Welcome to v0.8.0 update for Draft of Darkness! This update introduces a rework for the Power & Defence calculations; and adds equipment moves, starter items & perks, darkness level system, save slots and much more!
New Power & Defence Calculations
Draft of Darkness has some emphasis on RPG type progression, where you distribute stats to get stronger over time. Balancing the general strength of the cards emerging from pure stat distribution, synergy of the deck, synergy of the party members and other such elements together proves to be much harder with this type of progression.
Before this patch, the game used a logarithmic decay formula for the damage increase caused by Power. With increasing Power between 0-100, you would get only up to 4x the base damage of the card. While this kept Power as an important but not a be-all and end-all attribute; it also made most players feel confused and limited. For this reason, I changed Power & Defence calculations to be much simpler, which also makes these attributes much more powerful.
Power now equals damage! If you have 10 power, you will have a potential of dealing 10 damage. Of course, it will depend on your cards. Card base damage values now serve as a damage multiplier, and will determine the damage you deal based on your power. For example, "Pistol Shot" deals 1x your power, while "Pistol Whip" deals 0.5x (half your power). Here is a comparison of the old vs. new on a graph (yellow=new, orange=old).
Defence also had a similar but less significant change. Instead of an obscure logarithmic growth formula for the damage reduction, it now uses flat percentage reduction. Between defence values 0-80, the value is equal to the damage reduction: meaning x defence reduces the damage by x%. After 80 defence, there are diminishing returns to prevent complete immunity. You can see the comparison of the old and new formulas in this graph (green=new, red=old).
With this change, all content in the game has been re-adjusted for a balanced difficulty curve. You will notice that it's easier to reach higher damage values, but enemies have much higher defence and slightly more health than before. Similarly, enemies can have higher damage values, and you need to choose your equipment carefully and increase your defences before engaging in combat.
Explicit Attribute Calculations
For all attributes and damage values, you can now hover over them to see a breakdown of how they are calculated. The places this tooltip is shown include the equipment screen, entity and card detail screens, and the combat log!
Equipment Moves
During EA period so far, there has been several requests for equipment cards. This sounded like a great way to make the equipment system more interesting. With this patch, equipment (both for weapons and clothes) can now give you cards upon equipping. These cards are selected from a separate card pool, and will be special to the weapon type or the class of the clothing.
Swapping to alternative weapons during combat will also swap equipment cards if you have a weapon (with a card) equipped in the corresponding slot. In addition, dual weapon bonus and starting conditions given by equipment are now removed; since the purpose for these mechanics is fulfilled by the new equipment cards.
Starter Items & Perks
Another frequently requested feature was the ability to change the starting perks for heroes. There was also no way to spend the growing heap of credits, after unlocking the booster packs. You can now buy new starting perks and items in the main menu shop (which is now named "Credits Shop"). After buying them, they will be available for a subset of the heroes at the start of a run. Selecting them will cost credits.
All heroes now always start with some amount of resources required by their weapons. Jake's and Rene's default starting weapons are changed to Flares and Smoke Grenades respectively. As mentioned, other items are at your disposal to buy from the Credits Shop.
You can also now see and change your preserved item before starting a run! Your preserved items won't be replaced; instead, the last 5 items will be kept in the save file and will be available for selection. Along with the starter items and perks, this adds a lot of flexibility to the meta-progression.
Darkness Level System (Experimental)
The new Darkness Level system aims to solve two problems:
1) The emphasis on grinding encounters to get more cards and XP, which prolongs runs and disrupts the survival horror aspects.
2) The obscurity of the karma system.
With this patch, you will notice a new counter at the top of the screen. This Darkness Level counter increases with each encounter, and may also increase and decrease with your choices in the decision events. After Darkness Level 8, non-boss encounters will start to get a boost, increasing their levels and making them harder. In addition, your heroes and companions may receive "Sufferings", which are negative status effects. The spawn chance of a certain enemy is now also tied to the Darkness Level, instead of the karma system. Leaving an area will reset the Darkness Level, and remove all the Sufferings.
I'm planning to add increased rewards for fighting enemies with high Darkness Levels. For now, this system is added as an experimental feature to collect feedback.
Other Changes
There are many changes to talk about still. Since the article is becoming too long, I'll go over them with a quick summary.
New Card Faces: The card graphics are changed to make them more readable, and better fit the UI of the game. The rarity and type of the cards are now clearly shown.
Improved Item Bar: The item bar is now split up into categories. Passive items are collapsed to make the item bar more compact. The items are also sorted by the order they are first added to the inventory.
Save Slots: The game now has support for 5 save slots, where you can start new games and continue them in parallel. In-game achievements will also reset in a new save.
Chainsaw Rework: Chainsaw mechanics are changed for compatibility with alt. weapons. Using Engine Off/On labeled cards will now change the engine state automatically. In other words, the engine state is now independent from the conservation system.
New Stats: If you were wondering how muscle Strength increased firepower, worry not! Strength is now renamed to Handiness. Aside from naming, the attributes given by them are also changed to have better balanced stats. You can see the changelog below for more detail. To summarise the changes, Handiness now gives some Burn Power, Vitality gives Energy and all stats give a small amount of Speed.
