Hello warriors !
So, as you probably saw, the new update called “Glenwald Calling” is OUT! (And the changelog can be read here!)
And for players who didn't get the game yet, it's 10% off until 09/30rd! :)
We’ve been working very hard on that update all summer, so we hope you’ll like it! It’s the very first Major Update for The Last Spell, so we’re VERY excited! This is why we’re writing this blogpost to go into more details regarding some of the big changes we made for this update!
For this, I’ll let Benjamin, Producer and Game Designer on the game, take if from here!
New Map: Glenwald
Brace yourself Glenwald needs your help and it’s not going to be easy!
Before going into the details of what this map is about, I want to make some disclaimers about it.
Currently Glenwald has no boss but instead we’ve done a special wave that is…well…very intense (you will see). To be honest, at this stage of the development, we don’t know yet if every haven will have a boss or if other ones will have a wave like Glenwald, or a random boss pool at the end of the run.
Moreover, to be able to play Glenwald you will have to complete Lakeburg at least once.
Let’s talk about the details now!
This new map gave us a hard time in the beginning of the summer as Lakeburg has been in the game since the very beginning of the development and there were a lot of things to decide on how to design/implement/make the art for the next map.
We knew since the beginning of our reflection that we wanted to make a map that is more difficult than Lakeburg and that would be played by players who unlocked most of the meta content. This orientation was a good thing, we played with a 100% save file and tried to prototype challenges that would fit this configuration.
First thing we did differently compared to Lakeburg is the randomness of waves. In Lakeburg almost everything is pre-defined and there is a strong “scenario” that the game follows in terms of spawn directions and composition of waves. It was our way to control a bit more the difficulty and the player experience to ensure that it was somehow balanced. But for Glenwald we broke this “scenario” thing. Now, randomness is our new “scenario”.
Well of course we’re not crazy, we are still controlling some things to ensure that the challenge is feasible but multiple runs in Glenwald should feel a lot different than multiple runs in Lakeburg. I also hope it will reinforce the seer abilities to predict waves.
We also introduced a new “type” of enemies distribution in waves. There are now waves that can be on a whole side and trust me, this can be very tricky to handle even if it’s “just one side”. In general, waves should be less centered and more scattered than in Lakeburg.
Two more things about the progression.
First, there are a LOT more enemies in Glenwald, to compare there are almost twice more enemies at the end of a Glenwald run than at the end of a Lakeburg one.
Secondly, Glenwald is shorter and is completed in 10 days. We wanted to test this “shorter runs” for a long time and so, we found the challenge interesting to have less time to build your town. But since there are more enemies, there is more experience to get for your heroes and so they should be stronger than in Lakeburg!
Let’s focus on Level design
Our goal was to create a level that emphasizes melee heroes and try to give some hard time to range heroes. To do that we thought of a forest to create a lot of variations in the line of sight.
For the global shape of the map we brainstormed a lot, tried to think about different shapes for the haven, different configurations of the sides, we had some ideas but they were too complex in terms of development/design for the deadline and we knew we would have a lot of new things to implement in addition to this map. So we stayed “old-fashioned” with the shape of the haven but we still tried to do something different than Lakeburg.
We also worked on giving something unique on each side of the map to create different playstyles.
For example, on the southwest there are ruins of a shrine with some graves, while on the northeast side, it’s more like the forest side with a lot of places for enemies to hide and scatter.
Then we created something new in the level design: destructible obstacles. For now, only Glenwald has some, and that includes graves, wood piles, and dead trees, but we want to extend this later to Lakeburg and the future maps. It’s something we are excited about, bringing more interaction with the environment. With this update we’ve made the first step and we are going to work more on that for future updates!
Finally, our artists made a fantastic job on creating a new atmosphere for this map with some unique props and grounds. So thank you Jacques, Adrien and also Eloise who joined us this summer for her internship and did an amazing work to adapt quickly to our process!
New enemy
Let me introduce you the Guardian, an abomination that only the mist knows how to create (and our artists with weird ideas).
This enemy is exclusive to Glenwald waves and introduced a new type of enemy support oriented. We already experienced buff on enemies with the Ripper but instead of the Ripper, the Guardian will buff other enemies and not itself.
Also, the Guardian is block oriented, its main defense is the block stat and it buffs surrounding enemies in block. We hope this will gives some shine to the “No Block” skill effect and will gives you some new challenges!
We also experimented something new: the guardian blocks the line of sight. It’s something we wanted to do for a long time and here it is! We will see if it works well and if so maybe we will expand this behavior to other enemies.
New Apocalypse Levels
We worked a lot during this summer on apocalypses, we knew that we had to rework the existing ones and find new exciting ideas! Before going into the details, I just want to make a reminder that this update will erase your completion on apocalypses levels but not the progression. So, if you completed the 4 levels of apocalypse you will still be able to play the apocalypse 4 on the new update but it will be marked as “undone”.
