Abalon 2.70 - Massive Major Update plus our first Steam DLC: Animal Gear!

Greetings D20 Fans!

I'm pleased to deliver to you this massive update for Abalon and announce the release of our first Steam DLC: Animal Gear! There's a lot of new content and worthy changes to digest here, so let's dive in!

Major New Features

1. Improved Equipment System: Greatly improved the equipment system by adding further flexibility and utility. (Ex: ability to equip helmets on all units, ability to equip/unequip items unlimited times during battle)
2. New Gear: 14 new equipment including skin variations of existing armors for greater unit customization.
3. New Mechanics and Balance: Added new mechanics (ex: True Sight, Overwatch) and improved various aspects of game balance (units, nemesis, fate encounters)
4. New Fate Encounter: Meditating Monk (Snow Biome) (In honor of Peter Jones)
5. New Fate Encounter: Skeleton Bros (Dungeon Biome)
6. New Descent: Levels 15-19 have been added.
7. New Challenge Modifier: Unsuspecting Ambush: You may not retreat from ambush encounters.
8. New Challenge Modifier: Grave Robbers: Resources hidden in crates, barrels and chests are more scarce.
9. New Challenge Modifier: Assassins: Begin each chapter chased by nemesis assassins.
10. Massive Item and Economy Balance: Reviewed over 200 items and updated gold prices and mechanics for greater balance.

Animal Gear DLC

I'm also excited to announce the release of our first Steam DLC for Abalon: Animal Gear! This DLC was inspired by an overwhelming number player requests to provide customization options for their favorite animal characters.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3998420/Abalon__Animal_Gear/
The Animal Gear expansion contains a total of 34 new cards consisting of:

1. 20 Harnesses that grant new abilities to animals such as fire breathing, shape shifting, cheating death, speed boosts, gravity manipulation, and more!
2. 8 Helms that can be used by any of Abalon's characters, humans and animals alike!
3. 6 Armor offers new choices for your humanoid characters including elemental resistance, attack boosts, and inflicting vulnerability

Abalon's Animal Gear DLC adds a new "Animal Gear" chest to each chapter's adventure so as not to dilute the base game's existing reward pool. Additionally, animal gear will now surface at animal themed shops and as potential drops from boss characters.

I've also listened to your requests regarding double purchasing content (for Steam and mobile) and have addressed this as well by making any Abalon DLC purchased tied to your Abalon account so that you need only purchase the content once (on Steam or on mobile) and you'll get access to it on all platforms!

Note: This excludes purchases of the base game granting access to mobile DLCS (which I can't do anything about because that is a separate form of entitlement and there is no way to grant access to ownership of a Steam game by buying content on mobile). See our Mobile FAQ for more info.

Improved Equipment System

I've been carefully considering everyone's feedback regarding the equipment system and have come up with some better solutions I think everyone will enjoy.

First, to give some context, equipment has historically been restricted so that items can only be equipped once per battle. This was to prevent an unrealistic and tedious gameplay pattern where you could, say, attack with your most powerful weapon (like a fire sword or bow and arrow), unequip it, then re-equip it to another unit until every unit had attacked with it. Our last major update, on the request of players, also made it impossible to unequip armor and artifacts, in order to prevent a similar exploit where you could start with a powerful item like a horn of haste, then remove it after its benefit kicked in at the beginning of battle. However, these changes also produced their own problems where 1) A confusing UI that made it difficult to determine which items could be equipped/not equipped and 2) Another tedious gameplay pattern where min/max players would simply unequip all of their items after each battle so they could begin each new battle by equipping the items they felt were most suitable for their current situation.

To solve these problems and improve the experience, I've changed the mechanics once again so that you may now equip/unequip items as many times as you like during battle (eliminating the need for any additional UI). This also prevents the need to unequip all of your heroes after each battle, so that you can now adapt your tactics however you like. To keep things balanced, I've implemented a new rule that requires a unit being equipped or unequipped must not have used their action for the turn. Equipping/unequipping does not consume their action. This way, you have unlimited flexibility. Plus, this will prevent exploits like attacking with one weapon, then unequipping it and giving it to another unit in the same turn. Also, where it makes sense, specific items like the Horn of Haste, an artifact that's abilities are triggered at the start of battle, cannot be unequipped during battle after the artifact has been used.

