A downloadable game for Windows

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In conjunction with its predecessor, Caverns of Xaskazien II has been in development since 1995.  It is a completely playable game, but will continue to receive free updates for the foreseeable future.

Game Features:
- A rich, graphical game, with loads of animation and dynamic, coloured per pixel lighting.
- An exclusive orchestral soundtrack created for the game by professional film scorer, Dave Coleman.
- A full sound environment with close to 1000 unique sound effects, volume keyed to the source’s distance from your character.
- An intuitive keyboard and mouse interface.
- An easy to understand UI that ensures all information any player could want on any topic is only a mouse hover away.
- 300 visually distinct monsters, each with a dozen+ variants (including named boss types), and robust AI that differs by monster intelligence level.  Summoning and Charm methods allow you to raise your own monstrous army to fight for you, too.
- Merchants and NPCs to deal with, as well, each of which can run afoul of the monsters, just like you.
- More than a hundred unique booby traps for the unwary, most of which may be set by players to ensnare monsters, too.
- 225 base weapons and 150 base armour pieces, each with thousands of possible enchantment combinations and legendary variants.
- Hundreds of unique magic items, mundane items, potions, scrolls, staves, wands, rods, food items, etc.
- More than 350 unique spells.
- Play as either sex in any combination of 38 Classes and 16 Races, and customize your character as you see fit through the upgrading of both Attributes and Skills.
- A new Religion system in which you vie for the affections of dozens of gods and goddesses, and where you can devote yourself exclusively to one of 13 different religions.
- Procedurally generated dungeons utilizing multiple methods of generation to create caves, structured areas, labyrinths and even forests, supplemented by occasional pre-generated dungeons called Legendary Lands.
- Hundreds of unique environmental features to interact with and use to your tactical advantage (or detriment).
- Both random and scheduled special Events to mix up gameplay.
- A comprehensive user's manual in the docs folder.
- All for the low sticker price of pay-what-you-think's-fair!

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 4.4 out of 5 stars
(11 total ratings)
AuthorVirtua Sinner
GenreRole Playing
Tagsdungeon, Dungeon Crawler, Fantasy, Procedural Generation, Roguelike
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Mouse

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

Caverns of Xaskazien 2 Ver. 1.32.01.zip 716 MB
COX2 1.31.43 to 1.32.01 patch.zip 3 MB
COX2 1.30.04 to 1.31.43 patch.zip 4 MB
COX 2 1.30.04 to 1.30.18 patch.zip 3 MB
COX2 1.15.23 to 1.30.04 patch.zip 26 MB
COX 2 1.12.43 to 1.15.23 patch.zip 6 MB
COX2 1.03.69 to 1.12.43 patch.zip 180 MB
COX2 1.02.87 to 1.03.69 patch.zip 4 MB
COX2 1.01.53 to 1.02.87 patch.zip 3 MB
COX2 1.00.84 to 1.01.53 patch.zip 4 MB
COX2 0.99.61 to 1.00.84 patch.zip 3 MB
COX 2 0.98.33 to 0.99.61 patch.zip 5 MB
COX 2 0.91.70 to 0.98.33 patch.zip 8 MB
COX 2 0.89.31 to 0.91.70 patch.zip 3 MB
COX 2 0.89.30 to 0.89.31 patch.zip 2 MB
COX 2 0.87.20 to 0.89.30 patch.zip 3 MB
COX 2 0.87.02 to 0.87.20 patch.zip 2 MB
COX2 0.85.28 to 0.87.02 patch.zip 3 MB
COX2 0.79.91 to 0.85.28 patch.zip 3 MB
COX2 0.78.94 to 0.79.91 patch.zip 3 MB
COX2 0.76.66 to 0.76.89 patch.zip 3 MB

Development log

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Comments

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I'll likely try to make a better video when I get the chance, but for now:

Will likely upload this later in early March.

Hey, thanks for posting that!  I really enjoyed watching it :)  I'll answer a few of the questions you posed and share some observations in the comments on the video itself!

Better video when I had a chance to make it:


Hopefully your game will get a bit more attention come March.

Nice!  Thanks for posting these :)

Currently only unlisted, I'll actually be scheduling them in March.

Just giving you a chance to see them before then.

Continuation to death for you:

Nice!  Just gave it a watch and left some comments on the video!

Just bought the game, so still learning my way around the interface. I play with mouse and keyboard. A few questions: 

  • Does it have a combat log anywhere so you can re-read earlier messages?
  • Is it possible to add an option to exit the map again using TAB? I tend to want to tab in and out, and now I have to go to another button like C to go back to the main view.
  • When I clicked BACK in character creation, it did not go back until I clicked OK first. Intentional or bug?
  • Scrolling the map with arrow keys is inconvenient when my right hand is on the mouse. How do other players using the mouse scroll it?

