The modification update
Weapon modifiers have been expanded. now EVERY weapon in the game can have stat modifiers attached, allowing you to greatly change your build's final results and power. This, however, required some major reworks to the weapon charms to compensate
Weapons
Your primary attack can now only have up to 4 modifiers (-2)
Weapon Charms
Weapon Charms can no longer be upgraded. I chose to go this route for three reasons:
Attainability: it was nearly impossible to achieve a 'complete' weapon build and keep up with equipment. players felt encouraged to super buff a single weapon rather than increase the power of all of their weapons, which wasn't the intent.
Balance: upgraded basic charms almost always outperformed the un-upgraded scalar charms, and getting 3 of the same scalar charm was too unreliable.
Future proofing: my plans for the future of RuneLight include more than doubling the amount of weapon charms available, which would just make the first two problems even more pronounced
I have buffed most of the base charms to compensate.
- [Buff] Power Charm +15% damage (20->35)
- [Buff] Pierce Charm +1 Pierce (+2->+3)
- [Buff] Projectile Charm +20% damage (-20 -> 0)
- [Buff] Size Charm +10% Size (+10 -> +20)
- [Buff] Charge Charm +15% Attack Speed (+15 -> +30)
- [Buff] Precision Charm +12% Crit Chance (+8 -> +20)
- [Buff] Sharpness Charm +30% Crit Mult (+40 -> +70)
Elements
All element charms have been completely reworked. Elements can now be applied to every weapon, and each element now has an associated debuff. Elements can no longer be upgraded, and each element now subtracts percent damage rather than base damage
- Fire now does 3 damage per stack per tick. 3 ticks per second
- Storm now causes enemies to take 5% more damage per stack from all sources
- Ice now causes enemies to attack slower
- Nature now causes enemies to move slower
I know this takes away some of the "rule of cool" of the previous element system, for example the wind orbiters knocking back enemies. This is something I will be looking to rectify in the future
Other new mechanics
- you can now reroll level up rewards once per level up
- you can now skip rewards to get 25% of the exp refunded
These changes were made to make getting the things you want more reliable, especially as I intend to add many, many more equipment and weapon mods to the game in the future.
Other Changes
Visuals
- reworked most weapon visuals
- added entity shadows
- updated terrain art and visuals for the forest and beach maps
- resprited some enemies on the forest and beach maps
balance
Set Bonuses
- Dodge Set Attack Size is now 0.6T radius [-0.4]
map changes
- reduced elite spawnrate for forest and beach
- overhauled spawns on forest and beach
Forest
- burrower and evolved burrower now deal less damage
- walking mountain now deals less damage
- walking mountain now has a lot more health
UI and UX changes
- completely redid level selection ui
- overhauled set bonus display ui
- updated end of run screen to fit the new weapons
- redid main menu screen
- completely redid options ui. should be easier to nagivate
- added a lot more gameplay options -auto fill empty equipment
- added more visual settings -borderless window -pause while tabbed out
- made the ingame ui more uniform
bug fixes
- made a lot of performance optimizations. game should no longer struggle with high spawnrate builds
- fixed some crashes related to enemies on the beach map
- enemies should no longer push each other around when the game is paused
What's next
I'd like to be more transparent on what comes next, especially since I recently increased the price of RuneLight to go along with this update.
The next update will be 0.4.1, and is slotted to release early next month. The update will primarily be focused on adding new equipment, fleshing out the item pools that are currently lacking.
I've also created a visual roadmap to mark the game's overall progress on content
