Usurper Reborn v0.40.3 — PvP Combat & Quest Fixes

Bug Fix: Spells & Abilities Missing from PvP Combat

PvP combat (Arena, guard fights, sleep attacks, NPC duels) was missing the full combat initialization that dungeon combat had. This meant:

• Quickbar slots [1]-[9] were empty — spells and abilities never appeared in the combat menu
• Class abilities couldn't be used — even if triggered, they silently defaulted to a basic attack
• Combat stamina was never initialized — abilities showed as unavailable
• Ability cooldowns carried over between separate fights
• Barbarian Rage didn't work in PvP
• Fleeing PvP always failed — pressing [R] Flee said "not available" and forced a basic attack instead

All PvP-style combat (Character vs Character) now has full combat initialization matching dungeon fights: stamina, ability loading, cooldown clearing, temp bonus resets, poison coating, and divine favor. The combat menu now shows your quickbar spells and abilities just like in dungeon combat.

New PvP Combat Actions

• [1]-[9] Quickbar — Cast spells and use abilities directly from quickbar slots. Spells cast immediately without re-showing the selection menu.
• Class Abilities — Full ability selection menu with stamina costs, cooldowns, and all ability effects (damage, healing, buffs) working against player/NPC targets.
• [G] Rage — Barbarian rage now works in PvP combat.
• [R] Flee — Actually attempts to flee (AGI-based, 10-75% chance) instead of forcing a basic attack.
• Healing spells — Self-healing spells now restore HP in PvP combat.

Bug Fix: "Clear Floor X" Quest Never Completed

The "Clear Floor X" dungeon quest required killing an arbitrary number of monsters (based on a formula) that didn't match how many monsters actually existed on the floor. A player could clear every single monster on the target floor and still not complete the objective.

Before: Objective required killing 5 + (difficulty * 3) monsters anywhere, counting each kill as +1 progress. The target number often exceeded the actual monster count on the floor.

After: Objective now checks the actual floor-cleared state — when all monster rooms on the target floor are cleared (the same condition that triggers the "Floor Cleared!" message), the quest objective completes immediately.

Note: Existing "Clear Floor" quests created before this fix still use the old kill-count objective. Abandon and pick up a new quest to get the fixed version.

Bug Fix: NPCs Showing Wrong Location Flavor Text

NPCs could show flavor text from a previous location — for example, Sir Cedric "having a drink at the bar" while standing in the Church. This happened because the WorldSimulator sets CurrentActivity based on what the NPC did (e.g., visited the Inn), but the NPC could subsequently move to a completely different location while the old activity string persisted. The display code preferred CurrentActivity over location-aware text whenever it was set, so stale activity descriptions from previous locations were shown.

NPC flavor text now always uses the location-contextual system, which generates appropriate descriptions based on where the NPC currently is (e.g., "praying quietly" at the Church, "examining a blade on the wall" at the Weapon Shop). This guarantees the flavor text always matches the NPC's actual location.

Bug Fix: NPC Talk Crash for Direct SSH Players

Talking to NPCs could crash the game with a NullReferenceException when the player object wasn't fully resolved in the dialogue system. The SubstitutePlaceholders method in NPCDialogueDatabase dereferenced the player's name and class without null checks, which failed in certain MUD connection paths (notably direct SSH). Added null guards throughout the method so dialogue generation gracefully falls back to defaults ("stranger", "adventurer") when the player reference is unavailable.

Bug Fix: Admin Password Reset Immediately Failing

The MUD admin console's password reset feature immediately printed "Password must be at least 4 characters. Cancelled." without letting the admin type anything. The password prompt used TerminalEmulator.ReadLineWithBackspace() — a static Console method that doesn't work in MUD mode where I/O goes through the terminal abstraction layer. Replaced with the proper ReadInput() method that routes through the MUD terminal.

Bug Fix: Quit Cancel Still Disconnects Player

In online mode, pressing [C] Cancel at the "Where do you rest?" logout menu printed "You decide to stay in town." but immediately disconnected the player anyway. The QuitGame() method returned void, and the caller in ProcessChoice unconditionally returned true (exit location), so cancelling had no effect. Changed QuitGame() to return bool — cancel and Inn navigation now return false (stay in location), while dormitory and regular quit paths throw LocationExitException as intended.

Bug Fix: Missing Person Petition Gave Gold Instead of a Quest

The "Missing Person" NPC petition's [I] Investigate option immediately handed the player gold and XP with no follow-up. The player promised to investigate but there was nothing to actually do. Now choosing [I] creates a proper quest with two objectives: reach the dungeon floor where the missing person was last seen, and slay monsters there to uncover clues. A small gold advance is given for expenses, with the real reward coming on quest completion. If the player already has 5 active quests, they're told to complete one first.

