[Neolithic]To the End Windows game

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the last developer's diary of May. When you read this, it's likely been June already. Well, time moves on quite fast. We are almost at our 20th anniversary.

Anyway, let's start to talk about the content we get this week.

First, some follow-ups to Genzou. As the latest new teammate you can recruit, he needs to have some unique features and mechanisms. So, when he is in your group, you may discover some new story content in addition to his personal quest. For example, when you bring him to see a certain Aztec prince, he will comment on how similar they are, both waiting for someone, only to be dismissed by the prince mentioning they are nothing alike. Meanwhile, if Genzou is in your group, many Katan outlaws will not attack you because of some professional courtesy among bandits. (You can still attack them if you like.)

By the way, if you have won many times in the Arena in the Den of Pleasure, they will also no longer attack you.

Now, as we are talking about Katan, many of you may know there was an interesting location that has not been accessible in our current iteration of the game. That is the Psychedelic Cave. This location has been added to the game during this week's updates.
What makes this place quite infamous is, that almost all of its floors are so identical. There are several entrances/exits on each floor, each of them may move you down, move you up, or move you to another location on the same floor.

If you don't pay attention to details, you may find each floor looks just like this.
Thus, at the entrance, a bandit will remind you to bring some butterfly wings in case you get lost.
If you pass a persuasion check, you can convince him to sell you some.
Talking about the entrance.

You can immediately find the cave is not the brightest place in the world.

But, what's in this cave is so important that it keeps attracting people to keep going down there?
Well, let's not spoil that here.

But, you can easily find an ex-chemical teacher and current drug dealer to tell you. (Well, some of you may know this is another easter egg which we have plenty of.)
He is hiring someone to collect some spores carried by the mushrooms in this cave.
Yes, there are a lot of mushrooms. The deeper you go, the more and stranger variations you will encounter. Those spores have many usages. You can use them in alchemy, you can use them in cooking.

Don't tell people what you just added to those foods.
To accommodate this, I also made the food additives more versatile.
It now works this way:
If you are cooking a lot of food, you will need a lot of those additives to take effect. The less food you cook and the more such additives you add, the better the effect modifier. For example: 6 Poisonous Spore + 1 Apple can get you a cooked apple with a high poisonous modifier while 6 Poisonous Spore + 2 Apples may give you 2 cooked apples with only half of that modifier.
Not sure how many people will die from food poison since this update. But, it's going to be fun. :)

Those new mushrooms can also be turned into pets if you desire. They have unique skills and attributes according to their types just like the plague mushrooms we already have before. As they are mushrooms, you can also heal them with fertilizers. They drop their correspondent spores as loot. This also extended to existing mushrooms and their victims. The Plague Mushrooms and their infected victims in a quarantined neighborhood in Liu will now drop poisonous spores.

There are also some mineral deposits in this cave. However, most of them can only be mined for a limited amount of time. On the 4th floor, you may even find deposits of curse stones, indicating something sinister is on the deepest floor ahead which is currently still working in progress.

Other updates of this week include new equipment prefixes that increase resistance to horny, stun, and acid burn, flags of the United States in Queensmouth's various buildings, and more generic alchemy functions. Please refer to the full update logs for details.

That's for this week. So far, none of those things added this week will make you addicted as we don't have an addiction system in place yet. So, feel free to eat them or let others eat them like candies and go as high as you like. Have fun! :)

The full update log of this week:
20240525
English
############Content###############
[Genzou]When he is in your group, talking to his dog now has additional dialogs.
[Genzou]If you bring Genzou and talk to a certain Aztec Prince. In one of the dialog options, Genzou will now mention how alike they are while the Aztec Prince will dismiss that.
[Genzou]When you interact with any moonlight flowers in the world and Genzou is in your group, he will say something.
[Queensmouth]Added the flag of the United States in several buildings.
############DEBUG################
[Genzou]Fixed a bug that in a rare case you can still see Genzou in his tent even when he is in your group.


20240526
English
############Content###############
[Katan]If Genzou is in your group, Katan outlaws will not attack you because of some professional courtesy. However, you can still attack them instead. Those berserkers will still attack you.
[Katan]If you win a lot in the Arena in the Den of Pleasure, Katan outlaws may not attack you. (Each victory increases the chance by 2%) However, you can still attack them instead. Those berserkers will still attack you.
[Prefix]New Prefix: Frigid. (Increase horny resistance. It's a generic prefix that may appear on any equipment.)
[Prefix]New Prefix: Tenacious. (Increase stun resistance. It's a generic prefix that may appear on any equipment.)
[Prefix]New Prefix: Alkaline. (Increase acid burn resistance. It's a generic prefix that may appear on any equipment.)
[Katan]New Location: The Psychedelic Cave. (It has a map effect similar to an old mansion in SAPC++'s School DLC. Still WIP. It's quite empty at this moment.)
[Butterfly]Butterfly Wings now work in the Psychedelic Cave.


