Hello Heroes!
Welcome to our new map, the one haunting your dreams and sending shivers down your spine every Night: Elderlicht!
A new map also means a new (big) boss. We won't be spoiling it to much in this blogpost, as we want you to live the Elderlicht experience fully... but you can already have a good look at this baddie in the official update artwork!
SUMMARY:
- New map: Elderlicht
- Unique feature: Soul Vessels
- Unique starting setup
- New boss
- Damage Rework
- Enemies
- New Buildings
- Goldmine & Scavenger Camp Rebalance
- Panic Rework
- QOL
- Balancing
- Bug Fixes
We will be live on Twitch tomorrow at 15:00 CEST to discuss the new map, reworks, balancing and other novelties of this update! See you there, we will eagerly wait for your questions in the chat!
Important reminder:
The next Major Update will be the Meta Rework (Schaden & Freude), and to do it properly we will need to wipe all the progress made by players in a few months (all runs & Meta progression). Since a lot of things will be changed, this will allow us to make the best possible rework.
We are sorry in advance about this inconvenience, and we will come back to you with more information in due time.
NEW MAP: ELDERLICHT
Defend the mages while they break the last seal inside the underground ruins of a fallen civilization. Will the pillars and rubble serve the heroes, or hide and protect the monsters coming out of the fog? Be careful, as the fallen city of Elderlicht has a few secrets in store…
This map is unlocked after beating Glenwald, and is an even greater challenge. It lasts for 14 Nights, which is longer than any other map in the game, and will probably let you enjoy a few Nights with your heroes at the peak of their power… if you make it there!
The layout of the map is more geometrical than other maps, with a lot of pillars blocking paths or line of sight. As for the waves coming each Night, they have been designed to be a tough but diverse challenge: the types of enemies, density of the horde, number of sides, length of the Night… All these parameters will greatly vary during the run, and two consecutive Nights will probably feel more different than in other maps. And to top it off, we are introducing a unique feature that makes the Nights of Elderlicht even more of a challenge.
UNIQUE FEATURE: SOUL VESSELS
Elderlicht is filled with Soul Vessels, a mysterious invention of Elderlicht’s past denizens. At Night, some of these will light up a flame and bring back the souls of ancient warriors to fight against you.
Due to their intangible nature, these Soulbound units are invincible, but they can still attack you. Be careful, as most of them have abilities whose strength is on par with that of your heroes! However, extinguishing the Soul Vessel that invoked them or taking care of all other enemies should get rid of them for the Night.
UNIQUE STARTING SETUP
Elderlicht is not a human city, and only recently have the survivors of the mist settled here and built a magic circle. Their camp is different from other towns: only a few ruins are present, but a Seer and a Scavenger camp have already been built. How will you use this to your advantage?
NEW BOSS
A new boss awaits you on the last Night of Elderlicht. What will you have to fight against this time? Be prepared, as a tough fight lies ahead of you.
Starting here, all of the features listed have already been the subject of blog posts during open betas. If you want more details on a given subject you can visit those blog posts: Damage Rework & New Buildings, and Economy & Panic Rework.
DAMAGE REWORK
Since early stages of the development, we wanted The Last Spell to be a “classless” game, where players could build very diverse characters, combining any type of weapon. However, until now, and with a few exceptions, combining weapons of different damage types has always been pretty inefficient.
With the following changes, we are trying to make hybrid weapon combinations more viable for characters, without nerfing the character’s overall power level throughout runs. Feel free to try out those kinds of builds, and tell us if they feel viable or not.
Primary vs Secondary Attributes
The gist of it is that the Physical, Magic and Ranged Damage attributes have been shifted to secondary attributes, while Damage, Resistance Reduction and Accuracy have become primary attributes.
The formatting of their value has been tweaked a bit too - Damage is now displayed as a modifier (default +0%) and Phys/Mag/Rang+ as multipliers (default 100%), and their min/max boundaries have been updated accordingly - but this is purely cosmetics/UX, their behavior remains unchanged: they still affect affect each other and the base damage multiplicatively.
From a systemic point of view, this almost exclusively affects where you can get them during level ups, and thus changes the character build dynamic since the various options in competition for your attention have changed.
