Hello Wizards!
Today is the launch of the Enshrinement 2 patch.
With enshrinement, the balance of the game shifted tremendously. Mostly it was much better, but there was still lots of polish I wanted to do to get the game into a nice state before I did any more new systems or big content updates.
This patch is a bit smaller than the previous two, focusing on balance and content. It contains 14 new shrines, and 3 new passives skills. It also contains some changes core gameplay mechanics. Lastly, and perhaps most notably, it contains extensive balance tweaks to player spells and skills.
Full notes follow.
Gameplay changes:
Lairs renamed to gates, and have a new sprite which is much easier to distinguish from walls
Gates have 2x as much hp as lairs had, to make it a bit harder to destroy them without effort via global spells and triggers.
Resistances over 100% no longer cause healing upon taking damage, they just resist it entirely
Damage over a unit's remaining HP no longer counts as being dealt for the purposes of skills and buffs. So if you devour mind a 4 hp goblin with Cracklevoid active, you'll only splash out 4 damage to nearby enemies, and shrines that trigger per damage dealt are now a bit harder to activate.
Shrine rarity is no longer constant, common uncommon and rare shrines now spawn with a 5:4:3 ratio. The rarity of a shrine is generally based on its complexity, so you'll see more swords and shell shrines and fewer toxic agony and butterfly wing shrines.
Made tileset selection based on terrain, not on spawns. Some tilesets now only spawn on levels without too many walls, or on levels with enough chasms. The focus is on making the game more aesthetically pleasing overall.
Removed some tilesets that didn't usually look good (mostly the bright red ones)
Added some new levelgen mutators- wizards may now encounter circular levels, diamond levels, and sectioned levels.
14 new shrines:
Stormcharge - IL - deals 9 lightning or ice damage to a random enemy unit for each 15 damage dealt
Disintegration - ALD - deals 1 arcane or physical to all enemy units for each 30 damage dealt
Alchemist - all - gain 1 charge on item use
Warped - T - Deal 11 arcane damage around the caster before and after spell resolves
Troubler - T - On cast, summon 1 troubler per spell level for 7 turns near cast location
Sphere- B - +2 max charges, +4 range, +9 minion health
Fireclaw - NR - Redeal minion physical damage as fire damage
Iceclaw - NR - Redeal minion physical damage as ice damage
Faewitch - AD - On killing a unit, if that unit had a debuff, summon a faewitch for 7 turns
Bomber - AF - On kill, summon a fire or void bomber
Sorcery Shield - S - When this spell deals damage, gain 100% resistance to that damage type for 3 turns
Frostfae - AI - Summon a frost faery for each 33 damage dealt
Essense - DAL - On kill, temporary summons gain 1 extra turn of duration
Chaos Conductance - FLO - Whenever this spell deals damage to an ally, redeal that damage in a 2 tile burst around that ally.
3 New passive skills:
Moonspeaker- holy allies amplify arcane damage they witness as holy damage
Voidthorns- allies deal arcane damage to attackers
Necrostatics- gain +lightning damage per undead minion
Spell Balance:
Annihilate
range 4->5
can no longer target empty tiles
Flamegate
fixed bug where you could cast fan of flames and move one tile and keep flamegate
Petrify
range 5->8
now has 3 SP glassify upgrade, which glassifies instead of petrifies the target
Wolf
charges 9->12
health 9->11
pounce cost 5->4
pounce range 4->3
Orbs
Now pause instead of explode if they get blocked
Now use minion damage instead of damage stat (so they can be improved by arch conjurer and various shrines)
No longer explode on expiration (this was theoretically cool but made them very hard to aim, often resulting in self death, and eventually, in a widespread lack of interest in orbs)
Glass Orb
Glassilution cost 2->1
Orb Control
charges 5->11
Lightning Halo
duration 4->9
damage 10->15
Mystic Vision
Now has a 5 SP upgrade that applies it to your minions as well
Chain Lightning
level 4->2
damage 16->8
Touch of Death
Touch of Vampirism spawns now properly get minion bonuses
Seal Fate
now uses delay instead of duration (so arch enchanter no longer makes it worse)
Soul Swap
level 3->2
charges 6->9
charges upgrade 2 charges for 4 SP -> 9 charges for 2 SP
Magic Missile
charges 28->20
can no longer target empty tiles
Death Shock
can no longer target empty tiles
Melt
can no longer target empty tiles
Word Spells: These are now all level 7 spells. They have been adjusted to attempt to give each one an effect worthy of spending 7 SP for 1 charge.
