The Witching Hour Update is out, introducing a new playable character, expanded storyline, as well as numerous optimisations and bug fixes!
NEW HERO: THE WITCH
Hexa the Witch is the biggest new addition of 0.9.7. She's a support character who uses hexes and wards to weaken enemies and protect her allies. She's also able to halve her HP to spawn a shadow clone that doubles her action output, allowing for a more offensive (but also risky!) build. Especially as her abilities tend to ignore armor.
Her addition takes some weight off Hildie's shoulders as damage mitigator, and off Ephrem's as armor piercer, allowing for more diverse party compositions in the opening hours of Bonfire.
The Witch is unlocked very early in the game and requires no special actions to be taken. Just play as you would and she'll show up (don't expect her to be happy about it, though)!
MORE (BACK)STORY
Hexa is an old friend of Hildie and Ephrem, as well as a part of the original crew that assaulted the Overlord's keep before the events of the game. As such, her introduction provided us with a great opportunity to dig deeper into our heroes' backstories and the world's lore.
We also further developed some of the late-game character arcs, especially for Nadia who now gets her own questline.
FIXES AND STABILITY
While Bonfire has generally been pretty stable, there were quite a few outstanding smaller bugs, rare crashes, and missing or outdated assets that contributed to the "Early Access feel" we're trying hard to avoid (yeah, we know the game literally is in Early Access, but you know what we mean).
Developing better testing methods allowed us to catch up on a lot of these obscure bugs and we think 0.9.7 is the most stable and polished release the game ever had.
FULL PATCH NOTES:
NEW CONTENT:
- Hexa the Witch joins the hero roster!
- New skills, runes, inspiration bonus, and tutorial quests added for the Witch.
- 25 new story scenes involving the Witch added to the rotation.
- 10 new story scenes expanding other character arcs added to the pool.
- Witch's reactions and custom dialogue added to already existing scenes.
- A new questline and story arc for the Assassin.
- New quests added to showcase the Witch's abilities.
- New miniboss variant: Maladin.
- New miniboss variant: Doomsayer.
- New miniboss variant: Dire Wolf.
- New elite type: Pulsating.
- New quest rewards added for Gauntlet progression.
- New combat encounters added to the pool.
Dev Note: The Witch normally joins very early in the game, so her story progression may seem oddly placed, if you're playing on an old safe file with significant play time. Dev Note #2: Nadia's new questline starts with the "Elimination" story quest that used to be repeatable. Similar arcs are coming for other characters in future updates.
BALANCE:
- Food drops have been adjusted to be more generous early on and less so in the endgame.
- Minimum Health limit on the Failure difficulty changed from 25 to 30.
- Minimum Health limit on the Journey difficulty changed from 25 to 50.
- Enemy stats multiplayer on Journey difficulty changed from 0.85 to 0.9.
- Applying a stronger damage over time effect to an already afflicted enemy now updates the effect's power.
- Nadia's Secret Formula max uses changed from 6 to 5.
- Hexes are now stackable.
- Hex debuff power reduced from 0.7 to 0.5.
- Zivko's Blast Bead power increased from 2 to 2.5.
- Motivation XP gains from protecting another character have been doubled.
- Runes have been added as rewards for some endgame quests.
- Miniboss encounters have more difficult variants late in the game.
- Ditto for Elite encounters.
- Failures Health increased from 150 to 200.
- Failures now accurately reflect the stats of the party when it got wiped.
- Hildie's Failure AI has been significantly improved.
- Same for Zhu's Failure AI.
- Enemy mages no longer waste their charges on summons.
- Increased the difficulty and rewards of the Treasure Hunt questline.
Dev Note: Journey difficulty has been adjusted to be more challenging when it comes to combat, but simply less punishing. Dev Note #2: Protection XP increase is compensating for a double dip bug fix (see later), so it's not really a buff.
Dev Note #3: Failure encounters are now significantly harder, better reflecting the initial intention behind their inclusion.
GAMEPLAY & QOL:
- Quest rewards tally up can now be skipped by clicking.
- Maxed out skill trees now clearly indicate they are, well, maxed out.
- Boost animation now takes much less time when cast at no charges.
- Quest progress meter no longer replays the room slide animation when called manually.
Dev Note: Errand rewards still can't be skipped, because it's going to be reworked in the next major update.
COSMETICS:
- Remaining low-res rune items have been updated to higher resolution.
- Same for the remaining low-res runes themselves.
- New FX for the Poison debuff.
- New FX for the Special Formula Poison debuff.
- New FX for the Burn debuff.
- New FX for Erzsi's Sustenance skill trigger.
- Updated FX for the Fire Arrow attack.
- Updated FX for the Hero Sword attack.
- Updated FX for Erzsi's Blood Ritual.
- Updated FX for all campfires in the game.
- Updated FX for coin collect skip.
- Updated FX for skill/rune increase on the hero screen.
- Updated some menu and GUI particle effects.
- Characters can now close eyes and look smug in story scenes.
- Updated all story scenes to actually include this.
- Same for all generic quips and barks.
- New icon for summoning abilities.
- New icon for explosive abilities.
- New icon for pulsating abilities.
- New icon for the Witching Hour buff.
