Hello! Hope everyone is doing well.
Today's finally the day. Major Update 5 is here and it's easily the biggest update Nomad Survival has ever had. Thank you everyone for your patience. I originally planned for this update to take 2 weeks, but it ended up taking closer to 2 months!
This update does a lot of quality-of-life changes alongside the introduction of a massive Weapon Skill overhaul. Major Update 6 will be focused on a 4th map, so for those of you looking for more content in that direction, it's coming, and working on a map is way easier than doing a massive overhaul, so expect it to be much sooner than 2 months.
This update has some buffs to Characters and some nerfs. I get that a lot of people have a philosophy that nothing should ever be nerfed, but this is such a massive change to the Weapon Skill system that there were cases where it simply had to happen.
Thanks to all of the beta testers over on our Discord (you can find our Discord here: https://discord.com/invite/779FCkeeWT ) for their help, and of course the Community Translators. Speaking of which, if you'd like to help with translating Nomad Survival (which I would greatly appreciate), I use a website called Localizor for that. You can check it out here: https://www.localizor.com/nomad-survival
Big special shout out to Mikuru in Discord for their work with Chinese translations. They are single-handedly keeping the Chinese translation updated with each patch and for that I am tremendously grateful.
Big special shout out to Dravic in Discord for translating the entire game into Polish by themselves (and pretty quickly, too!). Incredible work. Nomad Survival has over 8,000(!) words in it, so this is quite the feat!
Anyway, here's the patch notes!
Changes tagged with were suggestions from you, the players, in the Discussion board, in YouTube videos, in Twitch streams, or in the Discord. Thanks!
CHANGELOG
- Weapon Skills now have branching evolutions where you are offered 2 choices at Lv.30 and then 2 more choices based on your previous choice at Lv.60. In total, this amounts to over 50 skills between the 9 Characters.
- Many Base Weapon Skills have been changed.
- Most stats now affect Weapon Skills. The notable exceptions are logical. For example, Projectile Speed and Duration isn't going to do anything for a quick sword slash attack. It makes sense that it wouldn't.
- Adjusted or replaced Weapon Skills which were redundant due to the aforementioned change.
- Reduced SP Regen increases across the board, typically anywhere from 30% to 50%. The old SP Regen values are not balanced for the new Weapon Skill system.
- "SP Regen Booster" item has been removed. With the new Weapon Skill system, this item was often too crazy and would result in significant lag.
- Merchant Heritage has been reworked. The old system of doubling Weapon Skill Amount would've DEFINITELY not worked with the new system now that Amount works with most Weapon Skills!
- You can now move with your mouse. Hold down the left mouse button and your Character will attempt to run to it. This means you can officially play Nomad Survival with one hand!
- When adjusting Game Speed, the FPS of the game is no longer modified. The game might feel a little weird now, but that's because everything is now being sped up properly (and things which don't need sped up, aren't) instead of just increasing the FPS of the game.
- Added +200% Game Speed option. Just in case you're feeling particularly adventurous.
- Redesigned Ratfolk Archer's arrows so that they scale up better. They are also now longer.
- Ratfolk Archer now properly supports Gamepads, making the cursor invisible when use of the right joystick is detected and bringing up an aiming path for the player to aim based on the direction their joystick is tilted. An option to disable this and revert to the old system will be added at a later date.
- Increased damage number popup cap from 80 to 180.
- Changed skill icons away from public asset packs into icons commissioned for Nomad Survival.
- The "Colorless Glyph" Relic which Doubles Size now increases Size by 50% instead.
- Fox, Owl, and Cat pets now move 50% faster.
- Cat pets maximum allowed target range has been increased by 60%.
- Fox, Owl, and Cat pets have had their attack rate doubled.
- Fox and Cat pets now inflict 50% more damage.
- Summoner Heritage now has a Summon cap of 12 instead of 5.
- Summons from the Summoner Heritage are now influenced by Duration and Size.
- Void Rifts from the Voidwalker Heritage no longer despawn when hitting an enemy.
- Void Rifts from the Voidwalker Heritage are now influenced by Duration (they were already influenced by Size).
