The Dog returns from their winter break, and is excited to see you again!

…But that excitement may be quickly broken, as their enemies find new ways to survive and grow powerful.

We’re Back!

It’s been a while! I hope you have been doing well. If you’re not doing well, that’s okay too. When it comes to the Dog, I’m feeling refreshed. I’ve had some time to think about what to work on next while I playtest, tweak, and fix issues.

Future Update: Reward Chests

For the next update, v97, the Dog levelling up will grant Chests as rewards instead of directly awarding the same item to all players. Chests get sent to your mailbox, and can be opened at any time.

The other major change to rewards being introduced is ⭐Star XP. Equipment will need ⭐XP to reach the next ⭐Star Tier. Equipment will no longer require an UPGRADE to progress to the next ⭐Tier and will no longer reset to Equipment Level 1 when reaching a new Star Tier. This allows you to open chests from your mailbox without worry that more Mailbox space will be taken up. Note: You can still use the UPGRADE command to exchange Gems and Gold for Equipment Levels, or to progress to the next ⭐Tier.

That’s all the news from me for now. Let me know what thoughts or questions you have about these changes on Discord. More will be shared in the Discord channel in the coming weeks, including when you can expect the update to drop.

See y’all soon.

Raider

v0.96c Notes

General

• When the Dog levels up, a Shining Bone is dropped.
  • Can be claimed with the code SHINE.
  • When claimed: Enemy Power is reduced by 1, and Friendship is increased by +1% per stack.
• Dig charms now produce a bone rather than produce DIG work.
• Player Fugitive and Prisoner status are cleared on login.
• Tiles (Such as Enemy Waves, or Golden Dog) in the Tile Tray at the bottom of the screen move more quickly.

Skills

• Pet reduces 1 Enemy Power XP for every 10 Pet Work.
• Each Kick and Riot level permanently increases your Max Fugitive Health by 1.
• Riot produces 90% less Enemy Power XP.
• Riot now actually has a chance to break an individual out of jail.
  • ^{I wrote it worked like this a long time ago but it was untrue so basically I lied to you all on the commands page can’t believe you fell for that haha just kidding I’m sorry here it is working now please don’t be mad}
• When you break out of jail, your character automatically enters Stealth for 5 minutes. 

Items

New Onyx items can be found.

• New Item: Chaos Fragment ⭐⭐
  • Passive: +5 Riot Power. +5% Chance to escape Jail with Riot.
  • On Level Up: +0.1 Riot Power
• New Item: Rage Fragment ⭐⭐
  • Passive: +5 Kick Power. +5% of Kick damage is converted into Fugitive Health.
  • On Level Up: +0.1 Kick Power
• New Item: Thieve’s Mask ⭐⭐⭐
  • Passive: +25 Fugitive Health. 5% Chance to ignore damage to Fugitive Health.
  • On Level Up: +1 Fugitive Health. +0.25% Chance to ignore damage to Fugitive Health.

Other Items

• Chaining: Deals 20% reduced chaining damage. (80% Damage)

View all Items

Enemies

• Enemy NPC Health scales with Time Played.
• Enemy Waves spawn about every 3 minutes.
• Player Enemies no longer take reduced damage.

Bugs

• Fixed an issue causing Item Upgrade costs to be more expensive than intended.

Quality of Life

• End of Game: Added Chat messaging at the end of the game that mentions the time played, the Dog Level reached, and the top Friend and Enemy players.
• Fugitives: Added a Chat Message that tells you to apologize after becoming a Fugitive.
• Skill Inspection: The Skill command will give you a realtime update on your stats instead of showing the stat value provided by your Skill.
• Loadouts: Loadout swapping no longer deposits items that are already equipped and in your target loadout. This makes it so that you can repeatedly type an action like ‘COP’ without it cancelling item effects due to swapping.
• UI: Item-stars are colored differently based on Tier to make them easier to distinguish.
• UI: You can see the meters for claimable items that are not the foremost item.
• UI: You can see the icons for claimable items that are not the foremost item.

General

• ‘Recent Contributions’ leaderboard added. This will show how much the last few players to join the game have contributed since they were added to the leaderboard.
• Reduced the amount of XP indicator spam (both from Players and from Modifiers)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Kick and Riot leaderboards were not attributing actions correctly, resulting in inflated numbers. A leaderboard revamp + reset will come in a future release.
• Fixed an issue where The Dog is Leaving message would only trigger once per game.
• Fixed an issue where Daily Quests could reset twice if a player was online at midnight server time.
• Fixed some UI elements that would sometimes not transition their Time of Day style correctly.

Items

See Items page for updated item descriptions.

General

• Item effects are now cancelled when unequipped. This notably prevents the Rapid -> Chain combo, which took advantage of the fact that Rapid items would continue to fire after being unequipped.

Mega Series

• Now deals an automatic critical hit and deals more damage per item level.

