Whenever we think we have secured more control over the cave, it seems to add another layer of chaos out of nowhere. I’m not sure if it’s taunting us, or maybe… 

helping us?

  New additions since 0.6

• Added an alternate boss for all four of the boss floors
  - The alternate floor 20 boss uses a variety of magic attacks, consisting of different elements than the original boss. Get your magical defenses ready!
  - The alternate floor 40 boss changes its elemental weakness, and the only way to find out which one it is is to test it with your moves. It also starts draining away your health when its health gets lower, so exploit its weakness hard the moment you identify it!
  - The alternate floor 60 boss tries to execute a program by first executing you. Defeat its files to make it more vulnerable, but can you deal with the auras they apply to the boss afterwards? This also might look familiar to people that played a different game I worked on…
  - The alternate floor 99 boss will use Wild Chips to gain random auras, each one containing the power to destroy your team. If it ever gets all four auras at the same time, it may become completely unstoppable. Can you destroy it quickly enough?
• Chests now spawn in varied locations on the first 20 floors. The chances of a certain number of chests spawning remains roughly the same
  This is a test to see how random location spawns feel compared to the set ones from before, and will be applied to the rest of the cave later if it works well
• Added the rare item Eternal Tinder
  This weapon alone contains many progressive skills. The first one is a basic attack with a small chance of making a match for you to contact later and granting the next skill. Each following skill gives you a chance to either continue the conversation and make a deeper connection, or for them to suddenly cut contact and bring you back to the first skill. Can you beat the… dating game?
• Added the Wager Chest
  A new chest may appear around the cave’s entrance, challenging you to put in some of your points to reclaim it at a multiplied amount if you make it to floor 21. Going for higher difficulties increases the multiplier. If your last 5 runs have been good enough, it may ask you to get to a deeper floor, with a higher multiplier as a reward. Are you confident enough to wager on yourself?
• Added Hi/Lo Chests
  
  - Once you have acquired 120 lifetime Points, a new type of chest appears in the cave, offering you to either roll for standard loot, or take a chance at a treasure a tier higher than where you currently are, at the risk of getting a dud item instead - A new pool of “tier 0” items have been added for when the gamble fails. These are joke items that have no real use (...maybe…?) - A new pool of “tier 6” items have been added for when you open this chest on floors 81+. There are only 3 of them, but they all might be run winners…
• Added aura fluctuations
  
  - Once you have acquired 200 lifetime Points, your first Mana Gem usage causes the energy levels of aura skills to change each turn
  - 5 is equivalent to the regular power of the aura skill as if it wasn’t unlocked, and is more common than the other numbers. Other numbers modify the power of damaging skills proportionally (from 20% power at 1 to 180% power at 9). For non-damaging skills, such as ones from Hearts, a bonus skill is cast by the cave on high or low numbers. High numbers benefit you, but low numbers benefit the enemies
  - These only change at turn end, and remain the way they were after you win a battle, so take opportunities to cast really powerful skills when you can, or switch off your most commonly used skill when low
  
  
• Added Stickers

Companions now start equipped with one of 50 different stickers. These can not be unequipped in the menu. Most of them raise one stat globally by a percentage and decrease another, but a few stickers have other special effects

• Added the Index Card

The Index Card can be viewed in the library, or at any time during a cave run by going to the renamed “Special” tab in your items. It lets you select between three main topics:

• Game Topics gives information on all kinds of sub-topics. Some are basic info already in the library, and some go into detail about specific features, including the new unlockable ones in Fluctuations.
• Companion Classes lets you view the images related to the swappable classes outside of the class change events
• The Content Card automatically tracks all enemies, equipment and items the first time you see or earn them. You can then read detailed entries for everything you have discovered. Some valuable information may only be available from here. It also tracks completion… can you discover all 100% of it?

(Note that a few secret items, as well as anything in the database either only available with dev cheats or completely unavailable, will not occupy a spot on the Content Card)

• Added Bonus Orbs

Bonus Orbs summon the cave to cast a powerful skill of your choice. These skills include a full team heal, a full team revive, and powerful damage skills of each element. Power scales with floor number, not your own stats
You get 2 Bonus Orbs after defeating Little Blorb, and 1 more after defeating each of the first 3 bosses. If you win a cave run without using them, you get 10 Points added to your score per unused one.

