West of Loathing news & patch notes

Many thanks to everyone who reported bugs and helped us track down the trickiest of these issues, we really appreciate it! Here's what's fixed:

• Corrected a problem where the player character would move super fast on a high-end personal computer. AKA the PCPCPC (personal computer player character problem correction).
• A few objects in dark areas of the game will no longer appear to be hovering very slightly off the ground (they were haunted before, now you're haunted instead, sorry).
• A couple interactions with clowns might now make slightly more sense and/or be slightly more menacing and/or creepy.
• You should no longer tell the Perfessor that you haven’t found anything in the Lost Dutch Oven Mine when you actually have. Ludonarrative dissonance averted!
• The El Vibrato headband will now prevent you from going bonkers in the Lost Dutch Oven Mine Pit, as it was always meant to.
• The El Vibrato Headband is now equippable if you are using a controller instead of a keyboard & mouse.
• The giant rock monster fight is much more challenging now because we fixed a bug that was preventing it from punching you.
• The scorched bandit should no longer be outfoxed when you attempt to hornswoggle them.
• You should no longer talk to the Breadwood Mayor about a lumber deal if you’ve already built a bridge before meeting him.
• The Ghostwood introductory text should now appear as you walk a little ways into the town instead of not-at-all.
• Polished diorite will no longer allow you to exceed your daily spleen allotment.
• When discussing Josie with the Perfessor, the conversation will now properly display character portraits.
• Wasco's banjo music no longer mysteriously continues to play at his shack even after he's left the area. (Those ghosts are also haunting you now instead of Wasco's shack, double-sorry.)
• If you ask Gary or Alice if they know how to play the piano, they will no longer appear to look like Florence when they answer.
• A definition in the Gun Manor Library’s dictionary that was for a homophone of the actual word has been corrected.
• Dirtwater bourbon should now properly provide bonus XP from the Gun Manor shotglass.
• The end credits should now show the jam band scene even if you didn’t get the washboard player. (Fun fact: there’s actually different text for every combination of two or more band members!)
• Lots of small typos that no one else would even notice have been fixed. You'll just have to trust me. (And the ghosts.)

Oh, also there is one known issue that we haven't dealt with yet, but will try to remedy that at some point down the line: A few scenes will look weird at the far edges on very wide monitors (2:1 aspect ratios and above).

Holy cow it's been almost three years since we first released West of Loathing! To celebrate this we've fixed some obscure bugs, improved some interactive bits, and added a splash of new content here and there. It's a regular smorgasbord of patch notes!