Soul Series

• Now provides Contribution, and has a flat 40% chance to trigger and their Power increases with item level. Soul items will also provide Modifier XP where applicable instead of just the base Modifier (Spirit, Armor, Jail Health).

Sandbox

Modifiers

• Spirit inspection now shows XP progress.
• Armor, Spirit, and Jail Health take dramatically longer to level up, but have dramatically higher maximum stack increases each level.
• Pray reduces the time between Spirit attacks at a ratio of 1 second to 30 Work.
• Charms are now consumed at a ratio of 1 Charm to 30 Work.
• Charms are now activated as a projectile to better show their effect.
• Reduced the visual intensity of Spirit attack projectiles.

Claimables

• New! Structures can generate Items that, when claimed, add Charms and trigger a Frenzy for that specific structure which increases Work Speed for those nearby. These items can be claimed separately from Riches (Gems, Gold).
• Bones once again provide more points the more players are claiming the item.
• Claim Power for items in the Items category increases with more players claiming. Claim Power can boost certain effects of claimed items, and also increase the speed at which it is claimed.

Enemies

• Enemy health scales twice as fast as previously.
• Enemy actions are taken twice as slow. (e.g. 4 seconds per action, up from 2 seconds)
• Additional enemy types (e.g. Corruptor, Knight) now appear at higher Enemy Power levels than previous.
• Knights no longer apply the Weaken Armor debuff.
• Corruptors now randomly add either the Burn or Weaken Armor debuff.

This iteration targeted two main goals:

1) Provide consistent rewards for defenders, so that defending does not punish rate of rewards over time.

2) Balance so that Dog defenses such as Cop, Smith, and Pray are less one-sided / more contested by enemies.

Gameplay

Rewards

• Golden Dog adds to the number of Rewards that are available when the Dog levels up (See Events for more details about Golden Dog)
• Number of choices during Rewards scales with Dog Level.
  • 1-40: Provides a random reward
  • 41-80: 2 Choices
  • 81-100: 3 Choices
  • 101+: 4 Choices
• PICK A’ has a chance to reward 50 or 100 Gold.
• A Gold Chest can now spawn from the other options. The Gold Chest contains 250 Gold.

Events

The UI display at the bottom of the screen, which has historically displayed when enemies will spawn, now also shows when Events will spawn. The underlying system has been updated to function more like a conveyor belt that moves Tiles across the screen and spawns them when they touch the left edge. Previously, this system was entirely time based, so tiles could overlap and be hard to read on screen. Now Tiles will shove other tiles out of the way if they overlap, to make space on the metaphorical ‘belt’.

• New Tile: Golden Dog
  • Roughly every 20 minutes, a Golden Dog tile is added.
  • While active, the Dog rapidly decreases any Anger added to them and all skills (except Riot and Kick) gain increased speed for 1 minute.
  • Adds +1 Chest Reward when the Dog Levels Up.

Enemies

Enemies are now overall more threatening to the Dog.

• Enemy tiles are added in more varieties.

Enemy Power

• Enemy Power now always starts at 1 (Previously, set to 1 on first Dog kick)
• Friendship no longer decays from Enemy Power increasing.
• XP required to increase Enemy Power scales much slower at higher levels.
  • For reference- Level 10 now requires about 3/4 the previous amount of XP required, whereas Level 20 requires about 1/5th of the previous amount.
• Enemies spawn in greater quantities as Enemy Power increases.
  • Demon Enemies: (Bombs, Corruptors) +1 Spawn every 5 Enemy Power. Max: 7.
  • Heavy Humanoid: (Knights) +1 Spawn every 4 Enemy Power. Max: 16.
  • Humanoid: (Fugitives, Prisoners, Arsonists) +1 Spawn every 3 Enemy Power. Max: 16.
• Debuffs added by enemies now scales with Enemy Power.
• Enemy Tiles spawn more frequently at higher Enemy Power. (Previously, -5 seconds per EP, Now: -10 seconds per EP)
• Corrupted Knight base health reduced to 25 from 50.
• Corruptor and Bomb base health reduced to 50 from 100.

Skills

Cop, Smith, Pray

• These skills have had their associated modifiers (Jail Health/Armor/Spirit) balanced to take longer to level up.

Pray

• Spirit leveling works like Armor / Jail Health now.
• Spirit now ‘trades’ with Debuffs rather than damaging them. (Example: If 1K Anger were present, and Spirit was > 1K, Anger would all be removed on hit by Spirit, but consume 1K Spirit).

Miscellanious

Inspection

• You can now inspect Enemy Power via ins enemy power

Quality of Life

• Keyword Loadouts are now supported. This allows you to quickly swap to a set of items when you enter a specific keyword in chat.

Example of setting a Keyword Loadout:

CHAT dxraider: load pet aea aeb aec aed aee BOTdktdbot: @dxraider ☑️ ‘pet’ loadout set: (AEA) [6⭐ Chaining Cop Lv.60/60],(AEB) [6⭐ Chaining Dig Lv.60/60],(AEC) [6⭐ Chaining Pet Lv.60/60],(AED) [6⭐ Chaining Pray Lv.60/60],(AEE) [6⭐ Chaining Smith Lv.60/60] | Type UNLOAD pet to unset this loadout.