Bug Fix: Two-Handed Weapons Becoming One-Handed After Unequip/Re-equip

Two-handed weapons (Zweihander, Claymore, Spear, War Maul, and many others) lost their two-handed property when unequipped to inventory and re-equipped. This happened because the Item-to-Equipment conversion in both the inventory system and loot system guessed weapon handedness from a hardcoded name list that was missing most two-handed weapon names. In the loot system, all weapons were hardcoded as one-handed regardless of name.

Impact: A two-handed weapon that went through inventory (e.g., buying a shield forced unequipping your greatsword, then re-equipping after turning in the quest) would permanently become one-handed in the save data. This also caused cascading slot confusion — equipping armor could compare against the wrong slot or show the wrong currently-equipped item.

Fix: Both the inventory equip and loot equip paths now look up the weapon in the equipment database by name to get the correct handedness and weapon type. The name-based fallback heuristic was also expanded as a safety net.

Bug Fix: Day Counter Going Backwards in Online Mode

In online/MUD mode, the day counter could decrease between sessions (e.g., "Day 5" dropping to "Day 4"). This happened because the day counter was stored on a shared singleton (DailySystemManager) that all concurrent player sessions wrote to. When multiple players were online, loading one player's save would overwrite the shared day counter, and other players would then save with the wrong day value.

The day counter is now stored per-session on each player's GameEngine instance. Each player's day value is read from their save on login and written back from their own session state, preventing cross-contamination between concurrent players.

Bug Fix: Quests Wiped on Login in Online Mode

All active quests disappeared every time a player logged in. Three compounding issues:

1. Shared quest database cleared on every login — QuestSystem.RestoreFromSaveData() called questDatabase.Clear(), wiping ALL players' quests from the shared static database whenever any player logged in.
2. Player's ActiveQuests list never restored — The quest data was properly saved but never read back during player restore, so the player object always started with an empty quest list.
3. Cross-contamination — In MUD mode, when Player B logged in, their restore call would clear Player A's quests from the shared database.

Fix: In online mode, player logins now merge their quests into the shared database (removing only their own quests first, then re-adding from save data) instead of clearing the entire database. The player's ActiveQuests list is also properly restored by linking to the quest database entries.

Bug Fix: Dungeon Floor Progress Lost on Login

All dungeon room exploration and cleared state was lost every time a player logged in. Floor 1 would show "0/15 rooms explored" even if the player had fully cleared it in a previous session.

This was caused by a deliberate reset (player.DungeonFloorStates = new Dictionary()) added as a workaround for a boss-room display bug that has since been properly fixed via the BossDefeated flag. The dungeon floor state was being correctly saved to the database but then discarded on load.

Dungeon floor states (which rooms are explored, cleared, treasure looted, etc.) now persist properly across sessions. Permanent progress (seals, Old Gods) was already preserved and is unaffected. Players who want to re-fight monsters on cleared floors can use a Dungeon Reset Scroll from the Magic Shop.

Bug Fix: Can't Sell Rings/Amulets at Magic Shop

The Magic Shop refused to buy rings, amulets, and belts, saying "I only deal in magical goods - rings, amulets, belts, and the like." The sell check only accepted items with ObjType.Magic or a MagicType property set, but accessories from loot and equipment conversions have their actual slot type (Fingers, Neck, Waist) instead. The shop now accepts all accessory types as valid sellable items.

Balance: Dormitory Sleep Attacks Retuned

NPC attacks on sleeping players were far too aggressive — players were almost guaranteed to be murdered even after logging out for just a few minutes. Additionally, Good and Holy NPCs were attacking sleepers, which made no thematic sense.

Changes:

• Alignment restriction: Only Dark and Evil alignment NPCs will attack sleeping players. Good, Holy, and Neutral NPCs no longer murder people in their sleep.
• Dormitory attack rate reduced: 8% per tick → 2% per tick (~18% chance in 5 minutes, ~70% in 30 minutes instead of the previous ~57% in 5 minutes)
• Inn now has a separate, much lower attack rate: 0.5% per tick (~5% chance in 5 minutes, ~26% in 30 minutes). Previously inn sleepers used the same rate as dormitory — the only benefit was a stat boost if attacked.

Bug Fix: Chat Messages Appearing During Character Creation

Gossip, shouts, and other broadcast messages from other players appeared inline during character creation (race selection, stat rolling, etc.), cluttering the screen and confusing new players. Broadcast messages are now suppressed until the player has fully loaded or created their character and entered the game world.

