Blood Bonds Update is out and with it a new playable hero, additional character customisation mechanics, as well as a significant amount of other tweaks and fixes!
NEW HERO: THE COUNTESS
Erzsie the Countess is the new unlockable hero. She's a flexible control-type character able to enthrall her enemies, heal and empower allies, summon undead minions, and even launch devastating attacks using her own life force. Once set up, she acts as a nexus for HP flow on the battlefield, sapping health from multiple thralls to then redirect it towards your party, while also controlling enemy turn order. She also has a bit of a flair for the dramatic.
You can read more about Erzsie and her abilities in our latest new hero sneak peek post.
You can unlock the Countess after running into her during one of your journeys. Just don't expect it to go smoothly.
NEW MECHANIC: AFFINITY & INSPIRATIONS
The other major addition is the introduction of another layer of character customisation: Inspirations.
Heroes now gain affinity points as they quest together, endure hardships, and engage in conversations. As their bonds grow stronger, each character can pick another as their inspiration to gain powerful passive abilities based on their respective affinity level. These passives range from modifiers such as increased item effectiveness or better HP regen, to unique effects like the ability to survive a deadly strike or start each battle with an undead minion.
Dev Note: As significant amount of affinity is gained through story segments, the first time you launch the game after the update, it'll retroactively grant you some levels for the already completed content. You don't have to start from scratch.
Dev Note #2: This additional venue of character progression results in some power creep and you should be able to reach further into the endless quest now. While it's intentional, the next update is going to introduce some more end game content to match these new power levels.
FULL PATCH NOTES:
NEW CONTENT:
- Erzsie the Countess, a new unlockable hero, has been added to the game.
- Two new runic abilities have been added for Erzsie to use.
- Several story scenes involving the new hero were added to the rotation.
- The system for hero affinity and Inspiration passives has been introduced.
- Hero customisation screen has been re-worked to fit new options and look nicer in general.
- New dangerous miniboss has been added to enemy pool. Beware!
- Player's party now too has the ability to utilise summons (which will grow in importance with further updates).
- Added five new early-game quests that introduce some of the most popular/useful tactics.
Dev Note: Just like with affinity levels, these new tactics quests are going to be retroactively unlocked if their conditions have already been met.
BALANCE:
- Zivko's Magnetic Field rune ability's duration increased from 3 to 5 turns.
- Nadia's Smokescreen ability's duration increased from 2 to 3 turns.
- Hildie's rate of XP gain has been increased by 5%.
- Hildie's basic attack's power increased from 100% to 110%.
- Re-adjusted food drop rates in the early stages of the game.
- Increased the frequency of story scenes to account for new content.
- Increased stat bonus for the easiest elite monster.
- Additional elite enemies may now spawn on harder quests.
- XP-charged attacks now grant less XP themselves.
- Heroes now gain XP-charge bars more slowly (every other level).
Dev Note: Hildie was already a staple of many party compositions due to her damage mitigation capability, but we feel she was too one-sided. These changes should facilitate a more active playstyle.
Dev Note #2: XP-charged attacks became essentially free at higher hero levels, making them easily abusable. These changes should keep them a powerful but costly mechanic throughout the game.
GAMEPLAY & OTHER IMPROVEMENTS:
- Re-adjusted some RNG parameters to make the Assassin unlock faster.
- Cauterize animation and FX has been updated.
- Unassuming Undead miniboss now has its own sprite.
- The first time you send a hero on an errand, it always succeeds. (Talk about critical updates!)
- Increased the speed of some attack and story scene animations.
- Locked runes in the hero screen now can be previewed through tooltips.
BUG FIXES:
- The game has been heavily optimised in several areas, with a noticeable difference in performance on low-end PCs.
- Fixed the issue with Wails in the Dark sometimes granting an already owned rune.
- Runesmith now correctly responds to slot upgrades.
- Glimmer chest now displays the correct sprite and FX.
- Battle against shadows of past failures won't happen until the player actually loses a run.
- Fixed some hitches when skipping through hero chatter on various menu screens.
- Meta bosses such as the Hunter now correctly save their HP between encounters.
- Corrected values for various screen shake effects.
FUTURE PLANS:
For the next few weeks, we're focusing on smaller patches and hot fixes to address any immediate concerns and bugs that might crop up following this update.
Once the dust settles, we're moving to the next large content update, which will center around increasing the overall variety of available content, especially in the late game.
We hope you like the changes! If you encounter any issues, would like to check our current development roadmap or make any suggestions, feel free to drop by our community forums. You can also follow me on Twitter or join MoaCube's Discord server for more frequent updates.
-Tom