Abalon 2.50 - Bigger, Better, Balanced Biomes!

Greetings D20 Fans!

Help romance a Flesh Golem and fall in love with Abalon all over again in our latest update, so mega packed with goodies it's nearly a 3.0 release! Available free for all of our existing players and on sale for Steam Deal of the Day!

Abalon v2.50 Release Notes

I've been busy since our last update carefully reading everyone's feedback and doing my best to improve on all the areas you've requested such as gameplay balance, quality of life, play styles and leaderboard system, plus provide a ton more content content I think you'll enjoy to further enhance your adventures.

TLDR: I started off trying to make a new leaderboard system but realized the game first needed better balanced biomes to create the best experience. So, I did that and also made you the better XP system you wanted plus added a whole bunch more fate encounters and loyal characters.

Balanced Biomes

When I started this update, my aspiration was to improve the basis of our scoring system so I could resolve the player feedback I received here and ultimately build a variety of different leaderboard tiers to support a wider audience. How can an RNG heavy roguelike with a wide variance of difficulty and scoring opportunities have meaningful competition? Like all things game design, this turned out to be a much greater challenge than I anticipated and ultimately revealed I needed to first balance the biomes.

Biomes previously varied widely in terms of difficulty, resources, and scoring opportunity. For example, the forest had a higher frequency of beneficial fate encounters, while the desert had a disproportionate number of hazardous encounters and fewer resources relative to other environments. Others, like the dungeon, had higher amounts of weapons and amor, while specific random combinations (such as a Demon Harvest world or a Yeti cave winter biome) had far more battles with harder enemies, resulting in wide variations of difficulty, scoring potential, and chances to recruit everyone's favorite loyal characters.

I wanted to create a way to incentivize each biome so they would have balanced difficulty, equal scoring potential, and still maintain a unique thematic feel so that you're incentivized to explore and enjoy everything. So here's how it breaks down in v2.50:

Difficulty Rating, No More! Welcome Biome Themes!

I read your direct feedback, ran statistical analysis on the win/loss data from each of the 200+ encounter types in the game, and balanced-tuned this baby to the nines! Hahah, right. Balance is never quite so easy, but I did discover a few interesting findings. For instance, the hardest boss in the game (by far) is Croakus, the frog demon of the harvest world swamps. Tityus Everlasting and Ninjitsu Master tied for top elites (more powerful than some bosses), and the Viking hordes of the snow biome took the cake over all the other minions. If you want to talk nerdy with me, I'd be more than happy to share my spreadsheets and discuss all the details with you on Discord. But the long story short is I made a substantial number of changes to the encounters, adjusting the difficulty and distribution for a better curve on novice and amped up the modifiers for more challenging bosses in advanced and hardcore modes. The end result is that biomes are no longer difficulty rated - they differ in theme only! Instead, difficulty will ramp up entirely based on the chapter you're playing.

Fate Encounters

Each biome now has 6 scored fate encounters:

1. 1x Biome-themed guardian rescue
2. 1x Biome-themed hazard
3. 2x Biome-themed beneficial (loyal units, chance for more resources or other special abilities)
4. 1x Universal-themed beneficial
5. 1x Scored Shop Encounter (Ex: Mercenary for Hire (single), Inkadoo, or Bleet)

Epic encounters, such as the Sand Pit Arena or the Demon Dance, now replace one of the biome's harder Minion battles so that each biome has an even scoring potential. Speaking of encounters, I've added 12 new encounters to the game to grow each biomes thematic feel of hazards helpful friends. My personal favorite is a chance to help a Flesh Golem find romance within the lonely depths of the dungeons...

New Encounters

1. Beetle's Burden
2. Cursed Tomb
3. Cursed to Crumble
4. Frozen Viking
5. Horse with No Name
6. Noxious Gas
7. Scavenger Hunt
8. Skeletal Siphon
9. Stitched With Love
10. Viking Vanguard
11. Yellowjacket Nest
12. Goblin Army (Minion Encounter)

Biome Themed Shops

1. Each of the 20 distinct shopkeepers now spawn only in specific biomes to create different incentives to visit each world depending on your desired strategy or thematic mood.
2. Each shopkeeper now has a limited amount of gold (500) to ensure balanced opportunity on earned gold. Buying items from a shopkeeper increases their gold pool so that you can trade and sell larger items.
3. Traveling Salesman carries 1000 gold for the entire adventure rather than refreshing for each camp.

