Happy Tuesday!
Before we jump into the patch notes, a quick note regarding a change that's occurred since last week: The NPC in the Traveller's Respite meant for updating Legacy save files for the new systems is no longer available except in very specific, freak circumstances. Instead, you'll be asked to update your save file upon loading a Legacy save file. In our internal tests, players didn't seem to realize what the point was, and would just not interact with the NPC. Anywho, on to the update patch notes! This one's a doozy, so we're going over these in sections today, as opposed to individualized bullet points.
COMBAT OVERHAUL
The damage formulas throughout the entirety of the game have been reworked from the ground up. This should produce a much more consistent gameplay experience for players. With this change, every single enemy in the game (normal, rare, boss, and even those not yet released) have been rebalanced entirely. Additionally, this overhaul gives me much more granular control over the balance of the game, so any future balance issues can be dealt with in a much more efficient manner. In addition to this, the differential between enemy damage and player damage should be reduced significantly. Instead, the player now has a much larger health pool (MUCH larger).
There are other minor changes throughout the systems as well, such as bug fixes, Guard granting MP, Meditate's MP bonus being significantly upped, and plenty of other small changes that I won't bother to list here. We've already got a few changes charted out for next weeks patch as well that weren't quite ready for this patch.
STAT OVERHAUL
The stats in the game have been reworked as an accessory to the above. One was not possible without the other. Players now grow at a much (much) faster rate than they did previously. In addition to the points that you assign, players will now gain a set amount per level that is roughly 4x what it was before. Enemy scaling is much less aggressive, and due to the new stat differential between the player and enemy, every additional point in a stat has more value. This will come into play more with gear as you get deeper into this new patch. Long story short, it should feel significantly better and allow for better expression of the player power fantasy. Additionally, the infamous Scroll of Power bug has been resolved thanks to the rework.
There are, like with the combat overhaul, lots of other changes that have occurred as well. Hit rates should be near 100% consistent, and crit rate now requires more Luck in order to raise. Escape rate is much more aggressively raised, and Agility is more heavily weighted in turn-order. Companion stats were reworked in an effort to make them more valuable (since they had to be rebalanced anyway under this new system, why not make them better?), and the companions should now fit their niches much better (Tank/Healer/DPS... DPT? I don't know).
EQUIPMENT OVERHAUL
Equipment has been overhauled from the ground up. The most important difference is that gear will no longer scale with you as a player. If you got something cool in the Lost Caverns, leveled up a bunch, and then thought you were going to roll on some dudes in the next zone? You may find that you've outpaced your gear. Without getting into the technical details too much, here's how gear works now:
- Each piece of gear has base stats
- Gear still has various levels of quality (White, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange)
- When acquired, a piece of gear gets a number of points put into it based on the players current level (+1 point at Level 1, + 10 at Level 10, + 50 at Level 50)
- In addition, extra points are put into the gear based on its quality (0% extra at White, 50% at Orange)
- Gear will drop at roughly your level, give or take
The end result is that gear now feels significantly more exciting, impactful, and has meaning. Ephemeral Tale should now feel what it is: a loot game. So if you're someone that loves to min-max, you now have a lot of potential to do so. Between the various rarities, level of the gear, and bonus points put into the gear, there should be plenty of loot to hunt for. Speaking of loot to hunt, thanks to community feedback, there is now more non-unique loot in the game that can drop from a world loot pool. These can have slightly higher stats than their unique counterparts, so if you need a bit of a push in a particular stat you can use these to round things out. More loot, better loot, cooler loot.
VENDOR REWORK PT.2
This one I kept a secret, as I wanted to ensure I had at least one surprise for you guys! Repair kits are, at community request, finally in the game. With the reworks to the above systems, it felt like the right time to introduce this mechanic. You'll be able to buy these from a special (hidden) unlock-able vendor. In addition, they'll drop from Mimics, chests, rarely from the world-pool, and one other source: when a piece of equipment breaks on you, it will give you a repair kit. Now your worthless gear can have worth!
These repair kits will repair durability on each equipped piece of gear. There's no need to worry about having enough for all your items. These repair kits will come in three sizes: Small Repair Kit, Medium Repair Kit, and Large Repair Kit. They'll repair 20, 50, and 100 durability respectively. Oh... and you can repair items past their starting durability, all the way up to 200 (Note: This is currently bugged and can be pushed past 200, but it's a bug that doesn't hurt the game, so I'll fix it later!). Rumor has it that there may even be an even greater repair kit coming, but we can neither confirm nor deny these baseless rumors. Don't trust everything you hear.
Oh, and you can sell old, poopoo tier gear to the new vendor in exchange for Power.
A SCRUMPTIOUS TREAT
A new secret has made its entrance. Without giving too much away, let's just say there are (Chris Houlihan inspired) rooms filled with chests for you to get excited over. Should you find your way into one of these rooms, however, be careful... There's deception beneath some of these lids. I'll leave the finding of how things work to you guys, but I hope you enjoy this secret! :)
Alright! That covers the first major patch of Ephemeral Tale! This is only the first of many to come. I currently expect the next major patch to hit in about a month from now. I suggest you learn how to swim. No worries, however, as we'll continue to have weekly bug fixes and balance changes as necessary until then! To finish off our Weekly Pupdate here (the company is called Dawdling Dog, you didn't expect a pun?), I'd like to ask that if you have any feedback (positive or negative!) to feel free to leave it in the discussion board, pop us an email ([email protected]), or reach out on Twitter (@DawdlingDogltd). In the future, we'll be having a group discussion as a community about what you guys want from the end-game content experience, but if you have ideas for that before then, let us know! I'm so excited for you guys to try this patch, and I hope that you guys enjoy the new gameplay experience!
Have fun,
--Ryan