Major Pet Changes!

Hey there, heroes!

This Monday, we have an update to the way pets can be used in battle.

First, the bad news. As some of you may have already noticed, pets can no longer be swapped while in battle.

The purpose of this change is two-fold.

There was a major exploitable glitch that allowed for infinite guest turns while preventing an enemy from attacking.
This opens up a much much wider variety of pet options to be created, including pets with stronger effects, since they no longer have to be balanced around being able to be swapped in battle.

There are some immediate changes to balance as a result of this, however.

Strategies that relied on pet swapping are no longer viable.
You will have to think about which pet you want to take into different battles, just like other pieces of equipment, such as trinkets or artifacts.

You will be able to un-equip your pet while in battle, though, should you encounter a need to. A confirmation box has been added to pet unequipping since you will not be able to re-equip a pet while in battle. An option has been added to the dragon summoning interface to dismiss your pet dragon.

You are now unable to swap gear while it is your pet or guests' turn.
The ability to do so was abusable with certain gear set ups where you could equip a fully offensive gear set up on your turn, attack, then swap gear to defenses on a guest or pet's turn. This is no longer possible.

Now for the good news!

Manual Pet Turns has been added as an Option.

This allows you to control your pet's turn. Currently, this means you are able to select your pet's target, as well as skip your pet's turn. And perhaps most importantly, there is an option to feed your pet a treat. (Feeding your pet a treat has no effect on combat and is there for flavor. Pet treat flavor.) By default, this is off. When Manual Pet Turns is turned off, your pet will attack automatically, just as it used to.

You cannot change this option while in battle.

Other changes:

The Metal element icon has returned to metal element weapons.
Resistances are now listed as "Resistances" instead of "Resists" in the character information panel.
Characters with no resistances will have their Resistances listed as "None"
Fixed a bug where characters with no resistances would not have applied resistances listed in the character information panel.
Fixed a bug where Argus Skywatcher (Dreamspace Dryad challenge, etc) would not properly apply his Avoidance debuff on the player.
Fixed various items that were giving NaN or undefined resistances.
Fixed the M.O.P. cat pets that were attacking backwards.

And that's about it for this Monday! I know some players may be initially disappointed with the pet and equipment changes, but this opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for the future.

Major Pet Changes!

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