Hey everyone,

0.5.3 started as a hotfix for some issues with 0.5.2, but got pushed back. This is because I wanted to add some much-needed content to Axu's story, lore and various other aspects. There are now some new story quests with the Ensis, Kin of the Deep, and Xul for you all to do. I've also added several new mutations, traits, and Vampirism! Vampirism is a pretty fun disease to catch. One large change in 0.5.3 is with enemies. They used to randomly use skills available to them, regardless of any cooldowns. This seemed unfair, as the player has to wait to use abilities. 

Take a look at the changelog to see all the new stuff!

Cheers,

Matt (Cynapse)

 ADDITIONS/CHANGES:

• Manually picking up a similar item to the one in your Ranged slot stacks the items together in that slot.
• The Throwing menu now shows Throwing items first, and follows the scroll bar.
• Explosives and flasks of poison are now designated as throwing weapons.
• Having a throwing item in your Ranged slot displays the item's amount rather than ammo on the side panel.
• NPCs now use Stamina in all abilities they have, and have to wait for cooldowns, same as the player.
• A new disease: Vampirism.
• New main quests for Ensis, Kindred, and Xul.
• A new stat: Attack Delay. The lower the value, the faster you attack.
• New mutations.
• New level-up traits.
• Summon Spirits has been buffed.
• Mysterious Liquids now give more radiation than Irradiated Corpses.
• Slightly increased regen rate while resting.
• Reduced the frequency of radiation being given to the player through enemy attacks.
• Reduced Ranger of Xzol's ranged damage and accuracy slightly.
• Added the option to simplify damage numbers as a range rather than dice.
• A new, improved options menu.
• A consistent options menu between the title screen and the game.
• Altered the character creation screen a little to be more clear.
• Added a tooltip for the character screen. It shows definitions for each stat.
• The Character Creation screen remembers your last selected name, and places it in the NAME box by default.
• Reworked the name generator to give some actually pronounceable names.
• Slimmed down save file even further, and culled unwanted screens/npcs/objects past a certain threshold of turns.
• Hunger costs while on the world map halved while flying.
• Experiments with no legs still get an inhibitor attached to a limb.
• The Experiment felony now starts with random stats.
• The world map camera is now pixel-perfect.
• Test Subjects no longer have a ridiculous amount of intrinsic armor. 

    FIXES:

• Enemies cannot use their skills while stunned, toppled or frozen.
• Fixed some exceptions with quests being duplicated and causing errors.
• Fixed tileset oddness and a crash due to it.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs are killed mid turn, causing the player to stand there unable to move or act.
• Fixed level up traits being different than displayed after closing an alert to get to the traits menu.
• Fixed severed limb naming.
• Enemies now have energy resistances. Having a voltaic weapon no longer crashes the game upon hit.
• Firearms no longer have a sprite to display, since it was overriding weapon sprite.
• NPCs that have a ranged weapon to start no longer get "None" equipped when swapping to the firearm.
• Mute option now mutes weather sounds.
• The equipment panel doesn't scroll when you scroll on the inventory panel.
• Inventory and Loot panels scroll properly with many items.