Equipment System Updates

1. New Equipment Mechanics: Items can now be equipped and unequipped an unlimited number of times per battle. To balance this, units may only be equipped or unequipped if their action for the turn hasn't been used yet. Equipping/unequipping does not consume their action.
2. New Equipment Mechanics: Regardless of whether or not you choose to purchase the Animal Gear expansion, all units in the game can now wear any of the helmets found in the game. It took some painstaking effort and clever adaptations to ensure the helmets would properly align with the eyes of Abalon's hundreds of different creatures, but I think it was worth it and I hope you all enjoy it.
3. New Equipment Mechanics: All units in Abalon are now able to equip one of the two types of body armor based on their armature model. Humanoid models (including bipedal dragons, birds, bats, and the Occuloid) can equip Humanoid Armor. Everything else (quadrupeds, bugs, snakes) can equip Animal Gear. Note: Animal Gear is only available via the new Animal Gear DLC.
4. QoL Reduced file size footprint by dynamically generating icons for armor and weapons using the in-game textures actually equipped by the units.
5. QoL Improved the readability of equipment cards by changing the keyword "Equipment" to "Equip", reducing the number of line breaks, and simplifying the way equipment slots are indicated. For instance, instead of saying "Equipment Right Hand, Left Hand, Helmet, Outfit, Boots" the cards now read "Equip (Body, Head, Main Hand, Offhand, Two-Handed)".
6. Balance: Weapons, armor, potions, artifacts and other satchel card drops now escalate in power according to chapter (for adventure mode) and wave number (for survival mode) with a goal of creating a more rewarding and escalating upgrade progression. For information about how this works, see the new guidebook entry entitled Abalon Card Tiers.

New Equipment in 2.70

1. Gladiator Helmet
2. Goblin Champion Helmet
3. Gladiator Armor
4. Orc Armor
5. Skeleton Captain Helmet
6. Samurai Armor
7. Wolf Skin Helmet
8. Paladin Armor
9. Dreadnought Helm
10. Knightly Armor of Takis (Named to honor our community's Italian translator)
11. Marauder Armor
12. Dreadnought Axe
13. Breaker Sword
14. Giant Mace