These stats have also been rebalanced wherever they may appear: probability of appearing and values have been tweaked for level ups, equipment, traits and some perks. The entire list of changes is a bit too long, but as a rule of thumb, Damage appears more frequently and has higher values, while Physical/Magic/Ranged Damage appears less frequently and with lower values than before.
What this means is that, whilst still theoretically as strong as before to focus on a single damage type, it’s much less frequent to be able to specifically target one and rely on it as the main source of a hero’s potency ; meanwhile, it’s much easier to increase your overall damage, reducing a lot of the friction when switching damage type mid run - or even better, constantly during the battle! This hopefully will enable more variety in combat builds.
ENEMIES
Enemies’ Accuracy
The impact of Accuracy on enemies - mostly, using Accuracy Debuffs - has always been pretty underwhelming. Also, with Accuracy now being labeled a Primary Attribute, we wanted to improve upon that.
The first thing we did is really a detail, but at the same time is altering the perception of the whole Dodge mechanic in a subtle way that enables us to perform the rest: we re-labeled the little “Dodged!” pop-up over the units’ heads to “Missed!”.
Same thing, right?
Wrong! It allowed us to justify a brand new addition: attacks can now miss buildings!
In addition to that, enemies also have an Accuracy value, which scales over the duration of the run.
Enemies Damage Scaling
We’ve changed the way enemies scale their damage to improve debuffs dealt to enemies. For example a -33% Damage debuff will now actually reduce 33% of the enemy’s damage ( this sounds silly but it was not the case before).
Enemies Skill Progression
Up until now, only damage could progress on enemies skills but we decided to extend this to buff and debuff attacks. This will increase the dangerous nature of some enemies (for example the guardian).
NEW BUILDINGS
We’ve added two new production building:
- The Alchemist: Produces potions and scrolls, costs 100 gold.
- The Jeweler: Produces trinkets, costs 100 gold. As you can guess, other production buildings won’t produce trinkets anymore.
GOLDMINE & SCAVENGER CAMP REBALANCE
A lot of players were frustrated by the dynamic of Goldmines: they felt mandatory if you wanted to have a good run, made the first Nights pretty hard and the last Nights very easy. This problem has been reinforced by recent changes to other buildings, making it possible to build and upgrade nearly all buildings in your Haven.
With the changes we’ve done, we want to make goldmines more cost effective at the start, while greatly reducing their maximum gold output. The start of a run should feel less “tight” economy wise, and the opposite will be true for the later portions of a run.
As Scavenger Camps follow the same model as Goldmines, they were also changed.
You can read all the changes in the Balancing part of this blogpost.
PANIC REWORK
The goal of this rework is to make panic less of a binary situation: up until now, you would get mostly S-Rank Night clears, until one difficult Night where suddenly a big part of the Haven is breached and you drop to a C/D-Rank. We want to make the Panic scale more meaningful and nuanced overall, with more situations where players can get intermediary rankings.
Panic Increase
Panic generated when an enemy hits a building now depends on how much the building was damaged by the attack, instead of just multiplying the underlying Panic value of the enemy as it used to be.
ANY building inside the Haven will generate panic when hit, including Defenses. Buildings have varying panic values, meaning that some buildings generate more panic when hit:
- Walls, Barricades & Ruins generate a very low amount of panic. The more health a wall has, the less panic it will generate with each hit, since their total Panic value remains unchanged (and Walls have also been buffed a bit, cf. Changelog section further down).
- Other Defenses generate a moderate amount of panic.
- Structures (town buildings) generate a high amount of panic.
- The Magic Circle generates a lot of panic, as it should!
This means that Havens open to the four winds and with a lot of structures will tend to generate more panic than Havens fortified with a lot of sturdy walls, or with a more compact design. Panic should feel more gradual than before, especially when properly defended.
Another noteworthy change is that from now on monsters within your Haven won’t generate any panic as long as they are stunned.
Rewards
S Rank now gives items with a slightly higher rarity than before..
A Rank now also gives an item! Albeit being of lower rarity (Common..Rare), this is not to be sniffed at.
All Gold and Material rewards have been rebalanced to fit the scale of the updated economy, which is expected to be less exponential.
As stated earlier, we tried to base our updated economy on getting an A-rank, as well as decreasing the resources penalty of ranking lower.
QoL
As always we read all your feedback and it helps us to see what we can do to make the game more comfortable to play.
Oraculum
You can now access the oraculum from the worldmap so that you don’t need to start a new run to buy or reclaim some favors.