Typing ‘pet’ would then equip the items specified on the loadout. This effectively allows you to change which items are equipped based on the action you want to take.

Currently supported Keywords: cop, smith, pet, pray, dig, kick, riot, sorry

Interested to hear thoughts on whether Keyword Loadouts are useful in the Discord.

In this update, we’re going back to something that hasn’t been in the game for a while: having the Dog survive for as long as possible.

Gameplay

• Difficulties, and Difficulty Power have been removed.

Lobby

• START now only takes 1 Work.
• You can no longer perform Work Actions in the lobby.

Dog Level

• The Dog now levels up by gaining experience.
• Every time the Dog levels up, players may choose an item reward.
• The Dog has no level cap, and a final tier has been added: Endless Dog starting at Level 121.

Rewards

• pick is now used to choose a reward (Previously, this was vote)
• Once all eligible players have picked their reward, the vote will end.
• The first reward slot is always a specific equipment or Gem, while Chests can roll any 1-5 star item of the matching color.

Dog Gifts

• While the Dog has not been kicked, there is a chance they will drop Gems or Gold periodically.

Dog Debuffs

Anger

• Heart Points have been removed.
• Anger is now added when the Dog receives Kicks without Armor.
• The Dog begins to leave when it is Angry, and must be calmed down with Pet within 60 seconds.
• If the Dog leaves, the run is over.

Weaken Armor

• Each stack increases damage dealt to Armor by +1%.

Burn

• Continually shoots Fire at the Dog. Fire decreases Armor, or increases Anger if Armor is depleted. Burn stacks have a chance to increase every time the Dog is hit by Fire.

End of Game

• The game ends when the Dog leaves.
• Items are no longer awarded at the end of the game.
• Prestige Points are awarded at the end of the game based on your Contribution and the Dog level reached.

Enemies

• Enemy Health has been rebalanced around Enemy Power.
• Enemies have a chance to drop Gold or Gems when defeated.
• Time between enemy spawns is much longer now, to start.

Enemy Power

• The first time the Dog is Kicked, Enemy Power is raised to 1.
• Enemy Power gains experience and levels up with Kick and Riot. More Enemy power XP is added via Kick.
• Enemy Power increases Enemy Damage and Health, and decreases time between enemy waves.
• Increasing Enemy Power releases a wave that heals enemies, reduces a fraction of Friendship and Spirit.

New Enemy: Corrupted Knight

• Beefy enemies that can add the Weaken Armor debuff when they Kick.

Stun

• Players are now stunned for a period of time after reaching 0 Fugitive Health.
• If a player Riots or Kicks, they will be marked as a Fugitive. Fugitives can be targetted by Spirit. Note this means that rioting while in prison may make you a target of Spirit.

Reduced Player Damage

• Players take only 10% of normal damage to their Fugitive Health.

Charms

• Automatically added to structures via DIG. Charms are consumable buffs that grant a bonus effect for doing Work.
• Charms have been renamed to reflect their bonus, and have a color to indicate what Structure they are for.
• Shovel Charms no longer spawn naturally, but can still be added by Charming Dig.
• Charm bonuses have been reworked.

All Charms

• Charms no longer expire or decay.
• 1 Charm is now consumed per Action.

Friendship Charm

• Generates +100 Friendship per Charm consumed.
• Available for Pet and Pray.

Armor Charm

• Generates +100 Armor, and +100 Armor Xp per Charm consumed.
• Available for Smith and Pet.

Spirit Charm

• Generates +100 Spirit per Charm consumed.
• Available for Pray and Pet.

Shovel Charm

• Digs up 1 item per Charm consumed
• Available only for Dig.
• Does not spawn naturally.

Jail Charm

• Generates +100 Jail Health, and +100 Jail Xp per Charm consumed.
• Available for Cop and Smith.

Structures

• Pet, Smith, Pray, Cop, and Dig now all have infinite health.

Skills

• Skill cap for all skills is increased to 100.
• Starting Power has been increased for all Skills to 5.
• Each Action now produces a random amount of Work between 1 and your Skill Power.
• All work sites can be inspected to have the bot send information about the game to chat via the new inspect (ins) command, e.g. inspect dig.

Cop

• Jail Health now has a cap that increases with Jail Level.
• Jail XP is granted by performing Cop Work, or by consuming Jail Charms.

Smith

• Armor now has a cap that increases with Armor Level.
• Armor XP is granted by performing Smith Work, or by consuming Armor Charms.

Pet

• While the Dog is Angry, Pet Work will target Anger instead of Friendship.

Pray

• Spirit now does Work based on Spirit Power.
• Spirit Power increases when the Spirit Meter is filled.
• Spirit decays over time, and each time it decays it performs an Action that prioritizes different targets.
• Spirit Actions add Friendship unless there are Enemies or Debuffs.
• Spirit Actions prioritize Debuffs over NPCs, and NPCs over Players.
• Spirit decay is stronger with higher Enemy Power.

