Honestly I had no idea that people thought dual wielding was the way to go lol. Big heavy weapons always seemed the best way to go in my experience, provided you make it past the hedgehogs in UT. Although to be fair I have struggled quite a bit with fungal caves, particularly all the small bats & spiders. Maybe I should give dual wielding another chance.

How quickly does your weapon skill deteriorate from lack of use? I guess I also have never really taken advantage of the new weapon swapping feature. It'd probably be good to alternate depending on the foe, even if that means you don't train your skills as well

But I feel like even if we did give a bonus for 2-handing a 1-handed weapon, that bonus would be fairly small. It would still make way more sense for the player to just equip a shield or a separate weapon in their other hand.

Maybe we could increase the blocking ability for swords though? Since long & short swords are the most likely weapons that you would pair with a shield, that makes the sword + shield combo a lot more appealing because both items block well.

I almost always go for a halberd or two-handed sword. Short swords and whips are pretty much the only thing you are strong enough to dual wield early in the game, and they're terrible at blocking. I get one-shotted (or 2 or 3 shotted) way too often when I try to dual wield, so I rarely do it anymore. I remember when I first started IVAN, I got excited about getting 2 turns per hit, so I'd dual wield a lot, but big weapons seem better long term to me now.

Idk I think the weapon system is pretty well balanced as it is (aside from the weaker sword + shield combo which has been discussed, and improved with shields giving AV protection to the whole body)

Dual wield short swords/whips/daggers:
Pros: more accurate, get 2 hits per turn, require less strength
Cons: get less damage per hit, bad at blocking

Two-handed halberd/big sword:
Pros: more damage per hit, good at blocking
Cons: less accurate, only get 1 hit per turn, require more arm strength

Dual wield halberds:
Pros: almost everything
Cons: impossible without insane strength from artificial limbs, which would also increase your danger level

I think what TheMasterGear is referring to though, is intentionally two-handing a weapon that you could dual wield and adding a damage buff to that, since you're swinging with 2 arms.
But real world, I don't think that makes sense.
Using a dagger, whip, or a sword that was designed for 1 handed use, just becomes awkward if you use 2 hands with it instead.
Instead the player should be encouraged to use a shield or another weapon in their empty hand.

Actually, once you are able to enchant your weapons +5 or more, and you can get extremely accurate halberds, I think they are overpowered compared to smaller weapons. They are able to get the same accuracy but small weapons can never achieve the same damage.

I've gotten a bug a couple times where it crashes when I try to descend into one of the new Aslona areas. Twice with the tower, and once with the goblin place. Fungal caves have never had this issue

Debug shows:

0   ivan                                0x000000010457e363 _ZN18globalerrorhandler22DumpStackTraceToStdErrEi + 51
1   ivan                                0x000000010457e600 _ZN18globalerrorhandler5AbortEPKcz + 320
2   ivan                                0x000000010415ca0e _ZN8bugfixdp16ValidatePlayerAtEP6square + 462
3   ivan                                0x00000001043a2930 _ZN4game4LoadERK8festring + 4048
4   ivan                                0x000000010439fec6 _ZN4game4InitERK8festring + 1270
5   ivan                                0x00000001044cb2b7 main + 2039
6   libdyld.dylib                       0x00007fff669ee7fd start + 1
Player can't be found anywhere! Try to restore a backup if available.

Sadly the save files don't work at all anymore, it crashes immediately when I load the save (presumably it entered the new area, and autosaved there)

I don't think there's ever been a limit on how early a material can appear

Rare materials & items appearing early on is a blessing and a curse, sure you can chop down Genny, but then your danger level goes up and next thing you know you're encountering small dark frogs and rookie dark knights in GC1

I proposed reducing the size of the world map on Github.

I kind of agree with this though, although I still dream of being able to descend into any square and just have a wilderness level with lots of natural enemies and food.

I think I just keep forgetting that elf flesh is unsafe, since they resemble humans. Now that I've been playing again I had completely forgot that I already complained about this lol.

The guaranteed altar to Seges is nice but if you want to go chaotic or neutral, I just don't think there's enough food sources in FC. Every game I have played so far I've struggled with keeping satiated. Always had to gamble with eating mutant animals, or mushrooms, or sirens, all of which have risky effects. Although at least one of those had a tapeworm, possibly 2.

Coffee is a great idea, I think we should also ensure that confusion is never a state that can be permanent. It should max out at several in-game hours of confusion regardless of how much you consume. Maybe if you get too confused it should cause you to black out (as drinking too much alcohol would). But then when you wake up the confuse state is gone. That would also be a sharp reminder not to eat too much elf flesh

I actually did notice the nurphe bat color later, but the spiders look the same to me. I think a bright purple + deeper red would be nice. Thanks!

I kind of hate sirens. Idk if I would call them "overpowered" but the annoyance goes beyond anything else in the game.

stealing items, which can easily be a death sentence
exhausting you to a point of unconsciousness, also a death sentence

And again... the confusion effect when eating elf flesh lasts far too long. Possibly permanently if it's compounded similarly to eating floating eyes/blink dogs? Which is character ending since you can never again read a scroll.

This is made worse with the Aslona fungal caves, where siren corpses are one of the few "safe" things to eat when your only other options are zombies, spiders, snakes. Maybe a bat here and there.

Is there anything that can remove the confused state?

Can we get the really nasty guys (aranea spiders, nurphe bats) in a different color? Purple or blue?

I don't like that they look exactly the same as their less harmful brethren. Even for IVAN that's pretty brutal

I can't think of any other monster in the game where the nastier versions aren't visibly different. Maybe golems but since those are completely based on material it at least gives you an idea of which ones to check more closely