No combat log.  I could add Tab to just toggle back to the last tab you were on.  I'll make a note and try to get to it.  The Back button issue you describe sounds like a bug.  I'll have to look into it.  You can right click any square to center the screen on the square you clicked, which is how you can scroll with mouse.  If you hold the button down it will continue to scroll, with the speed essentially controlled by how far from the center of the screen you've got the mouse pointed.

Wanted to join in on the praise for the game, it's one of the only RL's that takes me away from DCSS (I hate to say but most have boring loot and bad enemy count/variety, at least compared to the randarts and creatures there) and I actually love the graphics.  Love the great variety that's in game too and it feels like you're always in danger. Shout out for the events in general too, gave me my favourite RL death so far.    Do wonder if my computer doesn't like it for some reason though( I wouldn't think any roguelike should be too hard on any modern computer but this game does have high power usage according to my task manager)    

Thanks so much for the words of encouragement!  It's a passion project, so always gratifying to know it's reaching an audience that enjoys it.  As for the "computer doesn't like it" that's undeniably my fault - I'm not a coder by trade, so everything I know about coding is learned by trial and error in my spare time, so nothing is optimized the way a professional might do.  I do have some plans to address some of this in the nearish future (probably not the next update, but the one after that).  I'm curious to know what the Event was that lead your favourite RL death!

I got crushed by a 92 damage rolling boulder trap. My BRAWN was not sufficient to survive. I failed the roll to dodge. My tears flow in rivers.

:)

Hello.

There seems to be a file termination error on the 1.30.18 complete .zip archive, I've tried re-downloading three times and it gives the same error (it finishes the extraction eventually but can't find some files on startup and fails to launch).

I suspect there's nothing missing because it's been downloaded dozens of time and no one's said anything - must be some weird error in the general transfer to you.  If you send me your email at stopthesaturnians@gmail.com I can WeTransfer you copy I'm playing - hasn't been updated much, I don't think.  Just let me know here if you've done so, because I never check that email and might forget otherwise!

Apparently it was an issue with the specific PC I was downloading on, it works fine on another, so all good now, thanks for the transfer offer anyway!

This has honestly been one of the best roguelikes I have ever played, I have no idea how I haven't heard from it until now. I love how all the monster, items and skill have a purpose and even low level spells are incredibly useful in late game

I just had my first victory as a randomly rolled mouserling soldier and it was pretty damn fun.

I just have a couple bugs to report: 1. When you click on the reorganize button and you have a large inventory (like 28~30 slots by having expert travelling and a sack) if you are scrolled down on the inventory it will unequip items from the top of the list and not equip them back. 2. Not sure if this is a bug but I have lost a character that got greasy and slipped on to a stalactite tile, getting impaled.

Congratulations on this fantastic game, I will for sure keep my eye on it for future updates!

Ah - BOTH of those are bugs!  I thought I'd fixed the sliding into Stalagmite deal a while back, but evidently not...  I'll have to look into them.  Thanks for the bug report and glad you're enjoying the game!

I've been searching for the slide from grease into stalagmites bug.  I cannot find any loophole that would allow sliding from grease to put you into stalagmites in the first place...  I'll keep looking, but I'll be up front and say I'm not sure how to fix this one right now.

Wait, I MIGHT have just fixed it.  Truth is, I've been dicking around with the code, and I just changed something that might have been the cause, but I'm not entirely sure I didn't add that something previously while dicking around with the code.  So...  MAYBE fixed?

It took me about 20 serious attempts but now I can finally claim the word: Victorious!!! For some reason Xaskazien did not have max health but its fate was sealed anyway.

You did an awesome job with the dungeon (cavern?) generation, the kind that could only be achieved with years of fine-tuning. One small blemish would be the rare occurrence when you start a floor on a monster's tile, triggering a combat round. That just feels wrong so hopefully that's a bug and not intended!

QoL/idea: Toggleable "As long as it remains in your inventory" items. That can be highly desirable (Enchanted Arrows) and would blend well with certain effects and traps.

Already starting a new quest, the game is definitely a keeper!

Congratulations!  (Out of curiosity, what race/class/religion combo won it for you?)

Xaskazien could have been missing health from passing through dangerous terrain, falling in a pit, etc.