• If you leave the record playing in your bedroom on the farm, it is now just barely audible outside your house as well. The jam has been pumped.
• Skipping the prologue will now give you the broken board and pair of silver cufflinks -- you'll need to complete an actual pass through Boring Springs with them in your inventory first, though.
• Scaling monsters in the Boring Springs environs will no longer sometimes have missing stats. Contrapositively, missing monsters will have scaling stats.
• Pedestrians and coaches in Dirtwater now have things to say.
• "Poker" games now have twice as much flavor, but half the fat.
• You can no longer arrest the House-in-the-Desert Gang unless you've been inside the Dirtwater Jail at least once.
• You should no longer find any keys in Gustavson Gulch if you've already opened the door they would be needed for.
• The goblins in the guard barracks will now properly drop a random goblin consumable when defeated. But know that narratively they were gobblin' it when you arrived to fight them.
• If you get beaten up far from home and pass out, you will no longer get random encounters from that distant region if you immediately go to the map and start wandering after waking up.
• Your pardner should now provide useful advice about dealing with the remains of the Gherkin Brothers.
• Through the miracle of animation, the clown described as flipping his knife by the campfire is now actually depicted flipping his knife by the campfire.
• The kid at the Circus should no longer continue sadly searching for his bottle cap once you've returned it to him.
• The postcard-dickering arbitrage-for-infinite-Meat-but-very-slowly loophole has been closed. We apologize to anyone who is currently attempting to build up their fortune two Meat at a time.
• The problems board in Breadwood should no longer complain about a bad lumber deal if you didn't use any of their lumber to build a bridge. (Aka the 99 problems, bridge ain't one bug fix.)
• The guitar player at Fort Memoriam will no longer stop playing if you talk to him (but don't suggest he leave).
• You should no longer be able to walk behind some buildings in Frisco. We swear there was nothing back there except tragic wealth disparity.
• There's a new character to chat with at Clooncy's in Frisco.
• Once you've dealt with Norton, there are now pedestrians wandering in Frisco, and they have a few things to say to you.
• It should no longer be possible to accidentally break quest progression during pie-throwing or exploding cigar demonstrations.
• The dictionary in Gun Manor should no longer just close if you try to look up the word "done." This bug was actually pretty funny, so we almost left it in.
• Additional nonsense has been added to the Gun Manor dictionary that probably no one will ever see.
• All variants of venomous bullet oil will now properly report the damage they do in the combat log instead of just "" -- bullets don't actually know what state you are in when you do damage, they aren't that smart.
• The flow of many late-game conversations has been improved.
• A bunch of combats now have custom fight backgrounds that more accurately represent their locale. No one ever complained about this, but now that we've brought it to your attention I fully expect to get reports about other places where things look weird.
• A few combats that were unintentionally too easy are now tougher than they used to be.
• A few audio cues that were not firing properly because of typos in the scripting are now working.
• All known typos have been fixxed, except that one.
• West of Loathing should now be certified such that it will work with MacOS Catalina. (Goodbye annoying notification on the Steam store page! You won't be missed.)
• And finally, on the back end, we updated to Unity 2019.4. This sort of change is terrifying because it could introduce any number of unknown issues. We've tested it a bunch in-house, but please let us know if you find something screwy! (Once we've made sure it's stable we'll roll this patch out on the Switch, GOG, etc. as well.)

Thanks so much for playing our goofy game and telling other people about it so much over the years. Your word-of-mouth support makes a huge difference, and we really appreciate it. Y'all rock!

Today's long-in-coming patch fixes a couple of rare and extremely difficult-to-track-down crash bugs on Windows 10. Many thanks to the folks who helped us out by sending in Unity logs and testing things on a beta branch! With this release we'll be closing all the current beta branches — this build incorporates every bug fix we've made thus far, so no one should need to be on a specialty build at this point. (We'll open fresh branches to address new issues as they arise.) There's at least one additional Windows crash bug still out in the wild — if you're experiencing it, please let us know! It's extremely elusive at the moment. We did tweak a few minor things as well:

• The Spirit Guide achievement should no longer be awarded in situations where you didn't actually deserve it
• The Hedge Wizard no longer dies silently (into that good night)
• The dictionary now allows you to type both upper and lower case letters, just in Case you need to make your CASE
• Added some extra dialogue to account for the possibility of offering two somewhat similar characters each other’s quest items instead of their own
• If you don't own all the available DLC, a sign will appear on the main menu (many folks still don't know that there is DLC)
• Fixed 11 typos; Added 11 different typos in other places, just to keep you on your toes

A quick little DLC patch today to address some issues that folks have brought to our attention. Thanks for all the bug reports and also all the kind words about the DLC in general, everyone! Y'all rock.

• You now get the Spirit Guide achievement at a more appropriate moment -- also if you load a character that SHOULD have gotten that achievement but did not, it will be awarded right away (apologies for how poorly thought-out that was initially!)
• An important object in Mrs. Gun's room is now much more self-evident
• You should no longer be able to walk past Chet without talking to him once
• Eating a deep-fried holster should no longer give you the effect from the gun-shaped cookie
• You should no longer be able to walk up to a coaltergeist without getting warned about how that's a bad idea
• A photo of L’ardest should no longer appear from out of nowhere in the larder window if you defeated him in combat
• Added text to the #5 pool ball to indicate that you will start every combat on fire while holding it (which probably makes you look super intimidating, like "Dang, they're on fire and they don't even care!")
• Fixed an errant instance of Alice speaking when your pardner is actually Susie
• Flo should no longer report she learns the “Suck Ray” skill when in fact she learns “Beta Blast” (not really sure what the Suck Ray is, but it sounds cool)
• Added some entries (mostly plurals of existing entries) to the dictionary
• Some large bells now have a distinct visual effect when rung instead of just playing a sound
• West of Loathing should no longer switch Mac users with a Retina display to a lower-than-expected-or-desirable-resolution on launch
• And finally, you should only be marked as having found Macready’s grave if your character already knows it is important (from now on -- this is not retroactive, unfortunately)

