PATCH NOTES

What's changed in Roguegrind, newest first.

JULY 26, 2026 IN DEVELOPMENT · 0.0.6

NEW Enemies can now rarely spawn as Elites - golden-shimmering "shiny" variants of the normal monster, with triple health and 50% harder hits. Worth the extra fight: an Elite kill always drops a chest (never the usual 80% chance), forced to Gold rarity and a tier high enough to actually qualify for a legendary, with noticeably better odds of rolling one than a normal Gold chest gets.
NEW A gold arrow now appears at the edge of the screen whenever your nearest active quest target is off-screen, pointing toward it - no more wandering blind looking for the right kind of enemy.
NEW Every name on the Glory leaderboard now links to that player's public profile - glory, rank, career stats, nemesis (whoever's killed you the most), full death history and current loadout. Log in on the website and your own profile also lets you change your display name and pick which character sprite you play as.
CHANGE The website's home page now leads with real game artwork instead of a wall of small print, and got a proper Download section explaining the .jar and .exe options. The Armory and Bestiary moved to their own pages so they're no longer buried in one long scroll, and a new How to Play guide covers every control, system and mechanic in one place.
CHANGE Noticeably smoother frame rate while exploring the open world, especially on lower-end machines - the entity and terrain rendering paths got a significant performance pass.

JULY 25, 2026 v0.0.5

CHANGE Reduced weapon damage output across the board to curb how sharply DPS ramped up at the top end. Tiered weapons now scale up to 50 DPS at Tier 10 (down from 60, with every lower tier scaled down by the same proportion), and untiered legendary weapons now deal 55 DPS (down from 80). Fire rate is unchanged for every weapon - only damage per hit moved.
CHANGE Tiered staff bolts now change color as they get stronger - grey for Tier 1-3, green for Tier 4-5, blue for Tier 6-8, and red for Tier 9-10 - instead of every tier firing the same plain grey bolt.
NEW Replaced the three plain elemental daggers (Poison Dagger, Fire Dagger, Ice Dagger) with five all-new legendary daggers: Rainbow Dagger (every stab a random color, with a matching burst of muzzle particles), Spectral Dagger (a rotating, ghostly bolt), Poison Sickle (poisons on hit), Ice Fire Dagger (burns and freezes on hit, randomly fire- or ice-colored), and Storm Dagger (the fastest projectile in the game). Poison, Freeze and Burn join Bleed, Slow and Stun as on-hit weapon effects.
CHANGE Special attacks hit much harder - a cast is now worth 3 to 4.5 seconds of your weapon's own damage output, up from well under two. They also finally land the same value no matter what you carry: previously a special's damage was calculated from damage-per-swing, so slow heavy weapons like axes quietly got up to 2.7x more out of the same ability than fast ones like staffs and bows, even though every weapon category deals identical damage per second. Every special is now budgeted against your weapon's actual output instead.
CHANGE Whirlwind, the axe special, is a proper storm now: three rings of blades burst out instead of one, each at a different speed so they sweep past a target one after another. Anything standing close takes a hit from every wave and gets shoved backwards with each one, while distant enemies are only clipped by the outermost ring. It was by far the weakest special before - a single ring could only ever hit an enemy once. Mana cost and cooldown are up to match (40 mana, 6s).
NEW Replaced the two elemental axes (Fire Axe, Ice Axe) with five all-new legendary axes: Vine Axe (throws green and brown growth, and snares what it hits), Ice Axe (freezes on hit), Skull Axe (hurls spinning bone shards), Golden Axe (the widest, most dazzling muzzle flare in the game), and Dragon Axe - which throws the heavy fire bolt normally reserved for the Fire Mage and is the only weapon whose ordinary attack both burns AND shoves the target backwards.
FIX Fixed occasionally spawning into a new world marooned on a tiny island with no way to reach the mainland - spawn placement now checks that there is actually a real landmass underfoot, not just a single non-water tile.

JULY 24, 2026 v0.0.5

NEW Added Bee, grass's swarm alongside Wolf - found in small hives, not scattered singly, flying fast and aggressive rather than idling around. Individually it's barely a threat: a weak poke and, once in its life, one real committed sting thrown mid-chase without ever stopping to wind up. The instant it commits to that sting, though, every bee nearby rushes in to join - kill the first one fast, or you're facing a hive.
CHANGE Zombie and Slime spawn noticeably less often in the open world, making room for Bee's new grass hives.
CHANGE Reworked Crab: instead of scuttling into view and yanking you closer, it now stays buried, out of sight and immune to damage, creeping in while a faint trickle of sand gives away roughly where it is, sharpening into a clear ripple right before it erupts. It surfaces to chase and pinch for a few seconds - the only window it can actually be hit - then buries itself again.
CHANGE Chests dropped by defeated enemies are now more likely to match the tier of your currently equipped weapon, so they land as genuinely crackable rewards instead of either a trivial freebie or a tier you have no hope of cracking open.
CHANGE Legendary weapons can now only drop from Gold chests of tier 8 or higher - previously any Gold chest had a shot at one, even a low-tier one an early run could stumble into. Legendaries are meant to be a genuine high-tier jackpot, not an early lucky break.
NEW Dungeons now show a minimap too, top-right like the open world's - but only what you've actually explored is revealed. Corridors trace out as a trail behind you, and stepping into a room reveals that whole room at once; anything beyond a door you haven't opened or a corridor you haven't taken stays hidden.
CHANGE Toned down the Deamon Dragon's Blue Flame summon - its overlapping double-wave volley could land several hits on you at once, so per-hit damage is down from 20 to 12 to bring the total burst back in line with the rest of the fight.