Immediate combats on descending should be quite rare, but aren't a bug.  It would be easy to put in a catch to ensure it doesn't happen, but I don't really see a reason to do that...  I like the possibility, at least.

Enchanted Arrows do exist!  (As do Armour Piercing Arrows).  They're not toggleable - if they're in your inventory and you're using a bow, they automatically take effect.

Best of luck with your next go around!  I'm about to dive into another playtest, myself

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I played as a Viean Centaur Archer. The challenge was just right for this kind of game. In other words, it was devilishly hard! Fortunately, Vie played a decisive role against Xaskazien's damaging spells. Also, I was lucky to find a very good bow and... enchanted arrows. What I meant earlier is, those special inventory items should be toggleable. Seriously, can you really afford to waste such a great effect to finish off a low HP monster? So I dropped them when overkill, which takes me back to the rather slow inventory management. I also had two different Halo items  but didn't know which one would activate first...

I really like how there exist some defensive tactics, items or skills against everything: hidden pits and traps, enemies blocking corridors, cursed scrolls or bad potions... pretty much everything except taking a hit from an unexpected monster and possibly being killed right after you descend! Unlike the other thousand causes of death the game can throw at you, this won't be the direct consequence of a move or action you CHOOSE to take. It's all about taking calculated risks, so IMO that goes against the perceived spirit of the game. That sure will bring unnecessary frustation, and doesn't seem to add anything interesting gameplay wise...

My next hero is already dead, strangled by Severed Hands while running away. Here comes his avenger!

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After hours of deadly exploration, I must say this is one mighty impressive game! Plenty of old school yet refreshing ideas and interesting gameplay mechanics, like the combat resolution on the same tile... And so much content it dwarfs most other titles of the genre. Plus excellent graphics, sound effects and an awesomely fitting soundtrack... really impressive! Anyway, some quick QoL suggestions and one question that come to mind:

Since new items are automatically taken and the inventory tends to alway be full, there should be a faster way to swap items and/or access the "Retrieve" window. Perhaps also even a way to use items (potions/books) without actually taking them. IMO the game's only real issue so far, as sometimes it can become quite tedious...

An option to keep the view screen centered on the character after moving with the mouse would be nice too.

And ideally, the button that opens the map should also take you back to the last opened tab. Btw, in my current map I found a small bug (the kind that doesn't try to eat the hero for a change): The boat is not visible without a line of sight, however it's still possible to querying it!

Finally, the question: What exactly is "Yorick's Dimension Hopping Trunk"? There is no mention of it in the manual...

Keep up the great work!

(+1)

Thank you for the comments and thanks for the bug report!  That boat query bug I've already addressed behind the scenes recently.  We're still about 2 months out from the next release, but it's already going to be ungodly huge in size, including a lot of major QOL improvements.

You're not the first person to mention the desire to use items from the ground...  I'll have to think about it.  It's doable within the framework of the existing code, but it might be tricky to implement...  I'll have to give it thought.  Re-centering on the character after a mouse move, on the other hand, shouldn't be hard at all...  after I've finished today's workload, I'll look into it.

There are 2 magical trunks that can appear in the game:  Melgrim's Teleporting Trunk and Yorick's Dimension Hopping Trunk.  Melgrim's has a 10% chance of appearing on any level, though Yorick's only has a 1% (and can be purposefully conjured via a Vestonian miracle, too).  With Melgrim's, anything you drop in the trunk will still be in it if the trunk shows up again later in your game - so it's a way to set aside things you don't have space to carry but which MIGHT come in handy if you're lucky later.  With Yorick's, anything you drop in the trunk will still be there when the trunk appears, even in separate games.  So if you find something awesome that's not of use to your current character, you can drop it in there in the hopes that some future character will find and benefit from it.  (Yorick's also includes whatever items I've dropped in it before uploading here, so if you want a pure game that only contains your own stuff, you can reset it via the high score screen by clicking "Reset"). 

You might want to explain Yorick's Trunk in the manual. I've never found any, but I actually did reset the highscores to hide my laughable first attempts, and I was not sure what to do when it asked about it, hence my question. Unfortunately(?) the story will never tell what you've dropped in there, but it's nice to be able to reset it separately from the scores.

Very glad you're already working on the next update! Currently my randomly chosen Paladin keeps taking improvised junks he is not allowed to use, which exacerbates the inventory issue. Well, it's ok as he contracted too many diseases and will not survive much longer! 

Anyway, thank you for the explanation, I really appreciate it!

