra turns in rare cases - Rare crash bugs Caused by v3.2.0: - Potential exploits relating to explosive curse and thrown weapons - Liquid metal stating upgrades increase cost by 33% when it is actually 35% - Hero rarely dodging while affected by stone glyph. - Minor textual errors Existed prior to v3.2.0: - Upgrade window not accounting for metamorphed runic transference talent - Keyboard on iOS not showing return key on multiline text windows - UI layout issues with long custom seeds - On-equip ID talents not setting items to be ready to be IDed by Oblivion Shard - 'Taking the Mick' badge not unlocking if the final boss was killed via explosive curse - Shield of Light not applying to skeleton bone explosion - Paralysis resist not functioning correctly over multiple applications of paralysis - Transmogrified statues not always clearing their journal landmark entry on death

Hey Dungeoneers, here's the first patch for v3.2! This patch focuses on some bug fixes and balance improvements following the release of v3.2.0. As I mentioned before, there will be come technical changes coming later, which mean that this is the last patch that supports Android 4.0-4.4 and Java 8-10. If you're unsure if that change applies to you, check the in-game changes screen, which will notify you if support for your device is ending. Here's the full list of changes in v3.2.1: Thrown Weapon Changes Thrown weapons are doing very well overall since the changes in v3.2.0! In general balance is working well and thrown weapons are competitive with same-tier melee weapons. While they're still a lot less popular, people are actually upgrading thrown weapons now, which means I can make some changes based on balance data! Buffs: - Throwing Clubs and Hammers have a new upside: they can now be picked up from the ground instantly! - Kunai base durability up to 8 from 5. - Kunai damage scaling up to 1-3 from 1-2. (this is actually a bug fix but I'm listing it here for clarity) - Force Cube base damage back up to 5-25 from 5-20. Nerfs: - Bolas cripple duration down to 5 from 10. - Heavy Boomerang damage scaling down to 1-3 from 1-4. - Heavy Boomerang circle back delay up to 4 from 3. This should make them a bit less spammable. Lastly, I've received quite a few complaints relating to the nerfs to shurikens, tomahawks, and the shared upgrades talent in v3.2.0. I made these nerfs pre-emptively because I expected these three would benefit massively from upgraded thrown weapons having more quantity. Unfortunately that looks to be correct; all three of these are still doing quite well and there is no room to restore some of their previous power. Misc. Changes I've made some changes to two of the new Battlemage staff on-hit effects, as they didn't end up as powerful as I wanted: - Fireblast on-hit damage scaling increased to 2-4 from 1-2 - Blast Wave on-hit base damage up to 8-12 from 6-12 - Blast Wave on-hit damage scaling up to 2-3 from 1-2 - Blast Wave knockback at sides of explosion up very slightly, which should make it a bit easier to knock enemies to the side and into walls. And one other change: - 'Enchanting' vfx now follows the hero as they move Bugfixes Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.2.0: - Free guiding light cooldown debuff stating that the cooldown is 100 turns, not 50 - New hit/miss icons not working correctly with circling back boomerangs - Rare crash on launch bugs on iOS (hopefully) Existed prior to v3.2.0: - Liquid Agility evasion buff ending after enemies take their turn, instead of after the hero takes their turn. - Game text rendering at 1/2 resolution on mac retina displays - Revive via unblessed ankh resetting Duelist's weapon charge - Scroll empower buff overriding itself with weaker values in some cases - Noisemaker bombs being collectable after activation in some cases - Camera follow on enemies working when they aren't visible - Some specific Chinese characters not rendering on iOS and Desktop

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.2.0 has been released! You can get it right now on Steam, or on any of the other platforms Shattered is distributed on. Not only is v3.2.0 releasing, but Shattered is also just about to turn 11 years old! To celebrate, Shattered is 40% off on Steam for the next week! You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

What's new in v3.2.0

v3.2 comes with a major overhaul to thrown weapons, balance changes to some subclasses, and a major QoL change to accuracy/evasion effects. I talked about this update in one previous blog post: - Coming Soon to Shattered: Thrown Weapon Sets! Here's the full changelog for v3.2.0! Click or tap on each entry to read more. Note that this changelog will become slightly outdated as patches are released and dev commentary is added, so check the changes screen in-game for the most up to date version. (This section contains expandable text boxes, you may need to view the post directly in order to see them properly.) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/078d7bde993b58bd2c8bf0f1610185d1cdc37c29.png New Content:

• Dev Commentary - Released August 4th, 2025 - 63 days after Shattered v3.1.0 Dev commentary will be added here in the future.
• Thrown Weapon Sets Thrown weapons have been majorly overhauled to be more worthwhile to upgrade! - Thrown weapons now spawn in sets of three, sets do not mix. - Thrown weapon base durability increased to 3x5/8/12, from 2x5/10/15. - Sets are upgraded as a unit (all 3), and upgrading fully repairs the set. - Upgrades now boost durability by 1.5x, down from 3x. - Thrown weapon default damage scaling per upgrade reduced to 1-tier, down from 2-tier. - Sets can be enchanted, cursed, augmented, unidentified, etc. - Sets can spawn with natural upgrades, enchants, or curses. - A few special rooms now have a chance to spawn higher value thrown weapon sets. Note that darts are not affected by these changes, they effectively all belong to the same set and still cannot be upgraded.
• Hit and Miss Icons Pretty much every effect that changes accuracy or evasion now has an icon that shows up when that effect is the reason an attack hit or missed! This is an extension of the green bow icon that was used to make the Ferret Tuft's evasion boost more visible in v3.1. It should make it much easier to tell how much of a difference various buffs/debuffs are making to hit chance. There are 12 different hit icons and 11 miss icons in total.
• Text Banners New visuals have been added for the 'boss slain' and 'game over' text banners! They should now match the newer text visuals in the title screen. This also includes some detail adjustments such as centering the sword in 'boss slain' vertically instead of horizontally.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/daa8e0e103f78d594344fa256890c5c2d5b7daf8.png Changes:

• Liquid Metal Liquid metal has also been changed to go along with the general changes to thrown weapons: - Recipe adjusted, now takes one known uncursed thrown weapon set and always costs 3 energy. - Liquid metal can now replace missing/broken thrown weapons from a set (up to the usual cap of 3) - Liquid metal scaling per upgrade down to 1.33x from 2x. The upgrade scaling change works out to be a slight nerf, as thrown weapon durability scaling per upgrade was also reduced to 1.5x from 3x. However, I expect durability and repairing to be much more of a factor now, as previously upgraded thrown weapons would reach infinite durability very quickly.
• Survivalist's Intuition Now that thrown weapons can be identified, there is design space for the Huntress to have a non-generic identification talent: - Survivalist's Intuition now lets the Huntress ID thrown weapons at 3x speed at +1 or on-use at +2. Previously it increased ID speed of all items by 1.75x at +1 or 2.5x at +2.
• ~20 Misc. Changes Highlights: - Blacksmith's smith option now offers a thrown weapon in addition to 2 melee weapons and an armor - Thrown weapons (including the bow) now always have a throw delay of 1 turn if they aren't aimed at a target - Ascension challenge now always notifies the player the first time the amulet's curse is weakened - Characters that are immune to the wand of lightning no longer reduce its overall damage if it arcs though them - Chaotic Censer no longer aims at passive enemies - Added a new language: Swedish! Thrown Weapons: - Augmentation now affects thrown weapon durability based on how it affects attack speed - Projecting enchant can now stack on thrown weapons, giving more reach - Explosive curse now consumes uses on thrown weapons when it triggers - Friendly curse now sets weapon damage to 0 if charmed by that enemy Misc: - Improved most tutorial/guidebook text to be more concise - Stone of Intuition guess window now shows which item you are guessing for - Blacksmith room can no longer spawn next to the depth exit room - Rats that are made friendly by the 19th armor ability no longer attack enemies - Wands now only need to be known uncursed to be used in making resin - Made tweaks to tunnel and maze rooms to reduce the chance of them generating certain shapes - Made piranha description text more helpful - Updated code libraries on iOS (Android and Desktop lib updates will come in a patch later) - Added dev commentary for v2.2.0
• 8 Bugfixes Fixed the following bugs: Gameplay: - Cases where sacrificial fire would not apply just after a character steps into it - Rogue's inscribed stealth talent not properly triggering from some unstable spell effects - Rare cases where hero could not regen more than 1hp/turn when they should - Distortion traps always generating mimics when choosing to generate an uncommon enemy - Cleric's body form enchantment/glyph effect also applying to some enemies Misc: - Cases where status text would stack on itself incorrectly - Language selection menu using the wrong name for Indonesian - Minor visual and textual bugs

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a5e7fe20d019020e357c79823d85225c7b28e539.png Buffs:

