Hey everyone,
Hope you all had a nice break and Happy New Year!
Almost everyone is back in the office and getting stuck in to our plans for 2025.
Speaking of... we've just released a "minor" update to kick off the new year with lots of polish and tweaks!
We've been receiving a lot of feedback about balancing since The Second Act update, mosty that it's a bit too hard, and thank you very much for this feedback!
We are working on a balancing rework which will be split into 3 phases, and the first one is coming with this update:
- Medallion bag has been removed. You now obtain medallions only from looters (altars, chests etc). This should give you more choice about which medallions you're getting and reduce the 'management' of medallions you don't want.
- You can now recycle medallions for gold if you have the skill.
- Some balancing on the Gold costs and Medallions effects.
- Balancing tweaks on Heavy Weapon special attacks damage
- We've also added an "over shield" to the heavy weapons, preventing interruption when being hit while charging the special attack.
Some of these may seem minor, but they will have a decent effect on balancing straight away and set the stage nicely for the development work on the other phases which are coming later this year.
We didn't just make changes to balancing, we've also added and tweaked some things to generally improve the game:
- New 3D animations during dialogues.
- Some level structure improvement in Garden and Academy, plus some tweaks in the Huns Camp, to improve variety and simplify navigation (like adding more Well of Dreams in Academy). Let us know how these levels feel now!
- Rework of interact visibility, adding a little hint on where to interact with things and clarifying what you're interacting with.
- Added a World Map into the in-game menu, to help you better understand the World Structure and follow where you were, where you are, and what's next.
- Rework of the loading transitions. This is mostly aesthetic - we know they can be a bit long, we are aware of it and will be working on this in the coming months, don't worry.
- Our sound designer also worked hard to improve the overall ambiance, adding new SFX and tracks in the biomes to give them more life.
We've also fixed some bugs, here is a shortlist of the major fixes:
- The challenge room in the Gold Mines won't appear behind rocks anymore.
- Skystalkers now have a proper outline when shielded.
- Awakening of the Reinforced now works on bosses.
- You shouldn't have duplicated medallions anymore.
- Rescue music is now bound to the music slider option.
- Fixed Z-Door looping animation when entering.
- Berude's fight can't be skipped with Stealth Spirit anymore (Don't be rude to Berude guys, she deserves a fair fight too).
Finally, here are some known issues, we're working on them!
- Still investigating some collision disappearing for mobs and player sometimes.
- Props can appear before the Kids in the shop.
- Achievement for meeting or freeing Shahin might not trigger.
- Baatar's arena door doesn't appear (but the collision is still there)
We should™ be back with a bigger update at the end of the month so keep an eye out for that!
Cheers,
Matt & the EE team