Extremely fun game, but I had a weird glitch occur that killed my run. Basically time froze for everyone but me. I was basically invulnerable to all forms of hazard damage, but could not interact with anything in the dungeon, but could use spells/items. I think what caused it is that I opened one of those book shelves that are located on the wall, while simultaneously standing on a recharging station. I ignored the recharge station because I had nothing to recharge and dropped the spell book on the ground and tried to move away from both and it's right around then that the dungeon just froze up.

Huh.  That's a weird glitch!  Thanks for letting me know.  I'll take a look at Recharge Stations and see if I can find anything...  Not sure what would have caused this though!

If you're using an older version of the game, there was a glitch where you could open the Recharge screen from a Recharge Station and then walk away, leaving it open, and that could cause all kinds of problems.  Fixed that in the last version (or perhaps the one before) though.

(+1)

I should be using the newest version, at least I think so. I only started playing recently, I do think that is what caused it, but I think the item on the ground may have lent a hand in the glitch occurring.  Well either way, it might have just been a fluke or something, I don't know.

God this game is so great and addictive, one of the very best traditional roguelikes out there. I've been looking for a real varied while challenging experience for so long, I'm so happy it exists and is still actively developed.

It is currently trending on the Roguelikes Discord. People are getting really passionate (and expert 😛) about it and opened a channel to share their experiences on the game.

Would love to see you there, VirtuaSinner, and read your inputs and thoughts!

Join here if you have time 😊  https://discord.gg/Hq8wPcs

Thank you so much for sharing this!  I'll check it out as soon as I'm done work today!

(+1)

Got doomed early to mid-game by a nigh impossible map, esp as a Tree. Oh well. Was a fun anyway!

Yikers!  Bad luck!

Trying to figure out windowed mode for Win10.  Is it possible?  Tried the usual shortcut -window switch & keyboard shortcut to no avail

   

Thx! 

(+1)

Yes.  Fire the game up in full screen, go into the Options menu, and left click the Windowed/Full Screen toggle.  When you leave the Options it will save your preference so next time it will launch in Windowed.

Oh, not sure how I missed that.  The main screen doesn't have Options, I'll dig through the options again inside the Cavern

Yeah, you do have to actually start a game first.

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Weird - it was just a stack laying there?  Or did you do something and then they appeared?  Never seen that before.  The one potion you drank was probably a Sleeping Draught.

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Huh.  I'll have to look into it...  never seen that before, though.

Oooooh.  Yeah, you updated, skipping steps.  Absolutely that'll cause mess ups.  Just download the full version.  If updating, you have to update step by step.

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Trying to play this on a laptop with no numpad and it looks like there's no way to move down with wasd - s activates stealth mode. I'm not sure if this is a bug or I'm not understanding something.

(+1)

Gah!  You're right!  WASD was implemented (though I never use it), and since I FORGOT it was implemented, I rewired the s key for stealth to be mnemonic, instead of the y key which used to be stealth.  Sigh.  I'll fix it on the next pass!  In the meantime, you can, however, still use the mouse to move - click any square that you can see a path to to move there by the shortest, most direct and safest path.  Or click any square horizontally or vertically adjacent to your character to move to that square.

This has been fixed in today's update.  Thank you so much for pointing this out.  Can't believe I missed it

Hi. Where I can download COX 1? The Windows version. is not possible from the website http://codedread.com/games.php#COX


Thanks

All versions of Caverns 1 are included in the bonus folder that comes with Caverns II.  So if you've downloaded this, you've already got it!

Has anyone tried to run this on Wine in Ubuntu? It works great up until I finish the character creation.  Then I get 2/3 through the loading screen and it crashes:

Got to 13!wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 000003F8 at address 7BC73D9D (thread 0009), starting debugger...
0031:fixme:dbghelp:elf_search_auxv can't find symbol in module

Anyway I am still trying to figure out how wine works to try to debug it or I will just set up VirtualBox.  Maybe after I get a little work done.  Just asking in case anyone has run it with Wine before.  Really nice character creation screen though.

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OK so I am just using VirtualBox with this tiny Win 7 iso https://archive.org/details/Tiny7#reviews.  Just need to make sure to increase the resolution in Windows to at least the minimum by right clicking and going to Screen Resolution.  Or actually it should be 1024x768 really.

Did it work?

Yes it seems to be working perfectly.  Except something about my Ubuntu resolution when I change it to 1024x768 or my monitor, the screen is slightly moved to the bottom and almost cuts off the bottom edge.  But I can still read the text and I think I can fix that by messing with my monitor or Ubuntu display settings.  Anyway its only a few pixels.