• Thrown Weapon Talent Buffs Some talents that interact with thrown weapons are getting buffs as part of the thrown weapon changes: - Projectile Momentum accuracy boost up substantially, to +50/100/150% at +1/2/3, from +20/40/60% at +1/2/3. - Shared Enchantments no longer prevents multiple enchantment triggers. Both enchants can now trigger if the thrown weapon and the Huntress' bow are both enchanted.
• Cleric & Priest Buffs Firstly, a quick buff to the Cleric's worst performing T2 spell: - Divine Sense duration up to 50 turns from 30. I'm also making some changes to improve the Priest's synergy with their various spell effects. Hopefully this will help the subclass compete a bit more with Paladin, who already gets great synergy thanks to all spells extending holy weapon and ward: - Guiding Light free use cooldown down to 50 turns from 100. - Illuminate is now inflicted on directly targeted enemies by all spells.
• Warrior & Gladiator Buffs Firstly, I'm making a change to the Warrior in general, to improve tactical flexibility and to make the Hold Fast talent more interesting: - Hold Fast now slows the decay of combo and shielding buffs by 33/67/100% at +1/2/3. This includes the broken seal shield and Berserker's enrage shield! Next, the Gladiator was weakened a bit after v3.1's Warrior changes, so I'm giving him some more combo flexibility to compensate: - Combo now lasts for 15 turns after killing an enemy. - Cleave combo duration boost increased to 30/45/60 turns at +1/2/3, from 15/30/45 turns.
• Battlemage Buffs/Changes Some Battlemage staff on-hit effects have been changed to be more interesting and more powerful. Most notably this removes three effects that were previously just copies of enchantments: - Staff of Fireblast effect reworked, now has a chance to explode away flames, dealing damage to enemies. - Staff of Lightning effect reworked, now has a chance to charge the Mage, granting lightning immunity and extra arcing reach. - Staff of Blast Wave effect reworked, now consumes paralysis to deal big bonus damage. - Staff of Warding mildly changed, now heals level 2 and 3 wards in addition to sentries.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/f44e19fba8b06e683e185da2795a522f8f0aff4f.png Nerfs:

• Thrown Weapon Nerfs Various thrown weapons are getting targeted nerfs, mainly focused around compensating for lower durability weapons now effectively having +50% base uses, or certain weapons now being much more spammable. - Shuriken instant-throw condition changed to a simple 20 turn cooldown - Kunai base damage down to 6-12 from 6-15 - Bolas damage scaling down to 1-2 from 1-3 - Heavy Boomerang durability down to 5 from 8 - Tomahawk damage scaling down to 1-3 from 1-4 - Tomahawk bleed % down to 33% from 60%, but it is now a separate roll that ignores enemy armor - Force Cube base damage down to 10-20 from 10-25
• Thrown Weapon Talent Nerfs Some talents are also getting nerfed as part of the thrown weapon changes: - Projectile Momentum damage boost down to +10/20/30% at +1/2/3, from +15/30/45% at +1/2/3 - Durable Projectiles durability boost down to +33%/+50% at +1/+2, from +50%/+75% at +1/+2 - Shared Upgrades slightly reworked, now grants a flat +16.67% damage boost and +1 duration per thrown weapon level, but caps at +33/67/100% damage and +2/4/6 duration at talent level 1/2/3.
• Berserker Nerfs The Berserker is doing quite well after v3.1, given that the new shield naturally synergizes with him. I'm scaling back the base subclass power a bit to compensate: - Rate of rage gain and loss reduced by 25% - Base enrage shield reduced to 8+2*lvl from 10+2*lvl (the armor's level)

What's Coming Next?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/e4baaac5d924c38d384e75a52ee7f9f657ad2143.png

• Overview and ETA The next major Shattered update will v3.3 (I may change the name to v4.0 but it's unlikely). This update will include an overhaul to the Ambitious Imp quest in the metropolis! The blacksmith quest overhaul ended up taking quite a bit of time, and so I expect v3.3 will as well. I will write some blog posts as I make progress though, so hopefully you'll hear from me as things start to take shape in October or November. Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update!
• Patches & Old Android and Java There will be a higher than normal number of patches to v3.2. Firstly to address balance concerns arising from all the item changes (rather than waiting and doing them next update), and then to make various game library updates and technical changes. As mentioned previously, one of the consequences of these library updates and technical changes will be removing support for Android 4.0-4.4, and Java 8-10. Dropping support for these is unfortunately necessary in order to meet an impending requirement by Google.
• City Quest Overhaul! The major content improvements coming in v3.3 will be an overhaul to the Ambitious Imp's quest in the Metropolis. This quest is one of the last major leftovers from the original Pixel Dungeon and badly needs some modernization. Just like the Blacksmith quest overhaul, this new quest will send you to a new sub-region of the dungeon with some unique gameplay. Rather than digging, you'll be attempting to infiltrate a dwarven vault full of danger and treasure!
• Other Changes I will want to keep v3.3 mainly focused on the new quest, but there will be room for smaller changes too! Mainly this will be balance changes, but there might be room for a few smaller design improvements or additions too. Also, I can't make any promises yet, but I am hoping to move forward with more visual improvements, including in-game spritework improvements, whose development has largely been on hiatus since last year.

If you'd like more frequent incremental updates, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Dungeoneers! v3.2 has just gone to beta, with an overhaul to thrown weapons and some other substantial balance and QoL changes! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png The beta for Shattered v3.2.0 is live right now! To access it on Steam, go to your game library, right click on Shattered and select 'properties' then go to the 'betas' tab and select the beta from the dropdown list. In this blog post I'm going to go over what's changing in v3.2 in more detail.

Thrown Weapon Sets

Thrown weapons have been in an awkward spot for a while now. Prior to v0.6.3 they were single-use consumable items that you couldn't upgrade. Over time I've improved them with things like durability, upgrading, and dart tipping, but the upgrading experience is still far from ideal. Currently thrown weapons can only be upgraded individually, which the vast majority of players find way too restrictive. I've finally decided to solve this problem by changing up how thrown weapons work a bit. Rather than having all thrown weapons of a kind stack together, they will now spawn in 'sets' of three, and sets will not mix. This makes quantities more consistent, so I can have upgrades apply to an entire set at once! In fact, this doesn't just stop at upgrades, thrown weapons can now be enhanced in almost every way that a melee weapon can, including enchantments, curses, augments, and naturally spawning upgrades! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5bfc5e90254e819cf66d6a751f4b7bb0a77b6e1e.png Of course, thrown weapons are currently balanced around a base quantity of 2 and being upgraded one at a time. Massively increasing the uptime of thrown weapons like this without making adjustments anywhere else would make them absurdly overpowered. For now I have scaled back base durability a bit, heavily reduced the amount of durability an upgrade gives to each thrown weapon, and also reduced thrown weapon damage scaling a bit. There are also some targeted nerfs to some thrown weapons that will become more spammable due to this change. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/b8fc5ea0b367206b8da23786c2c5b720d013fd71.gif Note that this is a pretty big changeup to an entire category of equipment. I expect there will be followup tweaks to thrown weapons and mechanics that tie into them during and after the beta. It's not quite enough to have its own section, but v3.2 also includes some pretty substantial subclass balance tweaks, mainly meant at better balancing options in a few cases. The Battlemage is getting some new on-hit effects to replace some phoned-in enchantment copies, the Gladiator is getting more combo flexibility, and the Priest is getting some improvements to spell synergy and the illuminated debuff. I hope that will put these subclasses onto a more even footing vs. the Warlock, Berserker, and Paladin respectively. Just like with thrown weapon sets I'll be keeping an eye on these changes.

Hit & Miss Icons

While thrown weapon sets are the only major content change coming in v3.2, there is one pretty massive QoL change too! In v3.1 I added a little icon that appears when the newly-added Ferret Tuft was the reason an attack missed. I'm now expanding that system to apply to almost every source of accuracy and evasion in the game! There are 11 miss icons in total, that will show up in any situation where an effect caused an attack to miss. They are, in order: -acc from weapons, +evasion from armor, bless (and bless-like effects), hex, daze, cursed accuracy ring, evasion ring, liquid agility, defensive stance, ferret tuft, and freerunning. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/9c3594434a521526925eab653b9e25d25c80ac01.png The system applies to hits from physical attack too! There are 12 new icons here, which all piggyback on the existing sword icon. They are, in order: +acc from weapons, -evasion from armor, bless (and bless-like effects), hex, daze, accuracy ring, cursed evasion ring, liquid agility, sword dance, surprise attacks, precise assault, and projectile momentum. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/d7a1dc574b23a8ec4a615da881561a3e69737b79.png Here's a little GIF that shows these in action. The Cleric hits due to a surprise attack, the rat misses due to bless, then the Cleric hits again due to the +acc on their cudgel. Of course, these new icons won't show up as often in regular gameplay. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/571fe9d104d1e141cf522e9a190f1df50473f2d1.gif