Our first DLC for West of Loathing, Reckonin' at Gun Manor, is now available for purchase right here on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/954060/West_of_Loathing_Reckonin_at_Gun_Manor/ And now, here's some exciting marketing copy for you to read: A ghostly carriage arrives in Dirtwater. Only you can see it, and it only goes one place -- the mysterious Gun Manor. A brand new West of Loathing adventure, full of all the things you've come to expect from the Loathing brand:

• A few more hours of that sweet, sweet gameplay
• Fiendish new monsters
• Useful new items
• Challenging puzzles (which are also new)
• Scads of new goofs and gags
• No new gulches (sorry, we're all gulched out)

Who can solve the mystery of Gun Manor? Is it you? It's probably you.

* Does not actually contain any cabbage Not a ton of changes in this patch:

• The dialog window has been made a bit wider so that text after buttons can't try to hide from you off-screen any more
• Harmonized Halloway’s Hideaway hardwoods (had halted hiker headway historically)
• Horses that were sometimes so slow as to be immobile have been returned to normal speed
• Pardner skills now say what they're called when you have them selected in combat
• In very low light conditions, white objects would be drawn in a very dark green color. This was a bug, and it is no longer true. Now those objects will appear gray. After today, it will be safe to assume that any objects which appear to be green when dimly lit are, in fact, green objects.
• We had not found all the typos, it turns out; corrected a bunch more of them
• Oh, nearly forgot -- our new DLC, Reckonin' at Gun Manor, is now available for purchase here on Steam
• <3

Out now for Windows and Mac, and coming very soon to Linux, it's version 1.10! Major updates:

• We've added controller support! The game should notice if you are trying to use a controller and update your UI as appropriate. We've tested a variety of Playstation and Xbox controllers on Windows and Mac — let us know if your Steel Battalion control rig isn't working and we'll see if we can support that too.
• On the back-end we updated to a new version of Unity. We tested the game in-house, but this is a significant upgrade and there might be new bugs that we missed. Please report anything wonky that you find and we’ll look into it ASAP!

Captain updates:

• West of Loathing takes up even less drive space than it used to, with the minor trade-off of slightly longer load times here and there
• Night mode can be disabled with the launch option “--reset-nightmode”
• Big Spleen is now correctly marked as a perk, so it doesn't have a useless next to it on the skill screen
• The XP costs for increasing Grit to levels 10 and 11 have been corrected, they were at odds with Gumption and Glamour before

Lieutenant updates:

• Fixed typos, more than we cared to count (maybe... 42?)
• Removed the worst 11 jokes, added 11 different, potentially worse, jokes
• The combat music has been rebalanced; combat balance has not been remusiced
• Punching an opponent with your bare (or brass-covered) fists will now make a sound, which is also logically sound
• You can now hear it (glug glug!) when your character consumes booze
• You can no longer be doubly Ruthless, and it’s a little easier to be Honorable
• Wimpy Fricker is now a good shot with his right hand and a terrible shot with his left
• The Hostler will no longer offer to sell you a horse until you’ve learned the locations of his lost horses
• The lockbox in Orehole Mine is now clearer about how it should be opened
• Skeletons in the prologue can no longer be poisoned
• Rattlesnakes will now actually bite you instead of just slithering (hopping?) up to you and immediately turning away again
• The pyrobove in Susie’s basement will no longer make noises once it has been dispatched
• Pete’s leveling up encounters will no longer sometimes prevent you from ever seeing other one-time encounters
• Your pardner will no longer have a non-response when you are looking for barbed wire and you ask them about sidequests
• The House-in-the-Desert Gang can now be Outfoxed or Intimidated out of their weapons
• The Pickle Factory Activation Lever should no longer sometimes lock you out of acquiring the Wanted: Alive achievement
• The Goblin Gulch jeweler encounter will now only happen once per character, and won’t sometimes prevent you from ever encountering the Goblin Gulch juggler
• Gary will no longer join in a fight against a goblin who is trying to sell you driftwood sculptures
• Numerous other small bug fixes that we failed to write down