Dig

• DIG automatically adds Charms, rather than adding them to the claim queue (See Charms section for more Charm changes).
• Drops Bones, which add 5 seconds worth of Experience to the Dog each. The total XP value of the stack of Bones is reflected on screen.
• Drops a selection of Gems rarely. The selection rotates based on the day of the week.
• Inspecting Dig shows info about the first 5 claimable items.

Kick

• Generates 2 Enemy Power XP per Kick.

Riot

• Generates 1 Enemy Power XP per Riot.

Items

• Items now additionally cost Gold to level up.
• Finding a duplicate of an item that is already Level 60 will award Gems equal to the item’s base Star level. (So for example, a duplicate of a 3-Star item would give 3 Gems)

Deprecated Items

You may safely recycle these items for Gems/Gold, as they will no longer serve a purpose.

CHAT dxraider: recycle afa BOTdktdbot: @dxraider ♻️ Type RECYCLENOW AFA to recycle (From Bank) (AFA) [1⭐ Recharging Cop Lv.1/10] x1 and receive: Gold x10

Deprecated: Recharging

Now deprecated, since structures no longer have health.

• (AFA) [Recharging Cop]
• (AFE) [Recharging Smith]
• (AFC) [Recharging Pet]
• (AFD) [Recharging Pray]
• (AFB) [Recharging Dig]

New Items

• Onyx Gems and Items have been added to the game. Onyx items pertain to both Riot and Kick Actions.

Hastening

• Kick and Riot variants of this item have been added.

Mega

• Kick and Riot variants of this item have been added.

Rapid

• Kick and Riot variants of this item have been added.

Updated Items

Hastening

• USE: <Action> becomes Hastened, performing faster for 60 seconds. The effect is removed if this item is unequipped.
• Base Cooldown: 150s
• Speed Increase: +100

Empowering

• USE: <Action> becomes Empowered, dealing increased damage for 60 seconds. The effect is removed if this item is unequipped.
• Base Cooldown: 150s
• Power Increase: +60

Dire

• No longer allows you to perform an action from ‘anywhere’.

Charming

• Adds 5 Charms instead of 1.

Chaining

• Now uses the Skill Level of the chained Skill to deal damage instead of copying the original damage.

Account Progression

Daily Quests

• Now rewards Gems in addition to Gold.

Backpack

• The minimum number of backpack slots has been increased to 3 up from 1.

Bank

• No longer upgradeable.
• The Bank now holds up to 56 unique items for all players.

Prestige

• No longer costs Gold to increase Prestige Level.

Wallet

• Max space for Gems increased to 9,999.
• Gems can no longer be stored in the mailbox.

Miscellanious

• The bank command has been upgraded to accept a <search filter> so that you can view specific items in your bank, rather than having to check pages.
• The way item names are displayed in chat has been updated to be more consistent across bot messages.

CHAT dxraider: bank 1⭐ BOTdktdbot: @dxraider 🏦 Items Matching ‘1⭐’ : | ▪️ (AED) [1⭐ Chaining Pray Lv.4/10] | ▪️ (ADE) [1⭐ Rapid Smith Lv.2/10] | ▪️ (ADD) [1⭐ Rapid Pray Lv.2/10] | ▪️ (AEE) [1⭐ Chaining Smith Lv.1/10] | ▪️ (AEA) [1⭐ Chaining Cop Lv.3/10] | 🎒 (ADB) [1⭐ Rapid Dig Lv.2/10] | 🎒 (AEB) [1⭐ Chaining Dig Lv.2/10]

• The item command has been deprecated. Please use inspect instead! Inspect does everything item used to, but can be used on a wider variety of things, such as structures.

CHAT dxraider: inspect pet BOTdktdbot: ℹ️ The Dog is receiving 248 experience per second from Friendship.

• Whenever someone cheers 100 bits or more, a hype celebration is triggered in game.

Hey all. Hope you’re staying healthy, staying safe.

Let’s get to it.

Beta Test Information

First, all of what’s written here will be available in a Beta format via a separate Twitch channel. Follow http://twitch.tv/dxraider for go-live notifications. A post will also be made to the discord when a Beta test goes live.

Please keep in mind that no progress made during Beta playtests can be transferred to your main account. I know this makes the Beta significantly less compelling to play, but any time you do spend playing will help us identify critical issues to address before release.

Return of the infinite dog

In v96, the game will be transitioning to an ‘infinite mode’, where the game does not end until the Dog leaves. If you’ve been around for a while, you might be familiar with some of this already.

There was something special about being able to come to the game after a few hours or days (and even weeks at one point!) and see how the game has progressed. We’re going to revisit that idea. This update makes DKTD feel more like a lobby you can hang out in, grind out some skills/equipment, progress the current run, and check back later to see what has happened.

