Hero Mastery, end-game Skull dump mechanism, Bosses randomization, Elite’s rework, Covenants rework, new UI and more!
This update serves as a foundation for the future on the project. It was a hard road but here we are. Thank you very much for your patience and let's see what's inside:
New Features
- Hero Mastery Hero Mastery is a system which allows Heroes to accumulate experience between the sessions to unlock new cards/talents/elites etc. It's a solid foundation on the future Heroes we are already preparing for you.
- End-game skull dump mechanism Mechanism which makes the skulls valuable even when all the progression is completed. You will naturally find it out when the time comes.
- Boss randomization ACTs I and II now have one additional end-boss variation, which will require you to adjust your build and tactic for it. You can see what boss is waiting for you on the adventure map.
- Friendly Elite’s rework Your Elites are now more valuable than before. When you upgrade them - they not only receive raw stats gain, but also additional effects. The first 2 upgrades (up to level 3) will provide your Elites with additional capabilities, all following one increase in stats. On upgrade 3 Elites receive a massive stats boost. We also added a new UI for your squad which allows you to check your Elites hit points, cooldowns etc. at any time, even between the battles. One more change: you can not swap your Elites anymore - once you choose one it will follow you to the end of the run.
- New rare location - Elite Shop It's a rare location which will satisfy gold stacking build lovers. All the entities found in these Shops are always Legendary.
- Covenant Trees Rework From the previous tests it was obvious that the system needed some changes. Now it's much easier to obtain most of the perks, a lot of them are now active even if a Covenant is not chosen. Some perks now have ranks, which makes your choices much more fluent. Many perks were also reworked to match new power levels and new mechanics. The UI was also updated.
- Boss and Elite Health Bars Bosses and Elites now have fancy additional Heath Bars, to emphasise the fight is dangerous and to make it easier to track their buffs and health.
- Adventure map Adventure map now looks less like a strict net, we changed some pathing and variations. For example the Adventure map now can have empty spaces, which leads to unusual connections. We were also experimenting with the parallax and camera on the Adventure map. You can now zoom in/out and move the camera around with the right mouse button if you want.
- Talent distribution rework All the talents now also have rarities same as all other content in the game (Common, Rare, Legendary). Your chances to find a rarer talent now depends on the level itself. Additionally maximum level increased to level 10, so if you wish to do EXP build, you have that option now.
- Characters' mini dialogues bubbles Some characters now interract with the player via saying a few phrases.
New Content
Added 11 new trinkets:
- Tombstone
- Treasure Map
- Baobal’s Glove
- Crossed List
- Smoke Grenade
- Chevrons
- Enclave Anvil
- MRE
- Black Leather Cap
- Mana Box
- Winged Boots
Added 6 new talents:
- Battle Trance
- Booming Voice
- Pathfinder
- Ultimatum
- Business Shark
- Black Blooded
Added 4 new enemies:
- Boss ACT I: Rapier Master Pierce
- Boss ACT II: Necromancer.
- Elite enemy: The Eye
- Normal enemy: Zombie
Added 7 new cards:
- Repentance
- Ice Orb
- Explosives!
- Blood Orb
- X2-ER
- Lore Book
- Unload
Added 3 new events:
- X2-ER
- Vending Machine
- Crimson Ground
General Changes
- Control tweaks (we changed how users point and click, confirm targets and logic a bit, so it's less clunky, and also added secondary hover indicators like mouse cursor and extra glow level). As well added new targeting animation for cards and units.
- Changed animation for how cards are played, divided by the source that it came from (deck or was created in battle), cards also now fly with a trail to a corresponding deck.
- Added deck shuffle animation.
- All cards received new look, which better represents the rarity
- All talent and trinket cards received new look, which better represents the rarity
- Added animation for the cards which are automatically played from hand to make it comprehensible.
- Added small delay when most windows pop-up so user can't accidentally choose something
- Changed First time user experience to properly work with the new Hero Mastery feature
- Added mastery experience bar on victory defeat screen
- Added Abandon confirmation window
- Added Animated Text for the events
- Added secondary tooltip for keywords in talents and trinkets
- All backgrounds received a new look with more detalisation
- The Attack value in cards now dymanically changes the amount of outgoing damage based on your attack power
- Added Level Up Animation and text for the Hero
- Defender, Ward, Elite, Boss and Reflection token sprites was updated
- Time of the run now calculates correctly
- Pause now actually pauses the game, including the timer
- Torture mechanic now has a visual counter
- Added scroll functionality if you have LOTS of trinkets
- Added Discard and Main deck views, you can access it by clicking on the corresponding decks
- View of buffs changed not to cause such huge overlap as before
- Adjusting the view of Elites’ cooldowns
- Added visual for Exhausted cards
- Main Menu UI fully reworked
- Starting story now only shown once
- If you have an active saved run - you will be now automatically load right into the action on game start
- Reworked UI for for victory and defeat screens
- Added many new UI and gameplay sounds
- Added many new VFXes.
Balance
- Many cards, talents, summons and elites were changed, considering other changes the game should feel fresh, even if you are a veteran Hell Shuffle player
- Shop default amount of rerolls increased 1 --- 2
- Loot location now always have a choice from two Trinkets instead of one fixed
- Difficulties Hard and Hell are now just a little bit easier, bonus health is reduced roughly by 10%.
- Saplings, Huge Treant, Noblemans, Big Boy, Shackled Souls, Living Bloods enemies were reworked and received new abilities.
Fixes
- Movement visual bugs
- Adjusted logic of play/continue behaviour. Locked the windows which should not be accessible in continue state
- Fixed some character VFXes were not following the owner causes visual glitch
- Fixed a bug which caused Shop to have repeating goods
- Fixed various other bugs.
Future of the game
- Our plans are to focus on two new Heroes ASAP. We understand that will have a huge impact on both replayability and mastering new playstyles. Hero number 2 with the working-name Baji is already in the development. Very small sneak peek: it's a beast master type character, who directly controls his pets, gathers trophies from the enemies and ensures his survivability by distracting the enemies and dodging their attacks.
- We also have a plan to add a menu in which you can look at all the content in the game, like a Codex. In it you will be able to check all the content you encountered earlier and look for the missing parts of your collection.
- As a part of the Codex - we want to add various Hero skins to it, so you can choose the appearance of your Hero. Skins will be a reward for hardest encounters/achievements etc.
- We were also thinking about the 4th difficulty level, which might have an additional ACT and a new boss. This is in very early development right now.
- Controller support.
Additional note is that all previous saves are wiped. We did it for a various reasons, first of all we changed the format of all saves files, so its much more reliant. Secondly, we changed lots of core mechanics, NO MORE SAVES WIPES ARE COMING IN FUTURE PATCHES.
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