v2.70 Release Notes

Balance, Mechanics and QoL

1. New Mechanic: Created new mechanic "True Sight: Can see Stealth units. Attack reveals Stealth." All insectoid characters with antennae (ex: Ants, Beetles, Mantises, and Wasps) have been granted this ability.
2. Balance: Added antennae to the unit models for Giant Stag beetle and Yellowjacket to reflect their correct anatomy.
3. New Mechanic: Overwatch: May counter attack ranged attacks.
4. Balance: Rogue, Archer, Bandit Archer, Dark Elf Archer, Elite Dark Elf Archer and Satyr Archer have been given the new Overwatch ability.
5. Mechanic Balance: The Immobilize effect will now apply Stun Immunity when the effect wears off (in addition to the freeze, petrify, pacify that previously did this) to prevent a character from being stun-locked for two turns in a row. If the effect is removed by curative abilities, Stun Immunity is not applied.
6. Mechanic Balance: Stun-lock protection (known in game as Stun Immunity) will now apply to all units, not just summoners. Stun Immunity is granted whenever a Freeze, Petrify, Pacify, or Immobilize effect wears off naturally to prevent a character from being stun-locked two turns (or more) in a row.
7. QoL Effects that remove equipment will no longer remove satchel items. Instead, a new debuff status effect called "Nullify (Equipment)" will be placed on these units, disabling equipment until this debuff is removed. In battle mode, where equipment is cast from the deck, these status effects will be removed for any effects with Nullify (Equipment).
8. Mechanic Balance: Units with "Nullify Equipment" (applied after a remove equipment effect from unit or spell on a equipped satchel gear) cannot be unequipped or equipped with new equipment. Items are unaffected.
9. Mechanic Balance: Units with the Vigil ability now trigger their Inflict abilities when making a combo attack. Normally, Inflict abilities are not triggered for combo attacks.
10. QoL Disabled the pop up on shop tiles when interacting with a prop indicating that you must speak with the shopkeeper. (Thanks NishimiyaAnna) I didn't feel it was necessary to make this a tooltip or warning, since it seemed pretty obvious that the items belong to the shop as the music changes. Instead, the props in shop are simply non-interactive (they don't contain any drops anyway).
11. QoL During the Stiched with Love encounter, if Giggles decides she likes you, Patches and his minions will no longer attack her in the battle that follows after he gets jealous. (Thanks Rhubarb314)
12. QoL Created a new tip prompt that explains max deployable units.
13. QoL Tutorial Improvement: Removed the Gust of Wind card from the tree stump log and have it drop from the goblins defeated in battle instead. (Thanks Arianna)
14. QoL Increased the max item UI for cards to support 16 items instead of 8. This will ensure that if player is enchanted with Fallen Angel's blessing, they can still see and unequip the satchel card for it.
15. Balance: Krox, Gravomancer, now has his gravity pull ability tied to his gravity hammer.
16. Balance: Kennel Boss Nemesis now grants buff to other ally demons instead of all demons. (Thanks Drylord) Bug ID: 80410
17. Balance: Retreating from a Nemesis will now set them 100 tiles behind you instead of 45, offering greater chance to reach shops and campsites. (Thanks Ocean_of_Memories)
18. Balance: Swipe is now a main hand weapon ability since it requires a specific attack pattern and animation. (Previously it wasn't, allowing you to equip a spear on Arcane Giant and still swipe attack) Equipping a non-swipe weapon to a humanoid model with swipe will remove swipe. Equipped animals will retain swipe for any gear equipped.
19. Balance: Double Strike can now be used with any single hand main weapon. Equipping a two-handed weapon or a new offhand weapon will remove it. (Thanks skyefae08)
20. Balance: Ice Axe no longer creates a new melee attack, and so can be combined with existing unit attacks (like Spin Attack or Double Strike). (Thanks skyefae08)
21. Balance: Knockback is no longer merged with the unit's native melee action. This ability is considered tied to the unit's strength, so it can be combined with other weapons. Note: Knockback is still tied to melee attack unless explicitly included with a ranged unit or ability.
22. Balance: Lunge is no longer merged to melee attack, but is associated with the main hand weapon. This will allow animals with lunge to keep this ability when equipped with Swipe.
23. Balance: Pierce is no longer merged to melee attack, but is associated with the main hand weapon. This will allow animals with pierce to keep this ability when equipped with Swipe.
24. Balance: Cora's ranged ice damage has been increased from 2 to 3 to help balance the change of adding Stun Immunity to all units.
25. Balance: Dwarf Blacksmith will now buff existing equipped weapons when entering the battlefield. Previously, he only buffed weapons as they were being equipped.
26. Balance: Cleanse spell changed from "Remove all enemy buffs, surprises and equipment from the board. Remove all debuffs afflicting allies." to "Remove all enemy buffs. Remove all debugs afflicting allies."
27. Balance: Thief gains "Inflict: Remove Equipment".
28. Balance: Abilities that grant mana cost discounts to cards now work with temporary cards, such as those created by discard effects (like Animate Tree creating a Treant) and cards fetched by the Hellhound puppy.
29. Balance: Changed the "No Escape" challenge modifiers from "You cannot retreat after your first turn." to "You must roll dice to retreat on your first turn. You cannot retreat after your first turn." This change was made to increase the difficulty of the challenge and return meaningful functionality to the White Flag artifact in Descent mode.
30. Balance: The Beetle Juice fate encounter now grants beetle transformation until defeat as its highest buff. (Effectively acts as an extra life and chance to play as an animal!)
31. Balance: Being defeated while in animal form with an extra life (such as from the Fortune Teller) will now respawn Novice and Advanced difficulty mode players back in their animal form rather than transforming back into their summoner. (Thanks Arianna)
32. Balance: All shops now sell 12 items and 3 shop-exclusive cards (previously, early game shops were often limited to 6 items and 2 shop exclusive cards)
33. Balance: Esperelda’s Mystic Antiquities now sells 6 satchel cards instead of 4, Increased her max Tier from 8 to 9
34. Balance: Ross's Rare Relics now sells Tier 8-9 satchel cards (up from Tier 8)
35. Balance: Inkadoo's House of Hopeless Heroes now sells 3 satchel cards (in addition to spell cards), Increased max Tier from 4 to 6
36. Balance: Increased Nurkle's Demons N' Things max shop tier from 7 to 8.
37. Balance: Increased number of satchel cards Chit Chit sells at Swarms R' Us from 3 to 5 to ensure a greater card pool for non-insectoid centric summoners.

