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v1.22.0

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@duysqubix duysqubix released this 24 May 04:00
· 80 commits to master since this release
v1.22.0
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v1.22.0 — The Bestiary Comes Alive

Forty monsters. One hundred sixty items. All the AI-generated placeholders from before v1.21 are replaced with curated content. The infrastructure has been ready since v1.21.0 (zone-aware spawning) and v1.21.1 (HP-pool multi-turn combat); v1.22 is the content drop those releases were waiting for.

🐛 The Bestiary, Filled Out

The Horror and Boss-adjacent tiers were placeholders in v1.21 (high-danger zones gracefully fell back to Hunter tier). They're real now. 40 monsters across 5 tiers, 8 per tier, drafted by a writing-category agent and tuned to the HP/ATK/XP ranges from docs/balance-analysis.md §6.1.

Tier 1 — Vermin (zones 1-2)

Small filesystem creatures, single-hit kills, low XP. The intro tier.

Symlink Slug · Dotfile Dust-Mite · Cache Cricket · Tempfile Tadpole
Log-File Larva · Socket Snail · Inode Inchworm · Permission Pupa

Tier 2 — Bruiser (zones 2-3)

Process spirits, fight-back energy, 2-3 hit kills.

Zombie Process Zealot · Background Job Brawler · Daemon Duelist · Shell-Script Shaman
Pipe-Line Pugilist · Env-Var Vandal · Cron-Job Crusader · Std-Error Specter

Tier 3 — Hunter (zones 3-4)

Memory dwellers with predator aesthetic, 3-5 hit kills.

Heap-Alloc Hound · Stack-Trace Stalker · Pointer Panther · Overflow Basilisk
Garbage-Collector Gryphon · Memory-Leak Manticore · Segfault Shark · Dangling-Pointer Dingo

Tier 4 — Horror (zones 4-5)

Kernel terrors, serious threats, 5-8 hit kills.

Kernel-Panic Kraken · Interrupt-Handler Hydra · System-Call Siren · Page-Fault Phantom
Deadlock Dragon · Race-Condition Reaper · Root-Kit Revenant · Scheduler-Shadow Stalker

Tier 5 — Boss-adjacent (zones 5+)

Architectural entities, the kind you flee. 10+ hit kills.

The Monolith Manifestation · Architectural-Debt Archon · The Legacy-Code Lich
Distributed-System Djinn · The Microservice Medusa · Cloud-Native Chimera
The Immutable-State Idol · Entropy-Engine Elemental

The 5 named bosses (Kernel Panic, Lord of /dev/null, SIGKILL Supreme, The Infinite Loop, The Memory Corruption) are unchanged — they're a separate roster from this bestiary and continue to spawn at their existing 1/500 rate via boss::maybe_spawn.

⚔️ Walking Into node_modules Now Means Something

Before v1.22, the danger-5 zone (node_modules) fell back to Hunter tier because Horror and Boss-adjacent slots were empty. Now those slots are populated.

$ cd ~/projects/myrepo/node_modules
$ rm -rf some_orphan_thing
🪤  A Deadlock Dragon ascends from the depths!  (HP 150, ATK 22)
...
⚔️  The Deadlock Dragon falls! Glorious victory! +130 XP

A level-100 character will need 3-5 turns to kill a Boss-adjacent. A level-30 character will probably die. Don't cd node_modules casually anymore.

💎 Loot Table, Reframed

160 items across the 5 rarities × 4 slots × 8 items grid. Naming intensity scales with rarity:

Common is mundane: Rusty Crowbar, Cardboard Box, Soda Tab, Lukewarm Water. The bottom rung; you'll sell most of these via sq sell junk.

Uncommon is decent: Polished Wrench, Reinforced Vest, Silver Band, Fresh Espresso. Real tools. Real protein.

Rare is the named tools tier — single-word evocative concepts: Bit-Blitzer, Logic-Lash, Kernel-Cloak, Code-Cordial.

Epic is darker fantasy — multi-word with attitude: Void-Pointer Voulge, Mantle of the Mainframe, Sigil of the Sysadmin, Essence of the Epoch.

Legendary is the "The X-of-Y" construction — the kind of name that makes you sit up when it drops: The Final Commit of Fate, The Aegis of the Absolute Path, The Loop of the Lost Link, The Tear of the Tired Tech-Lead.

$ cd ~ && sq shop
🏪 The Terminal Bazaar
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
  1. Dull Letter Opener (+1 Weapon) [Common] — 10 gold
  2. Cardboard Box (+2 Armor) [Common] — 15 gold
  3. Stained Apron (+3 Armor) [Common] — 20 gold
  4. Soda Tab (+4 Ring) [Common] — 25 gold
  5. Half-Empty Juice Box (+3 Potion) [Common] — 20 gold

Prices reflect the v1.19 multiplier ladder (5/8/13/22/35). The flagship "max-enchant a Legendary for 30,000 gold" math from v1.18 still holds — your Legendary just has a way better name now.

⚙️ How This Shipped Without Disruption

This is the content release. The mechanics were already in place:

  • v1.21.0 added the MonsterTier enum + zone gating
  • v1.21.1 added HP pools + multi-turn combat
  • v1.22.0 swaps the actual content

Each release was small enough to ship cleanly on its own. The whole bestiary overhaul took four releases, each with its own user-facing release notes.

The writing-category agent that drafted the 40 monsters + 160 items did so as a parallel team member during v1.21 development. Designer reviewed and approved the proposal at docs/v1.22-bestiary-naming-proposal.md. v1.22 is a string-substitution layer on top of v1.21's infrastructure — zero schema changes, zero combat-math changes.

⚙ Compatibility

Saves are unchanged. No schema migration. No CLI changes.

If your save references old monsters by name (it doesn't — names are runtime strings, not save data) or old items by name (it does — every item in your inventory is a name-tagged record), your old items remain in your inventory. The Pike of Ping you found before v1.22 is still a Pike of Ping. New drops will come from the new pool.

A future sq sell legacy command (not in this release) could let you sell off pre-v1.22 items in bulk. For now, your old items mingle with new ones until you sell or replace them.

Full Changelog: v1.21.1...v1.22.0

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