This week's update is the 5th update that we deployed in the last month, and we're very happy to be able to move at such a speed. Our overall plan is to finish Prologue and Chapter One, then release a public demo and transition into the general Early Access some time in late spring.
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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 here, as well as below –––>
SPELLBOOK HAS SECTIONS NOW!
Requested and delivered: Spellbook now has sections, which make it easier to navigate. The sections are not separate pages but just the spots in the book, to allow you to scroll up and down as you wish, in order to compare several spells from different groups at once (coming in future updates: filtering Spellbook by specific elements).
MOVING ELEMENTS BETWEEN FORMULAS DOESN'T COST ACTION POINTS
In previous versions, moving element from one spell formula to another was considered an action. This now does not count towards character's actions (see example below).
SUPPLIES FROM THE SPIRE
When you start the chapter, a chest with supplies from the Spire is now dropped within a few hexes from your party. It contains a randomised set of useful items that will help the party survive the first few encounters. The chest has no environment effects to protect it, and requires only 1 Dispel token to access it. In the future, the design of this chest with supplies will change (you can already read the lore in the discovery card, it mentions the looks and the back story). We think there could be more of such supplies dropped once in a while during the chapter, with one of the upcoming updates.
RESOURCES IN THE PARTY'S INVENTORY AT START
When you start the chapter, your party will now have some resources in its inventory already (9-12 items randomised between Cheerblossom, Bloodfroth and Stormium). These are meant to allow new players to experiment with concocting, and for experienced players to use them for basic restorative potions.
WHEN PARTY RETREATS, IT RESTORES FULL MOVE POINTS
When you retreat, every party member gets 5 more days of stress and you give up any loot that has been accumulated in the encounter so far. But now you also restore full move points, and can get as far away as possible from the unwanted opponent! This change is meant to give retreating parties some head start from the pursuit.
CREATURE PARTIES GOT "ALERT" AND ASSOCIATED BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
Previously, if you ran into a creature party, it would entice you and immediately try to pursue you. So coming head to head with aggressive parties in the fog of war wasn't pleasant. Now things work differently:
- when creatures spot player party, they become "alert" in the alert state, they spend the day investigating the surroundings – they will move 1 hex towards intruder
- if the intruder is spotted, creatures transition to "pursuit" and will attack in the next day
- if the intruder is not spotted, creatures will go back to their idle behaviour
This small change makes a lot of difference for exploration of the world.
The illustration below shows the creature reacting to player party, getting alert, investigating by moving one hex towards the intruder and only then becoming aggressive.
'SUMMON OFFSPRING" IS NO LONGER AN ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT
"Summon children" used to generate creatures when their spawning point was attacked. We now transitioned this effect to post-encounter: if you destroy spawning point, it will issue an alert for every creature of the type spawned there, within 15 hexes. The parties that receive such call, will travel to its source to investigate – already in alert state, ready to attack player.
DESIGN CHANGES
There's a bunch of things that we adjusted here and there, we don't think it makes sense to run here a long list, but here's the major changes:
- Spitters got updated move range and vision range, and can now (slowly but surely) crawl out of ruins;
- Loot has been re-balanced between pretty much every event in the game, to make distribution more consistent – and thus make decisions about where to go and what to do more predictable;
- Spitters, Shadows, Gigglers had their spawning probabilities updated, so you're bound to meet new mixes;
- Spitters, Shadows, Gigglers had their attack probabilities updated, you will see more consistency between type of creature/ attack
- "Smell of death" dealt 1 Fear to every target, now it deals 1 Fear to random target
- Flash 2 and Flash 3 spells in the Spellbooks had their targets and effects updated
CREATURE PARTY NOW HAVE NUMERIC COUNTERS
Earlier, we used a dot-based system to indicate how many creatures are in the party. Now we (finally!) transitioned to showing the actual number right on the map, instead of all these dots (see below: it's 3 Shadows, not *** Shadows).
ABANDONED PALACE GETS PROPER VISUALS
The sketch of Abandoned palace from version 174 is now replaced with the proper visual (next stop for our concept artist: new alchemic items, then creatures). As a reminder, you can 1) burn 2) destroy 3) restore the palace. In terms of inspiration, we were looking at the recent archaeological finds that deal with how much color was used in the ancient times; in short: a lot of rich colours were used!
RELATIVE SIZES OF CREATURES IN ENCOUNTERS GOT REBALANCED
We didn't have the time to re-balance them for version 174, but this is done now in version 175.
NEW DISCOVERY CARDS
Hex effects, environmental effects now have their own discovery cards. Overall, we'll keep expanding the information available via Discovery with every update.
UPDATED POTION VISUALS
The visuals of Dark pleasure, Dead man's tears and Throatburner have been updated (see below: ingredients and outcome).
QUEST NOTIFICATIONS
Quest UI is still far from being perfect, we'll get to this in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we made progress with how new quests are introduced. Before: a quest window would fully open right in your face. Now: there's a "New quest" notification window which can be clicked away with "Ok" or used to open the quest with "Access the quest" button.
QUEST ORIGINATOR IS NOW SHOWN IN THE QUEST WINDOW
We had a bit of a disconnect where the portrait of the entity issuing a quest for you wasn't really in the quest window. We addressed this by integrating the portrait into the actual window.
SOUND EFFECTS
- New SFX for when player's turn starts in the travel mode
- New SFX for when player's turn ends in the travel mode
- New SFX for gaining Blindness token
- New SFX for gaining Flash token
- New SFX for losing Flash token
- New SFX for when Flash tokens activate and convert into a Blindness token
- New SFX for gaining Fatigue token
- New SFX for when Infection tokens activate and issue a new disease
- Several SFX received their new versions.
FIXES
A number of tooltips was edited to better reflect the actual mechanics.
A bug where multiple copies of the same potion could be concocted is fixed.
Auto-completion of necromancer's quest has been fixed.
Lots of other small issues were created and fixed in the course of this week =).
NEXT UPDATE
The next update is set for January 21, Thursday.
But if things turn out as they did this week and the last week, then it will be January 22, Friday.
God knows we try to wrap all the new content and features by Wednesday night, and have an early testing run on Thursday, ерут everyone just keeps bringing new things to be integrated – and so we slip towards Friday. If this continues to happen, we'll just have to live with weekly updates happening on Fridays =).