But what is life without conflict? In v96…

• Fugitives will be able to augment their skills with Onyx Equipment.
• Endlessly spawning enemies grow stronger with every Kick and Riot.
• New debuffs will torment the Dog, including Anger, Vulnerable, and… Fire.

Infinite Enemies

• Every five minutes of game time, Enemies will spawn.
• The types of enemies that spawn will change throughout the day according to a hidden schedule that changes every day. (For example: You might encounter Corruptors for a few hours, and then none for the next few.)

Enemy Power

Any Kick or Riot damage dealt will grant XP to Enemy Power. Beware – When Enemy Power increases, the Dog’s Friendship and Spirit are damaged.

Your salvation from overwhelmingly powerful enemies will be leveling up the Dog. Each Dog Level will reset Enemy Power to 1.

An important note is that Enemy Power is significantly different in v96. It will no longer reduce the damage you deal. Instead, it will exclusively make enemies stronger both in Health and Damage.

Damage Calculation

• Skill Damage is now a random roll between 1 and your Skill Power. The same goes for Enemy Power.
• Experience gain still caps out at 10 experience per action.

The Dog Is leaving in sixty seconds…

• Heart Points have been removed. When the Dog is kicked, such that it penetrates Armor, the Dog will become Angry.
• If the Dog becomes Angry, a 60-second timer will begin. If the timer reaches zero and all Anger stacks have not been cleared, the Dog will leave, ending the run.
• Anger can be removed either via PET or it can be removed by Spirit Attacks (see further below).

Loot

When the Dog levels up, a Reward Vote begins. Each vote will have a selection of options that can now include specific items rather than chests. This works the same as the Post Game Rewards vote in v95.

Currency Drop Changes

It should be noted that Reward Votes primarily drop Equipment and will only rarely drop Gems. Gold is no longer a drop from Reward Votes.

• The primary sources of Gems will now be Enemies, and DIG.
• When an Enemy is defeated, there is a chance for Gold or Gems to drop.
• Similarly, there is a chance for DIG to unearth precious Gems. Gems will drop more frequently at higher Enemy Power levels.

Gem Drops Rotate Daily

• The types of Gems that can drop from Enemies and DIG will rotate each day.
• There will be at least 3 types of Gems that can drop every day, and for one day of the week all Gem types will drop.

The gem drops for the current day will be displayed on screen, and an official list will be shared on the website by the time v96 is released.

Why change to a daily rotation of Gems? It can be frustrating to not get the Gem drops you want. A daily rotation gives some agency to plan when you want to focus on farming the Gems you want. It’s important to note that there will always be ways of obtaining the other types of Gems, such as through Reward Vote chests, or Daily Quests.

Speaking of…

Daily Quests

These are getting a tweak to accommodate the new game mode. Specifically, the game completion quests will be removed, and Gems will be added as rewards in addition to Gold.

Fugitive Items & Onyx

Players will be able to collect Hastening, Mega, and Rapid items for the Kick and Riot Skills. Onyx Chests will be rarely available during Reward Votes, though Vote A (the default option) cannot roll an Onyx item.

Other PvP Updates

Stunned on Imprisoned

When a Player is imprisoned, they are stunned for a short period of time. The effect of Stun prevents movement, and prevents firing projectiles. Stun will not cancel any active commands.

Reduced Damage to Players

Players will take 10% of normal damage to their Fugitive Health (rounded down), minimum of 1 Damage.

Other Skill Updates

Armor & Jail Level

Smith and Cop can now level up Armor and Jail Health respectively. Their level determines their maximum stack size. There is no level cap.

Spirit Attack

In v96, Spirit will play a little to the strengths of PET and COP, but also have the ability to remove dog debuffs.

Spirit will now decay slowly, based on Enemy Power. By default, Spirit provides bonus Dog XP. Spirit will additionally fire a projectile at any debuffs on the Dog to cleanse them (This includes Anger). Finally, if any enemies are active, Spirit will attack them with projectiles.

Digging

• Charms are now automatically claimed when spawning from DIG.
• DIG-type Charms no longer spawn naturally.
• Bones now drop from DIG. Claiming a stack of Bones will add points to the Dog that increases with Friendship.
• As mentioned earlier, Gems can now spawn from DIG according to the day of the week.

See You Soon

A Beta playtest should be coming online soon(tm) for v96. I’m excited to show what we do have and look forward to your thoughts and feedback.

Talk to you soon!

Raider

Systems

Equipment Projectiles

This update unifies some of the behavior when a Projectile hits its target. Most notably: Chaining, Rapid, and Mega Items can now trigger Recharging and Soul Effects. This may make some of those items more viable for certain builds.

UI

• The amount of experience gained from Actions is now displayed above your character’s head.
• There is a new callout that appears over players when they become a Fugitive, or Apologize.

Gameplay

Difficulty Voting

Difficulty selection is now a vote that occurs immediately after the lobby wants to start a new game. After 30 seconds, the game will begin at the Difficulty level with the most votes.