I only played for a few minutes so far but I do appreciate the amount of thought and roguelike experience that has gone into this just from initial reactions.  The wheel of fortune that spawned right next to me was a nice touch.  It was funny because I gave it all of my gold.  Also it is nice that there is a portal or whatever thing to create a new dungeon level easily in case people don't like the one that was generated or whatever.

I actually want to go back to the manual and the character creation screen for at least like 30-60 minutes before I go back to a dungeon again though.

Awesome!  Thrilled to hear it's working out! Hope you continue to enjoy it :)

Deleted post

Wow!  Thank you, so much!  Really appreciate it :)

Having a bit of trouble playing "of xaskazien." When I boot the game, I only get the inmost 60% of the screen, hence the "of Xaskazien", the rest is occluded. I get the feeling it is scaling itself far past the meat-space parameters of my screen. I'd love to give this a shot, but I can't find anything on the 'web to help me with this. Any ideas?

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It runs in a straight 1024*768, 4:3.  Any scaling would be done by your graphics card.  I know, for myself, I have an NVidia graphics card.  If I go into the settings, under Adjust Desktop Size and Position, there's a scaling setting with 3 options: Aspect Ratio, Full Screen and No Scaling.  I leave mine set to Aspect Ratio, to ensure that 4:3 games/videos play at that format, otherwise it stretches the game to fill the full screen.  Unless you're playing on a 4:3, the game should appear centered, with black, empty space to either side.  Could it be something to do with that?  If that doesn't solve it, the other option would be to play in Windowed mode, but that option can only be set in game, though it saves the preference thereafter - so if you're still having problems, PM me, and I'll generate and mail you a new preferences file that would default to Windowed mode.

(I suppose the other potential culprit would be if your computer is set to a lower resolution than 1024*768 - the game runs only in that resolution, so your environment would have to be at that resolution or higher).

I get this error trying to open the game:

C:\Rogues\Caverns of Xaskazien 2>"Caverns of Xaskazien 2.exe"
Couldn't set 1024x768x32 video mode: No video mode large enough for 1024x768

My device it's a portable handheld with 6" screen, but it has a 1280x720 resolution. Some idea about how to solve this?

Unfortunately, no.  It's designed for a Windows PC only.  There must be some aspect to a handheld device that it just can't grasp.   

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Just to be clear. It's a windows PC, just the format of the computer it's umpc. But it's an Intel m3 with intel HD 615 graphics, 8GB ram windows 10 and a max resolution of 1280

I'm just guessing that there must be something different in the processor of a portable machine.  But truthfully, I have no idea.  I've coded it on a Windows PC (desktop), seems to work on most Windows desktops and laptops, but I have absolutely zero knowledge about why it would or wouldn't work on one machine vs. another.  Sorry, man.

Hello. I think he said his vertical max was 720, but you are looking for 768. Maybe there is a way to give an option for a lower resolution or something.

Anyway this is a random question but is there a way to donate to this game or buy it or something?  For example if someone is requesting a new graphics mode or something, maybe they could buy you a coffee or something at least.

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https://clips.twitch.tv/VibrantCrypticLocustNerfRedBlaster Streamed Xaskazien win by Dynast! Tons of enemies are willing to walk into dangerous terrian though, you might need to check into that.

Ha! That's probably a holdover bit of legacy code from when Xaskazien was 100 percent immune to heat damage. His resistances are randomized now.

Having watched the full video (found it here: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Caverns%20of%20Xaskazien/videos/all), I think you're right - maybe I'll try doubling their hesitation to enter dangerous squares.

Also spotted 8 errors in the game via his stream!  Free playtesting!  Hopefully I can repair them soon.

Thanks for calling my attention to it, and thanks to Dynast for playing and recording!

Hey! Thanks for the new patch.. Just wanted to stop by and show you someone streamed your game recently! Overall they really enjoy it and will probaly stream it again! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/465956603

Another Xas vod is up! has some good game discussion in it

Thank you! I'll check that out!

Also, there will be a new patch along potentially. I've been AFK for a while, recovering from an injury. But hopefully that's almost done. 

Ah, man, I missed it! It's already gone. Thanks though!

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I've been exclusively playing a Half-orc Barb of Hornan, great beginner combo I'd recommend for any new players.. Anyway, I just wanna suggest maybe buffing Hornan's Summon Orc Champion prayer? When its most effective is the first few 1-3 dungeon levels, but its cost makes it so you're not able to actually use it consistently on those floors compared to something cheaper and more appropiate like Strike prayer.

Summons as a whole from my limited experience using Hornan's prayer and wands seem rather weak and quickly become useless 4+ dungeon levels in, thoughts?