First apocalypse we looked at was the level 2 “Enemy waves are 20% bigger”. The problem was that since there were more enemies, you gained more experience, so your heroes were stronger, and the game felt easier with this apocalypse. To balance that we decided to not increase the overall gain in XP, so your heroes keep the same amount of XP as before this apocalypse.
Then pretty much the same thing happened with the level 3 “Every Gold and Materials cost is 20% more expensive”. Everything was indeed more expensive, but you earned more by selling items, so with this extra gold you could buy more things for your town and heroes and here we go again, the game felt easier. To prevent that, selling costs remain the same as before the apocalypse.
Last apocalypse we weren’t happy with was the level 4 “The Mist is closer at the beginning and gets closer every morning”. We thought this was a cool idea but then we watched players play this level and we read a lot of feedback and we saw that this level was generating a lot of frustration and forced players to do only one strategy. So we changed our mind and decided to replace this level with a new one. Now this apocalypse is “Enemies have +2 Move Points”. This apocalypse should do the same effect as before, enemies will be at your gates very quickly but this time you will have more strategies to overcome this challenge.
Now let’s talk about new apocalypses! But first, we reordered all apocalypse so here is the new order! :)
The new apocalypse 3 has the feature I’m most excited about because it introduced a new gameplay element: The Mist Censers.
As we were brainstorming for the new level, we found this idea of the players forced to play more with the mist. At first, we were prototyping this for Glenwald but we extended this to the apocalypses challenges.
A Mist censer is an obstacle that produces a cloud of thin mist around it. Enemies can go inside this mist. While being inside, they can’t be targeted, and they are invulnerable (just like the Deadly Mist).
From there players have several options:
- Attack the mist censer, if it dies the thin mist will go away and monster will be once again targetable. To add some more spice, mist censor will regrow every two days.
- Heroes can dissipate the thin mist in a radius of 3 tiles around them. So it might be good to send your melee heroes inside this thin.
- Just wait until enemies get out from the thin mist (I never said that all options were good)
I’m excited to see what strategies you will find to face the mist censors! :D
Last apocalypse I want to talk about is the level 6 “Every item (initial gear excepted) gets a random negative attribute modifier”.
At one time during the development of TLS, almost every item had trade-offs in their attributes. It was cool but it added an extra layer of complexity on the building of your heroes and it can be hard for new players that are still learning all the games systems. We kept some trade off on specifics items but it’s not something common.
With this challenge we restored this idea to create some unique situations and force players to adapt more.
Consumables Rework
Just before the release we had a debate about consumables in RPG in general. We were saying that often players don’t want to invest on these items because it’s something temporary or if the game gives to the players some they won’t use them because there is a constant fear of using an item for a situation not worthy (we’ve all been there). The result of this is, you beat the final boss of the game and you realized you still have 50 health potions (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy).
In TLS consumable were not very used so we never took much time to make a proper progression for these items. And we had players that didn’t want to waste money on them because it’s consumable (like I said earlier) and players that were buying all of them because they had too much money.
We searched for solutions to this problem, and we realized that we liked our system we’ve made for the catapult and it could be applied to consumables.
So now consumables have uses per night. I think that the fact that consumables are not destroyed anymore integrate them to the building process of the heroes and can create some interesting synergies.
Of course, this changed all the balancing of consumable. For example, mana potion and health potion will give less than before in the beginning of the run but can be used every day.
We also reworked all the progression of consumables, now every one of them have 6 levels (like every other item).
Last thing I want to talk about this rework is the scrolls. We removed the cost in action point to use the skill, it now only cost mana points. This can be very useful if you need an extra attack for your turn.
Balancing
[Thomas here, Lead Game Designer on TLS, taking over from Benjamin because he’s not a superhuman and thus doesn’t have time to write down everything by himself!]
Of course, no update would come without its lot of gameplay balancing, tweaks and changes. This is not a comprehensive list, but rather an overview of what has changed and why.
Dodging alterations
Many players complained about dodging a Bulky’s boulder or an Archer’s arrow and still being debuffed… And rightly so! It has never been intended and has been fixed! \o/
Just remember: the combat system is symmetrical, so any mechanic can be a double-edged sword. Enemies dodging your attacks will now also evade the related effects!
Production phase & economy
Shop
As a global feeling, we wanted to empower the Shop a little bit more. It has always been our intention for the Shop to be more of an early run helper than a late run game changer, but we acknowledged that it wasn’t scaling enough and ended up REALLY before the end of the run.
This is even more important now that we have reworked the consumables and made them scale, as currently the only way of getting some is through the Shop.
Highlights:
- Additional Item Level upgrade to be able to buy Level V (5) gear and decreased a bit the overall price of those upgrades.
- Increased chances of presence of magic/rare/epic gear (epic was impossible before).
- A few more consumable items slots.
