Hey there, Keepers! Hope you're all doing well!

Dungeon: Keep Her - Alpha 0.21 is shaping up nicely, with a huge new addition that should really add to immersion and end-game goals:

The World Map

A fully simulated, procedural world map has been introduced, with distinct Factions fighting over territory!

Settlements on the World Map will have distinct types, such as Farms, Villages, Markets and Cities. These will change what actions will be available for you to take. For instance, ransacking a Farm type settlement will have your servant come back with Food type items, while raiding a village will kidnap a character from that culture.

Those settlement types will directly influence the faction Power number.

Power emanates from a faction's capital settlement, becoming weaker at the edges of their territory. A settlement's Power number influences its defense and attack rolls, making it easier to expand and fend off enemy attacks! As such, Factions are strong around their capital, and become weaker at the edges as they expand.

Factions

More than 20 hand-crafted, lore-friendly factions have been created to populate the world of DKH and fight for power!

They have their own flags, colors, behaviours, loadouts, genes... and Leaders!

Faction Leaders are procedural -- yet persistent. They will be created and saved with your profile, and exist throughout your campaign... unless something happens to them! In which case, they get replaced by their next of kin.

A faction's relation with the Dungeon depends entirely on your relation with its leader! As such, you can slowly build up relationships via gifts or sending aid to their settlements -- alternatively, you can try the more hands-on approach: sabotage their capital, send a trusted servant to be instated as Leader... and now the kingdom answers directly to you!

You can also call them over to your Court. Maybe a little get-together will have them on your side?

Actions & Expeditions

All of your interfacing with the outside world will be done via Actions and Expeditions.

Actions are instant -- like sending a message. These are mostly diplomatic behaviours that cost you resources or relationships, such as gifting gold to other leaders, calling them over to your court, changing settlement types, moving capitals or even reinstating fallen cultures!

Expeditions, on the other hand, require you to choose a servant to travel over to the chosen settlement.

Expeditions directly influence the world -- if you raid a village, for instance, you kidnap someone from that culture while also hindering that settlement, lowering their Power contribution towards the realm for a few days.

You'll be able to sabotage, render aid, assassinate leaders, kidnap villagers... and much more! Your actions will shape the way Factions evolve in the World Map, as you forge alliances or drive whole factions into extinction.

Traits

New traits related to the World Map mechanics have been added!

Leader Traits will shape how a faction leader handles their kingdom, with bonuses related to settlement types, levels of aggression, how much they can be influenced with gifts, and more!

Expedition Traits change how servants deal with expeditions, with increased bonuses and responses to certain expedition types.

World History & Simulation

The world writes its own history. Wars, sieges and the fall of entire factions are recorded as named chapters in the Codex. "The Fall of the Imperium", "Mira's March", "The Stand at Ashford", each telling how it happened, who was involved, and what came of it.

Factions hold grudges, too. Leaders remember who took their lands, swear revenge, and go after their rivals first -- and when an old oath finally comes due, history remembers that as well. If your saboteurs were the spark that started a war, the chronicle will say so!

How does it all change the main gameplay?

My idea is to not have the already existing loop be completely disrupted by the World Map additions. It's meant to be a layer of expansion and immersion, not replace the main loop.

Characters in the game's world will now be part of Factions, and no longer completely random. As such, they will have distinct races, visuals, loadouts and traits. Invaders will be part of an existing Faction in the game world, for instance.

Since Factions already encompass different character races, race unlocks through the Research Lab will no longer be a thing -- this will be moved to a "content toggle" window that basically turns entire Factions on/off (like Futas, furries, monsters, robots, etc...), so you can tune what type of content will show up in your world.

Make-up Layer & Tattoos

Some of the character appearance items, such as "Face Style" have been split into other types:

Face Style is now the physical aspect of a characters face: Moles, scars and freckles.

Makeup has been added as a layer, including face paints, eyeshadow or eyeliners.

Lipstick has been added as a layer as well, overriding character lip visuals!

Additionally, new tattoo maps have been added to the Skin layer!

And More!

• MAJOR rebalancing of existing features, such as traps, abilities, rooms, invader power creep, gold/gem gain and more.

• Many newly added combat abilities and synergies.

• Many new and more varied sex animations, and rework of some of the existing ones with desync issues.

• All of the new core additions to character visuals and behaviours from latest BK and DRH releases.

• Major graphical, shading and performance improvements.

• Physics rework of butts and other jiggle effects.

Dungeon: Keep Her - Patreon Alpha 0.21 playtesting will start by the end of the month and should be out shortly after!

Thank you all, and see you soon, Keepers!