JULY 21, 2026 v0.0.4

NEW Added Turtle, a slow-moving beach dweller found on sand alongside Crab. It rarely catches you on foot, but land a shot and it locks onto that spot, then unleashes a churning torrent of seawater along that line, widening as it surges outward - step out of the line and it does nothing.
NEW Added Ogre, grass's heavyweight alongside Wolf. It rears up before slamming the ground in a wide ring, dazing anyone still standing in it - and once, if wounded badly enough, it turns and flees to heal back a real chunk of health instead of fighting to the death outright.
CHANGE Fire Mage moved from roaming the whole world to spawning only in volcano biomes, alongside Salamander and Imp.
NEW Added a new Snow biome - rare and large, like Volcano. It's home to two enemies exclusive to it: Frost Mage (no longer roams the rest of the world) and the all-new Yeti, a slow brawler that permanently enrages - faster, harder-hitting, and its claws leave a lingering frostbite chill - once wounded badly enough.
FIX Fixed items picked up, discarded, or swapped during a run sometimes vanishing if you closed the game (or it restarted) before that run ended.
CHANGE Loot pickups and inventory changes are now validated server-side, closing another way a modified client could fake progress.
FIX Fixed occasionally spawning right next to (or in immediate danger from) an enemy at the start of a run.
CHANGE Improved performance during fights near several ranged enemies at once - should mean noticeably better FPS.

JULY 20, 2026 v0.0.3

CHANGE Outdated clients are now blocked from starting a run and prompted to download the latest version.
NEW Added a cross-platform .jar download for players whose antivirus flags the Windows .exe - also runs on macOS and Linux with Java 8+.
FIX Saved settings (login session, key bindings) now actually persist on macOS and Linux instead of silently failing to save.

JULY 19, 2026 v0.0.2

FIX Fixed the enemy that killed you sometimes showing as a single garbled letter instead of its real name.
FIX Global chat now correctly shows the most recent messages instead of getting stuck on old ones.
FIX The newest chat message now appears at the bottom instead of the top.
CHANGE Chat messages now fade out after 10 seconds instead of 25, and stay fully visible while the chat window is open.
CHANGE Removed debug chat commands that granted free weapons, mana, or fire-rate changes.
CHANGE Glory gains are now validated server-side, closing off a way the leaderboard could be manipulated.

JULY 18, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Added a self-contained Windows build - no separate Java install required - available from the website's "DOWNLOAD FOR WINDOWS" button.
NEW The website is now available in German and English - toggle with the DE/EN switch in the navigation.
NEW Added a Donate page - entirely optional, never required or rewarded in-game.
NEW Added an Environment picker to the Launcher's Settings tab - switch between Local, Production, and Custom server connections. Production is now the default for new installs.
FIX Fixed the game window's title bar showing no version number.
FIX Fixed the bestiary's HP-sort button reverting to English after switching to German.

JULY 17, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Drag the inventory window by its background to move it, and drag a weapon onto the equipped-weapon slot to equip it instantly.
FIX Fixed manual-fire mode accidentally shooting while you dragged an item in the inventory.
NEW Four more enemies added to the world: Boar (charges in a straight line and can be staggered by slamming into terrain), Imp (keeps its distance and flinches into a dash-away plus a burst of faster shots when hit), Vinelasher (a stationary jungle plant that lashes out and roots anything that strays too close), and Vulture (circles overhead before diving at you).
NEW Dungeons are now procedurally generated - a fresh layout, monsters and loot every time you step through a portal, instead of one fixed dungeon.
NEW Dungeon entrances are now much more common across the world.
NEW New characters now start with a random tier-1 weapon instead of always a sword.
FIX Fixed the dungeon's portal and torch tiles showing a stray colored background instead of matching the dungeon floor.
CHANGE Spider bites now visibly web you in place while you're rooted.
CHANGE New artwork for Frog and Golem.
CHANGE Wraith no longer spawns in the open world - it's now an exclusively dungeon encounter, alongside Bats.
CHANGE Leaving a dungeon now returns you to the exact spot you entered from, and that entrance closes behind you, instead of dropping you into a brand new world.
CHANGE The Deamon Dragon no longer drops an extra chest on top of its guaranteed gold one.

