Soft Ban Automatic System
Seen and not picked items* will be banned for a longer time period and a lot more efficiently. This will heavily reduce the chance to find an item* which you statistically are not interested in. As a result, as you play the run, you'll have a higher chance to see items that you need and that will be meaningful for your build. The "banned" recipes/heirlooms have a 100% chance to not appear in your next X draws and with time that percentage gets lower and lower. Eventually, after a very long time that item is no longer banned (0% chance to be banned upon drawing). Heirlooms ban cycle is short.
*The word "item" is used to mention all of the following: heroes, relics, origins, recipes and heirlooms.
Recipe Locking
You can now Lock rare and legendary recipes which will freeze them during a reroll and during a new reward. The main purpose of the lock system is to counter a negative effect of the Soft Ban Automatic System which is that if you see 2 recipes that you need in one draw, if you couldn't lock one, then you would pick one of them while the other would be put at the start of the ban list, meaning that you wouldn't see that recipe for a long time and maybe even for the entire run. Additionally, the lock system can be a tool to lock a recipe which you might be unsure whether or not it is the perfect fit, and either reroll and see if something better comes up or even wait until your build is more concrete before committing to that recipe. The locking system is situational, it can help in some situations but don't worry if you are not using it all the time, this is normal.
The Forge Window now has a small section displaying the locked rare and legendary recipes so that if you forgot, you can quickly remember.
New and Reworked Unlock Perks
New base Flame cost for rare recipe rerolls: 4 -> 3
New base Flame cost for legendary recipe rerolls: 5 -> 3
Unlock Perk #2: You now have 4 recipe/heirloom option choices up from 3.
Unlock Perk #4: you now have 4 hero option choices up from 3 (also applies to star encounter hero reward)
Unlock Perk #6: Flame cost for legendary recipe rerolls: 3 -> 2.
Unlock Perk #7: (UNCHANGED) Flame cost for rare recipe rerolls: 3 -> 2. And bigger shops.
Anti Reroll Spam
The Flame Cost to reroll recipes now increases by 1 every reroll. Heirlooms are unchanged (2 Flame per reroll/ fixed cost). With the increase recipe choices from 3 to 4, if on average you reroll twice, you pay less Flame per item choice options on average.
The Anti Reroll System is added to counter "reroll spamming" that could be used to find a specific item which is against The Last Flame's game design philosophy that is to "adapt with the available tools" and not to force specific builds.
Advanced Section in the Guide Book
Advanced section added in the Guide Book with more advanced mechanics and tips.
Data Analytics
- Data Analytics implementation for balance purposes (recipes, heirlooms, heroes, relics, origins).
- New General Data Analytics Stats added.
The data analytics will be quite useful to further balance and rework the game which is the next goal of the Early Access!
Unlocking XP required increased
Unlocking XP required has been increased by 50%. This is to give more time to new players to play more runs and get more experience with the current sets before unlocking new content which on average seemed to be going too fast.
Balance
Hero:
- [nerf] Giachi now deals split damage. Damage is unchanged. (Major damage nerf in AoE situation)
- [nerf] Giachi active animation speed decreased by 35%. This is a nerf to the rate at which he generates mana overall (less auto attacks) but especially, it nerfs perma-casting.
- [nerf] Celeste's active animation speed decreased by 33%
- [nerf] Alec's active animation speed decreased by 7%
- [nerf] Flynn's active animation speed decreased by 38%, active base damage lowered from 220 -> 190
- [buff] Khiro HP: 1100 -> 1200, Attack Damage: 65 -> 70
- [change] Azura's active speed was scaling with Attack Speed which was not desired. It now has a fixed active speed like most other heroes.
Recipes:
- [buff] Crazy Mace and Spirit Hat CD: 2 - > 1.5
- [buff / change] Powerful Staff, Powerful Dagger, Healing Helm and Shielding Hood now work with Self Surging in addition to global surging which means that these 4 items now work with Nyria's active, and these Legendaries: Crazy Mace, Spirit Hat.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that caused some archer heroes to perma-cast even if they were not at full mana.
- Fixed an issue where bleed would not show up properly in the advanced damage meters if the hero had "Ethereal Infused Attacks" causing auto attack damage to be Ethereal instead of Physical.
- Fixed an issue where the game would give you the Steam Achievement for completing a Challenge when losing to the third boss. You now need to beat the third boss to get the achievement.
- Beating a higher difficulty will now give the Steam Achievements for all the lower difficulties. In theory, there are no ways to skip a difficulty, so this shouldn't be necessary. The reason why it got implemented is because of rare occasions where some player didn't receive some Achievements while completing a difficulty on Ascension.
A word from the dev and the road map
Hey there! This is Hotloop the solo dev of The Last Flame. I wanted to take a quick time to say thank you so much for playing my game! There is still much in the works to make The Last Flame into the best possible game. The game just released in Early Access, and there will be numerous updates until the 1.0 launch. In a few days, the road map will be posted with everything currently planned up until the full launch!
I also wanted to mention that I do hear and read all your feedback. I am aware that some players find that the item pool gets too large as you unlock more and more content. This is a very valid feedback. The patch 0.6.5 and this patch (0.6.7) are doing their best to address this specific issue, and future updates will take this into high consideration. I also want to mention that there is no current plan to add any new archetype(s) which would amplify this issue. Instead all new content will focus on the current available archetypes. The next updates will focus on balance and reworks, and I do believe that a better overall balance will make the game feel more fair, fun to play and less "RNG".
Thank you for your support!