Something to read while I clean up the last bits and do final testing. 
New Feature: The Upper Reaches Of The Tower
- Three new floors have been added to the Tower, bringing
it to a total of 23 floors, not including the other realms
it contains portals to.
- The new floors contain demons unlike any seen before,
wielding powers of strength unheard of before their
appearance.
- Among the new cadre are a few figures of note: two
demons capable of forming Sanctums, a morose looking Hero,
and a bold, cunning, and quite deadly Summoner with no
tolerance for rivals.
- The appearance of the new floors has also had significant
impacts on the previously existing floors: reports indicate
many demons dwelling in floors 11 to 20 have developed new
abilities.
- Further more, several entirely new demons have been sighted
on the lowest floors, including one capable of creating a
Sanctum.
- All in all, over 20 new demons and over 170 new abilities
can now be found within the Tower (and in the realms it
has connections to...)
New Feature: Attenutated Attacks
- Many area effect attacks now have the Attenuated modifier.
This is shown in tooltips in the ability's main description,
such as "Attenuated 70 Power attack."
- Attenuation has two main effects: it reduces the damage
dealt and the chance of applying status effects for
targets not caught in the focal point of the blast. The
further away from the focal point, the further from the
reduction.
- Attenuation also allows Agility, Block, Dodge, and effects
that improve evasion to further reduce the damage or even
avoid the effect entirely! The effectiveness of these
defenses also depends on the distance from the focal point:
the further the better, and they won't work at all if you're
right in the focal point.
- The UI will show attenuation by fading out cells when
aiming an area effect ability: the more faded the cell, the
less effect the ability is going to have.
- What is the focal point of a given area effect? For lines
and cones, it will be the affected spaces adjacent to the
caster. For sphereical effects, it will be the center.
- Needless to say, several demons, starting character packages,
and modifiers have been changed based on this.
New Feature: Hybrid Modifiers
- Elemental energy has arced through the Tower, causing some
demons to change in new and unexpected ways.
- Nine new random demon modifiers have been added that grant
Fire, Ice, and Electricity powers geared towards melee use
to those who receive them, including hybrid physical attacks
that include these types.
- Some demons now also naturally pass these modifiers on
when used in Demon Fusion.
Corpses
- The player now always acts first after triggering the
appearance of enemies from a corpse.
- Corpses never spawn unusually high level demons anymore.
After all, if the summoner who left the corpse had been able
to tame such foes, perhaps they'd not have died?
- Reduced the number of demons that appear in corpse
encounters by 1.
- Corpses will never spawn Relic Wraiths when searched by
very, very low level summoners who have less than three
allies of their own.
Dungeon
- Despite this build using a new scoring version, ghosts from
the 12/11/2016 scoring model can still be found within the
Tower. This is probably the only time during alpha or
beta that this sort of ghost carryover will occur. It is
certainly the only time I will promise to do it, because
it turns out this is a pain in the neck for a game still
in very active development.
- A couple of encounters on Tower:1 have been slightly
reduced in difficulty.
Balance
- Being weak to an element now increases damage and chances
of status effects by 25%, reduced from 33% and 50%.
Weaknesses are now worth slightly less bonus HP as a result.
- Damage randomization has been almost entirely removed.
The only randomization present is a chance for fractional
damage to resolve as a +1 instead. For example: 4.3
damage will resolve as 4 damage 70% of the time, and 5
damage 30% of the time.
- Reduced damage dealt by attacks by about 8%.
- Breath weapons are now much cheaper in terms of SP cost
and cooldown, but now use % of SP instead of raw SP,
meaningless Tireless can no longer be used to "overclock"
them.
- Cone effects now are shaped a bit more like cones and less
like wedges.
- Did a significant balance pass on Presence abilities,
resulting in most of them now having significantly reduced
cooldowns, and slightly adjusted (some up, some down) SP
costs.
- Charisma is now a cooldown reduction instead of increased
cooldown recovery.
- Bravado now resets your Presence cooldown whenever you are
attacked and left with less than half your HP.
