As you may remember, Wesband is a multiplayer hack-and-slash, dungeon-crawler add-on for the open source, turn-based strategy game Wesnoth.

I’m proud to present the next version of Wesband. While the game is mostly the same on the surface, many things are much more sophisticated underneath. Support for much smarter and much more rich NPCs has been my biggest accomplishment. NPCs are all built just like your own player characters are. This means they can vary in skills, items and attributes, and they will be smarter about which items they choose. This also means that if you kill an enemy, you get to keep everything he’s wearing.

Here’s a small screen shot of the new tavern that illustrates some of this:

My partner in this project, a college student in New York which I only know to call by his online handle ‘Exasperation’, has taken advantage of Wesnoth’s support for Lua, a programming language that works as a great extension tool. With Lua, Exasperation has made dungeon and enemy generation faster and has done a few things in dungeon crawling that were impossible otherwise. For one, enemies now need to spot you before they will start to come at you, but if you happen to spot them first, that gives you an advantage.

Oh, and he, just as an after-thought, upped the max players to 4.

Here’s a quick start guide to Wesband (it’s simpler than before):

• Download Wesnoth, click on the appropriate platform under “Download Wesnoth 1.8.2” and install it

• Once installed, start up Wesnoth and click on the “Add-ons” button on right-hand side

• Find Wesband on the list. Scroll down to find it, or you can use the filter by typing Wesband. Double-click and wait to finish installing.

• Click on “Multiplayer”. If you are playing solo, then select “Local Game”. If you are ready to play with others, “Join Official Server” is how you do it. You can also input your character’s name at the top of this screen.

• In a “Local Game”, scroll down the “Map to play” to Wesband (should be the last one), select it and hit the “OK” button.

• For players 2, 3, and 4, click “Local Player” and change the menu to “Empty”

• Click on “I’m Ready” and you’re in the game. The rest is self-explanatory.

In true dungeon-crawler fashion, the game is pretty tough, so be sure to bring a lot of henchmen and potions into the cave with you.