- The descriptions of the Summoner and Voidwalker Heritages have been updated to reflect this new information
- Added "Rerolls" Stat to the Stats display in the Pause Menu.
- Added "Max SP" Stat to the Stats display in the Pause Menu.
- Spectral Sword has had its wording updated to help better describe what it does.
- Spectral Sword has had its ability slightly changed. It only mimics your Base Weapon Skill, not any of your chosen Weapon Skill Evolutions.
- Spectral Sword Relics have been changed. Instead of them attacking on their own, they now mimic your Weapon Skill Evolutions (1st and 2nd respectively) if applicable.
- Spectral Sword description now clearly states that Amount doesn't increase the number of Weapon Skills used. This is a balancing measure and it must be this way to prevent this skill from being too strong.
- Cleaned up Stats menu, removing unnecessary decimal places in various skills and bringing more consistency to the information being displayed.
- Re-aligned various pieces of text which were slightly offcenter.
- Added "Amount unmodifiable" to all skills where Amount doesn't do anything, even if it's pretty obvious. This is more for consistency than anything.
- Necromancer's summoning SFX have been changed to be less annoying.
- All particle effects are now affected by the Skill Opacity slider.
- Player HP bar always draws above everything else. Please let me know of instances where this is still not the case.
- Numbers regarding damage taken have been moved so that they're drawn on top of the HP bar.
- Knight's Weapon Skill "Provoke" now fires even if you took no damage. It'll just inflict 1 damage.
- Entangle's Poisonous Pool Relic is now influenced by Size and has its initial Size doubled.
- Entangle's Poisonous Pool Relic is now influenced by Duration.
- Fireball Explosions are now influenced by Size.
- Initial Fireball Explosion scaling has been tripled.
- Fireball Shrapnel is now influenced by Duration.
- Curious Wisp no longer has an Amount limit.
- The Raccoon pet now always defaults to returning to the player if it can't find any viable targets. This should ideally fix issues with the Raccoon getting stuck in particular.
- Player X/Y coordinates have been added to the "Display FPS" option in the Options Menu.
- When summoning a Spirit as Whisperer, your HP bar and damage taken numbers are now also displayed with the Spirit. This should help with risk management when playing as this Character.
- Spirit enemies in The Crossroads no longer have a blue outline (which is typically reserved for friendly units). Their outline is now orange.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed issue where Ascension Relics were incorrectly providing Amount bonuses when they shouldn't (this of course applies to the Relics that don't state they increase Amount).
- Fixed issue where some skills were completing their animation while the game is paused. Please let me know if you find any other instances of this happening.
- Fixed issue where Amount could not go above 9. Don't ask.
- Rewrote code regarding Knight bonus defense handling. This should fix all issues related to their Defense bonus being abruptly removed in the middle of their Weapon Skill.
- Fixed issue where Chain Lightshock's Spark effect would hit enemies more rapidly than intended.
- Fixed issue where the Homunculus Summon from the Summoner Heritage did not have double attack speed as it should.
- Fixed issue where if enemies are right next to you, Fireballs would not properly create Explosions.
- Fixed issue where if no enemies were present, the timer would pause.
WHAT'S NEXT
With an update this big, there's bound to be some stuff that's not quite working 100% the way that it should. Please let me know over on the Steam Discussion Boards or on the Discord about issues you've experienced. Please note that I'm much more active on the Discord (Discord link is at the top of this post).
Many great suggestions have been made on the Discord and I'm now starting to go down the list of accepted suggestions and working on getting them implemented. If you have a suggestion, the Discord is the best place for it.
I know that there's been a lot of questions about when the next map is being implemented, as I know a lot of you have pretty much "completed" Nomad Survival in its current state. No worries, a 4th map is next to be worked on, and once that's completed, I want to dive straight into Map 5, so expect more challenging content to come your way soon!
I've also been working with the creators of the music used in Nomad Survival and have arranged for selling the soundtrack! For those of you who really enjoy the music in Nomad Survival, it'll be on sale in Steam soon. I'll make an announcement when that's the case.
Thanks again for all of your continued support. Stay awesome!