In the case of a tie, the easiest Difficulty will win. If there are no votes, that counts as an all-way tie, and Difficulty 1 will be chosen.

Multi Upgrade

UPGRADE and UPGRADENOW have been improved to support multiple upgrades at once. This can be done by adding the quantity # to the end of the command.

The help descriptions for these commands have been updated on the Item Commands page.

Balance

• The probation period for SORRY is now 2 minutes (down from 15 minutes)

Gameplay

General

• Corruption now additionally emits a pulse of energy that heals all enemies by 20% of their maximum health. Each pulse consumes 2 Corruption.
  • This pulse will also heal Demon or Fugitive Players.

Rewards

• Post Game Rewards now allows each player to choose the chest they receive.
• New Ending Type: Flawless Victory. If the Dog loses no Hearts during a game, then the Flawless Victory is earned. This adds a couple bonuses to the post game rewards:
  • Additional 2x Multiplier on Points rewards.
  • 3rd Chest Option in Chest Voting for that round. (i.e. Vote C)

Items

• Two new (5⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) item series have been added: Empowering, and Hastening. These items give passive boosts to Skill Power and Skill Speed, respectively.
• Two new (3⭐⭐⭐) items to complete the Soul Series: Scavenger Soul, and Spirited Soul.
• The icon artwork for the Rapid Series has been updated. The previous Rapid artwork is now being used for the Hastening series.
• The Item Codes for the Soul Series have been updated to be consistent with other series.

See the Items page for updated information.

Balance

Rewards

• The amount of Gold awarded from Chests has been increased.

Upgrading

• It now costs Gold to upgrade an Item’s Tier. This information has been added to the Upgrading page.

Items

Mega Series

• Cooldown time reduced to 60 seconds (Down from 120 seconds).

See the Items page for updated information.

Quality of Life

• WITHDRAW and DEPOSIT now accept multiple item codes (up to 5, to cover your whole backpack)
• New command: LOAD. Accepts up to 5 item codes. Behaves like a DEPOSIT ALL followed by a WITHDRAW. This lets you quickly switch to a specific set of items.

The Item Commands page has been updated with the new command information.

Greetings all,

We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on our new systems and have taken time to make some improvements as well as fixes to some critical issues.

Problems with RNG

The drop rates of all items have been affected in this update, with Tier 5 items being the most affected.

I probed around for potential issues with how items are being rolled. Why was Dire Pray almost impossible to roll? It didn’t take long to realize:

• I didn’t implement weighted random selection correctly (How embarrassing) but have corrected the error and verified that it’s now working as intended.
• The actual drop rates were off across the board from their intended values, but Tier 5 items on Difficulties 8 and 9 specifically were WAY more generous than intended, due to the error. (Except for poor Dire Pray)

Consequently, all item drop rates have been updated, but the most significant change is that Tier 5 items will be much rarer in Difficulty 8 and 9.

Item Recycling

You can now discard and receive materials from unwanted Mail using the new RECYCLE command (and its counterpart, RECYCLENOW)

Recycling gives Gems or Gold based on the type of item recycled, and based on its Tier.

• Tier 1: 10 Gold
• Tier 2: 1 Gem
• Tier 3 – 4: 3 Gems
• Tier 5 – 6: 5 Gems

Please refer to the command help section in Item Commands for more details.

Should SMITH and PRAY share the same color?

A small Straw Poll was opened in the Discord. Nine of you responded to the survey, with all but 2 votes disagreeing that SMITH and PRAY should share the same color (Blue).

While SMITH and PRAY were originally the same color for sharing similar functionality (Prevent the Dog from losing Hearts), I also thought that it would be best, given the current state of the game, to be consistent with how COP, PET, and DIG are all separate.

SMITH Chest, Gem, Color

SMITH will no longer share the same color, gem, and chest as PRAY.

• SMITH is now colored Indigo
• New Gem: Amethyst

Are Charms Charming?

Because Charms last an entire game, with no way to remove them, their effects had to be somewhat limited. Charms were intended to play the role of a slow momentum gain that, if built up, would greatly improve your odds of success.

There’s a few problems I’ve observed with Charms since release:

1. The momentum gain was slow.
2. It’s a lot of work to type in codes.
3. Players were picking up fewer charms every day.

Charm Updates

To help address these problems, we’ve made these changes:

• Multiple Charms can be claimed at a time. You can do this by typing codes separated by spaces, such as: aaa bbb ccc ddd eee. You can claim up to 5 Charms in this way.
• Charms now are time limited, and far more powerful. Read more below for details.
• Claiming a Charm grants 10 Contribution. Increases the Points you receive at the end of the game.
• Charms grant Friendship when they overflow from DIG.

Charm stacks are now limited to 5, and all Charms decay over time.

When a Charm decays, all stacks are removed. The decay is reset when a stack is added.

