Wow! Over a month since my last update here, so figured I'd jump in to keep everyone up-to-date on what has been happening with Vault, as I push towards Early Access.
Progress on the Beta has been going very well! The last month has been focused on getting The Enlightened to a solid point, which he is very close to! Feedback on his gameplay mechanics has been great, so progress continues with him. His second Spec and first batch of Artifacts should be in within the next 2 weeks.
Theres been a bunch of patches and changes over the last month. I'll post a full report at the bottom of this post, however I'll highlight some of the noticeable/major changes.
Black Void Stone Change + Inert Keyword
This is probably the biggest change of the patch that just went live. For sometime now, there has been a questionmark next to the Black Void Stone. Rebound is such a strong ability, and it has some issues around being very strong on certain cards. Rebound has a place, and so won't be removed from the game, however it's not the way I want the Black Void Stone to work exactly.
A suggestion was made to have the Black stone instead create a Volatile copy of the card played, rather than Rebound the card. This does a few things:
- Means the card can't be played and then Purged (Volatile cards can't be Purged
- Means you can't hold onto the created card across turns. Black Stone quickly became a target for high power cards for players, meaning they could play it, hold it, play it again next turn. Rinse + repeat.
I've gone ahead and made that change, giving Black Void Stone the ability to add "Ghost" to card.
Ghost: When you play a card with Ghost, a Volatile copy will be added to your hand.
This also brought up another issue, which was around Multi-Triggers (Combo, Death Strike etc) and the effects of these also triggering Void Stones multiple times (a card triggering 3 times means the Stone triggers 3 times as well!). Whilst I'm, for the most part, very happy for this to be apart of the game - there are some issues around 0 cost cards, Stones and Multi-Triggers being a little too easy to pull off. Hidden Blade (Red Stone) + Mithril Blades + Combo 3, I'm looking at you.
Another community suggestion was around a keyword for some cards which would disabled a Void Stone once it triggers once, clearing at the end of your turn. Welcome the second new Keyword, Inert!
Inert: The first time a Void Stone triggers on a card with Inert, that card's Void Stone will become inactive until the start of your next turn.
Right now, there is only a few cards with this keyword. However, the Black Void Stone also gives the card the Inert keyword. Ghost + Inert, which stops a few silly plays that could spawn from Ghost interactions.
As always, I'll continue to monitor things as we go. I'm a huge fan of simplicity, and the one thing that Inert does do is add a layer of complexity which may not be super visible at first. However for long term success of the game, I do thing it was important to include something along those lines.
Compendium Changes
Finally got around to fixing up parts of the Compendium! As requested by the community, typing is much better now, can now select all, delete etc - all the typing functions you'd expect to see. Also fixed a number of design/QoL things inside the Compendium (multi-select keywords!).
New Battlefield Backgrounds
New Battlefield Backgrounds have been added! There is now a total of 4 in game, under "Unlocks".
Minimum Cost Tooltips
For any Hex which involves spending a currency of some sort (Essence or Souls), I've now included a "Minimum Cost" tooltip which lets you know, on the map view, what the lowest price item inside the room is.
Keyword Highlighting
All keywords on cards which have a tooltip are now highlighted in blue!
Fatigue - The Enlightened
The Fatigue system has been added to the game. You can read about it through tooltips etc, its pretty simple. Each time Future Strike triggers, an enemy will gain 1 point of Fatigue. Each time you apply Future Strike, you will do so an extra X times, equal to the characters Fatigue (because you're beating the s*$% out of them!)
Developer Gameplay Video
I've been asked a few times now if it was possible to put together a video demo'ing the gameplay of Vault for those who aren't in the Beta, or maybe undecided. I managed to put together a video showcasing some of the differences and talking about some of the decisions I made when making Vault.
Just a note: I don't think I'll be switching careers to a YouTube Star anytime soon - sorry if the video drones on a bit!
Amazing Community Guide!
Dabor, from our Discord community, has taken the time and effort to put together an extensive guide which excellent. I strongly suggest you take a read when you get some time, its an great overview of all different aspects of the game, and some tips to help plan/play more optimised. Although sections of it are aimed at the new player, I'll admit I learnt a lot from different areas, and the Class breakdown sections help a lot for those struggling with different classes. Massive thanks to Dabor for the effort, it's not a small guide, and I think it's an excellent thing moving forward for Vault.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2175704525
Thats it from me for now! I'm sure I'm missing something, but hopefully nothing major! As always, please feel free to join our excellent Discord community, or if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I'll answer back as soon as I can!
Thanks all for the support!
- Josh
Full Patch Notes from the last 5 weeks:
CHANGES
- 4th and final (for launch) battlefiled background added!
- Regal Monocle is now Uncommon
- Purifier Diadem reduces Debuffs by 1 now
- The Disheveled Salesman now has scaling prices for difficulty
- Have added a byline to the Foresight toottip:
If no cards in your Deck are eligible to be a target, your Discard will be reshuffled. The other option would be to just cancel the effect, however I did like how this was somewhat of an exception, and ment the effect was never wasted. Happy to be wrong.
- Removed Quick Strike from the Unholy Creations for now.
- Have tweaked how Zen/Chain works, you'll no longer get a chain from the 5th (and final) card you play in Zen mode. This card still benifits from the reduced cost.
