We're getting close to our v1.0 release! Before we can get there, this update addresses two main items, that we've wanted to get to for awhile now:
- A complete balance overhaul, across all weapons/classes/maps/quests/boons/etc! Now that we have the majority of the game's systems added, we wanted to finally get everything adjusted as a whole. This should make the game feel more fun than ever before, improve weapons to be as strong as one another, and make the new player game experience smoother. This balance, as always, is ongoing, so let us know if you see anything that seems too far off!
- Fixing performance issues. We've had various small stutters in the game, which were caused by dozens of reasons, depending on where they were happening. This release hopefully fixes the majority of them, making everything feel much smoother.
The biggest details of these changes:
- Add boons that increase the number of Inventory Slots! The base inventory size is now 6, with two boons available, to upgrade up to 8 slots.
- Add Warrior boons - Berserk and Toughness.
- Add Rogue boons - Precision and Rift Rend.
- Add Crit Chance and Crit Modifier boons. This is also displayed on the Attribute screen in the pause menu. These stats can now also be rewarded as max-level upgrades.
- The Power Beads has been removed. In its place is now the Brutal Pendant, which increases the player's crit modifier when selected. This was done because the Knockback from power beads was hard to balance, often not that fun to use, and we also needed an additional passive weapon that increased player damage.
- Greatly buff max level-up rewards, to ensure it always out scales enemy health scaling values. This can result in some crazy player strength in the final waves, which we believe should always be the case - you earned it by hitting such a high level!
- Update the Armory to use 'Rank Points' instead of randomly unlocking weapon mods. This should let you plan out your builds in advance, and have much more control in the whole process.
- Add a Tutorial flow to the Armory mod. This should help next players better understand how the Weapon mod system works.
- Add a weapon evolution table to the pause screen in game. This can be referred to more easily remember evolution combinations.
- Add a custom mouse cursor - an Orc hand!
And a summary of everything else:
- Adjust how we display Condition effects on enemies, so they all now display correctly based on enemy size. No more giant Javelin impaling Biggus Piggus, or a crazy large Static condition on the Queen.
- Update all weapons to have, at a minimum, a 10% crit chance.
- 'Simple lighting mode' is now the default option selected, instead of an opt-in, with the new toggle you need to enable being called 'Advanced Lighting'. Lighting effects were a large source of game stutters, so we wanted to make sure it was disabled globally. If your computer can handle it, feel free to toggle 'Advanced lighting' back on, for a better experience (such as enemy skulls glowing) in the Underground!
- In the Palace, the Royal Guard's attack now properly gets removed when they are defeated. No more random hits after their death.
- Adjust health scaling values across all Maps.
- Adjust base stats, level-up options, and weapon mods for all Warrior weapons.
- Adjust base stats, level-up options, and weapon mods for all Rogue weapons.
- Adjust base stats, level-up options, and weapon mods for all Mage weapons.
- Notably for this weapon balance, some weapons now have a 'damage falloff' value, as they hit more enemies. I.e. Quake will do much more damage to the 1st enemy hit than the 50th that it hits, from a single projectile. This was required to get all weapons to be balanced relative to one another.
- Change the shield to no longer use a duration. Instead, the shields stay out until one breaks, at which point its cooldown starts counting down. When the cooldown expires, all shields are refreshed.
- Bow and arrow no longer Marks an additional enemy when you teleport. This was an early idea from Rogue implementation (that every weapon would interact with the teleport in some way), which never panned out.
- Bow and arrow shots no longer destroy a target that isn't its own. This could sometimes happen, and make you shoot less arrows overall, which made the weapon inconsistent.
- Adjust many weapons to reset their cooldown immediately when evolved, so you get the stronger effect right away. For example, the Psydrangea will expire all active plants, and get the new, stronger ones out immediately.
- Adjust boon prices and quest rewards. Boons are now a bit more expensive overall, with quest rewards increased to compensate. The goal being that more early-game gold comes from quest rewards, incentivizing completing quests.
- When getting the Heart passive item, it now also increases your current health. I.e. increase max health from 100->120, your current health will also go from 100->120, instead of staying at 100 and requiring you to regen up to 120.
- The Frosted condition on enemies now also increases the chance that they will be critical striked.
- Final damage screen numbers no longer tracks overkill damage amounts. By tracking these, it was making some weapons look much stronger than they really were, while making others look weaker.
- We very rarely saw a bug where the Camera would be unbound when exiting a run. We've added a fix that should hopefully stop that from happening.
- Add a level indicator to the final damage end screen, next to each weapon, so you can see which level weapons got to, in the context of their damage numbers.
- Add a unique damage display color that now occurs when you deal elemental condition damage.
- Move Elemental Combination damage to be tracked as its own damage instance, for display on the run summary screen. Previously this damage was simply split between the two weapons that supplied the conditions, but this made it hard to see how much overall damage came from the combination effect and which came from the weapon.
- Fix crit damage display to no longer display a crit damage number if an initial damage of 1 crit, which would still deal only 1 damage. This didn't make much sense to display.
- Adjust the sprite of the Beekeeper to indicate his strength, when he powers up after his 3rd and 6th bee spawn.
- Add small, randomized pitch shift to XP and coin pick-up - this should make them much more pleasant to listen to!
- Duplicate Bouquets will now reward +50 gem streak, instead of being wasted.
- Add Announcement message when ending Gem Streak, to make it clearer what is happening.
- Adjust Spiralius throw speed to be slower when at high health, but faster when at low health.
- Add a max limit of a few hundred Condition visual effects. This should improve performance in the final waves.
- Food now restores a percentage of total health, instead of a flat rate. This should make +health increases much more powerful!
- Double the base intangibility duration. This makes it much less likely to get multihit and comboed out.
- Properly clean up Nightmare trails when he dies, so they don't remain invisible after his death and damage the player.
- No longer display Rank-up notifications in a run. In certain scenarios, a lot of these could be queued-up in a row, taking up critical screen real-estate for too long.
- As Mage, having mana also now increases your damage by 20%, as well as empowering your Mage weapons as before. This is a balance strategy, to reward the Mage for having to deal with the more difficult mechanic of maintaining the mana bar.
- Change how Rogue and Mage are unlocked. They are now unlocked after 3 boss kills with the Warrior, and 3 boss kills with the Rogue. This is to make it less critical to complete a run to unlock the next class.
- Greatly increase game launch time, by optimizing some file sizes.
- Update locked weapons in the Armory to describe how to unlock them.
- Add UI element to Chest screen to display the player's odds of getting 1/3/5 chests.
- Add the ability to right-click to refund a single boon level in the Boon menu.
- Adjust dragon claws icon to be more visually distinct from the base Claws.
- Adjust UI of in-game Attribute display on the pause menu, to be more consistent with other UIs.
- Update Rogue and Mage to only have Knife and Magic Missile available as starting weapons, on their first runs.
- Fix a bug where treasure maps would sometimes spawn treasure chests super far away
Happy playing!
TitanCrestGames