This is another smaller update while I clean up lingering bugs from the Reason boss fight and prepare for the upcoming Wisdom boss fight.  A couple of minor interface improvements which have been on the to-do list for awhile also found their way into the release.

The main new addition is the ability to face Reason is single play mode.  The new "Versus Reason" scenario was very difficult to balance, since she's even more difficult than would be expected for a boss fight late in campaign mode.  You're meant to "burn all your resources" to beat Reason, because the nature of her simulation mechanics means that those resources will remain available in the real world.  For a player without access to Forsaken, the number of items you need in order to reach that level of power is high.  There's also a large degree of randomness in how well the items you get will synergize with each other, which means that the scenario can be pretty easy or extremely difficult depending on your luck.

I'm still including the scenario just so that players who don't like to play deep into campaign mode will still be able to experience Reason's mechanics and story, but it's still recommended to face her in campaign mode as originally intended.

Next month will be the introduction of the final species-based boss fight, Wisdom!  Like Reason, she has a pretty crazy gimmick, but I've already done a significant chunk of the work required to implement her this month, so she should be done on schedule.  I hope you all look forward to it!

Click here to download.  Mirror.

Just a small status report while I work on the coming releases:  As with Reason's boss fight, I'm spending the month beforehand primarily working on the framework for Wisdom's unique mechanics.  The immediately-playable content for Release 72 will again be pretty minor by comparison, but I do want to add a single play version of the Reason boss fight, and of course I'll also be fixing the bugs and other issues that have come up with Reason's boss fight as well.

More previews regarding Wisdom's boss fight and the endgame will be forthcoming as I work on them!

This is a small bugfix for an issue where Despair was the only Distortion which could be carried over to Reason's Forsaken form.
Click here to download.  Mirror.

This update adds the first of the endgame bosses: Reason, leader of the Mechanical Chosen!  Reason will first appear 5 loops after Judgment is defeated.  As a scientist whose knowledge of the workings of psychic energy has allowed her to replace her own body with mechanical parts, she's an exceptionally powerful and resolute opponent.

From a gameplay perspective, Reason can be treated as effectively a "final boss."  Similar to the Mechanical Chosen who serve under her, Reason's Forsaken abilities once defeated are all about making the player stronger over time.  If you can beat her as early as Loop 25, then it'll be easy for your power level to snowball to the point that the actual final boss on Loop 35 will become trivial.  Even if you delay fighting Reason until Loop 30, the extra efficiency she adds when crafting buildings will still make you a lot more powerful by the true endgame.

This is important, because Reason's city is an exceptionally difficult fight.  She has her own unique set of Operations (which are now also listed in the mechanical operations.txt file), and you'll need to figure out which ones to aim for and which Operations to manipulate her allies into using in order to make the fight winnable.  Don't be afraid to burn all your resources (mechanical parts, limited Forsaken abilities, etc.) in order to beat her!  She has a special gameplay mechanic you'll discover which encourages you to do just that.

Because the fight is so difficult, and because it assumes that you've spent all of campaign mode building up the resources to take it on, there's currently no single play version of the fight.  I'll probably need to tweak some of Reason's mechanics in order to make the fight fair for players who don't have a Forsaken roster.  Until then, campaign mode is the only way to face her.

Now that this is done, I'm going to be moving directly to implementing Reason's Elemental counterpart, Wisdom, as soon as possible.  Like Reason, Wisdom makes use of some pretty tricky mechanics in her boss fight, so I expect this to take 2 months as well.  Until then, I hope everyone enjoys the beginnings of the endgame!

Click here to download.  Mirror.

Now that we've entered the month whose release will bring the Reason boss fight, it feels more appropriate to give a proper preview of her personality and appearance.  She's already shown up a few times in the previous boss stories and the item descriptions, and players who have read those parts will recall that she had a sort of "mad scientist" air about her - pretty appropriate for the boss of the Mechanical Chosen.

However, unlike most mad scientist characters in fiction, Reason cares a lot about morality.  In fact, she believes that moral laws, just like physical laws, can be investigated and determined objectively through experimentation.  Her worldview is based on the idea that the material world is all that exists, and therefore our ideas about what should and shouldn't be done must all ultimately come from our observations about how the material world works.

This might seem like a pretty radical viewpoint in a world where magical powers are real and belief dictates reality, but the scientific method still applies even to a place like that.  When the same action is taken, then the same result should occur.  And if a different result occurs, then there must be some difference in the conditions of the experiment.  It's a lot harder to reproduce experimental results when the researcher's mental state is always a factor in the experiment, but it's still fundamentally possible.

This worldview naturally lends itself to a determined, forward-thinking personality.  Reason doesn't have Victory's idealism or optimism, but she does have confidence in her ability to overcome any obstacle with enough time and effort.  The desire to make the world better, combined with a realistic outlook that acknowledges the evil within the world, was what made her get along so well with Judgment.  And once Judgment falls, Reason will acknowledge the Demon Lord as a problem that must be solved at any cost.

Normally, this is where I'd post the full-body preview of Reason's character design, but I realized this morning that I made a serious mistake by not including a labcoat in her transformation.  I'm still in the middle of fixing that, so for the time being, I can at least show off her work-in-progress portrait.  Astute players might notice the similarity with the "Reason Brainscan" subspecies of Mechanical Chosen.  I've known roughly how I wanted Reason to look for awhile.

This is a small bundle of bugfixes which didn't make their way into the main release.
Click here to download.  Mirror.