• Added the Deal of the Day

 Between cave runs, the Points Shop will offer a randomized Deal of the Day. It costs 10 points, and must be re-purchased after using it in a run, but it offers very powerful items at the very start of a run, including late game drops, the tier 6 items, and elemental damage items that can be recharged at Mana Gems. You can also reroll the displayed deal for 10 points each if you really want a different one

Other Changes

• The Wild Card fight has now changed entirely
  Wild Card will select an aura at the end of each turn. When you defeat it, you will get an extra Chip item after the fight that corresponds with the aura it had when defeated, but after 4 turns, it goes away and rewards no extra Chip item. Wild Card's HP is much lower, making it usually possible to kill in one turn with strong moves. It also can now be encountered in more spots deeper in the cave.
  The Wild Card was one of the oldest enemies of the cave, and its role as a kind of tough mid-boss became unnecessary after the four full bosses for the cave were completed. Also, there were no ways to gain Club and Heart Chips outside of Lucky Loot in the first 20 floors. This should solve the problem of eliminating an outdated fight, while also greatly increasing the chances (but still not guaranteeing) the player can apply an aura they don’t have available.
• A more satisfying event happens when you win a cave run
• On your first win, you earn a bonus 200 Points
• The Home Base now unlocks at 350 lifetime Points instead of 400. (Combined with the one-time bonus, a first win will guarantee unlocking it)
• On the player’s very first run, should they survive to the first staircase, they will be warned that an irregularity has been detected, and then get the choice if they want to leave the cave immediately or continue anyway.
  The goal of shoving the player into the Impossible Cave difficulty immediately is to show that the mode exists and is one of the ultimate goals to chase. It often kills the player immediately, but if it doesn’t, there should be a way for players that don’t like the oppression to escape sooner. I am thinking of entirely alternate ways to achieve this goal in future versions.
• After your first run, if you attempt to go back down into the cave without looking at the Points Shop, the shopkeeper will make a remark at you
• The first 3 bosses now each award 17 Points upon defeat, and the fourth boss does not inherently give any points, just Bonus Orb points. This makes the max score per run  200, and the max score over 5 runs an even 1000
• Hex Caster now has the MP to cast things; sorry about that bro
• Other early game enemies have been given the MP to use alternate skills exactly once
• Some enemies that were neutral against all elements have been given either a weakness, or a weakness + resistance (but not just a resistance). All weaknesses and resistances are noted in the appropriate entry in the Content Card
• Treasure Guardian no longer uses its Ice move on Light Cave, to help identify the distinction between itself (Physical and Fire attacks) and the new alternate boss (Ice and Lightning attacks)
• The player now has an accessible way to inflict Sleep on the enemy with a Deal of the Day item. Due to this, Sleep now has a 50% chance to be removed upon damage
• Heart Circulation, the group healing move from the Glowing Heart Ring, has been put on the companions’ Devoted Friend Charm. On the ring, it has been replaced with Heart Embrace, which is also a group heal but scales based on magical attack and defense.
• The process that determines mystery buffs on Impossible Cave difficulty has been modified to not show when HP is restored, meaning that the HP boost is exactly as unknown as all the other boosts until you test the fight.
• On Unsealed Cave+ only, escaping now introduces a penalty added to the next escape attempt of -20%. This penalty is set to 0 on moving down a floor. On Impossible Cave difficulty, this penalty is instead lowered by 1%.
• Added a unique music track for floors 81-99
• Swapped out some sound effects, and added some to events / moves that used to have none
• Changed some battle dialogue lines
• Edits have been done to the lobby map to make the floor tiles look cooler
• The monitor at the Home Base that either gives you a check-in bonus or asks you to enter a Dimensional Code now appears in the main lobby, only until you have unlocked the Home Base. On this lobby monitor, the “extra purple chest pull” reward has been replaced with 20 Points
• Various happenings have been adjusted for a theoretical “demo” mode where the player can not earn points, or go past floor 20. This demo version does not publicly exist yet, because as of the Fluctuations update the entire game is still free
• There are no obscure, strange secrets, but if they did exist and were broken before, they may have been fixed now

Due to new additions, save files from previous versions of the cave will not work on 0.7. Inform the mysterious entity at the start of the game that you have played previous versions of the world to reclaim Points and skip some starting events.

Thank you to those that have played or followed the cave in any amount so far. I am going to keep doing my best to create the game that both I enjoy, and that people not into the super hardcore challenge can also enjoy