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I’m always tweaking and balancing, so good to keep an eye on what other people are experiencing. Coincidentally, the perks I’m just finishing coding are for the Warlock class, which is a spellcaster devoted to summoning. I have a Female Centaur Warlock who worships Talltioward on the go, and my fearful eye has been kept on whether or not summoning is overpowered. But through this playthrough I think I’m realizing it’s okay, at least for now. Let me answer your question with some detailed thoughts.

 Firstly, very cool that you’ve found a race/class combo you like. I hadn’t thought about it, but a Barbarian is a perfect starting class, since it pretty effectively removes spellcasting from the table, allowing a player to learn other core mechanics first. I think if someone asked for a beginner combo in the future, an Agnostic Half-Orc Barbarian might be my recommendation, since that would also remove Miracles from the list.

 If you’re exclusively playing the same character type, though, it’s important to bear in mind that the experience of other characters would vary widely, making certain things more or less useful. As an example, Hornas’ Striking miracle you mentioned, which costs only 10 Faith Points and allows you to automatically hit on your next swing - I can see how this would be especially devastating for a starting Barbarian character to use. The Barbarian starts with the most powerful weapon among all starting characters - the Small Axe. This is to compensate for their total lack of spell access, but bear in mind its massive damage of 1 to 15, and contrast this with other classes who would start with weapons that do either 1 to 3, 1 to 4, 2 to 4 or 1 to 6, and it immediately becomes clear that Striking serves the starting Barbarian better than any other class. The Small Axe also comes with a massive -18 to hit penalty, so automatically hitting overcomes a big obstacle to its use. A character starting with a Pitchfork, by contrast, has +6 to hit, so Striking, while still useful in many circumstances, is maybe not as necessary to land that blow.

 Now let’s look at Summoning spells as a whole. The purpose of summoning is, generally, to bring into play a monster that will go and kill other monsters for you, so let’s compare it to another common way to use magic, which is with direct damage spells. Invisible Hammer, in terms of raw numbers, is the most powerful Low Power direct damage spell, doing 8 to 15 physical damage at a cost of 35 Spell Points. In the early game, this is an insanely powerful spell that can kill most monsters with a single application. But it does have some drawbacks - firstly, it’s only useful against a single monster. Once you’ve cast it, the spell points are gone, and you may now be defenseless against other monsters. Secondly, it only works against the monster in your square, meaning to cast it, you have to first engage in a single round of combat, possibly taking damage, possibly even being killed before getting a chance to cast it. And thirdly, it always does physical damage, limiting its effectiveness against monsters with physical resistance, most notably various types of Golems who would be unaffected.

 For 35 Spell Points, you could instead (provided you had access) cast the Summon Minor Fiend spell. This summons a low level Diabolic monster (a monster that would most commonly reside on Dungeon Levels 1 through 10). There are some key advantages to this vs. the Invisible Hammer spell. Firstly, depending on what you summoned, it might be able to kill multiple enemies. On a particularly early dungeon level (say Dungeon Level 1 through 5), there’d be a decent chance the summoned monster would outclass everything else on the level, and could rampage through killing literally every enemy without you ever having to face them, while you still reap all the EXP rewards. Secondly, you don’t have to (in fact, can’t) cast it in a square with an enemy, so you don’t have to put yourself at risk in order to cast it, the way you would with most direct damage spells. Thirdly, the potentially summoned monsters are varied, some having attacks other than physical attacks, so while an Invisible Hammer spell could never affect a Golem, your summoned monster might be able to.

 There are drawbacks to Summon Minor Fiend, of course, and that’s that it doesn’t scale as you level up. It’s extremely useful early on, but as you progress deeper in the dungeon, it becomes obsolete. Because of its wide variation in what gets summoned, it’s even possible to use it on Dungeon Level 1 to bring into play a lowly Demonic Larvae, and have that get killed by the first thing it meets, doing no damage whatsoever, so it’s risky. Invisible Hammer isn’t going to kill anything with a single cast beyond a certain depth, either, but it will still do some damage. (Of course, even the Demonic Larvae could get lucky and get a single hit on a Dragon before it dies, but it’s not as sure a thing as Invisible Hammer).

 So they both have advantages and disadvantages to balance each other out. Finally let’s compare Summon Orcish Champion to Summon Minor Fiend. With the Miracles, I always did my best to correspond Faith Point costs to the Spell Point costs of an equivalent spell, if one exists, and right away we see that Summon Orcish Champion costs 40 Faith Points instead of Summon Minor Fiend’s 35 Spell Points, so it had better be more powerful, but not too much more powerful. Summon Minor Fiend brings in a monster of random power (again, between level 1 and level 10) with a median of 5.5. Orcs are a level 6 monster, so we’re pretty in line. But the Summon Orcish Champion miracle doesn’t just summon an orc, it summons a buffed up orc, a little more powerful than the average orc, putting its 40 point cost right about on the money.