- Corrected timing and FX for the Runesmith's rune upgrade sequence.
- Corrected timing and FX for the Master's skill point purchase sequence.
- Corrected timing for arrow ripostes.
- Corrected timing for Protect FX.
- Dust particles have been added to some areas.
- Exploding booby trapped chests now properly remove their sprite cover.
- Increased the volume of the hit sound effect on low damage.
- Erzsi's "Majesty" inspiration has been changed to the more appropriate "Grandeur".
- Unit portraits now tilt slightly on their turn for better clarity.
- Miniboss aura effects have been unified to better discern them from elites.
- Fixed summons' HP bar Y-sorting issues.
- Depart message now uses character's true name rather than their class.
- Adjustments to the breathing anim on some enemies and heroes.
- Minor color adjustments for some GUI elements.
- Scrollbar in the quest menu now works more smoothly.
- Targeting beams now correctly take the caster's height into account.
Dev Note: Cosmetics have been a large focus of this update as some things (like the remaining low-res assets, DoT effects, or the missing skill icons) have been long overdue.
BUG FIXES & MISC STUFF:
- Bonfire is now correctly notarised for MacOS.
- Implemented an automated test system that made it possible to replicate and fix many of the following bugs.
- The Ultimate Journey now uses the correct (and much harder) quest setup.
- Further optimisations to texture and sound loading.
- Fixed a relatively frequent crash on the first story scene.
- Fixed a crash on auto-cast skills applying their effects to non-enemy NPCs.
- Fixed a rare crash caused by AI being unable to find a sufficiently weak target.
- Fixed a rare crash on AI searching for the most powerful target.
- Fixed a crash on re-applying some debuffs.
- Fixed a rare crash when skipping the coin collection sequence too soon.
- Fixed a crash caused by Revenge effect triggering when there are no enemies left.
- Fixed a rare freeze caused by an interaction between Riposte and Mournfolk Assassin's abilities.
- Fixed a rare freeze caused by another Riposte interaction with Ephrem's abilities.
- Fixed a potential freeze after the Master's introductory scene.
- Fixed an issue that could result in double or even triple dipping on protection XP.
- Losing all heroes now properly ends the run even if some player summons remain.
- Entering and leaving the quest menu can no longer cause the map screen to become unresponsive.
- Legacy saves can no longer end up with otherwise unattainable Rune levels.
- Master and Runesmith events no longer appear where they shouldn't.
- Undead and Mournfolk pseudo-boss encounters now feature correct compositions.
- Cauterize no longer follows the Hex attack even if it kills its target.
- Riposte no longer triggers when the target is protected or the attack is otherwise redirected.
- Internal: Global food and gold multipliers implemented to better handle quests with extra drops.
- Fixed armor sound not playing when the attacker has negative Attack stat.
- Protectors will no longer protect other protectors.
- Internal: Miniboss encounters have been merged, which makes them less prevalent in their respective pools.
- All minibosses no correctly display their auras.
- Claw Marks quest now grants correct XP.
- The battle now ends correctly if all opponents are killed by Dark Pulse and similar effects.
- Berserk elite buff no longer causes dragons to twitch.
- Internal: Story scenes can now exclude heroes to prevent some very awkward situations.
- Newer Runes can now correctly drop on respective story quests.
- Added a failsafe for when all runes have been already collected (mostly on legacy saves).
- Quest auto-grant for legacy saves now correctly includes those added more recently.
- Changed the order of some early game scenes for better pacing.
- Hovering over the resource panel no longer pauses combat.
- Master's upgrade price now always correctly reflects unspent skill points.
- Ephrem's Rune quest now gives the correct Rune.
- Disabled some legacy save compatibility scripts that could cause a soft lock.
- Master no longer double dips on difficulty mode multipliers in his introductory scene.
- Hopeless Attempt quest log now correctly triggers on the map screen.
- It's no longer possible to highlight two heroes at once on the camp screen.
- Maxed out characters no longer play the XP gain animation in the quest summary screen.
- Disenchanters now correctly spawn in quests with Mournfolk enemy pool.
- Skipped quest summary tallies are now correctly tracked by backend stats.
- Erzsi can no longer die in her encounters instead of triggering the join dialogue.
- Fixed the location of the skill points tooltip in the hero menu.
- Fixed overlapping tooltip hotspots for stats/skills in the hero menu.
- Fixed a sneaky but long-standing dungeon scripting error for Auspicious Road.
- And a similar error in quests with increased item drops...
- ...and increased food drops...
- ...and also with increased gold.
- The first runestone quest now correctly requires three heroes to start.
Dev Note: A lot of stuff thanks to the mentioned automated test system that allowed me to find and fix some known bugs that I couldn't reproduce for the life of me. I'll write a bit more about it in an upcoming dev diary.
FUTURE PLANS:
Just like with previous major updates, we're now going into rapid hotfix mode to address any immediate bugs or balance issues you might encounter.
Once that's done, the next goal on our roadmap is re-working the journey and exploration systems to make the game's survival elements more engaging, with strategic choices beyond simple resource management. We also want to start adding personal questlines for each remaining hero.
As always, thank you for your continued patience and support! 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