Improvement: Bug Report Build Type & Player Name

Bug reports now distinguish between Local, Online, Steam, and BBS Door builds (previously all non-Steam/non-BBS showed as "Standard"). The player's character name is now included in all bug report formats (Discord, local file, GitHub) for easier tracking.

Improvement: --version CLI Flag

Running UsurperReborn --version (or -v / -V) now prints the version string and exits immediately. Previously, the game didn't recognize this flag and would launch the full game engine with no terminal attached, spinning at 100% CPU indefinitely as a zombie process.

Rename: Marketplace → Auction House

The old "Marketplace" location has been renamed to "Auction House" throughout the entire game. This affects menu labels, NPC location text, Crystal Ball lookups, news messages, opening story narration, and all internal references. NPCs now show as being "at the Auction House" instead of "at the Market," and the Main Street menu displays [J] Auction House instead of [J] Marketplace. The old name is still accepted for backward compatibility in commands and lookups.

Bug Fix: Screen Reader Menus Out of Sync

The screen reader accessibility menus had two discrepancies with the normal visual menus:

• Main Street screen reader menu still listed Z - Team Area which was removed from the game (moved to Inn).
• Dungeon combat screen reader menu was missing V - Attempt to Save (Soulweaver's Loom) for Old God boss fights.

Both menus now match their visual counterparts exactly.

Bug Fix: Church NPCs Invisible

The Crystal Ball could show an NPC at "Church of Good Deeds" but visiting the Church showed no one there. This happened because the Church location's internal NPC location string was mapped to "Temple" instead of "Church" — so NPCs placed at the Church were filtered as Temple NPCs and invisible at both locations.

Bug Fix: Duplicate Faction Mission Targets

Players could receive the same NPC as a faction mission target multiple times from different petition NPCs. For example, getting "Redeem Grog the Destroyer" from one NPC and then the same mission from another. The Faith and Crown faction missions also always picked the same NPC (the first match) instead of randomizing. Faction missions now check your active quests and exclude NPCs you already have missions for, and targets are randomized.

Bug Fix: Faith "Redeem" Quest Hint Says Kill Instead of Talk

The Faith faction's "Redeem" mission (bring a lost soul back to the light) showed the hint "Find and defeat the target in combat" — telling the player to kill the NPC they're supposed to redeem through conversation. This happened because the quest internally reused the DefeatNPC quest target type, and the hint system read that type instead of looking at the actual objectives.

Fixes:

• Quest hint now correctly says "Find the NPC in town and talk to them."
• Defeating the NPC now also completes the quest as an alternative path (you've "purged their darkness" through combat). Previously, if the player killed the NPC following the bad hint, the quest became permanently stuck since dead NPCs can't be talked to.
• Quest objective target matching is now case-insensitive, preventing edge-case failures.

Bug Fix: Wandering Monk Appears After Every Battle

The wandering monk potion seller appeared after every single combat victory as long as the player had room for even one potion. This was extremely repetitive and slowed down dungeon exploration. The monk now has a 25% chance of appearing after combat (matching the original Usurper frequency), so most fights end without interruption. The monk is still always available via the [B] Buy Potions option in the dungeon menu for when you actually want to restock.

Bug Fix: Potion Healing Inconsistent Between Combat and Town

Healing potions used different formulas depending on where and how they were used:

• In-combat item use: flat 100 HP per potion (regardless of level)
• Auto-heal after combat: MaxHP / 4 per potion (wildly varying)
• Teammate/NPC potions: 30 + level*3 + random (weaker scaling)
• Computer player potions: flat 25 HP max (nearly useless)
• Out of combat / quick heal: 30 + level*5 + random(10-30) (the correct formula)

All potion healing now uses the same scaling formula: 30 + level*5 + random(10-30). At level 10 this gives ~100 HP per potion, at level 20 ~150 HP, scaling consistently whether used in combat, out of combat, by teammates, or by AI opponents.

Improvement: Auction House Atmosphere Overhaul

The Auction House display was bare — just a menu with no personality. Both the single-player and online/MUD Auction House now feature:

• Grimjaw the half-orc auctioneer — a gruff shopkeeper character who reacts to current market activity (empty stalls, a few listings, busy day)
• Dynamic atmospheric text — the hall description changes based on how many items are listed (buzzing crowds vs. empty counters)
• Listing summary on the main screen — listing count with total market value displayed at a glance
• Formatted bulletin board — listings now display in clean columns with item name, price, seller, and age. NPC sellers shown in cyan, player sellers in green.
• Styled status screen — your active listings and market overview are presented with proper headers, separators, and color-coded stats
• NPC interaction in online mode — NPCs visiting the Auction House now appear in the "People here" list, and you can talk to them with [0] Talk
• Full status line and global commands — the online Auction House now shows your HP/Gold/Mana status bar and supports all quick commands (inventory, help, etc.)