Balanced Resource Distribution

1. I've replaced my previous individual object based RNG drops in favor of a world resource pool. Each world now has a fixed set of resources created for it and the procedural algorithm will randomly hide those items based on the world seed. Items will be hidden appropriate to their context (i.e. weapons in weapon racks, gold in chests, dice in crates and barrels), and also distributed evenly amongst defeated enemies. This will guarantee a consistent drop rate and max resource score potential for all biomes and adventure runs.
2. As an added bonus, the run summary will now indicate the total number of resources you have found per each category (gold/dice/cards/etc.) and the number that remains so that you can be certain you collected everything before you portal to the next world. Any map cells with resources left dropped or still hidden in crates/barrels will now show an icon (gold with a dice) so you know where to go to find the goodies. Note: You will need to explore the map first or use the Insatiable Coffer before this icon appears.
3. Since the dungeon biome naturally has a higher frequency of weapon and armor racks and bookcases, this biome will generate extra weapons/armor/spells. Likewise, overworld biomes will each spawn extra gold, locked chests, potions and marshmallows to even things out. The total point value of all resources remains equal across all biomes, but will vary by chapter, with higher chapters producing more resources.
4. After all sub worlds (such as caves, portals, dungeons) for a biome have been populated, the procedural generator will remove Minion and Elite encounters from the overworld that exceed the per-chapter maximum of 9 minion battles and 5 elite battles. This is to ensure a consistent adventure duration and scoring potential for all biomes and boss combinations (such as when the Demon Lord or Yeti King generates additional dungeons).
5. Additional fate encounters added for thematics of the biome RNG will replace encounters of equal score value to ensure consistent adventure duration and score potential.
6. Minion difficulty for non-fast adventures now use the difficulty distribution for the entire world rather than resetting the difficulty distribution each time a new subWorld is populated. This results in the hardest minion encounters being found in the deepest subWorlds.
7. Elites, soul gems and boss keys can now be hidden in any of the sub worlds generated for a biome.
8. Skeleton keys will now always spawn in the floor for which their locks chests and doors are located.
9. Lore is now only hidden in the native sub worlds and not the additional sub worlds generated by encounters (such as demonic realm or yeti cave). This is intended to provide incentive to fully explore the overworld.
10. Nonscored battles (such as minions on the Path of Pain in Demon world) can no longer be assigned keys, lore, or other kinds of drops as these encounters are meant purely as obstacles that can be fought through or avoided using alternative routes.
11. Completed fate encounters are no longer repeated twice in the same adventure across different chapters.

Quality of Life

1. Visible Icons: Resource icons on the world map (such as skeleton keys, lore, drops, and boss key) are now displayed above the folds in the map so it's clear which areas have items to collect.
2. Resource Tracker: The world map will now display an icon consisting of a dice combined with gold coins on areas that contain resources such as gold, dice, soul gems, or card pickups that have been left on the map or are hidden within crates, barrels or other objects. Resources are detected once the map has been explored or if you have equipped the Insatiable Coffer artifact. You can also use your run summary to get a more specific breakdown of the total gold, dice, cards, and satchels you've found out of the total left to find.
3. World Map: Buttons indicating the number of subWorlds will no longer show until you have visited a map on that subWorld. This is to prevent revealing information about the nature of the boss by simply looking at the number of floors a map contains. If you have equipped the world map artifact, compass, treasure coffer, or are playing on fast adventure, the subWorld floor buttons will display without having to explore first. The first time a player explores a new subworld, the total number of subwords is revealed on the world map.
4. Achievement Unlocking: Players who have beaten an adventure on Hardcore now receive the achievement for completing an adventure on Advanced. Likewise, players who have beaten an adventure on Advanced or Hardcore now receive the achievement for completing an adventure on Novice.
5. Final Run Summary: Added the UI HUD display on the Prismatic Realm so players can view their final score and run summary.

