Week 2 of early access is now in the books. And in this update we categorize and take a look at all the game changes that went live this week. We're currently focusing on combat related improvements.
Loot
- Destructibles now scale their loot quality based on level.
- Added all new loot FX. The new FX should make it easier to spot and grab loot. Rather than being images that often matched the items looted, they are more stylized and larger, to stand out from the dungeon geometry.
- The new loot particles should now do a better job of following the dropped items location, which is variable due to physics. In the first iteration sometimes they would become detached.
- Added new beam pillars for special loot items.
- Made different variations of each loot particle type which are based on the rarity of the item.
NPCs
- Introduced a new NPC type: Orc Legions use a spear and a shield. They move slowly, but have high defense against magical attacks, obscured behind their shields. They have a special ability which will knock players backwards and push them off balance. They also have a standard double attack with a chance to knock the player backwards.
- Reduced the ratio at which enemies gain bonus health, damage, and attack ratings from automatic level scaling. Making the difficulty curve a bit less harsh as your level increases.
- Adjusted the level scaling ratio so that bosses and minibosses can have a higher level scale on some stats than standard NPCs.
- Increased the base hit points of Troll Clubbers, Orc Warlords, Skeleton Captains, Necromancers, Mage Spirits, Barbarian Champions, Barbarian Witch-Doctors, and Orc Smashers.
- The shopkeeper has a new voice, and now randomizes between several dialog lines.
- Adjusted the cooldown on many NPC abilities.
- Increased the defensive capabilities of Barbarian Champions.
- NPCs and players can now have different cooldowns on abilities.
Scenarios
- Implemented an improved generation technique should allow us to create denser prop layouts in dungeons without worrying about blocking off content. We will need to go through to each map and update it to take advantage of this. This will happen over the next few patches.
- Destructables will now clean up earlier. Though they will wait until they are off screen for a period of time.
- Improved the Defeat the War Leader generation scheme, fixing an issue that could occasionally cause blockage, and increasing the amount of ground clutter.
- The Trimming Their Numbers scenario has received a generation pass, improving the ground clutter and props. And adding a treasure path to each generated instance.
- Improved the Retrieve the Artifact generator. It now has more props, and new types of props that had not previously been in the game.
- Improved the Destroying Their Supplies generator to have more ground clutter and props.
- Improved the Rescue scenario generator. It can now be larger, has more props per room, and additional prop types. The lighting was also adjusted in the area.
- The Sealing the Rift and War Plans scenarios each got a generator update, similar to the ones which other scenarios have gotten over the past couple of days.
- Locked Gates now display a locked symbol when they are locked, to make it easier to tell that it can be opened elsewhere.
- There are now body parts and blood strewn across the floor in some of the more brutal scenarios.
- Grounding improvements in the Retrieve the Artifact scenario.
- Added more shrubbery to some of the outdoor maps.
- Made tweaks to the Trimming Their Numbers landscape materials.
- Bed rolls in the Outlands are no longer oversized.
- Fixed a bug which could allow the stash to block the exit to the hideout area in new missions on rare occasions.
- Fixed a bug on one of the props in the Trimming Their Numbers scenario, which could block doorways in rare cases due to a missing configuration flag.
Skills and Abilities
- Increased player attack speeds by 30%. NPC attack speeds remain the same.
- Added a new Protection (Cleric) skill: Stone Skin. This is a PBAoE which will give a temporary defense boost to nearby allies. The defensive boost will increase based on skill rank in Stone Skin, with a smaller bonus for each rank in Protection. And the radius will also increase for each rank of Protection you have trained.
- Witches (Mage) can now train the Hold Undead skill, which was previously only available to clerics.
- Added a new Swashbuckling (Warrior) skill: Dashing Strike. This ability will quickly dash towards your targer and deal melee damage. It can be used to quickly close the distance to opponents. It can also be used to quickly move to a location.
- Added a new Swashbuckling (Warrior) skill: Dashing Strike. This ability will quickly dash towards your targer and deal melee damage. It can be used to quickly close the distance to opponents. It can also be used to quickly move to a location without a target. It receives a 2% damage bonus per skill rank.
- Added a new Healer (Cleric) skill: Luminary Leap. This skill will quickly dash to a location, and then heal the any nearby targets, including the caster. It receives increased healing per, with a small bonus to healing per rank of the Heal ability.
- Added a new Wizard (Mage) skill: Wizard's Warp. This ability will quickly warp to a location, and then boost the caster's damage ouput for the next 5 seconds. You will receive a bonus of 4% damage per skill rank, with an initial bonus of 10%. You also receive a 1% bonus per rank of Fireball. It has a longer range than other dash abilities.
- Increased the speed of magic projectiles.
- Reduced the cooldown time on Fireball, Smite, Thrust, Frost Blast, Ice Shards, and Heal.
- The Heal skill now has a bonus of 6 health per rank +4 base, beginning with a heal amount of 10. This is a boost of 5 per rank with a +3 initial base.
- Added new status effect particles to leg slice, vulnerable, and off balance, to make it easier to denote when an opening is available, or a debuff is active.
- Reduced the cooldown on the following player abilities: Meteor Strike, Sanctifying Shock, Sleep, Taunt, Cleanse, Leg Slice, Strength, Overpower, Siphon Life, Ward, Spinning Strike, Weaken, Hold Undead, and Leaping Strike.
- The Arcane Shield skill now has a particle effect.
- Added a new particle effect that will display when you are poisoned.
- NPCs and players can now have different cooldowns on abilities.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the Strength skill to not function properly.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing Berserk to deal damage on interval.
Miscellaneous
- Improved post-processing effects.
- The opacity material used when hiding objects that would otherwise obscure view is now slightly less transparent.
- Made some optimizations to camp fire lighting.
- Improved the character selection menu background.
- Fixed a bug which was preventing gold from dropping out of barrels.
- Fixed a typo in the Thief achievement's description.
- Fixed a grounding issue with the Mage character on the character selection screen.