Critical Heals: You heard it right!
To see all of the changes coming with the update, see the changelog below. As this update is heavy on changes, you might notice new bugs or out of tune balance. If you do, feel free to reach out by joining our Discord Server, or through Steam forums!
EA Plan Incoming
As you know, announcement for the 2nd part of the Early Access plan has been delayed. The reason for this was that I wanted to allocate as much time as possible for the v0.8.0 patch, and go through most of the rework ideas, improvements and balancing in the backlog. With this patch out of the way, we can finally focus fully on content.
I will be making the announcement for the Early Access Plan Part II on 24th February. On the same day, the demo version will also be updated for it to be a better preview of the game.
Update Notes for Patch v0.8.0
Improvement & Balance
- Power & Defence Rework: The formula for how damage values are calculated is changed. Defence calculation is simplified to a percentage reduction, with diminishing returns after 80 defence. Power calculation is changed to a simple multiplication. Damage value is now simply calculated by: [Card Multiplier] x [Power] x (1-[Defence]/100).
- All cards, items, status and condition effects, enemies are revised with new base damage multipliers.
- Equipment and enemy base and level scaling for power and defence attributes are revised for the new calculation.
- Darkness Level System: After every encounter, Darkness Level increases by 1, and shown at the top of the screen. Some of the player choices in decision events also increase or decrease Darkness Level (previously hidden karma system is integrated into the Darkness Level system). Above Darkness Level 8, non-boss encounter levels will gradually increase, and the heroes and companions will have a chance to be inflicted with Sufferings (negative status effects). When the player moves on to the next area, Darkness Level will reset and all Sufferings will be removed.
- "Strength" stat is now called "Handiness". "Dexterity" is now called "Agility".
- Stat Rework: Stats are changed with the aim of giving them a more balanced feeling. All stats now give Speed, and Handiness also gives Burn Power.
| "Handiness": 1 Physical Pow, 0.5 Light Pow, 0.03 Speed.
| "Vitality": 5 Health, 0.2 Energy, 0.03 Speed.
| "Agility": 2% Crit Chance, 0.05 Speed.
| "Intelligence": 1 Acid Pow, 1 Light Pow, 0.5 Mend Pow, 0.03 Speed
- Added tooltips showing attribute calculations including card damage, cost, character attributes like power and defence. Hovering over attributes in card/character detail screens and combat log will show all modifications made by equipment, items, etc.
- Hero and companion details can now be seen just like enemies by pressing the "Details" button (middle click by default).
- Save Slots: Added support for a total of 5 save slots. Ongoing saves are placed in slot 1 with name "user1". A new save can be created in an empty slot by clicking the newly added button in the main menu.
- Improved Item Bar: Item bar is separated into categories, making it easier to manage items. Usable items are always shown in the item bar, while passive items after 3 per category are hidden to make the item bar more compact. Hovering over the "..." icon will show the hidden items. Items are sorted from newest to oldest added to the inventory. The scrollbar is made more visible when the items overflow the screen. Sorting & Filtering option is removed from the item bar.
- Chainsaw Rework: Engine state is now independent from the conservation mode. Chainsaw normal cards are marked with the "Engine: On" keyword, and weak cards are marked with the "Engine: Off" keyword. Using an Engine. On card will automatically use up extra Fuel to turn on the engine. Similarly, using an Engine: Off card will turn off the engine. With this change, alternative weapon cards can now be utilised without any incompatibility.
- Equipment Cards: Some of the clothing and weapons now give cards when equipped. Unequipping will remove the card from the deck. Swapping weapons during encounters will also swap the weapon cards equipped in the connected slots (Main weapon will be swapped with main alt. weapon, offhand will be swapped with offhand alt. weapon.)
- To simplify equipment, clothes will always give defence, but not power. Weapons will give power, but not defence. There may be rare exceptions such as special equipment dropping from events.
- Equipment and clothes with moves have a low chance to drop with the keyword "Muted", which removes the attached move.
- Starter Items & Perks: Booster Pack window is now called "Credits Shop". In the Credits Shop, starter items and perks can be bought by spending credits. Bought perks and items can be selected when starting a run. Selecting perks and items other than hero's default configuration will cost credits upon starting the run. Certain starting items and perks can be selected for certain heroes, as specified in the Credits Shop.
- Heroes will now always start with 8 of the resources required by the weapons they can use. Heroes with resource starter items are changed. The default starter items for heroes are: Flare (Jake), Warning Letter (Cara), Charger (Pavel), Smoke Grenade (Rene).
- Starter items added: Flares, Pills, Smoke Grenades.
- Starter perks added: Assassin, Combatant, Empowered, Scorching, Steady, Vengeful.
- Last 5 preserved items are now recorded. When starting a run, one of these 5 preserved items can be selected to start the run with. The last preserved item is selected by default and is free, while selecting the others costs credits. Preserving a new item while all 5 slots are full will remove the oldest item from the list.
