Hey Scholars!
I'm happy to announce the first major update of Scholar of the Arcane Arts! The Necromancy Update adds a new dungeon, seven new enemies and five new spells as well as other minor improvements. So, here we go:
New Dungeon - Catacombs:
A new Gateway has a chance to appear during your run. This will lead you to the Eldritch Domain which contains the new dungeon, Catacombs. Explore a land of death and decay as you attempt to close this Gateway and save your village. But be careful Scholar, the undead will swarm you!
New Enemies:
- Warden
- Zombie
- Obsidian
- Marko
- Wraith
- Lich
- MasterEye
New Boss Fight:
Demigod Thynx
New Spells:
Death Drain:
Drain the health of all monsters near you, while recovering a small amount of hp per monster damaged.
Ethereal Form:
Leave your body in a ghostly form. While Eathreal Form is active all cooldowns on spells are reduced by 50%. At the end of Ethereal Form you will be teleported back to your body. Be careful! Your body can take damage while you’re gone.
Soul Link:
Mark a monster. Soul Links will attach themselves to nearby monsters from the marked monster. Any damage done to the marked monster will also be done to all Soul Linked monsters.
Null Hour:
Sacrifice 50% of your health to deal 50% more damage for a limited amount of time. Afterwards, your damage and health returns to normal.
Absorbing Eye:
Drain the life of nearby monsters into the Absorbing Eye. The Eye will increase in damage and size with each monster drained.
Spell Updates:
Solaris:
This spell is no longer a starter spell
Tremor
InstantCast 20 => 12
Deluge
Description now correctly states that InstantCast is Cast Time Level 15
Flare
Description now correctly states that InstantCast is Cast Time Level 5
Town Building Update:
This patch will introduce the Town Building aspect of Scholar. This is a very small step towards a much larger feature of the game. You can now collect materials which will be saved between your runs. These materials can be used to improved your home village:
- Earth Domain - Wood
- Fire Domain - Star Fragments
- Water Domain - Clay
- Eldritch Domain - Carbon
New Town Project:
Cat House
Speak to Altur and he will direct you towards the new Quest Board by the Gateway. Tootsie’s Cat House is a new quest which requires materials that can be mined in the Domains.
Tootsie:
Once you’ve built the cat house Tootsie will appear in the Villa. When you pet Tootsie she heals you to full hp, and she resets all the cooldowns for your spells.
Gameplay Updates:
The game is a little bit too punishing. This patch I’ve reduced damage by 20%. I’ve also cut down the range of some of the enemy’s spells like fireball and ice drill. Please let me know how this feels. Is the challenge toned down too much? Or does this feel better?
If a purple chest will only spawn Power Stones, then that chest will open automatically when you walk near it. If the purple chest spawns additional loot then you will have to hold down F to open it like normal.
Spell combos that temporarily boost your damage now last for the entire Domain. They will be reset when you return to the Villa (examples: Necrotic Orb + pyromancy will boost your damage for necrotic spells if you kill an enemy with it.)
The Earth monster RockShell takes longer to cast Boulder Drill, which will leave them vulnerable for longer.
The domain you last died on can not start a new run. For instance if you die in the Earth Domain your new run’s first Domain can only be the Fire or Water Domain. After completing one of those options the Earth Domain will be added to the random level pool.
The background mountains in the sky castle scroll when you move.
Altur and Vera’s dialogue will change depending on what Domain they’re in.
Spells can no longer deal 0 damage. Even if the monster is highly resistant to it, the spell will deal at least 1 damage.
Both your spellbook and Vera will display the max level of each school of magic. No more guessing or remembering!
Poisoned Test Dummies were showing crazy damage numbers. It’s because the Poison status does % health damage. This has been fixed so the Test Dummies now just state that they have been poisoned.
Ormung spawns 4 lanterns to power up a big attack. Previously the lanterns would do a death animation, and at the end of the animation it would stop powering up Ormung. This felt bad, as you would destroy the lantern but still get hit by the big attack because the animation didn’t finish in time. Now the lanterns stop powering up Ormung the second they have been destroyed.
Bug Fixes:
Screen Resolution Issues:
All the shop windows have been revamped so they can fit all screen resolutions. If a window is not aligned properly on your screen please let me know so I can adjust it in a future patch!
There were some missing texts like “Immune” or “Resists Up”. This has been fixed.
Necrotic Orb properly states how many orbs spawn.
Necrotic Orb would freeze in place if there were no enemies around and it was combined with Necromancy and Geomancy. It now has a timer that will make it explode after some time.
Final Boss can now be poisoned.
Hailsphere was not upgrading its damage, or the Nekra’s Scythes damage that it would create when combined with Necromancy. Now it does!
Riptide now properly states that InstantCast is at level 5.
SummonDeadwoods damage was not correctly calculated when it was set on fire. Once set on fire Deadwood will explode for 10 * Level.
Vera’s Dialogue resets properly when you close and reopen her shop window.
When Boulder Drill combines with Necromancy it spawns a little rock monster for each drill. A decently leveled up Boulder Drill will fire around 30 drills. The intention of this combination was to get about 30 rock monsters on screen, because a player would shoot Boulder Drill through a Necrotic Wall. We had a player who found that combining Mudball spawns about 18 poison puddles which count as necromancy spells. He then shot Boulder Drill through each puddle which created about 540 rock monsters. Seren’s Barrage spawns a flare for each Geomancy spell it touches. Rock monsters count as Geomancy spells. He then shot about 10 Seren Barrages into the 540 rock monsters which created around 5,400 flares. This is really cool. This will break someone’s computer. I had to put a limit to how many rock monsters Boulder Drill can spawn.
Check out the game Discord, feel free to share your ideas for new spells and discuss with other players!
- Endo