- Max Handsize has been removed, and many "handsize" related items etc have been removed/retrofitted. The only references to handsize now are:
Draw Potion, Cripple, Bottle of Whiskey
- I've gone through all cards and highlighted any "keywords" (pretty much anything that has a tooltip) with a blue colour. This was a part automated/part manual process, please let me know if I've missed anything!
- Minimum Cost Tooltip; On Hex's that require spending SOMETHING, for the most part, I've added a "Minimum Cost" tooltip letting you know how much the cheapest item is, or the baseline cost for something (Class trainer etc), to avoid those times where you head to a hex and get PRICED OUT
- Added tooltips to icons above your "deck" in the Deck Manager
- The filter opening/closing animation has been sped up for those on Fast Play
- Backpack sort settings will save
- Continued tweaks to the card rendering system
- Added all class artwork to the Main Menu, on cycle
- Added rarity to items Tooltip
- Visual changes to the Dark Idol
- Have updated the fight descriptions for many missing fights
- Have moved the text for "buffs" below the icons, which should help on smaller screens and lighter icons
- Continued progress and support for larger fonts. Replacing bits and pieces where I find them
- New artwork around the place
- New card keyword: Transfer
- New Background added
- 20+ new Artifacts (Artwork still on the way!)
- Huge new system/optimisation implemented for the way card text is drawn. This should improve performance a lot (I gained about an extra 100-150 frames). This has only been applied to some card instances to start with, just until I know its working correctly, then it will be rolled out all.
- Have moved any cards which show on tooltips for creatures to the right, to stop them clashing with icons for debuffs
- You'll now be able to see your cooldown on all spells in your Spellbook, not just your active
- When you mouseover cards in your hand, they'll now appear larger
- Mousing over the Void Stone in your menu bar will now give details on the Void Stone you're working towards.
- Reduced the opacity on the black box that appears when Discarding
- Arkaos now has tooltips for his Artifacts
- Removed Green Rune from being your free bonus starting Rune
- You can now view all the player data stuff during card upgrades
- The Past Runs screen will now show a breakdown of your score for each tile.
- Bonus Void Stone from Loot the Dead will no longer give you the same stone as the one you're currently working towards
- New Deck Sort/Filtering in the Deck manager! Long overdue, and phase one of the new layout is deployed. There is still LOTS more to be done here, but you'll see the filtering/sorting has moved to a small fold out panel to the right hand side - close to the Void Stones.
- Tweaks to the Profile screen
- Clears Skies name changed
THE ENLIGHTENED
- You can now Foresight Void cards
- New cards added to the Monk's Mastery
- New cards added (Deceleration, Better Future, Chaotic Blur, Mix Up, Memento Mori)
- Zen now has a card limit (5)
- Foresight pannel is now hideable
- Monk runs will no longer show the class as "0" (PLEASE NOTE: this is changed moving forward, and won't fix any runs done previous to this patch)
- Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when using Foresight on an empty Discard
- Follow-Up abilities will now trigger if you're in Zen.
- Fixed a few intances where Future Strike was being applied outside of general card play, and Fatigue wasn't being taken into account (Flurry of Blows and Back in Time)
- Future Strike will now say "Will trigger this turn" in the tooltip if you mouse over it, and it is indeed going to trigger this turn.
- Future Strike will now also have a "(X)" showing the vulnerable value
- Echos of the Past has gained Expel
- Repeating Deflection light buff - now 3/5
- Changed sound effect for applying/triggering future strike
CARDS
- Better Future cost reduced
- Mix Up increased cost
- Repeating Deflection: changed upgrade to 5/8
- No Time: reduced to cost 1
- No Kando: upgrade reduced to 2
- Renewal: reduced to cost 1
- Smack to the Future: upgrade reduced to 1
BUGS
- Fixed an issue with Sneak Attack being able to target Evasive
- Fixed an issue with Cursed Blades damage projection
- Fixed a display issue with some keywords
- Fixed Lost Sword's clone not carrying over Void Stone
- Fixed a bug where Foresight was causing crashes with cards that couldn't be Foreseen.
- Fixed text on Self-inflicted Agony
- Fixed Unbalanced Fury setting you straight into Zen
- Fixed issue with UI font in the Deck Viewer
- Fixed issue with card numbers being a different font
- Fixed an issue with Cards not showing in the Deck Manager
- Fixed an issue with Unbalanced Fury
- Fixed an issue with Deceleration
- Fixed an issue with Mix Up
- Fixed an issue with the Post Run screen
- Fixed the issue with Arkaos' tooltips being jumbled
- Fixed an issue where cards in the deckmanager could break out of their desired location
- Fixed an issue with Run Time being incorrect on the run detail screen. This change will effect future runs. I can't fix previous runs sorry!
- Fixed daily run Leader board showing "Rounds"
- Fixed a big bug which stopped the difficuly/unlocks increasing when you won (big doh!)
- Fixed an issue which caused the text to be misaligned on the Postfight screen
- Stopped tooltips for potions show up through card rewards
- The Map will no longer show when viewing the Compendium and pressing "M"
- Fixed an issue where "card mastery" wasn't being skipped (and crashing) if you already had everything mastered
- Fixed Blessing of Energy being stupid
- Fixed some issues with Arcane Overload & Furious Assault
- Fixed a bug which was causing Immune targets to crash the game
- Theres another bug floating around which players are getting randomly. I've adding some more debugging support to help track this down
- Fixed issue with buying background
- Fixed issue wiht starting Daily Draft
- Fixed issue with Rage applying twice to Futurestrike