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[unormal]

*Added a new inhabitant to Joppa (meow)
*Added a new type of bow
*Added resonance grenades that disintegrate inorganic matter
*Added powered exoskeleton ('worn on back', rare)
*Refreshed the Short Blades skill:
  -New power: Hobble (150 sp, 15 agility), an activated attack that immobilizes your opponent
  -New power: Rejoinder (150 sp, 25 agility), a passive ability that lets you make a free short blade attack whenever an opponent misses you in melee
  -Shank now applies to your primary hand attacks as well as your off-hand attacks
  -Juke is now a prerequisite for Pointed Circle
  -Pointed Circle's cost was reduced from 250 to 100
  -Pointed Circle's agility requirement was reduced to 23
*Refreshed the Wayfaring skill's Wilderness Lore powers. They now:
  -Double the chance of interesting encounters
  -Reduce the chance of getting lost
*Added a new open air tile type
*Made underground caves more cave-like
*Fixed 'Enter' not working properly on the Saved Games screen
*Electromagnetic pulses now properly disable items in the inventories of non-robotic creatures
*Phasing now forces you into an open space as the final move, if possible.
*<redacted>

[Aquillion]

Aww, compound bows can't be crafted.  (Or at least they can't be deconstructed?)

The short blade changes have made the tree awesome.  I'm playing a 26-agility character with shank and rejoinder who found an early carbide dagger, and dodge-tank is definitely a viable strategy, at least early on.  (I suspect that it will be weaker later on when enemies tend to have more powerful abilities that don't care about dodging, and tend to have nasty ranged attacks so I can't immediately shank them to death, but that's true for all melee strategies.)

An observation:  Agility-based characters have no real way to cover significant distances quickly or safely while under fire.  If you don't have the strength for Charge, you're limited to Juke and Jump, both of which are short-range.  That seems odd.  I find my character has a lot of trouble with ranged attackers (they're a mutant, so I have them using freezing hands; and if they weren't they could rely on ranged attacks of their own...  but it feels like there should be an agility-based way to close the distance with a powerful ranged attacker without being killed.  I guess you can Sprint, rely on Run, and hope you dodge everything, but that seems unreliable.)

[unormal]

*Fixed some issues and improved the performance of the Asphalt Mines builders
*Fixed Pointed Circle's prerequisite link
*Fixed spinner being displayed when you wait 0 turns
*Fixed text-entry fields not responding to escape
*Overland rivers now flow more naturally into bodies of water

[puke]

*Fixed some issues and improved the performance of the Asphalt Mines builders

Oh!  Are there reasons to go there now?  Or is it just a dungeon?

[Aquillion]

Bug report:  When I delete a saved game from the saved game list, it deletes multiple saves, not just the one I wanted.  I lost the game I was playing while trying to delete some saves from old versions. 

[MrWillsauce]

A dual wield short blades build can breeze through the game now with the updated shank and new rejoiner skill. This is a huge boost to a build which was already viable.

[unormal]

It amuses me that the descriptions of Qud go from 'impossibly moronic worse than dark souls you can't take a step without dying' to 'game is a breeze'

[forsaken1111]

It amuses me that the descriptions of Qud go from 'impossibly moronic worse than dark souls you can't take a step without dying' to 'game is a breeze'

Sounds like a proper roguelike. With the right seed and/or skills even nethack can be easy.

[Intrinsic]

A dual wield short blades build can breeze through the game now with the updated shank and new rejoiner skill. This is a huge boost to a build which was already viable.

Pre-patch i had worked out a Short Blade build which i had been breezing through things and was gonna do a guide on. Then i saw the patch notes and it was clear it'd be rediculous. As it stands if i press auto-explore my guy runs around the map and if i get attacked i "rejoinder" (surely meant to be riposte?) and 1 shot them and the game doesn't even stop auto-exploring for combat just carries on. Of course there are some enemies which are a bit harder, it took me ~3 attacks for that boss thingy on lvl5 of Golgotha...

[Aquillion]

A dual wield short blades build can breeze through the game now with the updated shank and new rejoiner skill. This is a huge boost to a build which was already viable.

How far into the main plot have you gotten with them?  Like I mentioned above, I find that melee-focused builds get progressively less viable as the game continues.

Granted that being agility-focused makes it easy to branch out into ranged attacks, but I still have trouble believing an agility-focused dodge-tank short-blade build is ever going to be as powerful as a late-game Esper.  You have no way to close distance rapidly, no defenses against attacks that can't be dodged, no easy escape options and so on -- you can fill some of these gaps with mutations, but not as well as an Esper can.  You can fill them less effectively by spending stat and skill points, but you have a limited pool of those (especially if you're a mutant), and the dodge-tank / short blades thing consumes a lot of them.  You can also rely on equipment, but to get the full use out of the dodge-tank thing, you need to focus on equipment that won't wreck your DV, and you need a hand free, which means no shields, no heavy armor, and so on.