• Keyboard commands used in the game can now be fully customized from the new Keyboard Options menu — va pnfr lbh rkvfg va n ebg-guvegrra jbeyq, fnl
• The speed of the player’s horse can now be altered in the Options menu, fstr or ssslowerrr
• The brightness of the game window can now be adjusted in the Video Options menu
• New, safer, code is used to save the game — this should prevent players from (rarely) ending up with a save file filled with zeroes
• Short on space? West of Loathing now takes almost 50% less drive space than it did before (we packed the 0s and 1s much closer together)
• Short on time? The game now loads 80% faster, so you spend more time playing and less time not playing
• Short on RAM? Memory usage has been reduced significantly — this may help with some crashes on older PCs
• Short on patience? Don’t bother reading the plaques in Shaggy Dog Cave
• Corrected a bunch of typos, let's say... 37 of them
• One of the silly walks is now slightly more silly
• The cowbell fights at Hellstrom Ranch now count as cow fights for Susie-leveling purposes
• Drinking a perfect cup of coffee will no longer prevent subsequent cups of coffee from giving you their effects (but you will still forever know how far they fall from their Platonic ideal)
• When You’ve Had Your Coffee, your maximum Action Points will now properly be increased
• Pete's Dark Whisperin' no longer ignores enemy Spooky Resistance
• Fan Hammer no longer causes goofy combat log messages after killing unguliths and other ungulith-like things
• Kurtzian Charm is a now a perk and on par with the other Kurtzian perks
• Completing a certain quest no longer prevents the Chastity Pants from doing their chastity thing
• Gary and the player will no longer speak for each other at the Alamo — don’t you forget it!
• Created a Steam Controller profile: steam://controllerconfig/597220/1118485857 (Full, real controller support is still in the pipeline)
• A bunch of small bug fixes that we forgot to write down (sorry!)

This patch took forever for a bunch of reasons too boring to elaborate on here. Thanks for your patience!

• Keyboard commands used in the game can now be fully customized from the new Keyboard Options menu — va pnfr lbh rkvfg va n ebg-guvegrra jbeyq, fnl
• The speed of the player’s horse can now be altered in the Options menu, fstr or ssslowerrr
• The brightness of the game window can now be adjusted in the Video Options menu
• New, safer, code is used to save the game — this should prevent players from (rarely) ending up with a save file filled with zeroes
• Short on space? West of Loathing now takes almost 50% less drive space than it did before (we packed the 0s and 1s much closer together)
• Short on time? The game now loads 80% faster, so you spend more time playing and less time not playing
• Short on RAM? Memory usage has been reduced significantly — this may help with some crashes on older PCs
• Short on patience? Don’t bother reading the plaques in Shaggy Dog Cave
• Corrected a bunch of typos, let's say... 37 of them
• One of the silly walks is now slightly more silly
• The cowbell fights at Hellstrom Ranch now count as cow fights for Susie-leveling purposes
• Drinking a perfect cup of coffee will no longer prevent subsequent cups of coffee from giving you their effects (but you will still forever know how far they fall from their Platonic ideal)
• When You’ve Had Your Coffee, your maximum Action Points will now properly be increased
• Pete's Dark Whisperin' no longer ignores enemy Spooky Resistance
• Fan Hammer no longer causes goofy combat log messages after killing unguliths and other ungulith-like things
• Kurtzian Charm is a now a perk and on par with the other Kurtzian perks
• Completing a certain quest no longer prevents the Chastity Pants from doing their chastity thing
• Gary and the player will no longer speak for each other at the Alamo — don’t you forget it!
• Created a Steam Controller profile: steam://controllerconfig/597220/1118485857 (Full, real controller support is still in the pipeline)
• A bunch of small bug fixes that we forgot to write down (sorry!)

This patch took forever for a bunch of reasons too boring to elaborate on here. Thanks for your patience!