Heroes Portrait
We added information and changed the general layout of the little infopanel when hovering a hero and also on the portrait in the top right corner of your screen !
Optimization
Again with this update we’ve done a ton of optimization. The game should run more smoothly on idle. Don’t hesitate to tell us if you notice a change in your fps count or not !
BALANCING
Goldmine
Gold cost: 45 => 60
Base gold production: 10 => 25
Mine action now costs 2 workers to perform.
Changed all upgrades. New upgrade list:
Production+
Costs 60 gold
Improves gold generated from 25 to 40
Mine+
Costs 20 gold
Workers required from 2 to 1
Mine++
Costs 30 gold
Uses per production from 1 to 2
Scavenger Camp
Gold cost: 45 => 60
Base Material production: 20 => 40
Changed all upgrades. New upgrade list:
Production+
Costs 60 gold
Improves materials generated from 40 to 60
Scavenge+
Costs 20 gold
Workers required from 2 to 1
Scavenge++
Costs 30 gold
Uses per production from 1 to 2
Houses
Limit on buildable Houses: 5 => 4
Base price: 40 => 30 Gold.
House Expansion price: 30 => 40 Gold.
House Expansion+ price: 80 => 70 Gold.
Production Buildings
Armor Maker base price: 60 => 65 Gold.
Bowyer/Blacksmith/Magic Shop price: 60 => 65 Gold.
Added Alchemist and Jeweler with a base price of 75 Gold.
Production+ upgrade price: 110 => 100 Gold.
Production ++ upgrade price: 130 => 120 Gold.
Help + upgrade price: 50 => 40 Gold.
Help ++ upgrade price: 80 => 60 Gold.
Help +++ upgrade price: 100 => 80 Gold.
Production buildings now give +1 and +2 items from the start.
Removed one level upgrade. New list is as follows:
Level+, costs 150, gives +2 and +3 items.
Level++, costs 300, gives +3 and +4 items.
Level+++, costs 560, gives +4 and +5 items.
Walls & Gates
Barricade price: 7 => 8 Materials.
Wooden Wall Health: 55 => 75.
Reinforced Wooden Wall price: 30 => 25 Materials.
Reinforced Wooden Wall Health: 110 => 150.
Stone Wall price: 45 => 40 Materials.
Stone Wall Health: 215 => 300.
Reinforced Stone Wall price: 60 => 50 Materials.
Reinforced Stone Wall Health: 330 => 450.
Wooden Gate Health: 50 => 75.
Stone Gate price: 45 => 40 Materials.
Stone Gate Health: 195 => 300.
Special Defenses
Ballista price: 60 => 40 Materials.
Mounted Ballista price: 100 => 80 Materials.
Seasoned Operator upgrade price: 50 Gold => 35 Materials.
Catapult price: 100 => 80 Materials.
Watch Tower price: 70 => 60 Materials.
Construction limit: Unlimited => 12.
Warp Gate Health: 25 => Invincible.
Construction limit: Unlimited => 6.
Inn
Accomodation+ upgrade price: 180 => 130 Gold.
Accomodation++ upgrade price: 260 => 200 Gold.
Attributes and skills
Affixes balancing (the additional bonuses you get on uncommon+ equipment):
- Values, in relation to each other but also level ups (which are meant to be more important).
- Drop rates, according to the current state of the game and the current damage rework.
- Drop incompatibilities: some affixes can’t drop on some pieces of gear. This is still true, but since the game has changed a lot, some updated intentions have been reasserted (e.g. it was not possible to get +Propagation Bounces on a melee/ranged weapon, which was a bit sad for the 2H Hammer or Hand Crossbow builds… don’t ask!).
Some weapons’ skill have now a progression on their skill effects:
- Berserker Rage from the Two-handed Axe
- Watchout from the Longbow
- Suppressive Fire from the Rifle
- Wind Walk from the Magic Scepter
- Shocking Touch from the Magic Scepter
- Pillar of Light from the Power Staff
- Acid Spray from the Druidic Staff
The maximum base damage of all weapons has been increased à bit.
Perks
Versatility: Removed from the game following the Damage rework.
Flexibility: Tier 2 => Tier 4 ; +15% Damage => +25% Damage.
Crippling Punch: New perk added to Tier 2.
