Hello everyone, it's Sunday and we have a balance patch ready, as we said before one of the reasons for the Early Access is to test new things and balance the game, the others is to fix all the problems that may arise and add more content.
In this patch we are going to change how resistances work in the game and introduce negative resistances, we are also going to change what the "Vulnerable" debuff does and make a balance pass to many cards, mainly the 0 cost cards with card draw.
Negative resistances and "Vulnerable"
We have decided that from now on resistances can go below 0 and be negative, having a negative resistance means that you will do more damage with that type of damage. The main reason is that since we have a system of damage types and resistances we want to make the most of it and that each monster has its own identity, until now that identity was lost when you reduced all the resistances to 0, now there will be a big difference if you get to lower the resistances to an enemy and this will be different from another enemy.
We have made a revision to all the enemies in the game and we have tweaked their resistances. Now all the monsters have at least 2 resistances that are notably lower than the rest, in normal mode they can be negative by default, for example the trunkys and the boss of act 1 have negative resistances to fire.
We have changed how the "Vulnerable" debuff works, now it lowers the resistances by 5%, it has a cap of 10 maximum charges, and 2 charges are removed per turn (similar to how the powerful buff works). So 10 charges of vulnerable lowers the resistances by 50% but as there are now negative resistances it means that you can do more damage. Also in some cases now burn/dark/spark can do more damage than bleed or poison.
Monster balance and Act 2
We have slightly lowered the number of debuff stacks used by the monsters in Act 2, applying a little less burn/bleed/poison charges in their respective maps. This change is only for Act 2, the difficulty of a map varies depending on the order you do it, it is not the same to do Velkarath mountains in Act 2 than in Act 3, and the same happens with Aquarfall Marsh.
With this change and along with the general lowering of resistances and negative resistances on enemies, the game will be "easier" in normal mode in both Act 1 and 2.
In NG+ mode the resistances have also been lowered in general, making it also a bit easier. Keep in mind that the next content patch will focus on making the NG+ mode more customizable and difficult for those who want to challenge and compete in the score boards.
Card balance.
In this patch there have been many changes in many cards for most of the classes.
Mainly we have reduced the ability of heroes to draw cards, especially at 0 cost, so we have tweaked those cards by removing the draw, adding cost or changing them completely.
In addition there are general tweaks such as high cost cards are even more powerful, cards with thorns have gained a couple of extra charges(except for the 0 cost ones) and powerful charges have been lowered in general. Undoubtedly the decks that have undergone the most changes are the scout and healer decks.
Note: All these changes are not final and we can revert any card changed or make new ones if needed.
Other
New quality of life functionality, now when you are going to use a dispel or purge, you will see on top of the hero what debuffs you are going to remove. Also, if you are going to attack an enemy with a card that casts a curse, if the enemy is immune to this curse, a warning text will be shown over the target.
Vitality: As it confused many players, we are going to try that vitality never heals... not even if you are at 100% health, now it will serve to increase your maximum health but you will have to heal it.
There is also a new card for mages(Ice Barrier), and there are several cards that have had entire reworks.
There are 2 new items in the game:
*Handbook: Every turn reduce the cost of a skill card in your hand by 1 this turn.
*Advanced Handbook: Every turn reduce the cost of a skill card in your hand by 1.
With these items you can lower the cost to some of your favorite skills but it will be a bit more RNG and you will have to get the item, not being like before something 100% guaranteed (Using scavenge for example).
Note: Some of the items you can see in the Tome of knowledge are not yet available in the game.
We have corrected some texts in the game.
Multiplayer
We continue on our quest to fix every combat related problem, we hope with this latest hotfixes and patches things are more stable for you. If for whatever reason the combat freezes, you retry a combat and the problem persist, we suggest to close and reopen the game. At this moment we suggest too that you disable autoend and skip corruptions until we have a stable solution for this freezes in coop.
Multiple fixes and changes have been implemented. Some people are reporting issues while others can play without problems, so it's being really hard to identify the exact problem. We are working on a solution to reload the current turn instead of the combat, but it will have to wait a few days.
On the other hand we fixed the problem in town when some players buy a divination round at the same time. Now only the first one to create a divination round will pay for it.
Thank you all for your support, feedback and understanding.