Charm effects previously triggered 1 effect per 10 Works (+10% Work Efficiency), and now instead trigger 1 effect per single Work, per stack (+100 to 500% Work Efficiency, depending on stack count).

Other Changes

• Difficulty 7 – 9 have had more Fugitives, Prisoners, and Arsonists added.
• DIG takes more Work to produce a Chest. (180 Works, up from 90)
• Players who did not participate in the previous round will no longer be able to vote in Post Game Rewards.
• Updated Chest artwork.

Bug Fixes

• The Daily Quest ‘Daily Games Player V’ has had its Gold reward restored.
• The UPGRADE confirmation after successfully upgrading an Item’s Tier now displays the correct cost consumed from your Wallet.
• Lobby: The first Difficulty site fully worked should now prevent other Difficulties from being chosen.
• Lobby: Updated Difficulty 7 – 9 work sites to display the correct amount of works required (60).
• Actions that started in the Lobby will now properly be cancelled before a game starts.

Thank You

The first couple weeks of v95 have been bumpy, but a lot has been learned and a lot has been fixed.

Thank you for your time, thoughts, suggestions, and of course… Thanks for playing!

Raider

v95a.3

Quality of Life

• It is now possible to type USE ABC to trigger a specific item’s Use effect.

Bug Fixes

• COP was incorrectly generating Jail Health while simultaneously damaging enemies. It now only adds Jail Health while not damaging enemies.
• Fixed some issues where the ‘Dog has not left in’ timer wasn’t resetting from Kicks. The timer should now persist between games, and between application restarts.
• The Skill command is now less aggressive about what it matches. (E.g. typing ‘I like to skill pet‘ will no longer trigger the command)
• The Bank now includes Amethyst in its upgrade costs.
• The Recycle command is no longer case sensitive.
• Fixed an issue where UPGRADENOW was sometimes showing an incorrect upgrade cost.

Website

• The Upgrading page has been updated to include Amethyst.
• The Items (v95) page has been updated to include icons, as well as searching and sorting capabilities.
• The Charms page has been updated to include icons and searching capabilities.
• The Commands page has been updated to be more consistent with how the Items Commands page is written.

v95a.2

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an item duplication issue caused by claiming more Items from the Mailbox than you could hold.
• Difficulty 9 Power was unintentionally raised to 60 and has been lowered back down to 52.

v95a.1

Bug Fixes

• Charms should no longer be able to stack past 5.
• Gems should now properly be added to the Mailbox when they overflow from your Wallet.

v95.7

Balance

• The amount of Corruption that Corruptors add has been increased slightly.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the Mailbox would display both the Currency quantity in your wallet, and the quantity in the mailbox.
• Fixed an issue where Upgrade prices were not being calculated correctly.
  • Developer Note: Although the prices appeared to be random, what was actually happening was the Upgrade price would change as other players in the lobby took actions or used the Upgrade command. The price would reflect whatever the last Item used in a calculation was. I originally thought we were just missing some price checks, which we were, but additionally there was an issue in a piece of code called the Variable Stack.
    
    Imagine a stack of paper, where you can place a sheet on top or remove one from the top. Whenever paper is added to the stack, we write down what it says somewhere, and the game reads what we wrote. When you take a piece of paper, you also have to write down what that paper says, or its lost forever. (Because… well, paper is cheap and we have a lot of it. This is a terrible metaphor for computer memory, by the way.) Well, we weren’t writing down what the paper said, the game assumed we knew what we were doing, and just rolled with the last thing we wrote down…. Which was likely someone else’s upgrade cost, or possibly even the cost of another item you had equipped.

v95.5

Bot Messages

• The message when an Item reaches max level more clearly indicates the next UPGRADE will increase the Tier.
• The Bot will now tell you when you cannot claim an item from your Mail because it cannot be leveled up.
• The enemy wave started message is no longer misleading about how you can target enemies.

Bug Fixes

• The ITEM <code> command now properly shows the name of an item you don’t own.
• The ITEM command can no longer trigger in sentences that begin with ‘item’.
• Fixed an issue where UPGRADE was not displaying the correct cost to increase the Tier of an item.
• COP now properly gives a miniscule amount of XP every time it’s performed in the Lobby.
• Fixed an issue where the PRESTIGE command did nothing for players who had completed the MAX Prestige.
• Fixed an issue where UPGRADE BANK would incorrectly state that players could not afford the upgrade despite having all the materials.

Release Highlights

• Permanently unlock Items, equip multiple at a time.
• Skill cap increase, Skill damage calculation updates.
• Charms – a new type of buff for Structures.
• 3 additional difficulty levels, 2 new enemy types.

Items

In this update, we’ve rebuilt items to be permanent unlockables that can be leveled up as you play.

• Collect Items from post game rewards.
• Keep Items you earn in the BANK.
• Place Items in your BACKPACK to use their Passive and Active abilities.
• Level up Items with Gems to make them incrementally stronger.

Collecting Items

At the end of every game, the entire lobby earns rewards. The best rewards are earned by winning. Higher difficulties reward more Items per victory. Earned Items can be viewed by using the new BANK command.

