This week's update is already available (we released on Thursday) and delivers a number of minor issues, including 3 new token mechanics, changes in loot and changes in map.
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游戏的简体中文版本尚未完全翻译。 很抱歉给您带来不便。
Release notes are available on the game's forum, as well as below –––>
CONCEPT
For this week, we split our dev team into three smaller groups (with some overlap). One helped prepare the upcoming Season Update on Gremlins, Inc.; another dived into the visual concepts on Spire of Sorcery that take a few weeks to complete (we're updating the whole user interface, and this needs a complex approach where everything is aligned; what you see right now in the game is functional but not beautiful); and the rest of us picked up on the Spire of Sorcery's tasks that were overdue from the earlier builds.
As a result, we've made good progress with preparing the UI updates that you will see shipped later, in versions 178-180. What we ship in this week's build is mostly smaller issues that harmonise different parts of the game.
CHANGED – EQUIPMENT
Two changes:
- Earlier, equipment produced results (issued tokens) at the start of the player's turn in the encounter. This didn't work that well when player party got attacked – you would get damage first, in the opponent's turn, and only then your defensive equipment would kick in. We fixed that, and equipment now issues tokens at the start of the encounter, rather than player's turn.
- Equipped items now have a chance to be destroyed. When a character has an item equipped on them during the encounter, each Damage token accumulated by the character at the end of the encounter increases the chance that this item will be destroyed.
CHANGED – DISEASES: DIARRHOEA
As a general rule, Injuries cannot be issued during the encounter while diseases can be issued whenever character's Immune system gets overwhelmed by Infection tokens. Because of this, Injuries can affect pretty much anything, but diseases cannot affect character stats used in the encounter (because otherwise we'll need to recalculate on the fly, which is confusing). One group of diseases – diarrhoea – used to affect stats in its severe form. We changed that, and it now affects only the Digestive system of the character, which is not used during encounters.
FIXED – DISEASE PROGRESSION
Diseases progress from mild to moderate and to severe. Earlier, we had a bug where when a mild disease would be added to the character who already had the same disease in its severe state, the disease would reset to its mild form. This is no longer the case.
CHANGED – STACKED PARALYSIS
Originally, we had the idea that after each encounter where characters experienced Paralysis, a dice roll would determine if they receive an extra injury as a result. We now harmonise this by changing the rule as follows: (a) the dice roll happens every time a character experiences Paralysis; this of this as having a chance to get complications every time you're sick with flu – so that a character can get the extra problems right in the middle of the encounter (b) the result is not an injury, but a disease from the group "Shivers" (it rolls the dice for getting a Paralysis token at the start of every turn, the more advanced the disease – the higher the chance).
CHANGED – PROLOGUE, MAP SIZE
In version 176, we transitioned to the direction map 100x25 for this chapter. After playing for a while, and observing others play and discuss their experience in the community, we decided to change the map to 75x25.
CHANGED – TOXICITY LEVELS HARMONISED
We reviewed the toxicity levels of every alchemic substance, and made some changes that make the items easier to grasp intuitively. For example, "bombs" such as "Oorl's pleasure" and "Fetid hisser" all have toxicity of 6; "medicine" such as "Bloodboiler" and "Dead man's tears" all have toxicity of 3; and special items that originate from toxic environments/look toxic, such as "Can of worms" and "Giggler skull", have toxicity of 5. Toxicity remains a factor in considering what to concoct – it just got a bit easier to navigate.
CHANGED – FROST TOKENS, EFFECTS
Since a few weeks ago, 3 or more Frost issue 1 Paralysis. We wanted to up the ante for cases where characters or creatures receive even more Frost – for example, when they are stuck under the Hail for a long time. Now, 6 Frost issue 1 Damage (in addition to "Frost causes Paralysis" effect).
CHANGED – ACID TOKENS, EFFECTS
Acid was one of the few tokens in the game that didn't have its own threat from accumulating too much of it. Several versions ago, it used to convert into Damage (3 Acid -> 1 Damage), but that went away once we added Fire+Acid and Damage+Acid combinations. So in situations where your characters are immune to Fire and face a party of Spitters... you could accumulate any number of Acid without any consequences. This changes with the current build:
- Now, 9 Acid -> 3 Poison. And Poison is not a joke, as it self-propagates with time.
- Now, after the encounter, each token of Acid on the character increases the chance of getting an injury from the group "Burns".
NEW INJURY – "BURNS"
A new group of injuries is now in the game, "Burns". Progression:
- Mild burn: 50% chance to get 1 Damage for each token of Fire received
- Moderate burn: get 1 Damage for each token of Fire received
- Severe burn: get 2 Damage for each token of Fire received
NEW – OPPONENTS ARE DRAFTED RANDOMLY IN 3+ PARTIES
If opposing party had creatures ABCDE, we used to draft ABC first, and then DE. Now we draft randomly, so you can get ADB or ECA or any other combination at the start of the encounter.
NEW – WHEN RETREATING, LOOT IS LEFT WITH THE OPPOSING PARTY
Earlier, when player party retreated, the loot accumulated in the encounter was lost. Now it remains with the opposing party. We still don't display such loot when you look up the party in the travel mode, though – this will come with one of the later updates.
NEW – CREATURES ARE SPAWNED TO NEARBY HEXES WHEN TARGET HEX IS OCCUPIED
Every creature party has a limit of how many creatures it may have, at most (e.g. 6). When a spawning point (such as Barrow) already has a creature party sitting on top of it, and this party is at the limit, we used not to spawn any more creatures since there wasn't anywhere to spawn them to. Now, spawning goes ahead – just to a nearby hex.
NEW – CHANCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS IN EVENTS
Earlier, we designed events with certain probabilities in mind – such as, "Dead body has a 50% chance to have EE Smell of death" – and these probabilities rolled the dice when the event was launched. So you could re-enter the same event and get different environmental effects there. We finally transition to a system where the roll happens when the map is generated, and if a specific corpse generated with EE Smell of death, then it will always be like this, whenever you enter this particular event.
Accordingly, these events changed:
- Dead body now has a 50% chance for EE Smell of death (was: 100%)
- Barrow now has a 50% chance for EE Protective barrier (was: 100%)
- Chest now has 50% chance of EE Protective barrier and on top of it, 50% chance of EE Enchanted protection.
- Giggler haunt now has 30% chance for EE Poisonous environment, 20% for EE Smell of death and 50% for EE Contagious environment
NEW, FIXED & GENERAL UPDATE – CHARACTER SELECTION PRIOR TO ENCOUNTER
When you select characters who will engage in the specific encounter, we have 2 small quality of life improvements:
- double click on the character now sends that character to the first available slot
- double click on the slot with a character assigned, now removes that character
- tooltips for all environment effects shown in this screen now display properly
But in general, we plan to remove this screen in one of the next updates, because while prototyping the new user interface, we found a way of solving every action that this screen does, through other screens. And when we can get rid of an unnecessary part of the UI, we are always happy.
SFX
A few more SFX arrived to the game:
- Gain injury
- Gain stress
- "Victory" for when player party wins an encounter
WHAT'S NEXT?
Next week we still remain divided into the same three groups, however with more focus towards Spire of Sorcery, and we hope to ship at least one new feature that we prepared during the current week (personally, I hope this will be spell combos).