Saying Goodbye to Android 4.X

v3.2 also includes one pretty unfortunate change for ~1% of Shattered's Android playerbase: it will be the last version that Supports Android 4.0 ICS, 4.1-4.3 JellyBean, and 4.4 KitKat. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/4c4a66da0264d4ed3c674552b72ac7e46eea71c5.png I'm quite proud that Shattered runs on some absolutely ancient Android phones. I can currently still play it on my old Nexus S, a phone released back in 2010! I have needed to increase the minimum Android version over the years though, first dropping Android 2.2 in 2019, and then 2.3 in 2021. Now there's unfortunately a pretty big bump, as there were some major internal changes made to Android in 4.4 and 5.0. I've actually been trying to hold onto support for these devices for a little while now, as since 2021 their % of Shattered users has only dropped to 1% from 2%, but it's sadly no longer feasible. Several code libraries that Shattered depends on now require Android 5.0+, and soon a requirement by Google will force me to update these libraries in order to keep releasing on Google Play. In terms of overall Android users, the number of people on 4.4- has dropped to 0.1% from 2% in 2021. Coincidentally, with this change the oldest Android device that can still run Shattered will be my old Nexus 4, first released in November 2012, the same month as the release of the original Pixel Dungeon! I am sorry to those of you who won't be able to get future updates, but I have no plans to drop support for any more Android versions for the foreseeable future. I expect this beta to last for about a week. If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey Dungeoneers, v3.1 ended up being a pretty stable update, so v3.1.1 is going to be a pretty small patch. There's some internal technical changes, a few bugfixes, and support for a new language! Here's the full list of changes in v3.1.1:

Followup Warrior Tweaks

Gameplay-wise the Warrior is doing well after his mini-rework. I will likely make some changes in v3.2 but for now I'm just making one buff to an early talent: - Hearty Meal HP threshold increased to 33% from 30%, healing increased to 4/6 at +1/+2 from 3/5 at +1/+2. There are also some tweaks to the Warrior's new splash in response to feedback: - Significantly brightened the broken seal so that new details are easier to see - Added back in scarring and some muscle definition to the Warrior's arms - Deepened shadowing along the Warrior's figure - Added various small details to make the armor appear more worn and the Warrior more rugged

Misc. Changes

- Switched Shattered's rendering backend on iOS to use Metal (new) instead of OpenGL (legacy). This should result in better performance and higher frame rates on supported devices. - Enemies and items can no longer spawn on top of plants generated by garden rooms - Added a new language: Traditional Chinese! - Renamed Chinese language to Simplified Chinese - Updated translations and translator credits - Increased the HP threshold for status pane blinking red to 33% from 30%, for consistency with hearty meal change.

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused By v3.1: - Incorrect landmark entries for beacon of returning Existed Prior to v3.1: - Thrown weapons sticking to broken crystal guardians - Ebony mimics always appearing hidden after ankh revive - Various issues with how the game handles animation logic at very low framerates - Haptics not working properly on more modern iOS devices - Website links not working on modern iOS versions - Indonesian language not working on desktop platforms

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.1.0 has been released! You can get it right now on Steam, or on any of the other platforms Shattered is distributed on. To celebrate v3.1.0's release, Shattered is also 40% off on Steam for the next while! You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

What's new in v3.1.0

v3.1 includes a mini Warrior Rework, new terrain/rooms, a new trinket, and a bunch of other smaller changes and additions! I talked about this update in one previous blog post:

• Coming Soon to Shattered: Warrior Mini Rework and More!

One notable new addition that I didn't share in that earlier post is a re-done splash art for the Warrior to go along with his gameplay mini rework! This new splash is once again done by Aleksandar Komitov. The original Warrior splash was the first one Aleks did, and so this remake is the most significant of the hero splash art changes. Aleks was keen to make corrections to armor design and proportions to bring the splash up to his current standards. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/e6147297213d0a10c75f47ad31cc1c8183246d16.jpg Here's the full changelog for v3.1.0! Click or tap on each entry to read more. Note that this changelog will become slightly outdated as patches are released and dev commentary is added, so check the changes screen in-game for the most up to date version. (This sections contains expandable text boxes, you may need to view the post directly in order to see them properly.) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/852b5eddc894876db5f8c36d656f54d4a9633b40.png New Content:

• Dev Commentary - Released June 2nd, 2025 - 95 days after v3.0.0 Dev commentary will be added here in the future
• Warrior Mini Rework The Warrior has had a mini overhaul to his broken seal ability, and new visuals for his splash art and broken seal! The seal's shielding now triggers in bursts with a cooldown, when the Warrior is below 50% HP. It should feel more impactful and interactive while still being easy to use for new players. The Warrior's new splash art is once again done by Aleksandar Komitov. The original Warrior splash was the first one Aleks did, and so this remake is the most significant of the hero splash art changes. Aleks was keen to make corrections to armor design and proportions to bring the splash up to his current standards. Here are the detailed changes to the broken seal shielding mechanics: - Broken Seal shield no longer passively builds, it now triggers all at once just before the Warrior gets damaged to 50% health or lower. - Max shield is now based on armor tier, scaling from 5-13 (max of 15 with iron will talent). - This shielding does not decay, but ends shortly after combat - This shielding has a 150 turn cooldown, unused shield refunds up to 50% cooldown. - The broken seal can now be applied to known-uncursed armor. - When swapping armor, the Warrior now gets a prompt to swap his seal too. Various other Warrior mechanics have been adjusted to compensate for the seal changes: - Provoked Anger talent now triggers when any shield buff breaks, and grants +3/+5 bonus damage, up from +2/+3. - Iron Will talent unchanged, still grants 1 or 2 max shield. - Liquid Willpower talent now grants regular barrier equal to 6.5%/10% of max HP, instead of recharging 50%/75% of max seal shield. - Lethal Defence talent now reduces seal cooldown, instead of recharging seal shield. - Gladiator will retain any active shielding from his broken seal as long as he has combo. - Berserker enrage shield is now its own separate shielding buff, and has its own scaling separate from the seal's max shield.
• New Rooms and Terrain Types This update includes an expansion to the dungeon's standard rooms! - New decorative terrain has been added to each region, largely inspired by details from the region splash arts. - 5 new standard rooms have been added that use these new terrain objects, one per region. - 8 existing standard rooms have been modified to use the new terrain objects. - 10 new entrance/exit variants of standard rooms have been added as well. two per region. - Boss Arenas also use these new terrain types in a few places - Plain empty rooms no longer spawn normally.
• Ferret Tuft A new trinket has been added to the game! The Ferret Tuft is a simpler evasion-boosting trinket with more of a cute aesthetic. It's a little reference to a favourite lime ferret. Choosing and upgrading the trinket will cause all characters to gain evasion, including enemies! That might sound like a mixed bag, but keep in mind that there are lots of ways to counter enemy evasion.
• New Badges v3.1 also includes four new badges, each themed around a specific challenge: - Safety Hazard is a gold-tier badge that requires using terrain against enemies - So Many Colors is a platinum-tier badge that requires having a bunch of buffs/debuffs at once - Pacifist Ascent is a diamond-tier badge that require surviving an ascension without any enemy kills. - Taking the Mick is a diamond-tier badge that requires defeating the final boss with a VERY high level pickaxe I've also reduced the difficulty of the Big Game Hunter badge. It now requires discovering 10 types of rare enemies, down from all of them.
• New Rare Enemies Two new rare enemies have been added to the sewers: Gnoll Exiles are exceptionally strong, but also wary of combat. They won't attack unprovoked, so you can just let them pass, but maybe you'll be interested in the loot they carry... Hermit Crabs are sturdy but slow crabs that use a broken barrel for extra support. They're a bit tough to fight, but much easier to run away from, and have a good chance to drop some armor for you.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/dc8074281315a2e36220a60001203fc99a67669e.png Changes:

• Exploration and Quest Score I've made adjustments to how score is calculated to balance the difficulty of the various score categories a little better: Exploration Score is no longer all-or-nothing for each floor. It is now based on how many rooms were not fully explored. For each floor, score is reduced to 50%/20%/0% for 1/2/3+ missed rooms. The criteria for whether something is 'fully explored' is unchanged. Quest Score can now be reduced in a similar manner to boss score. Make sure to position well to avoid penalties! This reduction includes telegraphed attacks/effects (e.g. crystal spire, gnoll geomancer), and regular attacks that you should be able to always avoid (e.g. rot lashers, fetid rat's ooze). Cases where attacks are sometimes unavoidable (e.g. corpse dust wraiths, gnoll trickster) have some leeway before penalties apply.
• 20+ Misc. Changes Highlights: - Various small color tweaks to health bars, inventory buttons, and flare vfx to improve the experience for colorblind players - Custom notes for items can now be created or edited from the item's info window - Hero renaming can now be done in the hero info window while a run is in progress - All potions now refresh the duration of their specific effects. Previously the duration of some potion effects could stack on themselves - Added discovery hints for all catalog entries - Added landmark entries for lost backpack and beacon of returning Items: - Slightly reduced telekinetic grab's sale/energy value, so that it can't be used to effectively turn high-tier thrown weapons into energy - Unidentified wands can now be imbued in the mage's staff - Partially IDed items can now be used with the dried rose Characters: - Improved Tengu's AI, he can now switch targets if he is unable to attack the hero - Defeating Dwarf King now cleanses the player of the degraded debuff Effects: - Smaller shorter-term shielding buffs are now consumed before larger longer-term ones - The gravity chaos cursed wand effect now has its own debuff icon - When using metamorph, food talents that grant the same type of recharging can now stack - Improved VFX for activating or deactivating brawler's stance - Guiding Light's spell icon is now brightened when it is free to cast Misc: - The inventory button gold indicator on mobile now shows when buying items - Rooms with a chasm in the center must now be at least 3x3, up from 2x2 - Increased the minimum supported iOS version to 12, from 11 - Moved the notification position to the top-left on the Steam version. It should no longer obscure UI elements
• 30+ Bugfixes Fixed the following bugs: Highlights: - Thrown weapons gaining or losing more accuracy than intended based on enemy adjacency - Shocking enchantment triggering its damage twice in many cases since v3.0 - Runs in progress older than 2 months showing 'NO TEXT FOUND' - Allies not waking from magical sleep after it has healed them - Desktop versions downloaded via github not properly notifying when updates are available Characters: - Swapping places with allies not being counted as movement for shuriken's instant attack - Exploits where sheep could last forever if game was frequently saved/loaded - Mirror images not benefitting from body form or holy weapon if the Cleric was unarmed - Light Ally and Shadow Clone having very slightly more accuracy/evasion than the hero at base Effects: - Hallowed ground producing furrowed grass more often than intended in some cases - Ascended form ending early if its shielding was reduced to 0 - Metamorphed cleanse clearing lost inventory debuff - Metamorphed aggressive barrier using incorrect logic - Lay on Hands sometimes applying 0 barrier to allies - Death via the Cleric's life link not being recorded in rankings - Targeting traps having very slightly less range than intended - Duelist being able to stack invisibility using the sneak weapon ability - Metamorphed holy intuition deleting armor in rare cases Items: - Players being able to take smith rewards multiple times in specific cases - Stone glyph not considering some evasion/accuracy buffs - Brimstone glyph not properly scaling past +50% glyph power - Boomerangs disappearing if the game was closed during their circle back animation - Crystal path rooms sometimes sorting items incorrectly when player had exotic crystals - Cursed wand of warding not using autotargeting Misc: - Shattered locking to 60fps on 120hz iOS devices - Custom notes not properly applying to specific rings, wands, & trinkets - Paralysis vfx on enemies sometimes cancelling animations as it ends - Rare cases of wonky display scaling on Linux systems - Various minor visual & textual errors - Various rare crash errors

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/c5d7307afe742281de0fa8b16dafe28b4e696607.png Buffs:

• Cleric Buffs Overall the Cleric is doing well following their initial release. Their winrate is low currently, but they are also very popular so I expect some of that is people still figuring them out. For the moment I'm focusing on multiple targeted buffs to specific Cleric mechanics that are weaker vs. others. Base class: - Guiding light base damage up to 2-8 from 2-6 - Holy Weapon & Ward are now cast instantly - Shield of Light duration up to 5 from 4 - Divine Sense is now cast instantly Paladin: - Lay on Hands healing up to 15/20/25 from 10/15/20 - Aura of Protection dmg resist up to 20%/30%/40% from 15%/23%/30% Priest: - Illuminate bonus damage up to 5+lvl from lvl - Radiance now triggers and applies illuminate - Holy Lance cooldown down to 30 from 50 - Hallowed Ground heal up to 15 from 10 - Hallowed Ground root up to 2 turns from 1 - Mnemonic Prayer is now cast instantly Ascended Form: - Divine Intervention duration extension up to 3/4/5/6 from 1/2/3/4 - Judgement extra dmg increased to +33% per spell from 5-10 per spell Power of Many: - Life Link duration up to 10/13/17/20 from 6/8/10/12

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/c5d7307afe742281de0fa8b16dafe28b4e696607.png Nerfs:

• Cleric Nerfs A few Cleric mechanics are standouts in terms of power though, so I am scaling some of those back: - Searing Light dmg down to +3/+5 from +4/+6 - Enlightening Meal charge gain down to +0.67/+1 from +1/+1.5 - Cleanse is no longer cast instantly - Hallowed Ground barrier now caps at 30 - Flash starting charge cost up to 2 from 1 - Stasis charge cost up to 2 from 1, but duration +50%

What's Coming Next?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/4098abc86dfeacba10d1da52917593ae95302205.png

• Overview and ETA The next major update to Shattered will be v3.2, which will include an overhaul to thrown weapons! Due to deadlines relating to supporting old versions of Android, v3.2 has to release relatively quickly. Expect to hear more from me about it sometime probably toward mid or late July. Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update!
• Thrown Weapon Overhaul The biggest content change I have planned for v3.2 is something I didn't originally plan for 2025, an overhaul to thrown weapons! I've settled on a design I like, and want v3.2 to be fairly quick, which is why this has taken priority for the moment. The plan is to make thrown weapons behave a bit more like wands, by having them drop in 'sets' that have a fixed quantity, but which can be upgraded as a unit. This should make investing upgrades in thrown weapons much more appealing, as you'll no longer be limited to upgrading one at a time.
• Misc and Behind the Scenes Changes As always, v3.2 will include some smaller misc. changes and balance tweaks, but I expect it will be lighter on them than usual as I'm working on a deadline in order to ensure old Android and Java users will still get v3.2. If there's time, I would also like to make some internal changes in prep for a new city quest toward the end of the year.
• Older Android and Java Support Unfortunately, due to changes to code libraries and build tools that Shattered depends on, I will have to make some changes in the next few months that will remove support for Android 4.0-4.4 and Java 8-10. Devices with these platform versions should still receive v3.2 and any immediate patches, but will not receive updates after that. These devices will be able to continue playing v3.2 indefinitely. Android 4.4 was succeeded by Android 5.0 in 2014, ~1% of Android Shattered players are using Android 4.4-. Java 10 was succeeded by Java 11 in 2018, but can run on computers from 2010 and earlier. Note that the Java requirement only applies to the plain .JAR desktop builds of Shattered, which require a separate Java install. If you're unsure which desktop build you're using, it probably isn't the Java one.

If you'd like more frequent incremental updates, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Dungeoneers, v3.1 is ready for beta, just in time to meet the estimate I gave (for once)! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png The beta for Shattered v3.1.0 is live right now! To access it on Steam, go to your game library, right click on Shattered and select 'properties' then go to the 'betas' tab and select the beta from the dropdown list. In this blog post I'm going to go over what's coming in v3.1! This update has a a mini Warrior rework, some new rooms in the dungeon, and an assortment of miscellaneous changes and additions.

A New Warrior Ability

As a quick recap, the Warrior currently has an ability that gives him one passive shielding every 30 turns, which is effectively +33% health regen that works even when hungry. This power is hard to notice and impossible to interact with, but also easy to use and very impactful over the course of a run. This results in the Warrior feeling a lot weaker than he actually is, and I'd like to make the seal's power easier to notice and interact with without making it outright stronger or harder for new players to use. Here's how that's happening: When the Warrior is about to take damage that would reduce him to 50% health or lower, he will now instantly gain a shield that scales with his armor's tier, with a cooldown of 100 turns. This up-front shield boost is way easier to notice compared to a passive shield that just takes 1 or 2 off most attacks. To start out you'll get 5 shield, and this can go as high as 15 with T5 armor and the iron will talent. Here's how that looks in action: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a33436de1997562af2ec8d6a8d6b0f22a5a26f09.gif This means that in theory the Warrior is going from 30 turns per shield to 20 at the start, going as low as 6. That's a huge buff on paper, but it also assumes that the player is constantly fighting at 50% HP or lower. This creates a nice little point of interaction for experienced players, who'll want to try and maximize shield uptime. Newer players don't have to do anything in particular to just use the ability though, as it still triggers automatically whenever the Warrior needs it. Other Warrior mechanics are getting smaller changes to compensate for this. Several talents are getting shuffled around a bit, and the Berserkser subclass is getting its own separate shield buff instead of piggybacking on the seal's shielding buff. The Berserker's shield still scales with armor level as well, so players who want to dump their upgrades into armor will still have a mechanic that scales with that.