Houses & Workers
We like our system, so this didn’t change at all! But we tweaked the rhythm of obtaining Workers, because it was a bit too easy (once accustomed to the game, of course) to trick the system and have an explosive yield within the first couple of days. It’s not problematic to be able to do so, but it should have a strategical cost.
Houses now cost a little bit less but come with a single worker, and have an additional upgrade to still be able to reach 3 Workers per house.
Scavenging Ruins
Scavenging Ruins yields have been increased a bit overall to help the early run, and newcomers that don’t have as much meta-upgrades unlocked to boost their economy. The bigger the Ruin, the better the increase, to account for the cost of opportunity of spending more Workers at once.
Mana
The whole Mana scale of the game has been tweaked, to improve the balance of spending vs regenerating. The gist of it is that we started by doubling EVERY mana value (starting mana, caps, costs, etc.), which enabled us to perform some more fine-tuning: since we don’t deal with “0.5 Mana points”, something that deserved to be more than 1 and less than 2 was problematic (that’s often a problem with smaller scales!) whereas now it can be 3 (between 2 and 4 post doubling).
Taking advantage of this new granularity, we were then able to individually tweak many components. For instance, melee weapons have received an indirect buff because their mana cost have not been doubled entirely, so they will be less reliant on Mana and Daily Mana Regen than the other items/skills.
Also, Mana will probably be a little scarcer overall and players may need to be more cautious on their spending depending on their playstyle, since Daily Mana Regen has been increased as well but not doubled (will Potions and Mana Well shine again?).
Items & Skills
Many weapons and skills have seen some of their number fudged, and I won’t list them here.
Overall, Melee damage weapons received some buffs here and there: reduced mana cost, higher damage scaling and less/no native attribute malus (bye-bye reduced Accuracy). Ranged damage weapons generally have had their damage scaling nerfed A LITTLE BIT, but nothing that can’t be overcome since it’s mostly a slight decrease in their minimum damage, and thus require more Reliability.
Regarding defensive gear, Block and Res attributes scaling has been decreased a bit. On the other end, the active skills provided by armors and the like now scale with Item Level, just like other skills!
Perks
The perks still weren't the focus of this update, so there isn’t a big overhaul and many disliked perks at their core will remain that way (basically we only changed some stuff that didn’t require any programming change, only stuff we could already do by ourselves).
That being said, a significant amount of changes have still been made, ranging from number tweaking to bigger modifications (hello “Leapfrog”). These alterations added to all the rest of the gameplay changes will have an interesting impact on how things go during upcoming runs. Please check the patch note for a comprehensive list.
QoL
What would be a [major] patch without its share of quality-of-life improvements?!
- When building Ballistae/Catapults, their range and line of sight are displayed.
- Skills patterns displayed within the skill tooltip, making it easier to understand how they will behave (even before buying/picking the item).
- Attributes boundaries are displayed in their tooltip. For those who didn’t notice it yet, each attribute has some cap (min; max); they used to be hidden and will now be common knowledge so that it’s easier to plan accordingly.
- Apocalypse and Easy Mode shown in-run: we noticed some streamers displaying their own overlay on top of them game to do so, hence the addition. Plus, one can hover those for a reminder of the currently active effects.
- And more!
Localization Mods
We know a lot of you wanted to help us translate the game in more languages, so we worked on implementing the steam workshop for TLS. For now only localization mods are supported. However, there is a big disclaimer on this feature: custom fonts are not supported yet. Currently we have two fonts integrated in the games, one for the latin languages (English, French) and one for Chinese, but may be these fonts supports more characters that we know, so you can do some tests with your alphabet and see if it’s working, don’t hesitate to talk to us on discord! For example, we tested some Japanese characters and it was working but we don’t know if all Japanese characters are supported.
To conclude we are working right now on a solution allowing you to import your custom font into the game and it is promising, so stay tuned.
If you’re interesting in this we wrote some guide to help you start modding and translate: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607723968
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607152208
Our plans from today
And this is it! Now, the first major update is done, it was quite complicated with the summer and we want to make the best experience possible so we are working hard to achieve that! Right now, we’re already working on the next major update still planned for the end of the year.
Until then, you can expect from us some hotfixes as usual and some minor patches to polish some parts of the game, and also some balancing on the gameplay side.
I can’t tell you all the details of the next update, because even us don’t know yet (as I said earlier we were really focused on delivering this one properly) but we want to focus more on broader balancing issues the game is facing, like maybe reworking/tweaking some core systems, reworking the perks and more… But we also want to wait a bit after all the changes we’ve done for this update and see how it impacts the current game experience.
And of course, we will add some new content as promised in the roadmap.
That’s all for today, warriors!
Once again, as you saw, your feedback is more than precious for us! So please keep sending them to us!
Finally, feel free to come to our Discord server! We have the best community, and they’re always more than happy to welcome new players! 😊