I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a great start into the new year!
It's been around a month since you have heard from me so I am excited to share what I am working on next! Keep in mind that some of these changes might turn out to be slightly different with the way they are described as I do more testing/gather more feedback.
End game End game End game!
I genuinely appreciate all the feedback I have received. Especially feedback towards how they are sad that the game is now over once they have beaten all the bosses and gotten all the achievements. Although I must say all good things must come to an end. But 0.9 will definitely focus on more things to do in the endgame. With more challenging bosses and more exciting items!
Detph
There are a couple of things I want to do with the current depth system
- The current monster enhancement system is weird in the sense that most of the attributes are flat-out ignorable and have no impact. What made it worse is that there is no explanation of what the attribute is so this patch will address that by redesigning each attribute as well as adding a new indicator of what they are.
- The OG bosses such as Bone Knight and Gump told me that they feel a bit sad that they went from scary bosses into a more trash mob in depth. So this patch some of them will come back with a vengeance in their Uber form. Defeating them might also drop some special jewels as well!
- The game has a maximum level of 100 but there is already a sudo-paragon level in the game that's mastery level. In 0.9 I want to explore the idea of moving that concept into its own paragon level system. Won't be anything too crazy, mostly just putting the mechanics of continuing leveling under a spotlight so more people notice it.
- There are also going to be more crafting options and more ways to obtain those rare crafting materials!
Tower
It's been amazing seeing all the tower feedback and improvements. But I think the tower can be much more than what it is. The goal is to make it so that each run of the Tower will feel significantly different even if you chose the same spell and same party. These are some of the things that are coming.
- Floor 3, the Pinnacle, will be available!
- More skills for party members and you to pick from!
- Skill augmentation during the run to make it so that a Lesser Heal run might feel completely different if you augment your Lesser Heal differently
Sprite Improvements/New Transmogs
A big thanks to one of the community members who wanted to help out on improving some of the character sprites and trasnmogs. So in 0.9 I'll look to see if I can integrate it into the system! For folks who like the original transmogs there will also be a classic version with it
I am also looking to add in some full-body transmogs for other party members but depending on the time I might only add it for 1 party member for 0.9 (rest will still be coming!)
Balance Thoughts
I think generally the balance of things stands in a pretty good place. Most things are balanced but there are definitely still weaker builds and talents/items combinations that are way too strong than other builds. In 0.9 I would focus on buffing the weaker builds/items and bring the power level of some specific items/talents back in line a bit.
Quality of Life
Some of you might have noticed that there are a few minor patches 0.81 - 0.83. Previously I think it was not a good idea to bundle these QoL changes with the release of the next major patch. So for patch 0.9 I experimented with just finishing all the QoL changes I planned for 0.9 first and releasing them before the content work has started. So these changes are already live! Some of these changes include
- Better talent/skill hover indicator ✅
- Nifty roll information added to the atlas/crafting menu that tells you what can an item roll✅
- Display shield values✅
- Ability to bind multiple keys (shift + 1)✅
- Enhanced skill indicator (tells you when your Ample Heal is free!) ✅
There are going to be more smaller QoL changes bundled with 0.9 but at this point nothing too crazy.
Localization
I also hope to sync up all Japanese/Korean localization in 0.9 so I can say the game officially supports those 2 languages.
Huge thank you to all the community members who either localize the game or help suggest localization improvements. For anyone who wants to help out keep in mind that all the texts of the game are open source here!
https://github.com/minihealer/MiniHealerText
Timeline
Because 0.9 is pretty chunky, I am looking at around the end of February for it to be on the beta branch and mid-March for the live branch release. The theme for future patches before 1.0 will also be similar to 0.9 which mainly focused on end game as well. With QoL and improvements splashing in.
Thanks again for your support for the game and see you in 0.9!
Saddoge
