Hello everyone!
Today will be a pretty light Slormite Chronicles since we've just released the content we've been working on lately, so we don't have much left to show.
We will instead talk about our short term plans and what's to come in the next update.
First thing first, we have one (hopefully) last patch coming up on Monday that should fix the most important bugs that arose with The Mage Academy update, including the notorious "0% Pure Stat" bug some of you may have.
Our entire Art department (being one person) is already working on the upcoming update while the whole Tech department (being me) is making sure that Monday's patch doesn't add more bugs than it fixes.
That being said, here's the updated Road Map.
We still have 2 updates planned to complete the second part of the Road Map. The first one will be centered around Act III and the second one around what we call The Great Forge, which is an upcoming endgame mode.
The "Act III Update"
This is what we're currently working on. Here's what to expect:
- Act III: Act III should include around 10 new missions, a new Boss, new mission mechanics and new silly dialogues, all taking place in the Mage Academy.
- New Ancestral Skills: A new Act also means a new Ancestral Stone and new Ancestral Skills. The 4th Ancestral Stone will grant you access to 30 new Skills. This includes 10 new Active Skills and a new category of Ancestral Skills called "Imbue Skills". Imbue Skills lets you permanently imbue your Primary and Secondary Skill with an element (FIre, Ice, Light, Lightning or Shadow) of your choosing. Each element has its own mechanic. For example, Fire applies Burn to enemies hit (dealing Elemental Damage to them every second) while Ice applies Chill (slow) to enemies hit. Inside each part of the Ancestral Tree, you will then find new nodes to upgrade these mechanics. At some point, Ice will then have a chance to Freeze Chilled enemies, and later on to trigger Icicles from Frozen enemies. On top of that, Imbue Skills also change the design of your Skills. Some Exalted Breaches have a similar effect, so if you've ever activated an Exalted Breach granting you a Fire or an Ice buff, it's basically the same, except it's permanent. \o/
- Increased Level Cap: We will increase the Level Cap to 60 with this update.
- New Cataclysms and Exaltations: We will also introduce 5 new Cataclysms and 2 new Exaltations. We've yet to determine which one are going to get into the game, so I can't tell your more about it right now.
- Act I Rework: We will also take the time to rework Act I. We've mentioned this before but the first couple of hours in a game are crucial, and new players tend to get bored by the low amount of diversity and the lack of interesting mechanics at this point in the game. We do not plan to rework the whole Act from the ground up but we believe that we can provide a much better flow content-wise. For instance, we'd like to introduce enemies at a much faster pace to new players, and new Reapers as well as Exalted and Cataclysmic Breaches. We also think that introducing a couple of missions outside of the Graveyard, in a different environment would make a huge difference. Introducing named Elites, shortening the larger maps and creating more interesting enemy squads are also on the table. Basically, we want to make Act I flashy and fun so new players can get a better idea of what to expect later on.
- Other Reworks: Since our reworks list is getting bigger everyday, we will probably introduce the rework of a couple of mechanics or Skills, depending on the time we have left. We know that some Skills like Crest Shield or some mechanics such as "pulling" enemies need a bit of attention from us to make a healthier game so we will try to introduce reworks every now and then while trying to maintain a good pace of new content.
- WHEN? We will do our best to deliver the update as soon as possible and I don't want to make promises but we expect to get the update done in about 2 months.
Final Note
We're thrilled by the latest reviews The Slormancer is getting on Steam, and it seems like players were pleased by the latest additions. This makes a big difference for us: we feel like we're making the right choices and we are happy to work on the game, and I also feel like I'm always having fun when I'm interacting with the community. All in all, this is a huge boost of motivation for us!
So thanks for playing the game and being there with us, you awesome people!
That's it for now!
Have a nice day everyone!