Hello everyone!
The Great Forge Update is now avaliable!
New Endgame mode
The Great Forge has been added into the game. Simply talk to Cory Ironbender to unlock the new mode then to Palstrang to get there.
The Great Forge is a wave-based mode in which you have to defend yourself from hundreds of enemies. It also adds a different type of challenge to The Slormancer, heavily based on greed.
Various loot you usually get from enemies are added to your War Chest which you can loot at any point between waves. Once you do, The Great Forge ends.
Every Wave, you get to choose between various Challenges that each offer a different type of Reward, ranging from the new Reapersmith Spirit Currency, to % Equipment Quality or % Goldus Quantity applied to loot in your War Chest. The key is to stack as many Rewards as you can, well... without dying.
Challenges: There is about 60 unique Challenges. They often come with multiple difficulty settings based on their Rarity (from Normal to Legendary) so the actual number of different Challenges is quite higher. About half the Challenges comes from Cataclysms.
Greater Rewards: On top of regular Rewards, we've added 32 Greater Rewards to the game. They are almost always tied to Epic or Legendary Challenges and often change the configuration of your War Chest, such as converting your Slorm into Goldus.
New Mechanics
New Currency
A new kind of Currency called Reapersmith Spirits has been added into the game. They can only be looted through Challenges inside The Great Forge and allow you to upgrade your Reaper Runes, your Slorm Reaper Affinity or to forge Slorm Reapers.
There is a Reapersmith Spirit for each Reapersmith, so a total of 7.
You get a 200% Reapersmith Spirit bonus from the Reapersmith of your current Slorm Reaper. On top of that, Reapersmith Spirits are guaranteed, whether you loot your War Chest or die in The Great Forge, so choosing the proper Slorm Reaper to get these currencies is a top priority.
New Mechanic: Slorm Reaper Affinity
With Reapersmith Spirits, you can purchase Slorm Reaper Affinity to Cory Ironbender. And just like Spirits, there are 7 different Slorm Reaper Affinites to upgrade.
You can get up to 100 points in each Slorm Reaper Affinity. Each point grants:
+0.5% Reaper Damage
+0.5 Effect Multiplier
+1% Slorm Reaper Experience Gain
+0.5% Reduced Primordial Cap
These bonuses are applied to every Slorm Reaper wrought by the upgraded Affinity.
So if you choose to upgrade Fulgurorn's Affinity, then every Slorm Reaper wrought by Fulgurorn will benefit from these bonuses, on every class.
New Mechanic: Forging Slorm Reapers
Reapersmith Spirits also allow you to forge Slorm Reapers for your other classes.
The prerequisite is to own the Slorm Reaper with at least one of your characters.
So if you own Sword of the Nimble Warrior, you will be able to craft Bow of the Nimble Warrior or Staff of the Nimble Warrior for your Huntress or your Mage.
This works on Primordial Slorm Reapers as well.
New Slorm Reaper: Fate-Crusher
A new Slorm Reaper has been added into the game. It is sold by Cory Ironbender and cannot be looted.
New Boss: The Siege Leader
A new Boss, exclusive to The Great Forge, has been added into the game.
It has multiple Challenges tied to it and can spawn at (almost) any time during an Expedition in The Great Forge. Spawning and defeating The Siege Leader gives you access to the new Reaper Runes, and later on, to Greater Rewards.
New Mechanic: Reaper Runes
Reaper Runes have been added into the game. They are unlocked by defeating The Siege Leader inside The Great Forge.
There are 28 Reaper Runes:
- 7 Runes of Activation
- 14 Runes of Effect
- 7 Runes of Enhancement
Runes of Effects are based on Slorm Reaper Effects, so you will get to find Rune of the Nimble Warrior, or The Most Powerful Rune etc...
An Effect Rune is triggered when you fill the condition of the associated Rune of Activation. So the default setting to get Runes to work is to have at least 1 Rune of Activation linked to 1 Rune of Effect.
Runes of Enhancement adds a bonus to the configuration.
New Cataclysms
4 New Cataclysms have been added into the game.
- Hermetic: grants resistance to Damage over Time (25% to 100%).
- Double Down: grants Recast Chance (up to 100%).
- Multiplication: grants Additional Projectiles (up to 2).
- Proliferation: grants Increased Area Size (up to 100%).
Slorm Reaper Changes
The Base Damage of a great number of Slorm Reapers has been buffed while the Base Damage of The Most Powerful Reaper has been reduced. The complete list of changes can be found here.
The Mighty Knight Changes
We've been working on improving the overall feeling of some of The Mighty Knight's skills: Ascension, Crest Shield and Whirlwind have been reworked to feel more natural and less clunky.
Final Words
There are various changes and other minor additions that can be found in the complete Patch Notes, right here!
As always, the first few days of an Update are a bit unstable. Despite our best effort, we might have missed a few bugs here and there. So if you find one, please report it here, on the Steam forums, or on our Discord.
We try to fix them as soon as possible.
Same goes for balance, we try our best to build something that is balanced and fair but we probably forgot about this build or that build, or forgot that this effect was completely broken with another.
The truth is 200 players playing 2 hours each are faster to discover these issues than the both us playtesting for a 100 hours. So we expect balance issues aswell.
We really hope that you have fun in The Great Forge!
If so, let us know! Leaving a Review on Steam is a great way to do so. :)
That's about it!