New Terrain and Rooms

(Note that the new visuals shown here are placeholders and will be improved) v3.1 is going to include a new terrain type in each region and some standard room changes to make use of them! I ended up getting a little carried away with this, and in the end each region is getting a new room type, changes/expansions to some existing rooms, and two new entrance/exit variants! Firstly, here are some of the entirely new rooms that take advantage of the new terrain: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/4b142f0af27a78326b5d858837aca8944d5a461e.png Next, here are some existing rooms that have been changed around a bit to include new terrain types: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5a991faf2c8eb97ef6d4305de967bacb4d5f2760.png Finally, here are some of the new entrance/exit variants. Some are similar to old ones, but I’ve added a few new ones focused on enclosed starting spaces. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/b80477688f6709b99e2ea97ec1f7c5bbc54e8ad2.png Overall I ended up taking longer making these changes than I initially expected (at first it was just going to be the new terrain), but I'm pretty happy with the result. In particular, with these additions the typical empty rooms that were near universal a few years ago are now entirely gone!

Other Changes and Additions

The Warrior changes and levelgen expansion are the biggest parts of v3.1, but there's a nice assortment of smaller things too: v3.1 includes one new item: the Ferret Tuft! The tuft is a simpler evasion-boosting trinket with more of a cute aesthetic. It boosts evasion for you and for enemies, but there are lots of ways to counter enemy evasion, so use wands or go for those surprise attacks! The tuft is a little reference to a favorite ferret. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/010b0e2fc71efb96f212672d6fe3aeb8c069eb9e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/8ff65e5c6ee2ebe706ec5a4f7462677f15bf3c91.png There are also Four New Badges, that range in difficulty from gold-tier to diamond-tier. They're all focused on specific accomplishments, and I expect the two hardest badges to be quite tricky to earn. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/49a3a6c27e78eef000c75fa9dd08ff2f0324fae2.png There are Two New Rare Enemies, both of which can spawn in the sewers. Gnoll exiles have extra loot, are very tough, and also non-aggressive. Hermit Crabs have substantially boosted defense but reduced movement speed. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/8c49f50f149977bf0ced5648398b20be9e95b7db.png I'm also making some Cleric Balance Changes based on gameplay data from v3.1. The Cleric is a bit on the weaker side currently, but not nearly as much as I thought they might be, so I mostly did targeted buffs to various abilities. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/0e570dcd68e34ad3686d1bb092450e3e0108aaa5.png I've also made some adjustments to how score is calculated. Rather than exploration score being all or nothing for each floor, it's now instead reduced to 50%/20%/0% if 1/2/3+ rooms are left uncleared. To compensate, quest score is getting a little harder, with ways to lose points just like when fighting bosses. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/0ad0876c278b51ee9abf728499e46fab5120a4ff.png Lastly, there's the usual assortment of Miscellaneous Changes and Bug Fixes too. In total v3.1 has over 40 of them, including some small improvements for colorblind users, better custom note functionality for items, and hints for unseen items on the catalog. I expect this beta to last for about one to one and a half weeks. If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey Dungeoneers, here's that second patch I was mentioning. Just some more smaller fixes and translation updates. Here's the full list of changes in v3.0.2:

A note to Steam Deck users

A bug was fixed in this patch which affected display scaling on Steam Deck. Due to a quirk in how the Steam Deck reported display dimensions, the game incorrectly thought Steam Deck's screen was about 4", instead of 7". As a result of this fix, you might notice that the interface appears differently as it now defaults to the 'full' UI mode instead of 'mobile'. If you prefer the previous interface mode, you can swap to it in the settings by using the mobile interface mode and 5x interface scale.

Misc. Changes

- Music muting while game is in background on desktop now also applies to blacksmith's hammering sfx - Improved number rounding logic when damage hero takes is affected by several modifiers at once - Updated translations and translator credits

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.0: - Errors with Android golden supporter UI and full interface mode - Cleric's Recall Glyph spell not working with some runestones while time was frozen Existed Prior to v3.0: - Game incorrectly thinking it is on a phone screen when played on Steam Deck - Water of Awareness buff persisting between floors if the hero is very fast - Various errors when saving/loading custom controller bindings - Visual errors when Tengu's sprite animations are frozen (e.g. via paralysis) - Characters still appearing as visible if knocked out of hero FOV in specific cases - Talisman of Foresight's scry ability not detecting hiding mimics - Quick-using an item from a bag not using that item's autotarget properties (for real this time)

Hey Dungeoneers, after two weeks I've just released the first patch for Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.0! v3.0 ended up not needing any urgent changes so I've taken my time with it. I'm planning one more smaller patch a bit later, and then it'll be on to v3.1! Here's the full list of changes in v3.0.1:

Balance Changes

So far the Cleric is doing surprisingly well balance-wise! There are definitely some things to adjust, but nothing that's serious enough to need doing in a patch. I'm just making one change to put a limit on ring of energy shenanigans for the Paladin: - Holy Weapon and Ward can now be extended to a max of 100 turns at a time. After v3.0's nerf to the Mossy Clump, I'm going to experiment with scaling back its absurd upgrade cost. Hopefully it's at a power level now where it doesn't need to cost massively more than other trinkets: - Mossy Clump upgrade energy cost reduced to 10/15/20 from 20/25/30. This is now the same as other 'higher cost' trinkets.

Misc. Changes

Firstly, two trinket changes that are meant as QoL, but are effectively mild buffs: - Salt Cube's regen reduction now automatically disables itself during boss fights, the trinket doesn't need to be dropped. - Waterskin drinking now more intelligently handles the extra healing from vial of blood, no longer consuming excess dew. And some other things: - Updated Translations - Cursed wand pitfall effect no longer drops items if triggered via wondrous resin - Feint armor ability no longer autotargets - Removed support for runs in progress from prior to v2.3.2 - Removed internal code for old blacksmith quest from prior to v2.2

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs: Caused by v3.0: - Enemies getting many actions after recovering from transmogrification - Save/load errors with sniper's mark buff - Incorrect shielding amount shown when using Warrior's remains item - Various uncommon crash bugs Existed Prior to v3.0: - Exploit involving unidentified crossbow and curse infusion - Exploit involving placing wards on a necromancer's summoning position - Shocking enchantment missing valid targets in some cases - Rare cases where bees would refuse to attack near enemies vs. far ones - quick-using an item from a bag not using that item's autotarget properties - Alchemy guide items being greyed out in main menu - Various rare crash bugs - Various minor visual & textual errors

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.0.0 has been released! You can get it right now on Steam, or on any of the other platforms Shattered is distributed on. To celebrate v3.0.0's release, Shattered is also 40% off on Steam for the next while! v3.0.0 includes new title art and hero splash art, so I'll be taking the opportunity to refresh the game's description and image assets in all the various places over the next little while.

What's new in v3.0.0

v3.0 includes Shattered's second new playable character! The Cleric is a divine spellcaster who learns and upgrades spells via the talent system! They're releasing with 2 subclasses, 3 armor abilities, and over 30 different spells! There are also visual improvements, a new title graphic, and loads of smaller changes! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/51a76518f97d866d1440d2859904ca37103ea77e.jpg I talked about this update in two previous blog posts:

• Status Update: v3.0 Coming Soon!
• Coming Soon to Shattered: The Cleric!
• Coming Soon to Shattered: A Sixth Hero!

Here's the full changelog for v3.0.0! Click or tap on each entry to read more. Note that this changelog will become slightly outdated as patches are released and dev commentary is added, so check the changes screen in-game for the most up to date version. (This sections contains expandable text boxes, you may need to view the post directly in order to see them properly.) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/959740fd2f6ee5e243b59241d49a67c37c43cbdc.png New Content:

• Developer Commentary - Released February 27th, 2025 - 197 days after Shattered v2.5.0 - 548 days after Shattered v2.0.0 Dev commentary will be added here in the future.
• The Cleric! Shattered Pixel Dungeon has another new hero, making for six total!! The Cleric is an entire new hero class with a variety of unique spells that they learn via talents! They can be unlocked by removing the curse on any piece of equipment, but existing players who already have a win will automatically unlock them! Much like how the Duelist can use a bunch of weapon abilities, I want the Cleric to be an ability-centric hero focused on Magic. Unlike the Duelist, these abilities are tied into the hero and their talents, instead of equipment items.
• Cleric Subclasses The Cleric has two subclasses, each with their own emphasis! The Priest is focused on ranged spell combat, effects that synergize with magical items like wands and artifacts. The Paladin is focused on melee spell combat and defensive power. Their effects most strongly synergize with weapons and armor.
• Cleric Armor Abilities The Cleric has three lategame armor abilities as well! Ascended Form grants the Cleric access to new spells, extra attack ranged, and shielding whenever they cast spells. Trinity lets the Cleric access the effects of items they've previously identified in their run without the items themselves. Power of Many empowers or creates an ally for the Cleric, and grants them new spells to cast with that ally.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/4e1c9988f52ca101fe58eefbfbb0e2f4d95d273c.png Changes:

