Hello everyone!
New Slormite Chronicle for our second month anniversary and we have lots of good things to share!
New Patch coming next week!
First thing first, we have our largest patch to this date coming next week. We've been working on quite a lot of things that we are going to talk about below and detailed Patch Note will be released with the patch.
Also, because we've changed the engine and because various things might break the game, we are going to deploy this patch on the Experimental Branch at first so we can make sure everything is working properly. The Experimental period should not last long if everything works properly.
If you're interested in checking the new patch on the Experimental Branch, please do so. Your feedback matters a lot.
Especially, if you have a 1440p or 4k screen, we need to know that everything is working properly. ːsteamhappyː
What's New in Patch 0.2.0
Game Engine Migration
So we've decided to update our Game Engine to a more recent and more powerful version (we moved from GameMaker: Studio 1.4, to GameMaker: Studio 2). We felt that the sooner was the better since we believe that most issues preventing players from entering the game were related to the engine and fixing these issues were our top priority.
Migrating from an engine to another prevented me from working on new features hence the long hiatus. However, I've had to rework multiple systems to make the game work with the new engine so I took the chance to upgrade a bunch of things.
New Settings
- The Slormancer now supports 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 resolutions.
- Windowed Full Screen is now a thing.
- You can change the monitor where the game is displayed.
- You can customize FONT SIZE.
- Also, fonts should no longer appear blurry/fuzzy on various resolutions. It should be nice and sharp.
- You can lock the cursor to screen.
For other resolution settings: 21:9 (and above) support will come later. Due to a pretty rigid UI, I have to rework a bunch of things to make it work but we feel like we've already spent too much time working on technical stuff and not enough on content so we'll switch to content for a while for now.
Balance Changes
We believe that it is too soon to make small changes and tweaks on individual Upgrades, Passives or Skills unless they are widely overpowered so we mostly worked on general things such as Equipment as a whole, and mostly targeted specific stats such as All Damage Reduction.
We are not going to detail everything here, as we'll post a detailed patch note during next week. However, here's what you can expect:
- The most important changes are on Equipment. We like how Crafting works in The Slormancer, however it is detrimental to the excitement of looting new gear. So we're introducing a new genre of stat, called "Pure Stats". This is basically a critical roll of a stat on gear.
- These can be found on looted equipment but cannot be rolled by Friedrich. Also, if you modify the score or the stat itself at Friedrich's it will lose its Purity and turn back to a regular stat.
- Every stat on an item can be Pure, so you can loot an Epic Item with up to 7 Pure Stats.
- The difference between the perfect roll of a stat and a Pure roll is between 1% and 10%, so nothing crazy, but quite noticeable.
- We also have plans to upgrade Pure Stats chances and scores, but we'll talk about it later.
- Items can no longer roll the same stat twice since. The original purpose was to increase the possibility and the number of combinations on each item but it did the opposite, and players tend to just stack the same stat over and over.
- Reinforcement now offers diminshing returns. +1 Reinforcement gives a +15% bonus, +2 gives +14% bonus, up to +15 and above granting a +1% bonus to the Reinforced stat. That is instead of the former Reinforcement that granted +15% bonus to stats, at any Reinforcement level.
- We've made changes to how Slormelines work during Reinforcement. Players tend to completely bypass the Potential mechanic at the later stages of the game, which was obviously not intended. Instead of giving +10% Chance on items of equal rarity, Slormelines now work for every item regardless of rarity with different rates. The Normal Slormeline now gives +0.1% Reinforcement Chance, Epic Slormeline now gives +15% Reinforcement Chance etc...
- We've also reduced the value of some stats that were easily stacked on items, such as Critical Strike Chance or All Damage Reduction.
- We've made a lot of other changes but I feel like I'm writing the patch note all over again, so I'll just talk about the most important changes:
- Projectiles can no longer Pierce AND Fork. A Projectile will try to trigger the highest stat first, and try to trigger the second stat only if the first has failed. This change was made so you actually have to pick one of these options (or a little bit of both) and build around it. Same as how you can build around Overdrive or Inner Fire but not both while playing Melee.
- If you are a Mage using Arcane Clones: Skills cast by Arcane Clones now cost you Mana as if you were casting them. We really love Arcane Clones but we just feel they are just too strong all around. Especially because they can cast Skills with the most expensive Upgrades without batting an eye.
Other Changes
Mastery Changes
The following changes were made to keep the original idea of using the actual Skill you want to upgrade but also to offer players an alternative to slowly but passively upgrade other Skills.
It should now also be easier to try out a new Skill from the start and level it quicker once your level is high enough:
- Characters will now gain a permanent +2% Mastery Gain per level so gaining Mastery gets easier over time.
- Every time a Skill gains Mastery, other equipped Skills will gain a small portion of Mastery as well.
Enemy Changes
We've had lots of feedback talking about how easy the game is or how dumb enemies are.
We hear you. But right now, Enemies and Breaches are still missing a good amount of important features that will make the overall experience harder, so we feel like now is not the time to drastically change their behavior.
However, we do feel like Melee enemies (The Skeleton Soldier and The Rogue) are not oppressive enough (or should I say, AT ALL), so we've increased their Movement Speed, their Cast Time and their Attack Speed by quite a bit (if you're a new player, these changes are made throughout the first Act, so you can still get the basics at a comfortable pace).
What's Next
So once the 0.2 build is stable, we are going to focus on adding content for a while. We know we've been working on fixing bugs and technical features for too long and it is now time to add fun stuff!
While working on the 0.2 version, we've made progress on our upcoming Major Update. We have everything sorted out, we now need to move everything into production.
We're happy with what we are about to offer but I can't share much more about it yet. However, I've managed to sneak into the dungeon and take a few pictures of the upcoming enemies.
They will introduce new, and hopefully fun, mechanics.
That's about it!
We hope you enjoy reading these posts!
Next week is patch week! See you then!