My feeling is that you'll breeze through the early game and can probably do all right in Golgotha if you move quickly and avoid the vents (although you might have to cure yourself of glotrot afterwards), but sometime around Bethesda Susa, someone's going to get a lucky hit on a ranged attack and you'll die without warning...  or you'll bump into a named unique Esper somewhere along the line who will throw up a Force Bubble, then kill you with undodgeable mental mutations.

"rejoinder" (surely meant to be riposte?)

Riposte is already used for an upgrade to the Long Blades parry skill.  It wouldn't make sense as a term for a Short Blades skill, because a riposte follows a parry, not a dodge, and short blades can't be used to parry.

Sounds like a proper roguelike. With the right seed and/or skills even nethack can be easy.

Nethack is a weird case because so much of it depends on out-of-game knowledge.  Something like knowing about "elbereth" or knowing what to wish for, for instance, can make a dramatic difference in how hard the game is.

[Aquillion]

Update:  Yes, a short blades focus is a lot less powerful once you get to Bethedsa Susa.  I'm struggling against Cragmensch, taking lots of damage from mental attacks or the stray boulder that hits me, and had to use a lot of injectors to beat the trolls.  I didn't spend too long preparing -- the Cragmensch would probably be easier to kill if I had a vibrodagger or a powerful elemental-branded weapon, or if I'd spent a while grinding for levels, skill points, grenades, and bits to make grenades; but at that point it wouldn't be the short blades that were really carrying me, anyway.  Other weapons have higher penetration caps (and Vibroblades are better than Vibrodaggers, if I were using them), so the difficulty with Cragmensch is a disadvantage to daggers specifically and not just to melee combat.

More importantly, there's a bug with the cybernetics information terminal.  It's adding an extra newline after every line, which pushes much of what it says out of the text box.

Also, I backed up my game to test, and no, the short blade tree is not enough to defeat Saad Amus, not without a lot more levels than this.  Pity, beating him would certainly solve my mobility problems.  (Granted, I didn't grab that ability that disables movement...  Saad Amus lacks ranged attacks, so possibly that could shut him down while I finish him off with my Eigencannon.  I'm not sure it disables charge or the Fume-Flier, though.  I also gave up the dual-wield aspect of short blades to get the Eigencannon, which might be lowering my damage output a bit, but there's no way it would have been enough to just beat Saad Amus in a straight-up fight, whereas axes and swords give you a chance to disarm him.  And of course even if I managed to beat him, his sword is a long blade; there's no comparably-powerful short blade that I'm aware of.)

[FallacyofUrist]

...
and I just started playing yesterday. This game is incredible.

[unormal]

Caves of Qud feature Friday!

*Made a bunch of tweaks to the reputation system
  -Some creatures are now 'aggressive'. Aggressive creatures will attack you even if your reputation with their faction puts you in the neutral range. If their faction is friendly toward you, though, agressive creatures won't attack you.
  -Some creatures are now 'docile'. Docile creatures won't attack you even if your reputation with their faction puts you in the 'disliked' range. If their faction despises you, though, docile creatures will attack you.
  -We introduced the concept of private faction holy places. You're only welcome in a faction's private holy place if your reputation with that faction is friendly or better. 
  -The rep values for the dislike/neutral and neutral/friendly cutoffs have changed to -250 and 250 
  -Rep values are now properly color-coded on the Reputation screen
    >(bright red = despised)
    >(dark red = disliked)
    >(cyan = neutral)
    >(dark green = favored)
    >(bright green = revered)
  -The Reputation screen displays more info on each of the reputation levels
  -The starting reputation values were all changed. More factions start neutral to you now.
  -The reputation bonuses for genotype, mutations, and kits were adjusted.
*Villagers now admire their warden for defending their village (this means Warden Ualraig and Mehmet will play nice more often)
*Warden Indrix is now always hated by goatfolk for some reason he won't share
*Young ivories and lurking beth changed social groups
*Shield skill refresh
  -Made Shield Slam an activated attack with cooldown 40. It still triggers for free when you charge an opponent.
  -Fixed Shield Slam not triggering when you charge
  -Swapped the prerequisites for Shield Slam and Staggering Block
  -Removed the buckler prerequisite for Shield Slam
  -Wardens now start with Shield Slam instead of Staggering Block
*Acrobatics skill refresh
  -Removed the encumbrance restrictions for Spry and Tumble
*Harvestry now displays the right amount of harvested items
*Faction members will more vigilantly assist each other in combat
*Taught NPCs to use Shield Slam and Hobble
*Elder Irudad now directs adventurers to Argyve
*Underground caves structures are now interlinked
*Fixed some random seeds not saving and loading properly
*Added a new item: metamorphic polygel

[forsaken1111]

Did you look into the thing where you're sometimes hostile to your own plants when using the burgeoning mutation?

[unormal]

Did you look into the thing where you're sometimes hostile to your own plants when using the burgeoning mutation?

In theory that's fixed. Though it tends to rebreak from time to time as we continue to hammer on the faction system internals.