I know this is gonna be a pain but I need the link(s) for manual updating. 
Edit: Nevermind, I've worked out how to manually update for myself now. 
Ah, okay -- well, here's the link I came to post, anyhow:
http://avww.s3.amazonaws.com/AVWW571.zip It's a very predictable system based on the version number, and if you don't find a file then it was superseded by a cumulative update later in the path (yay, less to do).
Just wanted to say great job -- with this update, the game is really coming together for me. I had to force myself to stop playing, which hasn't happened in a while :-) Thanks!
That is definitely great to hear!
So nothing was actually changed about spell costs except dropping a zero? I probably just started noticing some cost disparity since the new numbers made it more obvious. For example: death touch. It costs 12x as much as fire touch, with a slightly longer cooldown, and it does only twice as much damage. I thought maybe there was something great about entropy damage, but if so I can't find it. And even then, it still costs 6x as much as miasma whip which is also entropy and does less than twice as much damage. Creeping death isn't so hot either. The damage per mana is poor, it's slow and hard to track enemies with, and it disappears if it brushes a wall. However, I'm not sure exactly where spell balancing falls in the priority list right now, so if I need to stop worrying about it for now just say the word.
Edit: Miniature seems awfully mana-expensive for the equivalent of a duck button. It already makes you die faster, it doesn't have to take almost half a mana bar as well. Literally adding insult to injury! 
Correct, no spell costs were changed. Thing to bear in mind is that piercing is definitely one factor. I'm not saying that they are perfectly balanced -- that should be something we look at, certainly -- but creeping death is enormously useful against a line of enemies because it goes through them slowly, doing quite a bit of damage. Death touch is so expensive because I worry about it being easy to cheese.
Lumbermancer.
That's my favorite, too.
They're intended to be funny profession names (little bits of humor of varying degrees of funny-ness are all throughout the game, really). Once we thought of it, I was laughing for minutes on end as well -- I could hardly tell Keith the name for it. The other names all followed after that.
The spell mana balance is based on the spell's raw power which is added to your character's magical power. The spell power is really small compared to the character power so the damage difference between spells is tiny now and plasma bolt is pretty much the best spell available since it fires quickly and is cheap.
I'm not sure that I completely agree with the plasma bolt thing, but you're correct on why it varies so much from character to character. Rather than being additive based on character attack power, I really need to make it a multiplicative factor. That way the spells can be balanced regardless of character, and there's more difference between various magical powers.
BTW, what benefits do the buildings have? Only unlocking guardian powers? You'll probably need to add more powers that do things other than build more buildings then.
Buildings only ever let you improve NPC tiers -- that's their entire function, and we're done with them for 1.0. I think it's kind of obvious we need more guardian powers than the four non-building ones that we currently have, but then again those four are pretty wicked powerful. There are a really wide array of powers that Keith and I have talked about in the past, but for this release we only had so much time.
Plasma wha? The multiple ways to look up spells now is confusing me. Is there a spot in game where I can just go and see all the spells without having to pick an element or a type or an ingredient? I don't have a plasma bolt and I can't find how one would go about crafting it.
The Crafting Grimoire gives you all the information about all spells
that you've unlocked the materials for. It's really very simple, and you can look them up in many ways: entire list, by material, color, function, etc. With one catch: if you haven't unlocked all the materials, then the game acts as if some spells don't exist. There's no in-game reference showing you something like plasma bolt until you unlock whatever material it relies on. And the game doesn't give you any hints (by design) about what spells a given material is used for. That's part of the fun of exploring the game, and unlocking new materials through the unlockables interface. It's also part of how we hide a lot of content from new players to prevent it from being overwhelming, while still letting mature worlds have tons of different spells; as many as we could ever want.
Is the EP added the same regardless of mission tier? If so maybe a lower tier mission shouldn't increase by as much.
It's always the same. The lower-tier ones are a bum deal, but are easier. You get the same quality of stuff out of them, but at a much easier difficulty, but at a higher EP.
Really enjoying this update but I'm confused about the NPC tiers. All my NPC's show tier 1 both in the settlement and in all the missions. I have some buildings I can't build due to a higher tier NPC required so it feels like a catch 22 situation.
Maybe I'm missing something but if anyone can help it would be much appreciated.
You need a residential and storage tower before any NPC can get above tier 1. Then each NPC needs their respective profession building (of which there are 6) to get to tier 3. Then each NPC has two other buildings they want out of the 30 different "personality structures." Building those in any order will bring that NPC to tier 4 and then tier 5. You'll want a Lumbermancer and a Stonebinder pretty early on in, to be able to really build up your settlement much.
And with that, I'm pretty much off for the weekend. Been sick all week, feeling worse today, was up way too late last night finishing this release, and I need a break. On Monday and Tuesday, we hope to get secret missions, co-op smoothing, and the new warp system implemented. By the end of Wednesday, hopefully enchants are in. And then a server browser sometime next week if we can manage it, and a variety of other improvements. And the mysteries feature if I can manage it, which will also be bringing back good ol' memory crystals.
And that would then pretty much be getting us to beta phase 3, whatever other tweaks and fixes aside. Then content development and polish for another 4-5 weeks after that, and we're at 1.0. Then more stuff for this game and AI War, and on and on.
Anyway, have a good weekend and talk to you folks soon.