• Visual & Interface Changes Shattered's title graphic has been totally redrawn! The new title graphic, by Aleksandar Komitov, improves on text quality and style while trying to stay true to the original title. There is now a landscape and portrait variant of this title as well. The game's Hero Splash Arts have been improved as well! After so many years, Aleksandar has revised some of the game's hero splash arts to bring them up to his current standards: - The Huntress and Rogue have recieved major changes - The Mage has recieved moderate changes - The Duelist has received only tiny tweaks to some face details. - The Warrior's splash remains unchanged for the moment, but improvements to it are coming soon as well! The Games in Progress screen has been expanded too, with up to 6 runs at once, info about recency, and sorting options.
• 15+ Misc. Changes Highlights: - Turned off auto-targeting in cases where it was almost always wrong (Bless spell, Wand of Warding, etc.) - Enemies are now more willing to switch targets if their target is retreating and they are being attacked by something else - Enemies are now more consistently drawn to the hero's position if they are attacked from out of visible range - Internal adjustments to hunger and regeneration effects, they should now be more responsive when hunger or regen rate changes. - Fixed Reclaim trap spell exploits, and allowed it to be dropped while charged - Traps triggered by time freeze ending now always resolve after other effects/actions (e.g. teleportation, item pickup) - Improved visual contrast for symbols on runestones Characters: - Crazed bandits now have their own description Effects: - Blast Wave no longer knocks back characters if they are killed over a pit - Cloak of Shadows (and new Holy Tome) can no longer be transmuted. Misc.: - Adjusted icons for Sucker Punch and Followup Strike - Camera no longer re-centers on hero when adding custom notes - Camera panning to enemies now respects the 'camera follow intensity' setting. - Improved the game's monochrome Android icon - Added developer commentary for v2.0.0 - Improved text clarity in a few cases - Updated internal code libraries
• 35+ Bugfixes Fixed the following bugs: Highlights: - Various issues with system gestures registering as game inputs on Android and iOS - Various cases where closing the game inside of the alchemy scene could result in lost progress - Rare cases where multiple ascension wins could be recorded for one run - Runestones working while hero is magic immune - Unstable spell never triggering scroll effects that could apply either in or out of combat - Exotic crystals trinket not applying to monster drops in many cases Items: - Rare cases where bomb AOE could be influenced by nearby potions shattering - Exploits involving juggling salt cube to get slower hunger with full regen - Cursed armband not updating player gold display on desktop after stealing gold - Very specific cases where disarming traps could make items unattainable - Icecap incorrectly being blocked by high grass - Stone of detect magic incorrectly being usable on thrown weapons - Artifact uniqueness being affected by runs from prior game versions - Crashes when aqua brew is dropped down chasms - Rare errors when cancelling scroll of enchantment on armor - Multiplicity glyph not working correctly with ghouls in some cases - Corrosion gas from chaotic censer always starting at 1 damage Effects: - Monk abilities which ignore armor using the incorrect damage icon - Damage type not showing when hitting downed crystal guardians - Very rare cases where spawned high grass could interfere with the floor 20 shop - Certain effects not having on-death or rankings messages - Specific cases where cursed wand effects would forget they were spawned by wondrous resin - Duration of greater haste not being preserved on save/load - Disarming traps not teleporting the hero's weapon in some cases where they should - Cursed wand effects potentially applying levitation to immovable characters - Geomancer rockfall attack being cleared on save/load - Duelist's block ability not working properly with save/load Misc.: - Rat King's description sometimes being incorrect in journal - Pacifist badge unlocking when it shouldn't in rare cases - Retreating characters failing to retreat through crowded area in some cases - Various minor UI errors when holding down inventory buttons just before moving - Rare cases where game win scene wouldn't trigger immediately - Ripper demons sometimes losing their target early - Various minor textual errors - Various rare crash errors

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/29677d62df02cd7a48a962994afd8b36841845fd.png Buffs:

• Trinket Buffs Overall trinket balance is in a much better place since v2.5, but there are still some that can do with being more powerful or fun to use: - Chaotic Censer now only spawns gasses when enemies are present, and gives a warning one moment before the gas is spewed. - 13 Leaf Clover slightly redesigned, now has a 15% chance to set damage to max and 10% chance to set damage to min per level. This results in ~10% more average damage at +3. - Mimic Tooth ebony mimics now have normal mimic stats, down from +25%, but still deal full damage on surprise attack. - Trap Mechanism now also makes 10% of a level's traps spawn visible per level. - Shard of Oblivion now prevents ID effects such as scroll of ID and wells of knowledge. Items are instead set to be ready to be IDed by the shard.
• Weapon Ability Buffs The Duelist continues to do better following all the changes in v2.X updates. A couple of weapon abilities are still lagging behind though, and so I'm giving them a little help: - Combo Strike ability damage boost buffed by 25% for Gauntlets. 33% for Sai, 50% for Gloves. - Charged Shot knockback +1, base bonus damage on untipped darts +1.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/9e35d8c52468a744710ffa8e8828bc6a3f104847.png Nerfs:

• Trinket Nerfs Despite nerfs in v2.5 the Mossy Clump is still far and away the strongest trinket. For now I'm going to experiment with adjusting the ratios on the floors it grants. - Mossy Clump now generates grassy floors 1/3 of the time and water floors 2/3 of the time, instead of 1/2 each. This will usually result in one fewer grassy floor over a whole run.
• Shared Upgrades Nerf Thrown weapons aren't an especially popular category of item to upgrade, and I would like to make more extensive changes to them in the future, but for the moment I'm making a targeted adjustment to the Shared Upgrades talent. The bonus damage it provided wasn't tied to the tier of thrown weapon used, which made T2 thrown weapons disproportionally powerful for the Sniper. - Shared Upgrades now grants 2.5%/5%/7.5% bonus damage per upgrade per tier, instead of a flat 10%/20%/30% bonus damage per upgrade. Functionally, this means -50% bonus dmg for T2 thrown weapons, -25% for T3, no changes for T4, and +25% for T5.

What's Coming Next?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/1ac8d65b26c41bdff20fde99da465c2ea81c33aa.png

• The next major update to Shattered will be v3.1, which will mainly focus on followup to v3.0 and some changes to the Warrior!
• For a long while now the Warrior has been the least appreciated class among experienced players. This is partly intended because he is meant to be the most simple, but I do think there are some changes that can be made so that the Warrior's class ability is a bit more visible and interactive. This is not going to be a hero rework, but rather some targeted changes to improve the Warrior's game feel without making him much harder for new players to use.
• I'm more confident that the Cleric is releasing in a better initial state than the Duelist, but there will always be needed changes to balance or mechanics, and fixes for bugs. I expect to make those changes in v3.1 after taking a little time to gather feedback and gameplay data from v3.1.
• I want v3.1 to be a fairly lightweight update, so that it can come out quickly in response to v3.0, but there should be room for a few smaller changes too. In addition to the usual bugfixes and smaller QoL tweaks, I might add a couple of smaller content additions such as new trinkets and other items, a new rare enemy, etc.
• Unfortunately I will have to make some changes in 2025 that will remove support for very old devices from the game's iOS, Android, and plain Java versions. iOS 11 support is being dropped after this update, and Android 4.0-4.4 and Java 8-10 support will be dropped closer to the end of the year.

I expect v3.1 to be a relatively lightweight update, much like v2.1 was after the Duelist. v2.1 took almost 3 months, and while I'd like to do better than that I also don't want to end up overpromising. Hopefully you'll hear from me with progress on v3.1 sometime in mid April to mid May. Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update! In the meantime, if you're like more frequent incremental updates, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey everyone, happy Valentines day! Back in December I estimated that v3.0 would be gearing up to release in late January or early February, so it's time for a little update! While I have missed that estimate, v3.0 is very close to being ready. I now estimate that it'll be releasing around the end of the month, maybe the very start of March. This delay isn't for any one specific reason, every little thing for the Cleric has just ended up taking longer to design and implement than I expected. Currently the Cleric is almost totally playable in beta, and I expect to be releasing their final armor ability (Power of Many) in the next few days. This is actually going to put the Cleric's total development time at almost exactly the same 5.5 months that the Duelist took! I do think that the Cleric is going to launch in a better place than the Duelist though. While there will always be things to improve post-launch, gameplay analytics and player feedback are both notably better for the Cleric than they were for the Duelist at this stage. v3.0 is also launching with a little more side-content than v2.0 did! There's some pretty big balance changes to several trinkets (Clover and Censor are actually good now I promise!), and new game visuals! Firstly, the new title screen I teased last time is now in-game! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/b81e822b5e0ec96253ccbffedc6fa12e31152f01.gif There are also improvements to the older hero splashes! It's been about 5 years since these splashes were added to the game and Aleks wanted to revisit and spruce them up a bit. The Warrior's improved splash isn't quite ready for primetime though, but v3.1 is going to focus on him anyway so that works out. Here are some GIFs comparing old and new. Note that because of GIF compression these splashes look a bit different than how they appear in-game though: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/3b847e3b3acb2405daaf24791ef5677be62d0f51.gif {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ab0d1efa6b78b88640996ff25a56535de33e2917.gif {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5b3a01e608b99fbdb9bfa24a77278b010dab67db.gif If all goes well then v3.0's beta should be content complete in another week, and then it'll be time for final polishing before release! If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development, you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky I've actually been posting about The Cleric's development incrementally on these places for the last couple months. You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Rat Punchers, happy new year once again! After a bit of a holiday break, I'm back to work on Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which includes laying out some plans for the coming year! This post starts with a year in review, and then lists the major changes and additions that I have planned for Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2025 and beyond. I've written one of these posts every year since 2019, you can take a look at the previous ones here: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.