 Like Summon Minor Fiend, Summon Orcish Champion only really has application in the early dungeon levels, but can be devastating there. Again, bear in mind that not every character can go toe to toe with enemies (even lowly enemies) and expect to live the way a Half-Orc Barbarian can. For some (like my Centaur Warlock), summoning monsters to do the dirty work, while fleeing or luring enemy monsters back to where the summoned monster lurks may be the only way to survive

I can see where you're coming form, and it all makes sense to me. Looking at it this way summons themself do seem to be in a good spot, what seems to be more of the issue is that 40 Faith is extremely hard to come by whereas your character can start with the spell points needed to cast a summon spell, and by the time you have it; summoning an Orc Champion isn't as useful as it should be.

Maybe this is more of an issue with Faith gain? 

I'll keep an eye on the miracle as I continue to playtest.  I don't want Faith to become common - it's meant to be a luxury you need to parse out rarely, unlike spell points which are a far more universal currency (except when it comes to  Barbarians :P) 

So I've been completely addicted to Caverns since I made my last comment here, its the most fun I've had playing a roguelike since I first discovered them. 

I was wondering if you could slightly reduce or maybe give us an option to increase/decrease the map scroll speed with the arrow keys?

(+1)

Thrilled to hear it :)

I'll look into it.  In the meantime, you can also use the mouse, btw.  Just right click a square to centre the screen there.  If you hold the right mouse button, you can scroll the map around, with the speed dependent on how far the mouse is removed from the centre of the screen.

Fixed it!  It'll be in the next update, early to mid-August :)

Glad to hear it! Thank's alot! I'm currently sitting on a level 5 Half-orc Barbarian and just wanted to chime in and say the new Perk system is really cool and I love the flavor it adds to the game! Machoism giving me the occasional EXP from taking damage is really unique and my favorite perk so far.

Awesome!  Glad to hear!  I'll have more of the races and classes add back in with new perks in the next update :)

Erm, you do realize that bright pink on pink is not readable, right? :) I'm talking about the page design.

Interesting.  It looks fine on my screen.  I'll see if I can casually tweak it without making it look weird.

Looks good now, thanks!

Hello Mr.Dev, I was wondering what a good beginner race/class combo would be? common sense would say whatever swings the heaviest weapon and takes the most hits, but I wanted your opinion first. Thank you for developing such an awesome and free RL!

I usually randomize everything, to be honest.  I would avoid anything with low starting health for a beginner.  So no elvish assassins, say.  Maybe a Dwarven Warrior?  Pretty basic.

P.S.  I'm working on a massive new update.  It's been slow going, but in addition to adding more content and gameplay improvements than any previous updates, it also fixes a couple of critical bugs.  I'll get it out ASAP!

I download Caverns of Xaskazien 2 Ver. 0.78.94 and when it 91% get error

Hmmm...  Not sure what would cause this.  There's been about 500 downloads and you're the first to mention.  Have you tried more than once with the same result?

(+1)(-1)

Linux port possible?

I wouldn't even know how, in truth.  If it's a simple process and someone can direct me to info on that process, perhaps.

Are you using Unity?

No.  C++.

it depeneds on the used libreries. If they are avaible on windows and linux. Do you plan to release this game as open source? 

No.

I there a way to prevent yourself from attacking monsters? I don't like accidentally killing monsters that are faster than me that will make my god angry but it keeps happening.

There are ways to minimize the risk, but no way to just not fight.  You can unequip your weapon before encountering them, to ensure you do less damage if you do hit.  You can keep your distance where possible (especially from Animal intelligence monsters, as they won't generally approach if you don't get close).  You can take steps to discourage them from chasing you like Confusing or Paralyzing them...  that's about it, at present. 

Might be a neat idea to add a toggleable "Pacifist" button or something where you can turn off your side of the fight, though.  Never occurrred to me before.  I'll look into it.

Thanks for the idea.  I've implemented a new key/button that toggles on or off your swinging at enemy monsters, so you can turn off your side of the combat if you're engaging a monster you don't want to kill (though they'll keep hacking at you).  Will be include in the next upload in a couple days. 

Sounds awesome! Would it be too much to make a per monster configurable option or something? So maybe for example its default settings are set not to kill monsters in the categories which your god will hate you for killing?