Bug Fixes

1. Fixed bug where Big Healing potion wasn't playing a cast animation or updating the unit's health.
2. Fixed bug with Chinese translations where the "。" character could sometimes be combined with a comma, resulting in this: "。," instead of "。". (Thanks jack)
3. Fixed bug where XP bonus was reporting 15% instead of 10% on lower XP encounters due to rounding error. It occurs due to a rounding error. You're technically receiving more XP than 10% at lower levels due to the integers being rounded up. 15 XP times plus 10% bonus comes to 16.5, which rounds up to 17. Then, I had another XP bonus rounder that was rounding the 13% effective bonus to 15%. I've changed that to use the floor method so it should now report 10% earned in next update. (Thanks Drylord)
4. Fixed bug where unequipping a unit card would cause them to look down while viewing their card.
5. Fixed bug with Italian translation in the Stitched with Love encounter that prevents interaction with Patches in the Italian translation. (Thanks Guest_268706)
6. Fixed bug with biome selection in the Indonesian translation. (Thanks Bagas)
7. Fixed bug with other localization errors affecting variable name placements and prompt headers.
8. Fixed bug where Nemesis can follow you to the next chapter. (Thanks Rhubarb314)
9. Fixed bug where Snow map resulted in inaccessible tile due to river overlay. (Thanks Guest_8084)
10. Fixed bug where Bandit Cuthroat would throw her knife at neutral enemies captured in the net. (Thanks Karmen General Nomen)
11. Fixed bug where casting Turn Back Time or Cleanse could result in losing control of units you controlled as a result of the Red Imp's unit swap ability. Instead of determining the buff team as the team who applied the buff (in this case the enemy Red Imp), it looks at the affix target's team and removes it if it is a buff. (Thanks Guest_245765)
12. Fixed bug where Red Imp could reapply its stealth by destroying a chair or other non-enemy object. (Thanks Guest_245765)
13. Fixed bug where typing ">_<" into Abalon Arena chat would crash the game. (Thanks Wesley)
14. Fixed Bug where attempting to fast travel and dismissing the "Cannot Fast Travel while chased be a Nemesis" prompt while standing near neutral units would trigger a "Roll for Initiative" prompt and force neutral units into battle with the player's party.
15. Fixed Bug where firing triple squirrels at a destructible environment object while standing on the edge of map containing lore could result in the unexplored map's being collected, but not incrementing the lore index, resulting in a missing lore within the world. (Thanks Guest_246703)
16. Fixed Bug where Phylactery Potion returns to inventory after usage.
17. Fixed Bug where game could soft lock after using Theron's Weighted Die and entering an ambush encounter with the gameplay setting "Wait for animation" enabled. (Thanks Kairin)
18. Fixed Bug where a captured guardian encounter spawned a bridge could result in some of the player's party members running off the screen and being lost. (Thanks Esfinge)
19. Fixed Bug where a Nemesis spawning on a tiny dungeon treasure room could potentially appear on or before the door tile and outside of the player's attack range. (Thanks Guest_275699)
20. Fixed Bug where a Knockback unit equipped with a Knockback weapon would trigger the push twice, enabling spike walls and traps to trigger twice instead of the one trigger intended.
21. Fixed Bug where Kennel Master nemesis or his hellhounds could spawn behind the one-way push block in the demon dungeon.
22. Fixed Bug where the weapon power bonuses from Dwarf Blacksmith remained permanent on weapons until unequipped.
23. Fixed Bug where Sylvia's multiple squirrel throw ability could be used in the tutorial. (Thanks Arianna)
24. Fixed Bug where Dice Mistress could reward the same satchel card multiple times in the same event. (Thanks Arianna)
25. Fixed Bug where it was possible for Nemesis to spawn in cleared treasure rooms, which could result in map layouts that were non-traversable in fast adventure mode. (Thanks Arianna)
26. Fixed Bug where thunderstorms weren't showing lightning flashes when the "Disable Lightning Flashes" option was off.
27. Fixed Bug where Big Beard's helmet didn't align correctly with Sylvia and Cora.
28. Fixed Bug where Philosopher's Stone alchemy encounter didn't clear the fate encounter marker on map after failing to transform lead into gold and exhausting the alchemy table resources. (Thanks Arianna)
29. Fixed Bug where non Harvest world elite Demond encounters could spawn in the demonic realm accessed from the portal in Harvest world.
30. Fixed Bug where it was possible to retreat from a Nemesis encounter into another battle. This could result in odd behavior, where a player might enter into unexplored areas (including locked boss rooms). Now, instead, you'll retreat to the last safe explored area (or if that path is blocked due to a nemesis minion left behind) then retreat will be blocked instead. (Thanks Guest_268344)
31. Fixed Bug where unit icons on small cards were rendering in the incorrect coordinate on mobile or with large cards video option enabled (appearing much higher on the card than the desktop version) because I wasn't accounting for desktop scale variation).
32. Fixed Bug where Tier 0 items (such as Bigbeard's Helmet and the Chronomancer Top Hat) could be found in a shops or stolen from presents at the goblin birthday party. Tier 0 items are limited to their special event drops only. (Thanks Rhubarb314)