2024 in Review

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/9f5b2df9da8494a8686232d4852110a49b0cab70.png 2024 saw the release of 3 updates and one beta, which overall completed 3.5 out of the 5 items listed for 2024 in last year's post. It seems I've settled into a steady cadence of an update every 3-4 months, especially as I've been moving toward making bigger content additions these days.

• v2.3 released in January, adding a second variant to the caves quest!
• v2.4 released in May, adding a new category of item: Trinkets!
• v2.5 released in September, overhauling the journal and adding new splash art!
• v3.0 went to beta in December, giving an early look at the game's sixth hero!

While I'd obviously like to do more, I am happy to be able to consistently check off more than half of the things I'd like to do every year. Clearing the whole list would be ideal, but that's always set as more of a best case scenario, and reaching 70% of that is just fine. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ecd4fb04a8c875f3b606c709d9f8f8661e9bcd93.png On the business side of things Shattered continues to outdo itself. Growth on Android and Steam has been nice and steady, but on iOS Shattered has done extremely well this year. This has led to Shattered's strongest sales year yet, despite not releasing on any new platforms! I'm thrilled to be able to continue sustaining my development with free updates to Shattered.

The Plan for 2025

Here are the major pieces of content that I'd like to add in 2025. The higher something is on the list, the more I'm prioritizing it for this year. Please note that while I'd very much like to stick to this, game development rarely works out exactly as planned. It's very likely that I won't get through everything here this year, and it's also possible that the order may shift or things may change entirely.

Releasing The Cleric!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/2a12242143ec7502b7f840575ce6cb3b1580a5e2.png Just like with 2024, this year starts with an update partway through development. My first priority this year is to get v3.0.0 and the Cleric finished and released! Right now the Cleric is missing some polish, one subclass, and two armor abilities. Expect to see those get filled in very soon.

Warrior & Misc Improvements

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a062edf96a1613da50b8fbecbcd1fe3099271b78.png After v3.0 I'm going to do a smaller update so that I can quickly address any issues with the Cleric. As part of that update, I'd also like to take a look at the Warrior! I'm not planning any fundamental changes, but I think I can make his base gameplay feel stronger and more engaging, without making him harder to play. I expect to do other small changes this year as well, both in v3.1 and later. These tend to get pinned down right when I start work on an update though, so I can't really say what specific smaller things will happen. Despite that, here's a quick list of some smaller things I may do this year: - Further improvements and additions to item categories, mainly trinkets - UI and UX improvements for larger screens, and keyboard/controller players - More badges or a challenge to test the skill of experienced players - Further improvements to shops, possibly including some new ones - New room types and general improvements to level generation - And, of course, every update comes with a bunch of bugfixes and small QoL tweaks

City Quest

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/42e5d04af5f05764788427ab0c3c341d61273cd0.png After these hero changes, I'd like to add a new quest in 2025 as well. My current concept is to have the Imp ask the player to raid a special dwarven vault. The major catch will be that none of the player's items can go with them, leading to a little microcosm of gear progression that will only exist within the vault.

Hero Lore

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/bff75077a33cc3d1ea35586bb625f6484b11902f.png With the game's sixth hero releasing soon, there's finally opportunity to start fleshing out the game's characters a bit! This lore could include journals written by the heroes from their perspectives, or documents that describe interactions and conversations between the heroes.

3rd Caves Quest

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/a7c33429a31d8712f05256646af55c043f55f288.png The caves quest is also currently missing a 3rd variant. While I decided to focus on other content through 2024, I would like to finish this quest up in 2025 if there's time or I come up with a great concept. I do still think that other content should take priority though, such as a quest in the city.

In-Game Art!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/2ef28182947e290c23be5444ca4314ba0defb1f1.png Lastly, there's the new art I previously showed off. Progress on this has been slow, so I don't have anything new to share. However, the reaction to the WIP new art has made it very clear to me that there's a strong demand for this, so I will be trying to make some progress here this year, and hopefully have more to show later.

Longer-Term Plans

Here are some other things I'd like to do in Shattered that I'm definitely going to be implementing after 2024. Think of these are longer term 'nice ideas' or 'stretch goals'. The higher an item is on this list, the more clearly defined my idea is for it.

Halls Quest

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/68958f009ed6ebb1cfd928f8e285e0e1cf412772.png While I don't want to make the game overly long, a bit more gameplay at the tail end of the game is sorely needed to give players a bit more time with finished builds and time to make use of armor abilities. I have a few ideas for interesting quests that could test an endgame character.

More Subclasses

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/e3e11a457851e36df3f3aec6c6bb7a261b145919.png It would be nice to add one more subclass to each hero to better take advantage of Shattered's increased equipment and class diversity. However, it's important that I have a good idea for all six heroes to ensure that all of the new subclasses are interesting. I've started to come up with some ideas here, but nothing concrete yet.

Endless Mode

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/3187f50da9b9dd6c68eca32dc37b2d2799f43e99.png Some form of endless mode is a very common request. This partly ties in to the last region of the game being the shortest, but also there's just a desire for players to see how far they can get with strong character builds. I have a few loose ideas for how endless might work, but want to focus on other things like new quests first.

Alt Paths?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/c811e1a6b42c702a1229f945ec303bf73e8f5d97.png Another common request is to have more dungeon floors, but just adding more risks making the game too long. An alt path could offer new environments and enemies without making the game directly longer. This would be a huge time commitment though, so I'd only really consider it when ShatteredPD is otherwise finished.

Something New?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/824b698a6f66075285f9f82694406d5bea6b219f.png Lastly, you might have noticed that the lists on these posts have been slowly shrinking over the years. Eventually everything here will be cleared, and it'll be time for something new! This is still a ways off though, and I have no current plans for what form this may take, it could be more ideas for Shattered, or something else entirely. And those are my current major plans for 2025 and the future! Thanks to Shattered's continued success (thank you!) I expect to get to pretty much everything here eventually, it's all a question of ordering and prioritizing. - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Dungeoneers, v3.0.0 and the Cleric are finally ready for beta! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/74e322ef614aa42457c38342d02330dd898adcdb.png The beta for Shattered v3.0.0 is live right now! To access it on Steam, go to your game library, right click on Shattered and select 'properties' then go to the 'betas' tab and select the beta from the dropdown list. In this blog post I’m going to share more details about the Cleric! Just as with the Duelist, I’m releasing the Cleric’s beta a little early. There’s still one subclass and two armor abilities to implement before the Cleric is content-complete and ready for release. Note that visuals and specific balancing are still a work in progress. Details may change significantly before full release.

Introducing the Cleric!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/51a76518f97d866d1440d2859904ca37103ea77e.jpg I went over a lot of the Cleric's base class features in the last blog I wrote. As a quick recap, the Cleric is an ability-focused spellcaster who gains access to a variety of supportive spells through the talent system! They cast these spells using charges from their holy tome artifact, and the variety of spells they can access makes them very flexible. I already shared several T1 and T2 spells last time, but here's a couple more, with animated GIFs! Recall Inscription lets you spend tome charges to repeat the effect of the last runestone or scroll you used. There are almost 40 different items you can duplicate, though some are more expensive than others. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/c6a1886acc7931b203e04b6af8cfc8186eedcc06.gif Bless increases accuracy, evasion, and shielding when the Cleric uses it on themselves. When used on allies it offers a longer buff and healing instead! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/60c0be1154cb62637d8b5146f4060837f6e34c3a.gif

Subclasses

Each of the Cleric's subclasses include a new innate spell, a buff to some starter spells, and three additional spells that are learned via talents. As usual both subclasses also get two shared talents, one of which is a spell as well. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/16534d7b3d6b4511038774a27e35bcca27d73858.png The Priest is all about magical ranged combat. All of their spells work from a distance, and they gain a buff to Guiding Light, which lets them cast it for free once every 100 turns, and trigger the resulting illuminated debuff using allies or magical items. When triggered in this way, Illuminated deals bonus magic damage. Probably the two flashiest spells the Priest gets access to are Holy Lance and Hallowed Ground. Holy Lance is a devastating ranged spell that can absolutely obliterate a single target, but comes with a hefty charge cost and cooldown. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/41b1c95a995d71b046ae4860552a41c195632506.gif Hallowed Ground, meanwhile, is a much more strategic spell that creates advantageous 'hallowed' terrain for 20 turns. This spreads grass, lightly heals allies, and impedes enemy movement. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/813fda5cdf8962ffe4cc2ca33ca6a870002b9539.gif {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5f0d23e03ce69b60571d28eccb6a041d7ae64598.png The Paladin is a simpler subclass that's all about close combat. All of their spells are closer-ranged, and they gain buffs to Holy Weapon and Holy Ward, increasing their effectiveness and allowing them to work with existing enchantments and glyphs. Unfortunately I haven't implemented the Paladin yet, and so don't have anything to show you, but here are some spell designs I'm pretty solid on:

• Smite is a fantasy Paladin staple, and will be the Paladin's innate spell. I expect it to be a fairly straightforward physical attack buff, granting the Paladin a guaranteed hit, and probably some mix of extra damage and enchantment power.
• Lay on Hands is another Paladin classic, and will probably be the Cleric's only 100% direct healing spell in the game. Lay on Hands will grant a nice chunk of shielding if the Paladin uses it on themselves, or healing if it's used on an adjacent ally.
• Cleanse is actually the spell that's shared between both subclasses, so Priest gets it too. It's a useful defensive spell that removes debuffs from the Cleric and allies, applies shielding, and can even grant brief debuff immunity.