- When an enemy summoner is defeated, his inactive demons are
now always put to Sleep, regardless of Mind resistance,
and have Ignite and Poison removed. This is intended to
give the player at least one fair shot at a demon of their
choice, if they went to the trouble of keeping it alive
during the battle.
- All SP removal/drain effects used on enemies are now %
based. Granted, before this build, there weren't many any
way, but still worth noting.
- Reduced the SP cost and Power of the Life Siphon, Life
Drain, Vigor Siphon, and Vigor Drain abilities.
- Reduced the discount Ritualist provides, but made that
discount trigger on more abilities.
- Gluttony now also affects SP draining.
- Mending now has a lower SP cost, and the Mended status
it applies has a shorter duration.
- All damaging attacks now do at least 1 damage unless the
target is outright Immune to the damage type involved.
- Drop Bears are now slightly more patient with summoners
attempting to recruit them.
- Reduced the SP costs of "battle cry" buffs a bit.
- Increased the SP cost of most "movement attack" abilities
that don't have cooldowns.
- Haunt now only attempts 1 turn delay instead of 2, and
has had its casting cost and cooldown adjusted accordingly.
Gameplay
- The Eye of the Dragon has a new Dark primary starting
option.
- The Faithful Heart has a new Fire primary starting option.
UI
- The warnings received for having a party member at low
HP while Poisoned/Ignited are now much more accurate:
you will only receive warnings if a character would die
in 4 or less turns as its current rate of damage/turn.
- These warnings can also be argued with a bit more easily:
attempting any 'auto' action such as resting, exploring,
or quick travel will proceed 1 step before stopping and
re-warning you, rather than sometimes not letting you use
these features at all.
- Quick Summon and Quick Dismiss allow you to do a normal
Summon or Dismiss on the same turn you did a Quick Summon
or Quick Dismiss. This is probably a bit overpowered, but
the user experience was so obnoxious I'm willing to live
with it until the next pass on Upgrades.
- Demon now gives the full path of Record files whenever
they are generated, to make them easier to find.
- Made it much harder to miss when Panic, Paralysis, and
Charm cause the player to lose actions or have those
actions changed.
- Relic Wraiths now give their ID number when you look at
their descriptions in their character sheets, which may
come in handy for debugging / telling multiple wraiths of
the same name apart.
- Cleaned up wording on "half accuracy" abilities like
Clobber and Eat Alive.
AI
- The AI's evaluation of area effects has been improved.
The AI now considers additional factors such as the
resistance/immunity of potential targets, whether or
not it feels a higher target count may be available next
turn, how 'conditional' the ability is, and other factors
when deciding when to use area effects.
- Characters now pay heed to whether or not they can already
reach all of their enemies with all of their attacks when
deciding whether or not to move and in general are much
more reluctant to move when there is no need to.
- Enemy summoners are now very reluctant to give melee-range
abilities to demons that do not already have them.
- The penalty to evaluations for anticipated Blocks, Dodges,
Parries has been capped at 50% for each of these defenses:
a chance higher than this will not make the AI any more
reluctant to attack.
- The AI is considerably more reluctant to use "stagger"
effects when outnumbered, and considerably more eager to
use them when outnumbering their foes.
- The AI is now a bit more eager to remove Poison status
from allies.
- The AI now evaluates SP consumption somewhat better when
deciding what abilities to use and when.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Quick Summon and Quick Dismiss could
sometimes fail, even when Paralyzed.
- Fixed a couple of typos in ability names, and a case of an
ability and modifier sharing the same name, which was
confusing.
- Fixed a bug where the wrong directory was being used for
Save and Record files, causing the game to be unplayable
due to permission settings on some sytems.
- Fixed a bug where some multi-hit abilities never attempted
their 2nd or later attacks if the first one missed.
- Cleaned up some minor, obscure bugs that may have prevented
some more esoteric abilities from properly triggering
special effects. (Example: Exorcism and Mien passives.)
- Fixed various typos in ability descriptions, most notably
Halo.