West of Loathing's phenomenal soundtrack by the illustrious Ryan Ike is now available for purchase on Steam. Check out this track list: #1 What In Tarnation #2. West of Loathing (Main Theme) #3. A Cave Is A Sideways Hole #4. Better Luck Next Time, Pilgrim #5. The Quick and the Undead (Spooky) #6. Draw! #7. Sit Fer A Spell #8. The Sticks-For-Hands Rag #9. El Vibrato Fanfare #10. Newfangled Contraptions #11. Dirtwater Jam Band #12. Fastest Pointer-Finger in the West #13. Misbehave (In This Cave) #14. This Song Is Public Domain #15. The Quick and the Undead (Scary) #16. These Boots Were Made For Moseyin' #17. Please Buy Our Game (Trailer) #18. Panic! South of 'Frisco #19. The Wild White Yonder #20. Y'all Level Up, Now Note: It's packaged as a piece of DLC, so you must own WoL in order to buy it. 100% of the profits from the soundtrack sales go to Ryan — support independent music by buying this album today!

West of Loathing's phenomenal soundtrack by the illustrious Ryan Ike is now available for purchase on Steam. Check out this track list: #1 What In Tarnation #2. West of Loathing (Main Theme) #3. A Cave Is A Sideways Hole #4. Better Luck Next Time, Pilgrim #5. The Quick and the Undead (Spooky) #6. Draw! #7. Sit Fer A Spell #8. The Sticks-For-Hands Rag #9. El Vibrato Fanfare #10. Newfangled Contraptions #11. Dirtwater Jam Band #12. Fastest Pointer-Finger in the West #13. Misbehave (In This Cave) #14. This Song Is Public Domain #15. The Quick and the Undead (Scary) #16. These Boots Were Made For Moseyin' #17. Please Buy Our Game (Trailer) #18. Panic! South of 'Frisco #19. The Wild White Yonder #20. Y'all Level Up, Now Note: It's packaged as a piece of DLC, so you must own WoL in order to buy it. 100% of the profits from the soundtrack sales go to Ryan — support independent music by buying this album today!

• Corrected 11 typos (they were not funny)
• An errant mention of “Christmas” is now the proper “Crimbo”
• A save-file backup system (every 30 minutes) is now in place in case of save-file corruption.
• A rudimentary set of alternative keyboard layouts is now supported, accessible from the main menu. Custom arbitrary keybinding is in the works for a subsequent patch. (Thanks for your patience!)
• Under Linux, locale info is now set to en-US at launch.
• Fixed a few off-by-one errors on stat checks; we blame math for starting at 0
• Some choice popups should no longer (rarely) repeat options multiple times if re-triggered (other popups are still being ornery)
• Special handling has been added for the case where you don’t have permission to write to your own save directory
• Maxed Menacing Moo messaging made more meaningful
• The Ol’ One-Two-Three should now live up to its name by actually dealing damage three times
• Dark Howdy now properly reduces your non-Mysticality stats
• Goblin spores will no longer reduce enemy stats below 1
• Navigating the high-level Mastery Cookery crafting menus will now be easier
• Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Bill’s attacks are now logged in Nerd Mode
• Damage calculations and applied effects when shooting at enemies blocked by other enemies should be more sensical
• Hornswogglin’ ticket-taker clowns will now display actual hornswogglin’
• A couple random encounters with goblins will no longer reward “0 XP” rewards
• Milliner bandits should no longer (rarely) become un-accusable
• The ghost foremen at Jumbleneck Mine should no longer sometimes lock you into an infinite series of fights, each more horrible than the last
• Fort Memoriam minatures now more accurately describe their capabilities
• NPC "poker" players will no longer renege on their bets
• Playing “poker” should now be far more consistent and sensical in general as well
• A few hats should no longer show up in the final cutscene before you acquire them in-game
• Buying the crazy horse should no longer sometimes give you the dark horse
• Old military caps should now drop properly from fights in Fort Alldead
• A perfect cup of coffee will now improve your life far more than a regular cup of coffee
• Infernal leather boots no longer allow your Bull Stomps to set defeated enemies on fire
• Newly-crafted infernal leather hats will now make your attacks set enemies on fire like it says they will
• Ring of Inconspicuousness will no longer try to sometimes load a non-existent random encounter
• Extra-venomous bullet oil is now properly craftable (assuming you have all the skills and ingredients)