XP Earn Rate Improvements

While my initial XP system introduced in 2.0 was quite a hit, it also stirred a lot of discussion. I have received regular feedback since its release, including daily reminders from players to continue to improve the XP system. I love that player passion, and I'm very pleased to finally roll this one out.

1. I've modified the XP Variance table by removing all negative modifiers (decay) on XP gain and continuing to reward bonuses for playing at higher descent levels. While the decay rate was intended to keep the challenge level up and avoid what I thought might feel like grinding, I neglected to consider that many casual players prefer the "power fantasy" of leveling up their characters this way and greatly exceeding the strength of their enemies while unlocking their characters ultimate abilities. If you want to grind to level up by crushing enemies on Novice level with your most powerful heroes, you now can. If you want to challenge yourself by playing harder difficulties, you'll get an XP bonus for doing so.
2. Your XP difficulty bonus now always uses your summoner's max earned rank (not your selected rank) to remove the bad feeling of not using your upgrades to get XP faster. This means you're now always incentivized to use your highest rank. You still have the option to downgrade your rank if you want the extra challenge, but this will no longer affect your XP or score.
3. You'll earn a 5% XP bonus for every difficulty level you play above your summoner's max achieved rank until reaching Rank 20. This is intended to support hardcore players who prefer overcoming brutal challenges over the power fantasy and to reward skillful play to reach the higher scoring tiers faster.
4. Descent difficulty tiers can now be globally unlocked for all characters without having to beat early descent levels with each character via a series of new achievements:
   1. Descent Explorer: Beat Descent 5 with any character. Unlock Descent 1 for all characters.
   2. Descent Journeyman: Beat Descent 10 with at least two characters. Unlock Descent 6 for all characters.
   3. Descent Master: Beat Descent 15 with at least three characters. Unlock Descent 11 for all characters.

5. I want to encourage faster XP gain by playing a variety of different summoners. So, you can now maximize your player XP gain by playing your lowest ranked summoners at the highest difficulties you can. This is because bonus XP contributes to both the summoner being played and your global player XP. This intended to incentivize and reward players who play with a range of different characters and you catch up to your highest rank summoners.
   
6. My goal for Abalon has always been to encourage exploration of a diverse range of characters so players can discover and master an arsenal of creative strategies. To this end, I've added further incentive to playing with different characters with a new set of achievements that will unlock permanent XP bonuses once you've completed adventures with multiple characters:
   1. Master of Many I: Complete an adventure with 3 different summoners. Unlock a 5% XP bonus for all characters.
   2. Master of Many II: Complete an adventure with 5 different summoners. Upgrade your XP bonus to 10%.
   3. Master of Many III: Complete an adventure with 10 different summoners. Upgrade your XP bonus to 20%.
   4. Master of Many IV: Complete an adventure with 20 summoners. Upgrade your XP bonus to 50%.
   5. Master of Many V: Complete a hardcore adventure with 20 summoners. Upgrade your XP bonus to 100%.

7. Your combined XP bonus (for playing harder difficulties, earning XP upgrades via achievements, and double XP events) is now shown as a bonus percentage of the base score in the battle summary. For example, if the battle shows you earned 100 XP and you have a 50% Bonus, you will earn a total of 150XP. Your XP bonuses for difficulty variance, achievement upgrades and events additively stack together, and bonuses beyond 100% will show as 2X, 3X, 4X multipliers instead (meaning your XP is multiplied by the bonus).
   

Smarter Battle Deployment

Raising a larger army of followers is a lot of fun, but many players have astutely called out that this can often lead to overcrowded maps and blocking in your summoner on the backlines. To address this, I've optimized the player's unit deployment algorithm as follows:

1. The size of the map now determines the max number of units that can be deployed from your party. 5x8 maps deploy a max of 8, 6x9, a max of 9, and 7x13 a max of 13. Boss battles will always deploy a max of 8 units to maintain a consistent challenge across variable map sizes.
2. The space directly in front of your summoner is reserved (no allies will deploy there) so that you're free to move about on your first turn. (Thanks EvilMustDie)
3. Units to deploy are selected automatically based on their combined power/life/armor remaining, then whether or not they are ranged or have support abilities. Guardians are always deployed.
4. Units are automatically deployed in optimal positions, with ranged units in the back and strongest melee fighters in the front. Injured units will even take a position in the backline behind units with more combined power and life.

