Malediction is probably one of the worst and most boring artifacts. Gave it curses on weapon hit and spell to reinforce its theme and overall power/fun factor. Removed negative life regen as it does nothing other than hinder resting. Added some spellpower to make up for low spellpower on weapon-based hybrids, particularly reavers. Overall a buff to Lithfengel, but he's weak and uninteresting either way.

Command Staff talent available to NPCs, which will spawn with the most appropriate aspect selected.  (Significant buff to staff wielders)
Updated artifact staves to use the new flavor system.

tactical AI will take duration of detrimental effects into consideration when evaluating cures.

clean up debugging code

Artifact changes:
Terrasca (which works the same) uses a new "absolute" resistance that is updated as needed by callbacks.
Added new callbacks: callbackOnTemporaryEffectRemove and callbackOnTemporaryEffectAdd to supplement callbackOnTemporaryEffect
Buffed Exiler to have a chance to affect non-summons.
Modified Spellhunt remnants: They gain a maximum of 1 material level per artifact crushed, but can spawn at any level in the game (adjusting

their material level to the zone).  Made more rare to compensate.
Cuirass of the Dark Lord slightly buffed bleed damage based on Physical Power.
Awakened staff of absorption, slightly buffed to bypass most defenses.

Object use tactical tables can be an explicit function in the object definition.  This makes complex AI tactical tables simpler to code and

more efficient to run.
Objects that have an instant talent as their activatable ability use no energy by default.

NPCs:

Will try to equip their drops if possible (cannot replace normal equipment unless the replacement is the same type and is unique).
Updated GameState:checkPowers with an "antimagic_only" mode that is used for test actor-equipment compatibility.
Updated some boss definitions to be able to equip their unique drops.

Moved after object use checks for breakStepUp, breakStealth, breakLightningSpeed, breakReloading, and breakSpacetimeTuning() from mod.Player to

mod.Object.

Added the Staff Mastery talent to many casters (including bosses) that primarily equip staves.

Adjusted talents for some bosses to compensate for the abilities of the equipment they can use.

AI:
Updated the tactical tables of several talents (that were used by various activatable items).
Updated tactical and talented AI's to allow NPC's to act again immediately after using an instant talent.
flee_dmap_keep_los AI will allow the ai to run farther if it has sufficient moves.
The tactical AI writes the selected tactic to the ai_state table as a parameter for talent.action functions.  This fixes a bug where NPCs that

were activating tageted abilities to flee were moving closer to their target instead.  So an NPC using phase door, for example, will try to

teleport closer when the "closein" tactic is active and farther from its target when the "escape" tactic is active.

Move object use data cleanup to action.
Protected function calls for talent code.

Updated callObjectTalent function to be more flexible and ensure talent functions are called with appropriate scope.
Updated tactical function for use_talent powers to ensure the tactical functions are called with the correct scope.

Added .never_fail flag (and support to Actor:preUseTalent) to actor object use talents to prevent failure to use objects when confused, etc.
Added support for on_pre_use_ai function

Updated game:logVisible to correctly identify projectiles (which get a .__is_projectile flag)

Enabled automatic use of object activation talents (more development needed)

Tactical AI:
Fixed a bug causing NPC's to sometimes not use cure/heal abilities effectively
tactical table functions are called with (self, t, aitarget, tact)

Updated charm tactical tables to account for possible resource recovery,
Updated definitions for several boss artifacts for NPC use: Wintertide (also fixed bug causing permanent ice walls), Crystal Shard,
Choker of Dread (fixed bug causing summon to not taunt foes), Rod of Annulment, Psionic Fury.

Talents:
Dark Tendrils: updated target table for AI use
Illumination: updated target and tactical tables so that NPC's will use it above level 3.
Fire Breath: added disable to tactical table.
Chain Lightning: updated target table for AI use
Disperse Magic: expanded tactical table to allow for both offensive and defensive use.
Tidal Wave: updated target table to allow AI use
Shattering Blow: corrected tactical table
Inertial Shot: updated on_pre_use function to check for enough ammo (temporary pending more general fix of archery talents)
***Note unrelated AI error with archery talents being used without ammo

Sunder Armor/Arms effects: added gain/lose messages

Restrict object talents to mod == "activated"

Fix bug with mitotic mindstars
updated staff ego messages

Revise definition for Wintertide

Possible update to equipment resolver

Update power use descriptions for zone specific world-artifacts, boss, quest, and special artifacts.

Updated handling of weapon special effects to pass the special effect field to the object code (facilitates handling multiple effects within object definitions).

Blighted Maul's on hit shockwave will not hit the primary target.

Wintertide's winter storm effect will expand in size to match its effect.
Updated the icestorm particles effect to accept radius and density parameters (this might benefit from some more tweaking).

Reduced the number of mental effects the Wintertide Phial will remove.

The Crystal Focus can now be applied to shields (updates the special_combat fields appropriately).

Prox's Lucky Halfling Foot benefits from Charm Mastery.

Penitence cures a more reasonable (few) number of diseases.

Updated the DAMAGE_SHIELD definition to note damage reflection in its tooltip and show shield strength in it's icon.

Awakened Staff of Absorption gets a special damage message and death message for the player if he manages to kill himself with it.

Adds rounding to Augmentation. Clarifies the psionic combat modifier. Corrects the way the psionic combat modifier is handled in combat.lua (and hence the weapon tooltips). Buffs the base mindstars slightly and slightly nerfs artifact mindstars to reduce the huge gap. Adds an icon for Psionic Maelstrom, though Nagyhal says he can make it better.

Map effects can update once per game turn instead of once per base turn; all following map effects now use this for more precision

Dawn's Blade glow fixed
Blood-edge bad pixels fixed