Note: Typos, etc, on items are only fixed on NEW items created after the patch (Sorry)

• Corrected 11 typos (they were not funny)
• An errant mention of “Christmas” is now the proper “Crimbo”
• A save-file backup system (every 30 minutes) is now in place in case of save-file corruption.
• A rudimentary set of alternative keyboard layouts is now supported, accessible from the main menu. Custom arbitrary keybinding is in the works for a subsequent patch. (Thanks for your patience!)
• Under Linux, locale info is now set to en-US at launch.
• Fixed a few off-by-one errors on stat checks; we blame math for starting at 0
• Some choice popups should no longer (rarely) repeat options multiple times if re-triggered (other popups are still being ornery)
• Special handling has been added for the case where you don’t have permission to write to your own save directory
• Maxed Menacing Moo messaging made more meaningful
• The Ol’ One-Two-Three should now live up to its name by actually dealing damage three times
• Dark Howdy now properly reduces your non-Mysticality stats
• Goblin spores will no longer reduce enemy stats below 1
• Navigating the high-level Mastery Cookery crafting menus will now be easier
• Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Bill’s attacks are now logged in Nerd Mode
• Damage calculations and applied effects when shooting at enemies blocked by other enemies should be more sensical
• Hornswogglin’ ticket-taker clowns will now display actual hornswogglin’
• A couple random encounters with goblins will no longer reward “0 XP” rewards
• Milliner bandits should no longer (rarely) become un-accusable
• The ghost foremen at Jumbleneck Mine should no longer sometimes lock you into an infinite series of fights, each more horrible than the last
• Fort Memoriam minatures now more accurately describe their capabilities
• NPC "poker" players will no longer renege on their bets
• Playing “poker” should now be far more consistent and sensical in general as well
• A few hats should no longer show up in the final cutscene before you acquire them in-game
• Buying the crazy horse should no longer sometimes give you the dark horse
• Old military caps should now drop properly from fights in Fort Alldead
• A perfect cup of coffee will now improve your life far more than a regular cup of coffee
• Infernal leather boots no longer allow your Bull Stomps to set defeated enemies on fire
• Newly-crafted infernal leather hats will now make your attacks set enemies on fire like it says they will
• Ring of Inconspicuousness will no longer try to sometimes load a non-existent random encounter
• Extra-venomous bullet oil is now properly craftable (assuming you have all the skills and ingredients)

Note: Typos, etc, on items are only fixed on NEW items created after the patch (Sorry)

Some highlights from a glowing review in Polygon posted just hours ago: "There’s no escaping West of Loathing’s relentless humor, but that humor is so warm and clever that it never gets old. The writing aims to subvert its own tropes at all times and in all ways, and there’s simply no way to see all the punchlines coming as a result." 'West of Loathing is a great Western game, and it isn’t even in color. It’s evocative of all the ambitions and moments that make a cowboy story worthwhile and engaging, while at the same time gently mocking the entire affair from start to finish." "West of Loathing elicits this powerful emotional connection with stick figures. It bonds you to its world with nothing more than doodling and dialogue. There’s a pretty good turn-based adventure game there, under the hood, but West of Loathing’s many strengths are all personal: connections made between developer and player when you both laugh at the same time. Absurdism aside, there’s something fundamentally human and direct baked into the game’s whole design from aesthetic to script."

Some highlights from a glowing review in Polygon posted just hours ago: "There’s no escaping West of Loathing’s relentless humor, but that humor is so warm and clever that it never gets old. The writing aims to subvert its own tropes at all times and in all ways, and there’s simply no way to see all the punchlines coming as a result." 'West of Loathing is a great Western game, and it isn’t even in color. It’s evocative of all the ambitions and moments that make a cowboy story worthwhile and engaging, while at the same time gently mocking the entire affair from start to finish." "West of Loathing elicits this powerful emotional connection with stick figures. It bonds you to its world with nothing more than doodling and dialogue. There’s a pretty good turn-based adventure game there, under the hood, but West of Loathing’s many strengths are all personal: connections made between developer and player when you both laugh at the same time. Absurdism aside, there’s something fundamentally human and direct baked into the game’s whole design from aesthetic to script."