Once an Item has been earned, it can be placed into your BACKPACK. Any Items in your backpack can have their effects triggered during a game.

Note: Having an item in your Backpack does not free up BANK space.

You can learn more about managing your BACKPACK and BANK on the Item Commands page.

You can check out all the items available in this update on the Items (v95) page. There are 31 new items in this update.

Please note that all items from before this update have been deprecated and can no longer be accessed or used.

The Mailbox

If your Bank cannot store any new items, or you cannot hold any additional Gems, the excess items/gems are sent to your Mailbox. Your Mailbox has a fixed store space of 10. If your Mailbox fills up, you run the risk of permanently missing out on items/gems.

Item Upgrades

Items now have a Level in addition to a Tier. Items can level up in a couple ways:

• Spending Gems
• Finding Duplicate Items

Gems are a new currency that can be earned at the end of a game, and are important for upgrading. The cost of upgrading an item increases with its Tier.

Items can similarly have their Tier increased by spending Gems. When an item’s Tier is increased, however, its Level also resets to zero.

You can learn more about what kinds of things you can upgrade, types of Gems, as well as upgrade costs, on the Upgrading page.

Using Items

When a game starts, there will be a 60-second period where players can still move their items between the BANK and their BACKPACK. During this time, Items cannot be used.

After this BANK lock period, Items can have their Passive and Active effects triggered. Not all items have a Passive or Active ability, so be sure to look up your item’s effects with the ITEM command.

USE

The USE command will trigger Active item effects on all items in your BACKPACK at once. When an item has its Active effect triggered, it goes on cooldown for a set period of time.

Skills

In v95, we are bumping the level cap of all skills to 50 (Up from 30)! Additionally, we have updated how damage is calculated across all skills, rebalanced experience gains.

Experience Rebalance

While the exact numbers are different, this is an approximate representation of the new experience curve.

The maximum XP you can gain per action is 10 xp.

Level Range	Approximate XP per Level
1-9	1,000
10-25	4,000
26-39	11,000
40-50	15,000

Damage Calculation Updates

Damage is now based on the difference between the Power of a given Difficulty, and the Power of your Skill.

The minimum damage you can naturally deal is 1, and the maximum damage you can naturally deal is 50 (Not accounting for any Item effects, such as Critical Chance). To deal 50 damage, you must have a Power advantage of at least 40. To deal 1 damage, the Difficulty Power must be at least 10 higher than your Power. If your Power and the Difficulty Power are evenly matched, then you will deal 10 damage.

PRAISE and JAIL Skills Removed

The functions of these skills have been incorporated into PET and COP respectively.

Charms

Charms are a new type of buff that apply to Structures. In v95, all Charms last for the duration of a single game and can be found in one of two ways:

• DIG Chests
• Bone Level Up Chests

Charms take the place that Items previously filled. They can be claimed by typing in a 3-Letter code. More players claiming a Charm means the Charm will be claimed faster.

For a complete list of Charms, hop on over to the Charms page.

The maximum number of Charms that can be ‘claimable’ at one time is 10. There is no limit to the stack count of Charms applied to Structures.

New Difficulties, Enemy Types

New Enemies

These new enemies will only spawn in Difficulties 4 and above.

New Enemy: Bomb

• After 30 seconds, the Bomb explodes and removes 1 Heart Point from the Dog.

New Enemy: Arsonist

• This enemy spawns in Jail.
• When this enemy breaks out of Jail, it will target Structures and unleash fireballs that damage a random Structure without triggering any of the Structure’s beneficial effects.

Difficulty 7, 8, 9

Three additional difficulties have been added. Their Power levels are 45, 50, and 52 respectively. Good luck!

Also, players can now elect which difficulty to play on. Higher difficulties will require a Veteran player to access.

General

PRESTIGE

• PRESTIGE titles have been changed to: Beginner I – II, Veteran I – II, Expert I – III, Master I – III.
• The Gold cost of each Prestige level has been reduced significantly.
• Check out the Prestige page for an updated table of point requirements and gold costs.

LOBBY

• PET, COP, KICK, and RIOT all work in the Lobby. You can pretty much play the OG version of Don’t Kick the Dog in the Lobby, now. Performing these actions adds a miniscule amount of XP to your skills.
• Players can now work Structures to move around the Lobby, and start a specific difficulty.
• Leaderboards for all-time actions performed have been added to the Lobby.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Player Actions are no longer interrupted when a Structure goes on cooldown.
• Demon players are no longer restricted from most things.

Closing Thoughts

This was yet another major evolution for the game, coming out just a little bit over 2 years since the game’s original launch.

We started this update almost exactly 4 months ago, and while a 4 month development cycle might seem like a long time, it has felt like barely any time at all. At the same time, I feel like every update allows us to make bigger and bigger jumps going forward.

We’ll see where we end up landing… Thanks for playing, and remember:

Don’t Kick.