So, you can still build a massive army reserve, no more map overcrowding, and your best and healthiest units will always be selected in optimal formation without having to tinker with a separate deploy step. To fine tune your army, you can use your gear to power up/down your preferred fighters to change how they are deployed.

Leaderboard Reset and Scoring Changes

Once again, I've reset the global leaderboard so we can start fresh with our new scoring system. While I didn't get a chance to finish the new category and tiered leaderboards this update (they'll be coming next), I did revamp the scoring mechanisms to move us closer towards the ideal end game:

1. Below Par Bonus: I've recalculated all of the par values (average turns to win battles) based on the latest 2.0+ battle data and changed these from a flat score to a simple 10% bonus of the base score for each battle type. Difficulty level is no longer a factor in determining par. The par value for each type of encounter is now based purely on the statistical average for all players' performance from the previous game versions' statistics.
2. No Retreat Bonus: I've added a new score differentiator that adds a 10% bonus to your battle's base score if you win the battle without ever having retreated. This aims to add a nice risk/reward factor and address the free scouting ability in Abalon that some of our min/max players called out for being a bit too tedious. (Thanks CyperAleksi)
3. Run Completion Bonus: Increases from 10% to 20%. Additionally, the bonus is now calculated after adding challenge modifier scores and is multiplied with other multipliers so that completing a run now has a much higher impact on score than partially finishing a run at a higher difficulty level.
4. Score Multipliers: All difficulties now share the same base scoring system so it's easy to track individual battle/fate/resource score performance relative to other difficulties and game modes. Scores for higher difficulties are now differentiated by an increasing score multiplier that doubles every four levels of difficulty. For instance, Novice is 1x, Advances is 1.25x, Hardcore is 1.75x and Descent 1 (or difficulty level 4) has a multiplier of 2x.
5. Adventure Scores: Playing the standard Adventure in signature mode with Descent difficulties offers the highest scoring potential as this is the hardest standard mode. The multipliers range from 2x (starting at Descent 1) and go up to 20x at Descent 15. I'll be adding Descent 16-20 and Descent 20+ in the next update for further challenge.
6. Traditional Mode: Traditional Mode now supports Descent difficulty. Since so many players prefer this style of play, I decided to remove the forced permadeath for summoner and guardians and instead allow you the option to increase the challenge by playing and unlocking the descent levels. Since Traditional Mode is much easier mode (due to the automatic recovery of cards and ability to see enemy hand), it earns points at half the multiplier rate of standard adventure.
7. Custom Mode Scoring: Custom mode allows you to pick individual modifiers to customize difficulty to your liking in the signature play style, so the standard multiplier is only used for the base difficulty (Novice, Advanced, Hardcore) and each bonus now has a challenge rating (1, 2 or 3) each corresponding to a 5%, 10%, or 15% bonus. All challenge modifiers, regardless of their effect, now award bonus points as a percentage of your battle score rather than individual categories (such as summoner battle, minion battle, fate encounter, run completion, etc.). I felt this change makes score tracking a lot easier to understand and helps emphasize the challenge effect of encounters like Ill-Fated better. As such, the scoring percentage value for affected encounters has been adjusted accordingly.
8. Nemesis Battles: Nemesis Battles no longer award points or XP since these are attached to challenges and/or fate encounters that already award their points.
9. Nonscored Encounters: Likewise, encounters that attached to specific dungeons or events, such as the "Friend or Foe" or "Path of Pain" that offer differing routes through the demon dungeon are now flagged as non-scored as these are intended as unique obstacles and an alternative paths to navigation rather than bonus scoring opportunities for the biome.
10. Buying out Shops: Buying out all cards within a shop no longer generates a fate encounter score, except in the case of a single mercenary for hire (not the mercenary den) and purchasing or freeing a hero from shops containing caged heroes that can be rescued (ex: Inkadoo and Bleet). I felt awarding points for this didn't make sense after the advent of shops containing loyal units increased the inventory of shops beyond most gold distributions. Each chapter includes exactly 1 scored shop encounter.

