Content Patch #9 -- Essences

News

Oh man! This has been a long time coming!

For those of you who didn't read the patch notes for Content Patch #8, I mentioned that the new mode I had been designing/developing for several months had "morphed" into something "very different, but very cool." The "very different, but very cool" thing appears in this Content Patch! I'm referring to "Essences."

Essences are effectively alternative versions of existing items that follow a few different rules:

1. They don't have a rarity associated with them, all Essences have an equal chance of appearing if they're not already in your inventory.
2. They do not appear in the regular "Item pool."
3. They have different effects from their non-Essence counterparts.
4. They are obtained after your landlord steals your "Essence Tokens" (you add one Essence per token stolen)
5. They are somewhat more complicated than regular items, so they have to be unlocked...

There are three ways to unlock the Essences and have them appear in your game:

1. Win a game on Floor 6 (this applies retroactively to older savefiles and does not have to be done multiple times)
2. Win 7 games of Luck be a Landlord (unfortunately, this stat was not tracked until this Patch, so your previous wins don't count towards unlocking Essences, sorry about that!)
3. If you're in the camp of having played many games of Luck be a Landlord, but weren't interested in the higher Apartment Floors, I would recommend editing your savefile if you want to play with Essences immediately (in order to unlock Essences by editing your savefile, do the following:
1. Launch the game at least once after updating to Content Patch #9
2. Close the game
3. Open your LBAL-Stats.save file at one of the following locations with a text editor:
Windows: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Roaming/Godot/app_userdata/Luck be a Landlord/LBAL-Stats.save
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/app_userdata/Luck be a Landlord/LBAL-Stats.save
Linux: ~/.local/share/godot/app_userdata/Luck be a Landlord/LBAL-Stats.save
4. Change the following line that reads "essences_unlocked":false to instead read "essences_unlocked":true
5. Save and close the LBAL-Stats.save file
6. Launch the game, and Essences will be unlocked!
)

There are more than 100 Essence items, each with a unique effect! I hope you enjoy playing with them as much as I enjoyed designing and implementing them.

In other news, the Luck be a Landlord soundtrack is available on Bandcamp! The Music Team (which is really just Vincent Colavita) decided to add a new remix of an existing track every other Content Patch. If you've already purchased the soundtrack, these remixes will be automatically added to your library.

I've also been able to fill out the last remaining positions of the Localization Team, which has led to the game being re-localized in Simplified Chinese, French, Russian, Italian, and Japanese. To those of you who play in those languages, I hope you enjoy the new translations!

Finally, designing and developing all the content in Content Patch #9 took quite a bit of time and effort. For that reason, Content Patch #10 will be released in 4 weeks and will primarily focus on adding more Quality of Life features. I will be spending most of this time resting and recovering, so please don't expect anything as crazy as this Content Patch in Content Patch #10.

I'm so happy I finally get to share this new content with all of you. This really is my dream job and I enjoy every minute of it. Thank you for believing in Luck be a Landlord enough to buy it while it's in Early Access. I couldn't add this much content to the game if not for your support, so thank you.

I'm going to go pass out now.

-Dan

Game Balance

• Watermelons now give 1 additional coin for each other Watermelon
• Duds are now destroyed after 33 spins

The above balance changes were made for the following reasons:

Watermelons were slightly underpowered for a Very Rare symbol. However, I wanted to be careful with how much I buffed the symbol, as some of the new Essences indirectly buff Watermelon's potential.

Duds were reworked as they were discouraging players who wished to play primarily in Endless Mode. The hoops one has to jump through to remove Duds at the apartment floors in which they appear made it so that "Endless-only" players would only play on floor 4 or lower. This change will hopefully encourage "Endless-only" players to try out the higher apartment floors, as they should have an easier time transitioning into a more enjoyable Endless Mode.

Please let me know your thoughts either in the comments or on the official discord!

-Dan

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Cultists sometimes wouldn't give coins if destroyed by an Eldritch Creature
• Fixed a bug where currency tokens sometimes wouldn't have the correct hitbox when hovered over in emails
• Fixed a bug where Eggs could transform into Chicks and then be destroyed by Frying Pan (oh no!)
• Fixed a bug where Rabbits wouldn't have their "spin counter" decreased if affected by a Hex of Draining
• Fixed a bug where a Five-Sided Die that was affected by Reroll could not re-roll into a value higher than 3
• Fixed a bug where Item Capsule's texture was slightly too large, causing visual inconsistencies in tooltips