Bug Fix: Dormitory Menu Missing Sleep/Attack Options

Pressing [D] Dormitory from Anchor Road showed a simplified placeholder menu with only "Rest and recover", "View stats", and "Leave" — missing the actual Dormitory features: sleep & logout, attack sleeping players, list/examine sleepers, and wake guests. This happened because Anchor Road had its own inline NavigateToDormitory() sub-menu that never navigated to the real DormitoryLocation. Anchor Road now properly navigates to the full Dormitory location with all its features. The Dormitory display has also been updated with the standard box header, atmospheric description, and styled menu matching other locations.

Bug Fix: Animals and Mindless Creatures "Saying" Dialogue

Non-speaking monsters (wolves, spiders, golems, water creatures, aberrations, elementals) were shown as The Wolf says: "*Snarls and growls*" — wrapping their sounds in quotation marks as if they were speech. These creature families now show their actions as narration instead: The Wolf snarls and growls menacingly. Speaking creatures (goblins, orcs, demons, dragons, fey, giants, undead, celestials, shadows) still use proper dialogue with says: and quotes.

Anchor Road Challenges Overhaul

The Anchor Road "Challenges" menu has been completely overhauled. Most options were broken — redirecting to other locations already accessible from Main Street, or using fake stat-comparison combat instead of the real combat engine. The entire menu has been stripped down and rebuilt with three real challenges that use proper CombatEngine fights.

What Was Removed

• [Q] Quests — Redirect to Quest Hall (already accessible from Main Street as [2])
• [A] Temple — Redirect to Temple (already accessible as [T])
• [K] Castle — Redirect to Castle (already accessible as [K])
• [O] Online War — Fake PvP that duplicated the Arena with stat-comparison combat instead of real fights
• [D] Dormitory — Moved to Main Street (see below)

What Was Fixed

[B] Bounty Board — Previously redirected to Quest Hall. Now wired to the existing (but orphaned) bounty hunting system. Targets evil NPCs with Darkness > 200, with fallback to level-appropriate NPCs. Combat now uses the real CombatEngine (PlayerVsPlayer) instead of the old fake stat comparison. Victory awards bounty gold, XP, and increments your player kills.

[G] Gang War — Previously used a stat-comparison formula that compared team power numbers with no actual combat. Now runs sequential 1v1 fights against enemy team members using CombatEngine. Enemies are sorted weakest-first, your HP carries over between fights (with 15% healing between rounds), and you earn partial rewards even if you lose partway through. Full victory earns gold (sum of enemy levels × 50), XP (sum of enemy levels × 25), and turf control transfer.

New Feature: [T] The Gauntlet

A 10-wave solo monster endurance challenge. Fight increasingly tough monsters in sequence — your HP and Mana carry over between waves with small restoration between fights.

• Entry requirements: Level 5+, 1 Player Fight, entry fee of 100 × your level in gold
• Wave difficulty scaling:
  • Waves 1-3: Normal monsters (your level -2 to your level)
  • Waves 4-6: Tougher monsters (your level +2 to +4)
  • Waves 7-9: Minibosses (your level +8 to +10)
  • Wave 10: Boss monster (your level +10)
• Between waves: Heal 20% of max HP and restore 15% of max Mana
• Per-wave rewards: 50 × level gold + 25 × wave × level XP
• Wave 10 champion bonus: 500 × level gold + 250 × level XP
• Achievement: "Gauntlet Champion" (250g reward) for surviving all 10 waves

Dormitory Moved to Main Street

The Dormitory exit has been moved from Anchor Road to Main Street as [L] Lodging. The Dormitory is a rest/logout location that doesn't belong thematically in the combat challenges menu. It's now accessible alongside the other town services.

New Menu Layout

The Anchor Road menu is now organized into three clean sections:

• Challenges: [B] Bounty Board, [G] Gang War, [T] The Gauntlet
• Town Control: [C] Claim Town, [F] Flee Town Control
• Other: [P] Prison Grounds, [S] Status, [R] Return to Town

Bug Fix: Monk Potion Seller Dismissed by Invalid Input

Accidentally pressing Enter, X, or any key other than the valid options (H/M/N) during the wandering monk encounter would dismiss him without buying anything. The monk now only accepts valid choices — [H]ealing potions, [M]ana potions, or [N]o thanks — and reprompts on invalid input.

