The big change this time around is the addition of pets. Characters with a Wildcraft skill of 5 or greater can now call an animal companion. Each character can only have one companion active at a time, but there is currently no limit to how many you can have in the FieldHQ. You can also dismiss animal companions if you find that your FieldHQ is starting to look like a zoo. This addition paves the way for robots and other sorts of beasties, which will come in a future release.

I've also overhauled the way map scrolling works. You can now use the WASD keys to scroll the map, and you can also turn off mouse scrolling in the config menu. In addition, all keys are now configurable by editing the config.cfg file. Someday I will add an in-game key customizer, but like robotics today is not that day. See the game manual for more information.

Speaking of the game manual, it's been updated with info about the new combat interface (introduced over the last few releases) and now has a complete section on character creation. Do you wonder what each of the stats does? Want to know what the skills are used for? Wonder no more! All questions are answered in the manual. And if you have any more questions, please let me know so I can include the answers in the next release.

Two new mecha from previous GearHead games have been added: Aegis Overlord's elite commando unit the Luna II and the Solar Navy's basic trooper the Puma.

Lots of bugs have been fixed. Thanks to everyone who reported problems.

As usual, try it out and let me know what you think.