Bodybuilder: Every 25 max Health after 115: +2% Physical Damage. => Every 10 max Health 100: +1% Physical Damage.
Harvester: Every 3 enemies killed => Every 4 enemies killed.
Head-On: +25% Physical Damage => +15% Physical Damage.
Enemies
Critical is now equal to 0% for all enemies and therefore is not shown in their HUD anymore.
Rescaled enemy quantities on Glenwald (less enemies in early Nights, slightly more enemies on later Nights, and slightly less enemies on boss Night, which should make it a bit easier overall).
Bosses
HARPIES
General changes
Overall pacing of the Night has been improved: Harpies after the first one will appear earlier than before.
Boss minions (Alerion) now spawn in smaller amounts but more frequently.
Boss wave will spawn less high tier units than before.
Harpy
Health: 810 => 630
Armor: 60 => 100
Base attack now deals less damage.
“Enraging Scream” (zone buff) now only buffs Move Points for 1 turn and buffs Damage for 2 turns. Additionally, targets’ Resistance will now also be debuffed for 2 turns upon application. It also no longer dispels targets’ Negative Alterations upon application and only self-dispel debuffs on the caster (it could previously also dispel poison).
Alerion
Health: 270 => 210.
CETUSIA
General changes
Overall pacing of the Night has been improved.
Invincibility phases have been removed from the fight.
Each phase now features one of the three versions of Cetusia, making the fight less repetitive.
Boss wave is now tougher.
Cetusia
Health: 3600 => 6000
Armor: 400 => 300
Block: 50 => 30
Dodge: 0 => 10
Resistance: 40 => 30
While not armored, Cetusia can use Putrid Water (poison attack) once again (it was changed in the previous boss balancing patch) after gaining a Charged status.
Cetusia’s tail
Health: 1800 => 2000
Armor: 400 => 300
Block: 50 => 30
Resistance: 40 => 30
Cetusia’s tail can no longer use Charged attacks.
Cetusia’s tail’s base attack no longer requires a Charged status.
Cetusia (armored)
Health: Invincible => 6000
Armor: 0 => 1200
Cetusia dives back into the water when you defeat her armored version.
Cetusia’s tail (armored)
Note: During a previous balancing patch, this version of Cetusia’s tail had been removed from the fight, but has now been brought back.
Health: Invincible => 2000
Armor: 0 => 1200
Cetusia (enraged)
Health: 3600 => 6000
The enraged version of Cetusia can now use an enhanced version of Putrid Water.
Wyrmling Egg
Armor: 0 => 600
Resistance: 80 => 60
Wyrmling
Health: 400 => 600
Armor: 0 => 300
Dodge: 40 => 30
Resistance: 20 => 30
Move Points: 8 => 7
DRYADS
General changes
Overall pacing of the Night has been improved.
Total number of Dryads: 15 => 12
Putrefied Dryad
Health: 1300 => 1800
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a soflock when using the escape key during a dialogue in the oraculum.
- Fixed a softlock on the screen “Finishing initializing”.
- Ballistas can’t shoot invincible enemies anymore.
- Fixed the lifetime stat “Nemesis” in the character sheet.
- Fixed the undo button which could be used after using theskill “Hammer Strike”.
- Fixed a softlock when Spiky Counter killed enemies with caster effect skills (for examples: Hunter, Harpy).
- Fixed the health number display that was remaining for no reason on enemies sometimes.
- Fixed some enemies having the poison/panic feedback displayed right after leaving the fog.
- Fixed the isolation bonus in damage calculation not being displayed (but still applied).
- Undoing a move while hovering the “Jump Over” skill lead to some UI problems.
- Fixed some weird camera movements when using the perk Human Ballista to kill the Harpy.
- Fixed softlocks happening in the Oraculum with screen resolution ratio different than 16:9.
- Fixed the “Potion Throw” perk that was not increasing the range of potions (how unfortunate…).
- Fixed a softlock happening when only one crawler was left on the map without any possible path to the Magic Circle for him to choose.
- The “Fatality” skill cannot be used on invincible units anymore.
- Fixed the “Legendary assassin” perk that was not displaying the right amount of enemies to kill to trigger the perk.
Thank you for reading! We will look at your comments and feedback with great interest, especially when you will misspell Elderlicht.
Join us on Discord, Twitter & Instagram to discuss with the team and other players!