Bug Fix: Missing Person Petitions Too Frequent in Multiplayer

The NPC petition system (where NPCs ask you to find their missing friends/spouse) fired far too frequently in online/MUD mode — players reported getting petitions every other minute. This happened because the petition rate-limiting state (location change counter, cooldown timer, session counter) was stored on a shared singleton, so all concurrent players' location changes accumulated together, triggering petitions much faster than intended.

Fixes:

• Per-player rate limiting: All petition state (location changes, cooldown timer, session count, petitioned NPC list) is now tracked per-player via a dictionary keyed by character name. One player moving between locations no longer accelerates petitions for everyone else.
• Duplicate quest prevention: Players could accumulate multiple identical "Bring back [NPC]" quests for the same missing person. The system now checks your active quests before creating a new Missing Person petition — if you already have a quest targeting that NPC, the petition is skipped.
• Talk-to-NPC quest completion: Missing Person quests now have "Find [NPC] or learn their fate" as the primary objective (TalkToNPC type). If the missing NPC has respawned, simply talking to them completes the quest. The dungeon objectives (reach floor, kill monsters) are now optional alternative completion paths for cases where the NPC is still dead.

Improvement: Quest Board Cleaned Up

The Quest Hall was showing an excessive number of quests (20+), including many duplicates of the same quest type. Available quests are now deduplicated by name and capped at 10, making the board much easier to read and choose from.

Balance: Melee Hit Chance Rebalanced

Players could never miss melee attacks against same-level or lower-level monsters. The player's attack modifier scaled so much faster than monster AC that by level ~10, even a natural 1 on the d20 would hit. Spells had a proper fizzle/failure system throughout the game, but melee was a guaranteed hit every time.

Root cause: Player STR grows +2-5 per level, and the attack modifier used (STR-10)/2 (a D&D formula designed for stats capped at 20). A level 20 Warrior with STR 94 had a +42 stat modifier alone — far exceeding any monster AC on the d20. Meanwhile, monster AC was 10 + level/5 + defence/20, which barely moved (AC 12 at level 10, AC 14 at level 20).

Changes:

• Player attack modifier now has diminishing returns: full value up to +6, half rate above that. This compresses the +4 to +45 raw range into +4 to +25 effective range.
• Monster AC scaling increased from level/5 + defence/20 to level/3 + defence/15.

Expected miss rates against same-level monsters:

Players will still auto-hit monsters 10+ levels below them. Bosses and higher-level monsters are noticeably harder to hit. The Sunforged Blade artifact (attacks cannot miss) is now a meaningful power instead of redundant.

Bug Fix: Ring/Necklace Loot Drops Showing Wrong Comparison

When a ring or necklace dropped from a dungeon boss or mini-boss, the loot screen showed "Armor Power: +0" (meaningless for accessories) and compared "Armor: 0 -> 0 (same)" against the currently equipped ring. This made it look like the game was comparing armor against the wrong slot when it was actually a ring-vs-ring comparison with misleading labels.

Fixes:

• Ring drops now show "Type: Ring" instead of "Armor Power: +0"; necklace drops show "Type: Necklace"
• Comparison header now shows the slot name (e.g., "COMPARISON (Ring slot):")
• Accessories compare "Stat Total" (sum of all stat bonuses) instead of showing a meaningless armor comparison

Improvement: Smart Ring Slot Equipping

Equipping a ring from loot or inventory was unintuitive — it always went to the left finger slot, replacing whatever was there even if the right finger was empty.

Improvements:

• Rings now auto-equip to an empty finger slot if one is available (prefers left finger, falls back to right)
• When both ring slots are occupied and a new ring drops, the game prompts which finger to replace (showing both currently equipped rings) or to put the new ring in inventory

Bug Fix: AI Teammate Abilities Say "You Deal X Damage"

When a companion or NPC team partner used a class ability in dungeon combat, all the ability messages used second-person ("You deal 45 damage!", "You recover 30 HP!", "BERSERKER RAGE! You enter a blood fury!") even though it was the AI teammate performing the action, not the player.

All ability effect messages in multi-monster combat now check whether the acting character is the player or a teammate. Teammate ability messages use their name instead of "You" (e.g., "Sir Cedric deals 45 damage!", "Sir Cedric recovers 30 HP!"). This covers all 25+ ability special effects including damage, healing, buffs, rage, fear, stealth, bloodlust, and more.

Files Changed