JULY 16, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Killing any enemy now earns Glory - previously only the Fire Mage did.
NEW Drinking a potion now shows a particle burst, floating text, and an on-screen cooldown bar.
FIX Smoothed out enemy movement - chasing enemies no longer stutter-step or flicker between facing directions.
FIX Deaths from poison, bleed or burn now correctly show which enemy caused them, in the death recap and on your website profile and the leaderboard.
CHANGE Volcano now mixes into every generated world as rare, large hotspots instead of only appearing in its own dedicated world.
CHANGE The minimap's zoom now shows a smaller window of the world around you instead of resizing the map itself.

JULY 15, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Seven new enemies added to the world: Wolf (winds up then lunges a long distance), Frog (hops around and spits poison from range), Salamander (leaves a trail of burning embers as it moves), Wraith (a rare, blinking shadow that phases through walls), Crab (pulls you in before pinching), Scorpion (weak sting, nasty lingering poison), and Frost Mage (marks the ground with an icy storm and chills anyone who gets close with a point-blank nova).
NEW Added a Bestiary section to the website describing every enemy in the game, with real in-game stats.
NEW Enemies now spawn in the biomes that fit them - Wolves in grass, Frogs in jungle, Scorpions in desert, Crabs on sand, Salamanders in volcano worlds.
NEW Dying now shows a death recap - enemies slain, chests cracked, and how long you survived.
NEW The minimap can now be zoomed in and out.
FIX Fixed several enemies (Skeleton, Spider, Golem, Crab, Scorpion) rendering as solid pink tiles instead of their actual sprite.

JULY 14, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Generated worlds now mix several biomes - grassland, jungle, desert and sand appear side by side with soft, natural transitions. Volcano worlds stay pure lava lands.
FIX Ground items are picked up where they actually landed, and with one free slot left the nearest item is picked up first.
FIX Fixed being unable to move after returning to the game from an earlier session.
CHANGE Weapon stats in the inventory tooltip are now rounded to one decimal.
CHANGE Redesigned this website: cleaner look, mobile navigation, leaderboard tabs and faster loading.

JULY 12, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Your website profile page now shows your Glory score and your full inventory.
NEW Daggers and Axes have joined the arsenal, with the same Tier 1-10 progression as Swords, Bows, and Staffs.
NEW Every weapon type now has its own mana-fueled special attack - right-click to use it.
NEW You can now change your in-game nickname (letters and numbers only).
NEW Added an offline play mode for practicing without a connection - runs don't count toward the leaderboard.
FIX Fixed facing the wrong direction while auto-firing.
FIX Fixed the chat box occasionally blocking movement after alt-tabbing back into the game, and blocked sending empty messages.
CHANGE Refreshed the Launcher with a new Play button and nickname picker.

JULY 11, 2026 v0.0.1

CHANGE Logging in now uses Discord instead of a username and password.
NEW Monthly and Weekly leaderboards are now live, alongside All-Time.
CHANGE Redesigned the Launcher and added a display for the server settings and game version.
CHANGE Redesigned the website with a new pixel-art theme, including Discord login.

JULY 10, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW You can rebind your controls, and toggle between auto-fire and hold-to-fire.
NEW Right-click and hold an item in your inventory to discard it.
NEW Chest rarity now actually matters - better chests drop better loot, and weapons have been rebalanced.
FIX Your inventory now correctly persists between logins.
FIX Dungeon portals are spawning in generated worlds again.
FIX Fixed broken-looking shorelines in generated worlds.
FIX Fixed aiming being off-center at the "Big" window size.
FIX Fixed a crash some players hit when starting the game normally.
CHANGE Lava now blocks movement, just like water.
CHANGE New fireball art with a fuller, more detailed flame.
CHANGE Removed the Donate tab - this project isn't run for profit.

JULY 9, 2026 v0.0.1

NEW Zombies and small slimes now attack you in melee.
FIX Major fix for lag and freezes caused by enemy pathfinding.
FIX Fixed the game hanging when the server was slow or unreachable.
FIX Fixed losing keyboard control after alt-tabbing back into the game.
FIX Fixed a slowdown that could build up over long play sessions.
FIX Various world-generation visual fixes (shorelines, water animation seams).
CHANGE Added extra safeguards against the game freezing.

JULY 8, 2026 v0.0.1

FIX You can no longer spawn or walk directly into water.
FIX Fixed enemies flickering oddly while chasing you.
CHANGE The leaderboard's "died on" time now shows the exact hour and minute, not just the date.

JULY 7, 2026 v0.0.1

CHANGE Improved enemy pathfinding performance.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT (2020-2023) v0.0.1

CHANGE Laid the foundations of Roguegrind: the game client, the account/leaderboard webservice, and global chat.
NEW Added the Glory leaderboard system.
CHANGE Increased player movement speed.
FIX Various early bug fixes and performance work.