I've played this game again in v2.1. It's so addicting, I've been playing it for 3 days. I've reached 2 years, solved all the areas, and unlocked all the potions except the lumberjack one. It seems I have missed the lumberjack quest, and now I can only buy wood from him.
It seems I have also missed the shop of the lonely church.
As of now I have 3k something dead and 6k fuel, and ~900 money. I wonder whether there will be a late game Richardo shop upgrade, as I have nowhere to spend this money now.
I have encountered a bug. It caused a crash. Reloading the game and repeating the steps caused the game to crash again.
I was exploring the fort area, in depth 2. I was trying to kill the wyrm. My tactic is, first use rot potion, then retreat and wait until it has only 1 hp, then go back and use a fireball.
The wyrm is usually in a special room with only 1 exit. This crash happens when the only exit is blocked by pits. I threw a rot potion from the other side of the pit, and retreated. About 4 turns later the game froze, and I have to kill the process by the taskmanager.
This tactic would work perfectly without the pit. Eventually I killed the wyrm with a different tactic, and moved on. I guess there is some problem with the wyrm's pathfinding logic.
I have some thoughts about the new items and changes:
1. The skeleton key is super powerful. It trivializes the traps in the dungeon, as they can now be lockpicked for no cost.
2. The bestiary is also very powerful. It allows the player to make effective tactics without trial and error of death.
3. The weather system caused something luminiscent to be less abundant, but there's still enough for me. This is mainly because the rains cause the fireflies to hide.
The weather visual effect is a bit too heavy, and it causes some difficulty for me to see the path. But I don't want to turn it off completely, maybe there should be an option to reduce weather visual effect.
4. I can't find a use for the black fire. It deals only 15~20 dmg, and is not enough for the stronger enemies. It is also too expensive for killing weak enemies. I tried it in a forest and it didn't spread well. It also has severe issue of potential backfire.
I think this potion is designed against swarm enemies but there is no such enemies in the game for now.
5. The scarlet flask makes something sanguine quite abundant. It's now a little too abundant, as this component is only used in healing and curing potions.
6. The leatherskin potion seems powerful, but isn't actually that powerful, since not many enemies deal physical damage.
7. The eelskin potion seems to be designed against crimson ivy. It could probably be helpful in later combats like crystal mansion, and it's quite cheap. I didn't use it though, because I could already kill the enemies quickly enough, and I prefer to avoid the damage completely.
8. The salamander boots make burning down forests easier. Instead of finding somewhere safe from fire, I'm now immune to flames.
9. The sparkling gloves are quite powerful, it can kill enemies easily in wet environments, and it's quite powerful in crystal mansion, saving a lot of shockwave potions. I think both of this is by design.
10. The efficient burner seems helpful, it saves a lot of fuel in distilling, and saves a little fuel in brewing.
Strangely, it halves the fuel cost of ember potion, but some of the fuel is supposed to be a part of the potion, instead of used in brewing. Maybe the effcient burner makes fuel in the potion also burn more efficiently?
Some previous problems:
1. The snake problem is solved. The snakes are a lot less aggressive now. The bestiary also explains why they are sometimes aggressive.
2. Umbral essence seems to be not that scarce now. I think the coffee thing is added in this version, and it provides some umbral essence. This allows me to use some frost potions, though it's still not very useful. I think frost potion can solve crimson ivy, but we have eelskin now.
3. The loot overlay now has its own UI component, together with a new creature overlay. Nice job done.
This update has also caused a new problem: Frequent switching of equipments.
In the previous version, I only have 2 equipments, and I use the sinister gloves most of time. There isn't much switching between them. In this version, I have 3 equipments, and I often need to switch between the sinister glove and the sparkling glove.
I think some equipment effects should be merged. As I can switch to the basic gloves at anytime with no time cost, its effect should be merged into all of the more advanced gloves. The same with boots, though verdant boots might have some adverse effects, so making it permanent is not good.
I think this could be solved be adding a new mechanism: Equipment enchantment. When you unlock more advanced equipments, some lower tier equipments can be turned into enchantment. Enchantment can be equipped with other equipments at the same time, but doesn't stack with its original equipment.