Balance Changes

1. Encounter Difficulty: Fine tuned the games 200+ encounters for better difficulty distribution (normalized curve for novice, harder elite and boss challenges for advanced and hardcore players). Full disclosure: I took my best guesses, and I'll continue to improve upon this with future releases.
2. Early Level Protection: Changed the mechanism that protects the player from early level encounters in the first chapter being too difficult. Previously, this would allow distributions of encounters rated difficulty 1-3 (after having spawned at least one elite for purposes of teaching retreat mechanic). Now, the curve advances in a linear fashion for the first 6 battles before letting the random map distribution take over. Additionally, the algorithm now protects early chapter characters from difficult fate encounters (not just battles), such as the Arena Ambush or Catch of the Day. The retreat prompt will now surface afterwards, if the player attempts to engage with a difficulty 8 or higher encounter before they have won 8 or more battles and have not recruited any allies yet.
3. Drop RNG: Instead of using the action id as the RNG salt (which can vary between sessions), I now use coordinates (which are fixed). This should result in more normalized card drops and will eventually help with consistency as we move towards more seeded RNG systems in the future.
4. Unequip: Made it so that player can no longer unequip items during battle. This is to prevent exploiting artifacts (such as Horn of Haste) where the benefit is applied at the start of the battle by removing them to circumvent the max item limits. This also fixes bug where it was possible to unequip allies who have been mind controlled by the enemy. Players can still swap equipment during battle (i.e. replace a weapon by equipping a different one).
5. Traditional Mode no longer includes the permadeath challenges enabled by default. Many players (casual and hardcore) enjoy this style of play over Abalon's signature style, so now you can play on any difficulty (including Descent) with permadeath optional via the difficulty setting.
6. Fast Adventure: Increased the number of shops in Fast Adventure Dungeon from 1 to 2 and increased the number of shops in Fast Adventure Overworld from 3 to 4 so that Fast Adventure now includes exactly 2x scored shops (1 in overworld and 1 in dungeon).
7. Ranged Unit Encounter Spawns: I changed the algorithm for rangedUnitSpawn so that these spaces are now only and always reserved if the enemy has farshot units. This should greatly improve the challenge of the encounter by ensuring the AI's melee troops aren't blocked by ranged units being positioned in front of them.
8. Elixir of Eternal Life: Instead of dealing 20 damage (and probably killing you if you fail the dice roll), choosing poorly and drinking from the wrong grail will now transform you into a long, white haired skeleton warrior. (Thanks Lex)
9. Dinner-A-Fowl now spawns a miniature version of the Griffon guardian so that all character classes can receive it as a loyal unit.
10. Increased the life of Goblin Birthday boy from 3 to 5.
11. Removed some traps and furniture in some of the dungeon rooms so there is more room for guardians to enter.
12. Updated the biome description prompt so that it no longer displays a difficulty rating to coincide with my balance update where all biomes should be of equal difficulty.
13. Chronomancer Top Hat: Will now be uniquely found in the Snow biome via Play Nice with Ice encounter. Expanded the range of creatures that can be created by four (you're welcome Kaaz). The full list creatures that can be animated includes:
    1. Treant by placing on a Tree
    2. Earth Elemental by placing on a Rock
    3. Crystal Golem by placing on a Crystal (I wonder where you find those?)
    4. Ice Golem by placing on an Ice Block
    5. Fire Elemental by placing on Fire Pit
    6. 1/5 Bramble Elemental by placing on Brambles, Cactus, or Spiked Blocked
    7. 3/6 Carniflower by placing on a Bush
    8. Magma Golem by placing on Powder Keg

14. Reduced Demon World size from 4x4 to 3x3.
    
15. Cursed Coin changed from "The last enemy defeated drops 60 gold" to "Defeated Elites drop 180 gold. Excludes Nemesis".
    
