Hello, I am working away on the next update. Things probably won’t line up for a release until late February but I will try to do another experimental branch so people can help kick the tyres - that was very helpful last time! Until then, I figured I should keep you updated with what I'm working on.
Postmortem
But before that, I wrote a postmortem a few months after release. This is hosted on my Patreon but I just needed somewhere to put it, really.
It’s worth a look if you’re interested in the game, what went well and what went badly. And yes, it contains how much money I made - that seems to be the main thing people are interested in! Anyway, let’s move onto the new stuff.
Content Goals
What I want to do for this next update is bring everybody up to sixteen Spells per main act for a total of 48 (except Pwca, of course), as well as about 24 Badges per act. I have made a lot of progress on this already, so I’m being pretty confident with these numbers. The goal of this is to give everyone more toys, and to help out Blodeuwedd and Arawn who, as a side effect of originally being secret bonus characters, have less Spells than everyone else. These still only have a ~7.7% unlock rate, but I love all my children equally.
I also want to make sure these are interesting. I could add these quite easily if they were just 4/5/6 damage for 3 stones based on act budgets, but that’s boring and doesn’t lead anywhere interesting. In fact, Firebolt and Tackle, which are both guilty of this, have been reworked!
Both of these have new keywords. I’ll start with Pierce since it’s the easier one: any damage dealt to the front target also hits the target behind. It’s kind of a soft-barrage that can be mitigated by both targets. But you can also pass through amplified damage, which is why Haymaker (double damage if it would defeat an enemy) is interesting here.
On Kindle, Reagent doubles the effect of any Badges placed on it. When dropping a Snake Badge (+1 poison) onto it, it will just assume it has two Snake Badges and give you 2 poison. But putting Prism on here won’t give you Double Barrage because keywords don’t stack. This also means something like Clock Badge becomes a +2 for only applying Cooldown once. It’s neat. There are certainly some broken things with it but… yeah? That’s the game?
Reagent is on two other Spells but I don’t want to talk about those weirdos. And it comes on a Badge, too. Where it effectively mimics whatever is in the other slot. It drops in act 1 so is a bit of an investment pick.
Another new Badge in act 1 is the new Wisp Badge. Wild is more like wild magic than, like, feral. It is a keyword that changes a spell into another, random Spell when cast. It is a bit gimmicky for sure, but gimmicks are fun! That’s what games are for, right? Also, you can place it on Spells with Exhaust, so it's always got some potential to be useful.
Something to note is the new Spell from Wild still keeps any Badges, so it will also have the Wisp giving +1 and Wild. Some Badges are limited to certain Spells, you cannot put Old Shield (+1 block) on Spark, for example, but this is because Spells determine targeting. So all putting Block on it would do is give Block to the enemy. This is probably something to keep in mind...
Anyway, those are some examples. Not every single addition is adding a new keyword or status, but I hope runs will feel nice and fresh again.
Flux
The Flux keyword is bad. I don’t mind randomising between 1 and a number as a concept, it’s how lightning damage works in a lot of ARPGs (because that’s how it worked in Diablo 2). But the average ARPG character attacks around a thousand times a second and, more importantly, the implementation I used means any damage additions on this spell become progressively worse. The Playing Card Badge tries to fix this by increasing damage by a chunk, but it is still pants.
The way these damage ranges are generated in other games is by having a base value and then making a range that preserves that as the average, like 1 to double for lightning, what Witching Stone does currently is just raise the maximum - which lessens the gains.
Flux now randomises between -3 and +3. So, Chaos Bolt now deals 2-8 damage (5 base). This might still be a bit too spicy for you, but the important thing is that putting a Fancy Sword (+2 damage) on Chaos Bolt now makes it 4-10 (7) and not 1-10 (5.5). Basically, it’s getting that +2 damage regardless of roll. This is more important in actual gameplay because it means Strength, Power and various other scaling effects like Zap will also go up linearly too.
Values can also never go below zero. Which is especially interesting for SuperFlux. So adding a Snake Badge (1 poison) means it now applies 0-4 poison. Also, even if the base gets reduced to zero, the value is still 0-3 as a minimum.
This did make Ceridwen's Absorb Spell too good as that was using DoubleCast to basically make Flux suck less. Also that spell shouldn’t be called Absorb. No absorbing is happening. So it’s called Mercurial and has lost DoubleCast, but is more interesting now, imho.
I hope this wasn't too boring. If people like posts like this then I might do more!
Edit 26/01/2025: I have been informed, by myself, that the Ceridwen Spell I changed was Drain, not Absorb, but same difference.