Word of Undeath
Completely reworked. Now doubles the current and max HP of all undead units, while halving the current and max hp of all other units, except the caster.
Word of Chaos
damage 20->45
duration 5->6
level 6->7
damage upgrade 10 -> 20 damage
Word of Beauty
Heal 50HP -> 100% HP
damage upgrade 10 for 2 SP -> 17 for 1 SP
level 6->7
Word of Madness
Now also a chaos spell
Arc Lightning
charges 6->5
level 3->4
damage 17->6
max arc upgrade cost 3 -> 4
Poison Sting
Added Acidity upgrade- removes all poison resist from damaged targets.
Blue Lion
charges 1->6
the lion itself is now also holy (was just nature/arcane)
Choir of Angels
fixed tooltip to accurately list HP (10, not 22)
fixed tooltip to accurately describe who gets healed
charges 3->5
Gold Drake
now works with range bonuses
Summon Archon
charges 2->4
range 4->5
level 6->4
Aether Swap
now swaps even if the target dies before the spell resolves
Conductance
charges 6->12
duration 8->10
Plague of Filth
fixed tooltip to accurately list fly damage (1, not 6)
Fiery Tormentor
charges 4->5
level 6->5
Knightly Oath
each knights spell now gets bonus damage from all applicable minion damage bonuses
Toxic Spore
range 5->8
Ignite Poison
base poison stacks/fire damage ratio 2->1
now shows impacted tiles properly pre-cast
Venom Beast
fixed bug where it always got the venom skin upgrade
Spider Queen
spawned spiders now get all applicable minion bonuses
Freeze
charges 10->20
Deathchill
Reworked. Is now an enchantment which deals dark damage to the target each turn, and does an enemy only ice explosion if the target dies while the enchantment is active.
Restless Dead
Is now an enchantment instead of an upgrade, now applies only to living enemies, no longer cares about finishing damage type
Ice Weave
removed
Upgrade balance:
Translocation Master
charges 2->7
range 3->4
Orb Lord
damage 4->5 (and now effects ball lightning and searing orb damage directly, rather indirectly through a ratio)
Pyrophilia
Reworked- now heals allies for 50% of all the fire damage they witness enemies take
Minion Regeneration
Now also a Holy upgrade
Natural Vigor
Now also grants ice and lightning resistance
White Flame
level 5->4
Hypocrisy
Reworked. Is now 'when you cast a dark/hol spell, if your next spell is the other element and lower level, its charge is refunded."
Scalespinner
No longer grants resistances to the wizard
Other small fixes worth noting:
Fixed a bug that was preventing some achievements from being set.
Achievement and stat actions are now logged in stats_log.txt. If you notice something funny with achievements, please post this file with your bug report (on the discord ideally).
Clouds now list duration remaining in their tooltips
The turn order of units besides the player is now randomized each turn (previously it was based on the order units came into play, which was an annoying thing to encourage the player to memorize)
Damage conversions now redeal damage to the unit they damaged, and only redeal damage if the unit they damaged is still alive.
Fixed bag of bugs making its flies after deathshock/chain lightning rather than during
Decreased teleport frequency for many teleporting enemies
Mind Devourers are no longer poison immune
Mushbooms are now vulnerable to Ice (-50 ice resist)
Blood creatures now have 75 instead of 100 dark resist
Removed glass reflection (it was a mechanic that mostly resulted in players one-shotting themselves if they faild to read the tooltip, with easy workarounds if they did- and glass monsters do enough other cool stuff anyway)
Fixed Frostfire Wizard hydras being permanent summons instead of 18 turns
Escape now saves keybinds rather than reverting them
Chimera Familiar can no longer channel multiple spells simultaneously
Fixed charge tooltips not showing bonuses to max charges
Fixed a bug that deleted options files every time a patch was launched. This fix will not kick in until next patch, so you will have to redo options and keybinds for this patch- but not for the next one!
Fixed bug where putting files in the savegame directory would crash the game
Fixed various bugs that caused certain conjuration spells to not get shrine bonuses (if you find more report them!)
Fixed many ambiguous or incorrect tooltips, far too many to list here. Megathanks to the Rift Wizard discord community for helping find these!
Fixed Suspend Mortality using current rather than inherint minion duration for respawns
Fixed flyin maturing/respawning units (vampires) not being able to respawn over chasms
Enjoy, and let me know what you think of the patch and the state of the game on the discord or the steam forums.
-Dylan