Armor Abilities

I'm going to be a bit lighter on info here to avoid lategame spoilers, and as two of the abilities aren't implemented yet. Just like with subclasses, each armor ability has three unique spells that are learned and upgraded via talents. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5a441122fc1d5d13c6c48c7d2cb5f2cb4d040767.png Ascended Form causes the Cleric to assume a glowing radiant form for 10 turns. In this form they gain +2 attack range, access to new spells, and shielding for every holy tome charge they consume. This ability and its associated talent spells are expensive, but you can always just plan around benefiting from the extra reach or bonus shielding instead. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/7d3dfa7b4c2f2e58e0f411e8882246af45222799.png Trinity (not yet implemented) is unique in that rather than being a single armor ability, it's a collection of three individual talent spells that each cost both tome and armor charges! To go along with the themeing here, I'm considering have the spells work with weapons/armor (body), wands (mind), and rings/artifacts (soul). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/b1cc128231dc3d71866a46cdfc1d14a87eaba784.png Power of Many (not yet implemented) is a more collaborative version of ascended form. The Cleric either produces an ally, or empowers an existing one. This ability has three talent spells that are cast from this empowered ally instead of the Cleric themselves.

Conclusion & Release Plans

The Cleric is shaping up to be the most complex and strategically flexible hero in the game, and I’m very excited for people to start playing with them. I expect they’ll be a treat for experienced players in particular, who are going to have quite a few options available via all the different spells. Please let me know what you think of the Cleric in v3.0.0’s beta! I expect the beta to last a fair bit longer than usual, both due to the work still needing to be done, and the upcoming holidays. I’m going to be taking things easy for the next week or two, so expect for the Cleric to start getting filled in during January, and for v3.0.0 to start getting ready for release around late January or early February. Finally, some of you may be wondering about the in-game visual improvements I shared in the 10th anniversary blog post. I'm afraid there's nothing new to share there yet, but I might have a couple other visual improvements cooking for v3.0 instead... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/b81e822b5e0ec96253ccbffedc6fa12e31152f01.gif Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update! I’ll be a little quiet over the holidays, but if you’d like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered’s development (including further work on the Cleric!), you can: - Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter - Follow me on Mastodon - Follow me on Bluesky You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com) Hey Dungeoneers! Progress has been made on the next major update to Shattered Pixel Dungeon, and it's finally time for me to start showing some things off! v3.0.0 will feature the game's second new hero: The Cleric! This blog will go over some of my design thoughts and early implementation work on this new hero.

The Sixth Hero

Two years ago, when I started work on the Duelist, I talked about how I wanted six heroes: two fighters (Warrior & Duelist), two agile tricksters (Rogue & Huntress), and two magic users (Mage & Cleric). You can also look at this in terms of game mechanics: two simpler equipment focused heroes (Warrior & Mage), two environment focused heroes (Rogue & Huntress), and now two ability focused heroes (Duelist & Cleric). So what would an ability focused magic user looks like? The Duelist's ability focus took the form of a special attack being given to every melee weapon in the game. For the Cleric I'm taking a bit of a different approach, the Cleric's abilities tie into the talent system! The Cleric will posses a holy tome artifact which they can use to cast a variety of spells that mainly focus on defense and utility. The Cleric unlocks and upgrades spells via the talent system! Here's an early low-res peek at their splash art: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/ce59535fa720c668eb82076c1e44a85e5a793ba1.jpg

Divine Magic!

(Note that the visuals below are a work in progress and subject to change) Currently talents are all passive or triggered effects because I didn't want them to warp Shattered's gameplay too much by being too complicated or powerful. In a way the Cleric is an exploration of the inverse approach, with more powerful talents that are active abilities. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/1e67bf315555db4f790987956f0506babba3e7d9.png The Cleric's holy tome artifact makes this possible, as even though most of their talents are now stronger player-triggered effects, they're all accessed from a single place in the UI, and all share a charge system. Scrolls of upgrade will still be the biggest source of power for the Cleric, of course, but expect talents to play a much bigger role for the Cleric than other heroes. So what sort of spells can the Cleric actually cast using their tome? Firstly, the Cleric starts with three innate spells: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/97df894c0ca1b6fe034338d83a3b2fb242749347.png - Guiding Light is a basic ranged attack option that deals a little damage and guarantees the next physical attack on its target will hit. - Holy Weapon is an offensive buff that's best early on when you have no weapon enchantment. This spell temporarily replaces the weapon's enchantment with a damage boost. - Holy Ward is Holy Weapon's defensive counterpart, adding a temporary glyph that increases damage blocking. Here's a little GIF showing off those three spells: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/cdb7db9a6fb0723ff465ca69f263b6cd8dfca627.gif All the other base Cleric spells are tied to talents. Most Cleric talents let you cast a new spell at +1, and make the spell more potent at +2. Here's a few examples: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/c72ed91537c943f41588af110c91c246804236bf.png - Detect Curse is a T1 talent/spell that acts as the Cleric's talent option to help with identification. For a fairly hefty charge cost, the Cleric is able to tell whether an unidentified item is cursed or not. - Shield of Light is a T1 talent/spell that is a great defensive panic button. For a short duration, the Cleric gains a significant armor bonus against a single target, and the spell is cast instantly! - Sunray is a T2 talent/spell that gives the Cleric a stronger ranged option. The spell deals a bit more damage than guiding light, and blinds the target for a few turns. Casting the spell twice in a row will upgrade the blind to a stun, but this can only be done once per enemy. - Divine Sense is a T2 talent/spell that gives the Cleric a visibility option. For a moderate charge cost the Cleric gains temporarily mind vision in a fairly wide (but not level-wide) area. And here's a little GIF showing off sunray, the flashiest of these spells: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/aabb829ba2a49ac32820bededa3b8adc672573f5.gif Of course this just covers some of the Cleric's powers up to level 12. It's looking like there will be about 30 Cleric spells in total. Some of these are tied to the base class like the ones above, but others are tied into things like subclasses...

Subclass Designs

I'm currently working towards Cleric subclass choice being about choosing a set of abilities/spells that each synergize with different classes of items. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/16534d7b3d6b4511038774a27e35bcca27d73858.png The Priest will focus more heavily on direct spell power and synergy with more magical items like wands and artifacts. Their abilities will likely not do much for weapons and armor or attacking in melee range. Experienced players tend to prefer more positional gameplay and use of wands, so the priest is likely to be the more popular choice for them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/5f0d23e03ce69b60571d28eccb6a041d7ae64598.png The Paladin will, by contrast, more heavily focus on weapons and armor synergy over raw spell power. Somewhat like the berserker, I expect the Paladin would lean more toward defense than offense. The Paladin will probably be simpler to play due to their reliance on simpler equipment, and so they'll probably be the more popular subclass overall.

Beta When?

Unfortunately the Cleric isn't quite playable in their current state. I want to at least have the base class, one subclass, and one armor ability fully implemented before starting the beta. Things might be a little rough, but I would like to try and push for a beta release of v3.0 around mid to late December, just before the holiday season. That'll give everyone a chance to try the Cleric out and for me to gather feedback to start to push for a release in the new year. ...Of course, I do also release Alphas on Patreon a bit before betas go out, and am less concerned about the Cleric not being fully playable there. I'm not able to commit to an exact timeframe, but I expect Patreon folks will be getting Alpha access sometime this week... Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update! In the meantime, if you’d like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered’s development, you can subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter, or follow me on Mastodon! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41344662/baf3b3a52fbef5496f815e6ab47c02bb9e93705a.png I’ve also now got an account on Bluesky! While I still prefer Mastodon, any platform is better than Twitter at this point, and if the majority of people want to migrate there I’m happy to post there as well. Bluesky will get the same posts I send to Mastodon or the Newsletter. You can discuss this blog post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.