- Cards can now deal multiple types of damage in a single attack. "Infusion" conditions are changed to use this system, scaling and dealing half the base Physical damage as Acid or Burn damage.
- Some of the damage dealing items won't scale their damage with power.
- Reworked how conserve mode cards are being handled in the background. This fixes weak cards not being affected by most of the effects.
- Preserving an item will no longer remove it from the inventory.
- Dual wield bonuses and starting conditions are removed from equipment, since the purpose of these mechanics are now fulfilled with equipment moves.
- Movement performance is improved. Delays during movement between tiles are reduced.
- Added an option for increasing movement speed during exploration.
- Cost of non-weapon equipment cards are reduced to 0.
- Energy and Health values after decimal point are now rounded down. Now, every 5 point in Vitality will increase Energy by 1.
- (Achievement) "Absolute Demon": Changed to "In a single run, complete 3 areas with Darkness Level 15 or more."
- (Achievement) "Absolute Angel": Changed to "In a single run, complete 3 areas with Darkness Level 5 or less."
- (Card/Chainsaw) "Pushing Saw (Weak)": Push back 50%->20%.
- (Card/Chainsaw) "Ripper Saw (Weak)": Advance 50%->30%.
- (Card/Chainsaw) "High Stance (Weak)": Block 3->4.
- (Card/Chainsaw) "Rev Up the Engine": Reworked to have number of hits increase per discarded card, instead of damage.
- (Card/Knife) "Poisoned Blade": Poisoned 1->2.
- (Card/Spray Gun) "Splash of Poison": Poisoned 1->2.
- (Card/Spray Gun) "Spout Poison": Poisoned 2->4. Energy Cost 3->4.
- (Card/Unarmed) "Recovery": Now draws the last damage dealing move discarded, instead of any move.
- (Item) "Filthy Needle": Poisoned max effect increase 30%->50%.
- (Item) "Kaleidoscope": Now has a higher chance to reduce energy costs.
- (Item/Resource) "Shotgun Shell": Price 3->2.
- (Decision Event) "Hole in the Wall": Health reduction now goes up to 80%.
- Heals can now be critical.
Visuals & Polish
- Card visual design is changed. New design now clearly shows card rarity and type.
- Defence and power values are shown separately in a column layout on equipment tooltips, for a cleaner look and easier comparison. Same change is also applied to how entity attributes are shown in various screens.
- Tweaks to how card damage and mend values are shown. Added tooltips for mend heal. Added icons for condition categorisation (buff, debuff, ability, disability) in card descriptions.
- Cards are now referred to as "moves".
- Cards are positioned a bit higher while targeting to show calculated attribute values more clearly.
- Save icon now won't show up when the Daemon spawns.
- Changed icon for Easy Mode.
- Hovering over the Conservation Mode button or the Weapon Swap button will preview cards changing in the hand.
Content
- 1 new equipment kind is added to every weapon type, for a total of 4 kinds: 3 with moves and 1 without a move.
- 6 new unarmed (clothing) equipment cards are added: Block, Dodge, Hide, Prepare, Sprint, Order.
- 12 new weapon equipment cards are added: Offensive Stance (Axe), Capacitive Load (Flashlight), Hit and Run (Knife), Toy Gun (Pistol), Sinner's Kiss (Shotgun), Acidic Coating (Syringe), Amnesia Gas (Spray Gun), Wildfire (Spray Gun), Perfect Substitute (Spray Gun), Fine Tune (Chainsaw), Extended Chain (Chainsaw), Burning Chain (Chainsaw).
- 3 new weapon cards are added: Acid Knife (Knife/Starter), Stir (Spray Gun/Run), Payment (Shotgun/Starter).
- 12 of the existing weapon run cards are changed to equipment cards: Ponder-Second Act (Axe), Shake to Charge-Sunburn (Flashlight), Energetic Slash-Choppy Chop (Knife), Shoot and Roll-Play the Victim (Pistol), Payout-Double Barrel Shot (Shotgun), Hippocratic Oath-Blinding Needle (Syringe).
- (Status) "Suffering: Handicapped": Hand Size is reduced by 1.
- (Status) "Suffering: Overwrought": Energy cost of damage dealing moves are increased by 1.
- (Status) "Suffering: Worn Out": Max. Energy is decreased by 2.
Bugfixes
- Fixed some damage values not being rounded up. Standardised damage values always rounding up and other attributes rounding to the nearest integer value.
- Various fixes to items, cards and conditions.
- Fixed a bug where pills healed more than they should.
- Fixed the categorization for some of the items so that they are sorted in the correct group of the item bar.
- Fixed health not resetting after stats are re-specced via Wooden Puppet.
- Fixed companions spawning with equipment cards.
- Fixed shop price increases and decreases not being highlighted.
- Fixed opening detail window before loot window appears in encounters freezing the game.
- Fixed Riposte and Explosion effects triggering after the target dies.
- Fixed holding "Preview Weak Version" key while hovering over a card not working during encounters.
- Fixed weak version previews not switching to the normal version after the key is released.
- Fixed tooltips showing up upon opening a window, while a gamepad is not in use.
- Fixed tooltips getting stuck upon closing some of the windows.