Massive Economy Rebalance

Abalon's entire item catalog and in-game economy (gold prices and drop rate) has undergone a massive balance overhaul using numerous sources of player feedback and careful relative analysis of each card in consideration with known gameplay strategies and relative to new upcoming cards that will be available in future expansions.

This process took many hours of consideration and various techniques, including paper card printouts, study of player created spreadsheets (special shoutout and thanks to player Ink), and many more hours of testing. Overall, we reduced the gold prices of Abalon's artifacts and consumables by nearly 10K gold and increased the prices of many undervalued weapons and amor by approximately 4000 gold. I've noted the mechanic changes below (this does not include the price adjustments for all items).

Item Balance Changes

1. Dark Elf Armor: Increased Max Life from +2 to +3, No longer carries "Dark Elf" tag. +150 Gold, -1 Mana
2. Dwarven Armor: Added Hexproof, +250 Gold
3. Wizard Hat: Added "Required: Summoner", -500 Gold
4. Forcefield Generator: Renamed One-Use Forcefield to Forcefield Generator. Created a new icon for it. Made it so that if the forcefield is unbroken, it will continue to persist. Previously, it would only last for duration of battle (including if you retreated). +50 Gold
5. Hero Doll: Changed from "Choose any unlocked Guardian and add it to your deck." to "Choose any unlocked Guardian and add it to your hand. It costs 0." +50 Gold
6. Arcana: Added Spellpower +1, +700 Gold, +2 Mana
7. Orb of Insight: Changed from "Consumable Choose any unlocked spell card and add it to your deck" to "Artifact Warcry: Fetch a random card. It lasts until end of battle.", +200 Gold
8. Forcefield Orb: Changed from "At start of battle, gain Forcefield" to "Warcry: Forcefield". This enables combos where you can use time travel to reactivate the forcefield during battle., -175 Gold
9. Sacrificial Orb: Changed from "Support: Destroy to gain 1 mana" to "Destroy to gain mana equal to its cost. Required: Summoner Gear", +150 Gold
10. Pyramid Vault: Changed from "Consumable Choose 1 of the next 3 cards in your deck and add it to your hand. It costs 5 less." to "Artifact Draw a card whenever you Discard a card.", +800 Gold
11. Big Mana Potion: Increased to Generate (3) Mana instead of (2), -150 Gold
12. Woodcutter Axe: Made into a artifact and satchel card only. Added +1/+0. Changed ability so that trees can only be chopped down during battle. Now destroys trees and stumps in one blow instead of having to first chop tree down to stump. +25 Gold, -1 Red Soul Gem: Made it Tier 0 so it only drops in Fast Adventure, -200 Gold
13. Blue Soul Gem: Made it Tier 0 so it only drops in Fast Adventure, -300 Gold
14. Crystal Sword: Added +1/+0, +100 Gold
15. Marksman's Bow: Renamed to "Marksman Bow" and made it an Artifact, +325 Gold
16. Necromancer Staff: Added "Sprintshot: Magic Attack", + 500 Gold, +1 Mana
17. And many more! If you're curious about the gold price changes for the other items, I'm happy to share the spreadsheet containing all the changes for the 200+ items in the game on our Discord.

Coming Soon

I've got another major update planned for next month that will introduce additional new features I didn't have time to include here, such as the revamped leaderboard system, Descent 20 (which will introduce an epic final boss fight), and more! I also haven't forgotten about the Caves expansion (which I hope to release later this year).

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 489, 94%! I can't believe that's just 11 more to go now (assuming you all like the game and where it's going). As I say in every update: I want to make the best experience I can for you, so please write a Steam review and let me know in your review what you like about Abalon and also where I can continue to improve and be a better dev. You can also leave me feedback directly in game via Menu -> Share Feedback. I personally read and do my best to reply back to every single player request.

Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and ongoing support :)

~Ross