16. Create an alchemy fate map for each biome so they can each support the many different alchemy encounter types.
    
17. Paying off bandits will now count as a successful encounter completion and award points.
    
18. Bigger Bosses challenge now increases boss life by +20 rather than +10.
    
19. Overcharged challenge now increases the starting mana of Bosses and Elites (not just bosses) to 5.
    
20. Camp Shortage challenge modifier is now unlocked in Challenge Mod Set 4 on the progression tower
    
21. Inflation challenge modifier is now unlocked in Challenge Mod Set 5 on the progression tower

Bug Fixes

1. Fixed Bug where multiplayer co-op games involving AI controlled withereds could become desynced because both clients auto-processed mindless actions and the host also sent the mindless actions, resulting in an exception that didn't manifest until much later in the game. (Thanks Excolion and yokeee)
2. Fixed Bug where it was possible to loot the Mercenary Den before recruiting all Mercenaries. Removed gold chests from Mercenary den. As a side note, Mercenary Den and other shop items no longer contain loot :P
3. Fixed Bug where player can unequip items on units they no longer control.
4. Fixed Bug where Demon Dance fate encounter was scoring twice (once as a Fate Encounter and again as a Boss Encounter). It now scores as a Battle encounter.
5. Fixed Bug where switching to a new page and selecting a card to sell would not initially show the "Sell" button until the card was selected a second time.
6. Fixed Bug where using the keyboard or controller to select two cards of the same type in a row while in the Deck Summary screen would not select the second duplicate card.
7. Fixed Bug where casting exactly 3 spells while equipped with the Trinity Orb, you could then play any number of satchel cards to continuously trigger the Trinity Orb's effect. The Trinity Orb is not intended to trigger when playing artifacts. (Thanks Elwood)
8. Fixed Bug where Goblin Backstab works with Ranged Attacks (ex: Warlock Staff). Backstab is not intended to work against multiple targets, so I've fixed this so that Backstab abilities only trigger when there are no secondary targets. (Thanks Excision)
9. Fixed Bug where restocking a campfire with marshmallows to light the bonfire wasn't incrementing the marshmallows eaten statistic.
10. Fixed Bug where AI wasn't attacking the hellhound puppy or cat of nine as it saw their constant resurrection as nonsensical.
11. Fixed Bug where shop name was not appearing correctly and other bugs in the Turkish translations. (Thanks Excolion)
12. Fixed Bug where Metamorph in Sandpit arena cannot transform into another unit without transforming back. (Thanks Wesley)
13. Fixed Bug where leaving the Harvest world through the portal while transformed into an animal to enter a new biome would result in being transformed back into your summoner and having a copy of the animal you were transformed into temporarily in your party until completing a battle. Your animal transformation status will now carry over to the next adventure. (Thanks Excolion)
14. Fixed Bug where some statuses affixed from fate events could become removed by retreating from battle instead of winning battle or resting at camp.

New Language Support

I am continuously impressed and thrilled by the support of our player community in helping to translate and add new language support to Abalon. Recently, we had volunteers for Indonesian and Polish, so these languages will be coming soon (hopefully in the next major update). I've also had several requests for Ukrainian and Arabic language support. If you're a native speaker and would like to help translate Ukrainian, Arabic or another language, I'd love your support! I've got a first-class custom localization tool that makes the process quite fun, and I also honor all of our volunteers by creating and naming a card in the game in your honor. Reach out to me on Discord (@RossD20Studios).

Coming Soon

I aimed to finish the leaderboard system this update: instead we got balancing, XP overhaul and new fate encounters - necessary steps on a long road. I do have the designs for the new leaderboards done (which is actually the harder part), so I'll make that the priority to finish for our next big update. After that, it's back to working on multiplayer and our Caves Expansion.

Showing Your Support

Many of our players have asked me for a way to help support the continued development of Abalon, so I setup a "Buy Me a Coffee" page where you can make one-time or recurring contributions.

Reviews

My year-end goal for 2025 is for Abalon to achieve "Overwhelming Positive" rating which requires a total of 500 or more reviews an overall rating of 95% or more. As of today, we're at 432, 94%. That's 68 more to go, will you help me by writing a Steam review? I want to make the best experience I can for you - let me know in your review what you like about Abalon and also where I can continue to improve and do better.

Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and consideration :)

~Ross