Greetings fellow Xon,
We have been inspired by the hot weather and have come up with a new Aspect: The Burning Ember.
The Burning Ember.
Ember is the fifth aspect, bringing a more aggressive playstyle to the table. With the ability to burn instead of harvesting, they are faster but more wasteful than other aspects. Many of their powers are very strong but carry inherent risks.
The starting miracles of The Ember are:
- Desert: Wish-granting Ifrit.
- Mountains: Tough, burning, Cherufe.
- Swamp: Sculptors Hut, capable of turning follower souls into Claymen, eternal workers.
- Forest: Eternal Pyre, which burns wood to generate essence.
- Plains: Smokestack, a building that produces gold and sparks from wood.
- Priest: Brahmin, can mark houses with The Burning Mark causing them to produce new followers faster.
We have also been looking into some other features of the game. With The Ember, a bunch of other features, fixes, and balance changes will be introduced.
Feature: Game Modes
All games will no longer be played in tutorial mode. Four new game modes are now available:
- Standard: A no-frills standard timed game.
- Domination: Only affiliated lands give points, and the game ends immediately if a player reaches 12 lands.
- Worship: Only followers give points.
- Freeplay: Unlimited essence and no calamities. Great for experimenting.
Features, Fixes and Changes
We have made several adjustments and additions to the game alongside The Ember aspect:
- AI has now been completely removed as it was never intended to be a feature and would have required too much work to become adequate.
- Fixed some of the issues with the new pause system.
- Gate Watcher (or Laser Giant, as Wilbur calls it): A new unit for Moon of the plains.
- Secondary aspect now only provides a passive effect.
- Follower/aspect miracles have been moved to the primary aspect.
- Leaf Secondary has been changed. This was boring - Leaf now spontaneously manifests trees and bushes in all lands.
- Brighter suns to prevent discoloration of certain actors.
- Essence now spawns in the center of its land.
- Follower bowl now shows the correct follower aspect.
- Added a borderless full-screen button.
- Buttons now react on mouse up instead of down to prevent accidental card picks.
- Essence gain per 10 seconds is now shown on the essence bar.
- Shrines now cost 1 stone and 3 gold.
- Manifesting anything now costs 15 essence, up from 5 essence.
- Swamp passive has changed and now generates Sparks, which can be claimed to gain 3 essence.
- Pox no longer works on magical creatures.
- Dreams and Sparks are auto clicked by hovering mouse over them.
- Priests have lower threat rating and soldiers have higher threat rating.
- Priest damage bonus versus magical creatures has been further increased.
- Priest upgrade miracles are now prioritized when gaining new miracles.
- Skull priest, Bokor, Turns dead followers into zombies.
- Coin priest, Hand of Midas, turns the blood of hostile creatures into gold.
- Temples are now built with Tree, Stone, Gold, Gold.
- Gilding Stone can now be destroyed manually.
- Most miracle effect descriptions are now shown in the tool tip.
- Blessing of the Leaf can now target soldiers as well.
- Base Essence regen increased from 1 to 3 per 10 seconds.
- Sending a Vessel now has a flat cost of 10 Essence.
- Golden Calf cost has been reduced from 25 essence to 15 essence.
- Awaken Land cost has been reduced from 70 essence to 30 essence.
- Bog Lord cost has been reduced from 30 essence to 15 essence.
- Moon Blood cost has been reduced from 15 essence to 1 essence.
- Golden Legion cost has been reduced from 5 essence to 1 essence.
- Dream Lord cost has been reduced from 10 essence to 5 essence.
- Druid cost has been reduced from 15 essence to 5 essence.
- Zombies last slightly longer (120 seconds up from 100 seconds).
- Lantern spirit sleep rate reduced.
- Oasis no longer spends precious essence.
- Faster graveyards for the Skull aspect.