20240527
English
############Content###############
[The Psychedelic Cave]Added more dialog options on the outlaw at the entrance. He shall provide you with more information about this cave.
[The Psychedelic Cave]Added 4 more floors of this cave. All of them look almost identical. Thus, it's quite easy to get lost.
[The Psychedelic Cave]The deeper you go, the environment will become pinker.
[Wiki]Added a wiki page of this location: Neolithia.fandom.com

20240528
English
############Content###############
[The Psychedelic Cave]Plague Mushrooms now appear in this cave.
[The Psychedelic Cave]When you go to another floor, the environment on the previous floor may now change.
[The Psychedelic Cave]If you pass a persuasion skill check, you can now convince the outlaw at the entrance to sell you some Butterfly Wings.
[The Psychedelic Cave]On Floor 1, there is now a board near the exit back to Floor 0.
[Skill]New Skill: Aphrodisiac Spore
[Pet/Enemy]New Pet/Enemy: Aphrodisiac Mushroom
[The Psychedelic Cave]Aphrodisiac Mushrooms now appear in this area. The deeper you go, the more of them will appear.


20240529
English
############Content###############
[Item]New Item/Alchemy Material: Poisonous Spore
[Item]New Item/Alchemy Material: Aphrodisiac Spore
[Loot]Mushrooms and their infected humans may now drop those spores.
[Cooking] Poisonous Spores can now be used as food additives when cooking. (If you are cooking a lot of food, you will need a lot of those additives to take effect. The less food you cook and the more such additives you add, the better the effect modifier. For example: 6 Poisonous Spore + 1 Apple can get you a cooked apple with a high poisonous modifier while 6 Poisonous Spore + 2 Apples may give you 2 cooked apples with only half of that modifier.)
[Cooking] Aphrodisiac Spores can now be used as food additives when cooking.
[Wiki]The cooking and alchemy effects of those spores have been updated to the Wiki.
[Wonderland Travel Agency]Procedurally generated caves with mushroom enemies may now have Aphrodisiac Mushrooms.
[Shopping]Enchantopia Elegance Emporium and the Mage Guild now sell Poisonous Spore.
#######System##################
Added a new function to standardize the effect of food additives during the cooking process.


20240530
English
############Content###############
[The Psychedelic Cave]Added a new NPC: Mr. Lambert on Floor 0 of this cave. (Some may know what an easter egg this is.)
[The Psychedelic Cave]Mr. Lambert buys the spores you can collect from those mushrooms at a relatively high price.
[The Psychedelic Cave]Mr. Lambert sells some standard medicine supplies and some drugs he makes. (He has an alchemy skill level of about 60.)
[The Psychedelic Cave]Added two types of unique drugs that Mr. Lambert sells.
[The Psychedelic Cave]Added two bodyguards standing behind Mr. Lambert.
[Skill] New Skill: Psychedelic Spore
[Item] New Item: Psychedelic Spore
[Alchemy]Added the alchemy data on Psychedelic Spores.
[Cooking]Added the additive effects on Psychedelic Spores.
[Wiki]Everything above has been updated to the wiki.
#######System##################
Added a parameter on the brew potion function in the Alchemy system module. This new parameter can override almost everything.


20240531
English
############Content###############
[Psychedelic Mushroom]New Enemy/Pet: Psychedelic Mushroom
[Psychedelic Mushroom]Psychedelic Mushrooms now appear in the Psychedelic Cave.
[Psychedelic Mushroom]Psychedelic Mushrooms now appear in the Wonderland Travel Agency's procedurally generated dungeons.
[Psychedelic Mushroom]Psychedelic Mushrooms now drop Psychedelic Spores.
[Skill]New Skill: Exciting Chemical (Psychedelic Mushrooms have this skill when turned into pets.)
[Mining]All mining deposits can now have a limited number of times that you can mine.
[The Psychedelic Cave]Floor 1 to Floor 4 may now have some stone mining deposits. On the 4th floor, there may be cursed stone mining deposits.