Interesting idea.  Hadn't considered it.  At present, it'll just be a toggleable option.  Won't have time to implement something more complete before the next release.  I'll bear it in mind for later. 

Scratch what I said.  It was too good an idea to pass up, so I've implemented it.  You can now toggle your Combat State to Fight, Don't Fight, or Selectively Fight, and can select specific monster types to add or remove from your Selectively Fight list at any time.  While set to Selectively Fight, you won't swing at any monster types you've specified in the list.  The game defaults to Selectively Fight, with any monsters your deity would prefer you not to kill automatically chosen.  (It also defaults to adding Golems to this list, since you won't be able to hurt them in combat at start of game, and trying will just wear down your weapon, though you can remove them or any other monster types from the list at any time).

It works great! Thanks for implementing this.

Thank you for the idea!

Deleted 5 years ago

This stuff seems amazing, but there's a few things I wanna talk about.

1) IMO, fonts are quite bad. I know that it's stylized like this, but it makes stuff much harder to read, for me at least.

2) Why you can move only in 4 sides? Why not use classic 8-sides movement system on numpad which is used in most of roguelikes?

3) Bar buttons should be down here, not on the right side., in my mind. Also, if you moved them, you could make them larger.

4) Why not add high-res suppor instead of making it 1280x720? I mean, yeah, it's in long time development, but...

Anyway, don't take this like I didn't liked the game! It still seems amazing for me, especially when it's so full of different content. I really like it, and hopefully it will be worked on more!

Hey, Fenos.  Thanks for the comments.  In specific response:

1) The fonts initially used in the game were a deliberate attempt to match (as closely as I could) the fonts I'd used in the original Caverns.  However, a lot of people complained that they were hard to read, so it now defaults to something much easier to read (at least in most instances), with the option to toggle back to the gothic fonts if a player wishes.  The character creation menu still uses stylized fonts for the large lettering, because the feedback I was getting was that at that scale everything remained legible, even in that style.  But if enough people raise this as an issue, I'll switch the fonts on that page, too.  Wouldn't be too tricky an issue to address, I don't think.  In terms of changing the "new", smaller font (the one I already switched to to make things legible), if that was also deemed hard to read, the one problem would be that since screen co-ordinates remain absolute, and there's finite room to print things in the supplied text boxes, I would have to find something that remained pixel perfect in alignment with the old font.  If a printed sentence grew even one or two pixels longer as a result of changing fonts, it could mess up all outputted text and take dozens of hours to realign everything manually (if that was even possible). 

2) Initially movement was in all 8 directions for player and monsters.  But I hated allowing either to move diagonally between walls or other impassable obstacles (where wall corners abutted, for instance).  Imposing the restriction there ended up being a pain in the ass programming-wise, but even more so in gameplay, because players were getting confused as to why they couldn't do so, so I culled it back to 4 directions, and I've since grown used to it in game.  I've been playing some Moria lately, and I'll admit when first coming back to Caverns it was jarring for me to have only 4 directional movement, but it wore off quickly, so changing it isn't a high priority.  Players who aren't used to roguelikes also find the 4 directional movement easier to grasp, so there's an upside.

3) Not sure what you mean by "Bar buttons" or "down here."  If you mean the clickable buttons to change sidescreen tabs, that's the only screen real estate available where they won't overlap anything important.  At the bottom of the screen they would need either impinge on the view screen or the Situation Panel.  Are those the buttons you're referencing?

4) When I first abandoned Caverns in favour of starting Caverns 2 (in 2010) I was still using a 4:3 monitor.  I had recently programmed another tile based game called "The Zombie Nightmare of Fillibree County" and it used 1024*768.  Since this was a marked improvement over the original Caverns' 640*480, I just went with it.  Today I'm working on a 4K monitor and if I could go back in time, I'd make a different choice.  But, cards on the table, I'm not a savvy enough coder to know how to allow players to choose their resolution.  And I suppose there may well be some players still out there with 4:3 monitors, so 1024*768 might not be the worst choice...  And further cards on the table, screen positions are hard coded - i.e. the game checks absolute X,Y coordinates for the mouse and places things at hard coded specific X,Y coordinates, etc.  Changing the resolution now, even just to a new, single specified resolution, would mean months of work.  And since the graphics aren't going to be scalable, it would really yield little fruit.  Unless I get around to programming COX 3 in 10 or 20 years, this one almost certainly won't change.

Glad you're enjoying the game!  The one thing I can promise is even more content...  in time.

Just want to say thank you!

Thank you for playing!