It's been tough trying to push updates for both existing players and new players while simultaneously interacting with the community, implementing high priority features such as key binds, and fixing bugs, but I have been doing my very best to make this game a better version of itself with each update by keeping the player's experience and feedback in mind.
I hope that this update will finally get new players to no longer feel overwhelmed while starting out.
UPDATES
- NEW Dungeon Item – The Offering: The Offering is a new item that can be used in dungeons to instantly invoke a hunt. The Offering requires the blood of players to be activated. When a player finishes the cast, all players in the group will lose sanity and stamina scaled by the Dungeon difficulty.
- Hunt Update: Hunts now occur based on difficulty. E.g., Hunts no longer randomly occur on Training and Easy Mode. This will allow new players to not have to worry about being interrupted randomly during their process of gathering energy while still getting used to the game. Hunts will only randomly occur on Normal Mode once a trait has been disturbed. Hunts can randomly occur at any time the moment the dungeon starts on Hard Mode.
- Activity Update: On Training and Easy Mode, Activity Level now pauses at 30 until a trait is disturbed upon which it will then continue to increase to 100. On Normal and Hard Mode, Activity Level does not pause and will increase until it reaches 100.
- Awaken Update: Awaken has been disabled on Training Mode except for when the trait is spawned after burning a corruption with 2 Level 1 energies Absorbed (since it is required to see the entity for certain traits). This will further help reduce the “overwhelming” new player experience so players can focus more on the objectives rather than the survival.
- Corruption Update: Corruption will no longer spawn at the beginning of every dungeon. Instead, Corruption will only begin to spawn after a minimum of 1 player has Absorbed 2 different level 1 energies. This not only adds more depth to dungeon progression and the feeling of “the darkness growing’ but it also allows new players to focus more on finding and transmuting dark matter rather than getting distracted by Corruption and burning it with no idea as to what it does or why they are doing it. The idea is to make the flow of dungeons more intuitive, and progression driven. This will make it easier for new players to focus on learning without so many things to read and interact with.
- Progression Update: Surviving Hunts doesn’t currently feel as rewarding as it should, so in this update, surviving a hunt now ties into the level progression. XP granted from Disturbing the trait has been reduced, but surviving a hunt will grant additional XP to make up for the reduction in trait XP. This provides greater dungeon progression, and it makes surviving a hunt feel much more rewarding.
- The story introduction has been simplified by removing a few steps that required players to peek at the astral core and database which seemed like a good idea in theory but appears to overwhelm players more than it helps them learn. These UIs are very important for players to understand later as they are the main source of deduction and have been integrated into the dungeon in a more intuitive manner. This should help lighten the “info dump” players feel when they haven’t even entered a dungeon yet. Again, the goal creates a more intuitive flow that keeps the player focused without being hit with information they don’t need to know about yet.
- Disturbing the trait no longer immediately invokes a hunt on Training and Easy Mode. Disturbing the trait will still immediately invoke hunts on Normal and Hard modes.
- The trait timer has been updated to scale based on difficulty modes. For example, the Trait Timer for Training Dungeon is now 3 minutes up from the previous 1.5 minutes, allowing new players ample time to focus more on finding the trait rather than worrying about the timer.
- Removed some message popups in the training mode that seemed to clutter and/or confuse players more than help them.
- Removed the spirit charm and the summoning circle from the Training Dungeon as I have noticed from feedback and watching players, that these items only confuse players more than it helps. These items will spawn on Easy Mode and Higher and can still always be read about by pressing “Y” when next to them. The idea is to simplify the number of interactable objects and information as much as possible for the new players so that they are not so easily distracted and can focus on learning.
- Removed the post process effect from corruption that was making the screen darker when near it.
FIXES
- Fixed an issue where trait timers weren't properly synced if players walked out of dungeons then back in while a timer was active.
Thank you everyone for continuing to play, posting feedback, being kind, and supporting me as I continue to improve this game!