Hello Heroes!
We are doing a new Open Beta for a few weeks, and this time we are focusing our efforts on the rework of Lakeburg, the Shop and several other changes you will see down below. This update will serve as a preparation to the Major Update (Bosses) coming in June.
If you are intrigued about the future Major Updates of The Last Spell, our new roadmap is available here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3222896627771752948
Summary:
- Lakeburg rework
- Dryads in Glenwald
- Obtaining equipment
- Shop rework
- Production building
- Item generation
- Production reward reroll
- Mist censers & Thin mist rework
- Construction menu overhaul
- Others
- Bug fixes
LAKEBURG REWORK
The objective of this rework was to, among other things, have an actual lake in Lakeburg. The initial map was designed as the only map of the game, so it had to be a jack-of-all-trades. Since we now have more maps, we decided to change things up and give Lakeburg a more pronounced topography.
We kept the plains of Lakeburg for two of the sides, but tried to diversify the terrain on the top side of the map. Northwest, the now unused docks of Lakeburg create more narrow passages, akin to Gildenberg. Northeast, a bridge crosses a small river : a great chokepoint to repel the masses. The layout of the city has also changed. Sturdy walls protect the southeast, and the northern part of the city is protected by the lake - or at least it is against most enemies.
Additional changes:
- Winged enemies can now appear in the first two nights of Lakeburg.
- A few Bulky enemies can now appear early on in Lakeburg.
- The dryad boss has been moved from Lakeburg to Glenwald and replaced by a temporary enemy wave. When the update comes out of beta, a new bossfight will replace it.
DRYADS IN GLENWALD
You can now fight a revamped version of the Dryads on the last night of Glenwald. Beware: it is stronger than before! The fight may be a little longer too...
OBTAINING EQUIPMENT
Even though random drops are a big part of roguelites, it can sometimes be frustrating to never get the weapon or piece of equipment you are looking for. With a lot of the following changes, we want to make it a bit easier for players to obtain what they want, without removing the random aspect that can make every run feel different from the previous one.
Players who focus a lot on optimizing their gold and item output may have more resources than before at the end of a run (especially when playing without apocalypse mode on), but these changes should allow for more “loose” and diverse playstyles to work.
SHOP REWORK
Up until now, shop and production buildings were often seen as opposite strategies : you either focused on one or the other. The following changes aim to make it possible to use the shop even if you focus on production, while still making it possible to focus solely on the shop.
- Removed the Level upgrades from the shop. Instead, the level of offered items in the shop now increases automatically over the course of the run.
- The number of offered items in the shop will now increase as the player unlocks new equipment over the course of the campaign. This will make it less frustrating to unlock weapons you dislike, as they do not dilute the item pool as much as before.
- You can now sort and/or filter the contents of the shop to your liking, allowing you to easily navigate the increased contents of the shop.
- Weapons and armor are slightly cheaper than before, especially at lower levels.
PRODUCTION BUILDING
Before, the common strategy when using production buildings was to build one, max it out, and then repeat the process for a second one.
We reworked production buildings in order to make it easier to have more functioning production buildings at once. On the other side, we made it a bit harder to reach high levels of production. It will now be more viable to have multiple production buildings, and these buildings will prove useful with less upgrades than before.
Shared upgrades
Item level upgrades are now shared between production buildings, meaning you only have to do each upgrade once per run, and all your production buildings (Armor Maker, Blacksmith, Bowyer and Magic Shop) profit off of it. Obviously, they’re now way more expensive than before.
- Item Level +: All production buildings give level 1 and 2 items, costs 70
- Item Level ++: All production buildings give level 2 and 3 items, costs 120
- Item Level +++: All production buildings give level 3 and 4 items, costs 280
- Item Level ++++: All production buildings give level 4 and 5 items, costs 520
As a side note, this also means that production buildings will keep their level even if they are destroyed during the night and have to be rebuilt.
Other upgrades
To make production buildings more rewarding faster, we got rid of “half gauges”: everything gives 10 units of production, or a multiple of it.
Also, keep in mind that these upgrades are still individual, they are NOT shared between buildings.
We changed the base passive production rate of production buildings, as well as passive production upgrades:
- Base: 10 passive production (1 item per day)
- Upgrade 1: +10 passive production, costs 100
- Upgrade 2: +10 passive production, costs 125
The worker action of production buildings has been changed, as well as worker upgrades:
- Base action : Spend 2 workers to gain 10 production units (Max 1 use per day)
- Upgrade 1 : Spend 1 worker to gain 10 production units, costs 50
- Upgrade 2 : Max uses per day from 1 to 2, costs 75
- Upgrade 3 : Max uses per day from 2 to 3, costs 75
Misc
Armor maker, Blacksmith, Bowyer and Magic Shop prices from 70 to 60 gold.
Non-upgraded production buildings give lower level items (max item level you can obtain remains unchanged, as there is an additional item level upgrade).
ITEM GENERATION
- Changed the way item drops are rolled. Some meta upgrades should not affect item drop chances as much as before (for example, players with respectively 2 and 7 different short swords unlocked will have the same chances of dropping a short sword, which was not the case before).
- Night rewards now scale for the entirety of the run (stopped scaling after night 4 until now)
PRODUCTION REWARD REROLL
- Added a feature to reroll the offered items for a single production reward, a limited amount of times a day. The feature can be unlocked in the Oraculum to get 1 reroll per day, and further unlocks can increase the number of rerolls to 3 per day.
MIST CENSERS & THIN MIST REWORK
- Changed the way thin mist works: enemies under the effect of thin mist are untargetable, but can still be hit and damaged by AoE attacks, propagations, poison, etc…
- Mist Censers (added by Apocalypse 3) are now destroyed at the end of every night, and new ones respawn at the start of every day in different locations.
- Mist Censers now have scaling health pools (from 150 to 600 HP over the course of a run). They are now easier to kill at all stages of the game, but especially early on.
- The number of Mist Censers now increases over the course of a run.
CONSTRUCTION MENU OVERHAUL
- You can now easily switch between the different sections of the construction menu.
- Repairing now has a dedicated section in the construction menu.
- New repairing options to make repairing multiple buildings faster: Repair identical buildings, Repair structures, Repair defenses, Repair barricades and Repair walls.
OTHERS
Glenwald
- Glenwald now has better night rewards (more gold and materials, slightly stronger items).
Gildenberg
- The mist is now a bit further away from the city.
- Enemies on night 5 are now less spread out.
- Slightly reduced the number of enemies on nights 4, 5 and 6.
Level up
- Available stat choices after rerolls from 5/3/1 to 5/3/2 (you will keep getting 2 choices if you keep rerolling after that).
Optimization
- We’ve updated our game engine during this month and you should expect some performance increase thanks to that. But we still have a lot to do in optimization before the end of the early access.
BUG FIXES
- Fix of an exploit enabling the player to have infinite gold thanks to the shop.
- Fix a softlock caused by the BOOM! perk when killing an ally or when killing a Boomer.
- Fix enemies stuck in the fog in Glenwald causing some nights to never end.
- Heroes generated in the inn had too many experience points (the experience gain attribute was taken into account).
Thank you for reading, and see you on Discord!