More than a week passed since the Early Access launch of Draft of Darkness. First of all, I'd like to thank you for all your support during the launch week! The positivity and all the feedback we received was invaluable!
I'll be preparing a roadmap for the content patches soon. For now, I'll be releasing improvement patches and balance updates with ideas gathered from your great feedback.
In this first patch, I made some improvements to eliminate some problems and streamline a few things to reduce confusion. The tooltip and card preview sizes are increased, for better readability of text. The stats screen is also simplified, letting you distribute your stats easily. Stats will show tooltips when you hover over them. You can see all improvements listed in the changelog below.
There were also some big balance related changes, mainly involving the "knife" weapon. Cara being very powerful due to her being able to stack high amount of Bleeding despite spending no resources was a common opinion. Using Stealth to hide after applying some Bleeding, then watching the boss melt away was feeling a bit exploity to say the least.
To fix this, I've made a big change to Bleeding condition itself: it decays by half when it triggers. This means the bleeding won't decrease by one after doing damage. Instead, it will lose half its layers, making it decay faster the more you stack it. If you stacked 50 Bleeding, after dealing 50 damage, it will be reduced to 25, then 12 and so on... This indirectly limits how much you can stack Bleeding, and requires a more active gameplay to effectively use it and benefit from its advantages.
Also, cards applying or manipulating Bleeding have been tweaked. One example is "Open Wound", which can now be used to have some control over Bleeding, by triggering it manually and delaying its decay.
(The Daemon now applies "Revealed" if it sees you hide in the shadows!)
Next week, I'm planning to add more exciting improvements, such as movement with mouse, faster ways to use cards, and more! I'll be releasing the next week's changes to the "experimental" branch on Friday, and it will be merged to the main branch on Monday! If you want to test things earlier, you can always switch to the "experimental" beta branch of the game on Steam.
Looking forward to hear more of your feedback. See you around!
Note: If you have a saved run, you might come across some anomalies when you load it in the new patch. For example, some attributes may decrease on leveling up. This will fix itself when you start a new run. On the other hand, if you come across any crashes or game-breaking bugs, please contact me in our Discord Server.
Full Patch Notes for v0.5.2_p2
Improvements
- Bleeding now loses half its layers when it decays.
- Encounter card drops will now include unarmed cards more often.
- The Daemon now applies Revealed with its "Menace" moves.
- Increased text size for tooltips and cards.
- Pressing corresponding keyboard shortcuts to open equipment/deck window will also close the window if open. The shortcuts will also function to switch between tabs while this window is open.
- Level up screen is more streamlined by adding "-1" buttons to remove points. Tooltips are added to stats.
- Equipment inventory screen now shows character stats.
- Equipment can be marked as junk inside the shop window.
Balance
- Sell prices are reduced from 0.2x to 0.15x.
- Reduced the amount of Speed given by higher rarity equipment.
- Resource drops are now more uniform. The drops will be selected from all resource types 50% of the time, instead of being skewed towards characters currently in the party.
- Necessity drops are tweaked to only drop if player has less than 5 of a resource.
- "Strength": Phys. Power per level 1->1.5.
- "Intelligence": Light Power per level 1->1.5. Mend Power per level 1->1.5.
- "Dexterity": Crit. Chance per level 2%->1%. Speed per level 0.05->0.03.
- "Dodge" will now negate application of "Bleeding".
- (Item) "Broken Syringe": Reworked to "Whenever an ally draws a Viral Infection card, apply Bleeding 2 to all enemies."
- (Item) "Glass Cannon": Damage increase 40%->30%.
- (Card/Axe) "Carve": Won't apply Bleeding if its damage is dodged.
- (Card/Axe) "Pierce": Won't remove buffs or apply Bleeding if its damage is dodged.
- (Card/Axe) "Swiss Army Axe": Bleeding 5->3, 8->5. Won't apply Bleeding/Crippled if its damage is dodged.
- (Card/Flashlight) "Blunt Hit": Phys. Dmg. 5->7, Energy Cost 5->4.
- (Card/Knife) "Butter Finger": Phys. Damage 4->3, Crit. Multiplier 4->3.
- (Card/Knife) "Dash": Added Limited 2.
- (Card/Knife) "Sneaky Blow": Phys. Damage 2->3.
- (Card/Knife) "Stealth Blow": Crit. Multiplier 5->4. Added Limited 2.
- (Card/Knife) "Wounding Tantrum": Bleeding inflict count 5x->4x.
- (Card/Knife) "Vanish": Added Limited 1.
- (Card/Knife) "Twist the Knife": Applies 100% Bleeding instead of 50%.
- (Card/Knife) "Open Wound": Energy Cost 7->5. Now triggers only 1 layer of Bleeding, but also serves as a refresh for Bleeding, delaying its decay.
- (Card/Pistol) "Wounding Bullet": Won't apply Weak if its damage is dodged.
- (Card/Shotgun) "Head Blaster": Crit Multiplier 3->2.
- (Card/Unarmed) "Repel": PhysicalDmg 2.5->2. Stagger Chance 20%->10%.
- (Card/Unarmed) "Punch": PhysicalDmg 2.5->2.
- (Companion) "Nurse": Base Speed 3->3.5.
- (Companion) "Police": Base Speed 3->4.
- (Companion) "Scavenger": Base Speed 5->4.
- (Companion) "Thug": Base Speed 4->4.5.
- (Enemy) "Albino Rat": "Scramble" Bleeding 6->8.
- (Enemy) "Crawler Brute": "Head Slam" Bleeding 5->8.
- (Enemy) "Sentry": "Saw" Bleeding 3->4, Wounded 2->4. "Triple Chop" Bleeding 2->3.
- (Enemy) "Crooked Zombie": "Hack" Bleeding 6->8. Wounded 6->8.
Fixes
- Fixed item tooltips obstructing the view when selling items in shops.
- Fixed Assassin perk not increasing Crit. Chance when weapons are switched using a card.
- Fixed card highlights not updating after a card is used.
- Fixed an issue with critical hit screen shake being delayed.