We are announcing the latest update to our core gameplay content, which has been upgraded, necessitating several significant changes aimed at enhancing player experience and strategic depth. This update focuses on clarifying elemental interactions, refining existing upgrades, and improving core mechanics such as defense, dash, and knockback, etc for a more intuitive experience.
New Mechanics
Shrine Mechanism
Old :
- Players could interact with a shrine to either purify or destroy it.
- Purifying the shrine granted elemental enhancement rewards after surviving within its influence for 15 seconds.
- Destroying the shrine triggered a temporary powerful event.
New :
- Players can now only activate shrines.
- Activating a shrine allows players to invade the boss's territory, where they will remain for 15 seconds before returning to the map.
- Within the boss's territory, players can loot resources, which can be consumed to trigger powerful events upon shrine activation.
- The time remaining in the boss's territory is displayed as a percentage (0-100%) directly above the shrine.
Boss Spawn
Old:
- Previously, destroying a shrine would empower the corresponding elemental force.
- The most powerful elemental force would seize control, causing the boss to relocate to that area.
- A boss would only spawn if the level of the relocated area exceeded a certain threshold.
New:
- Players can now regulate the frequency at which shrines appear.
- A boss will always spawn after 20 minutes of survival, with the elemental properties of the boss determined by the frequency of shrine appearances.
Base Elemental Power
Old:
- After imbuing an elemental attribute, players needed to upgrade the element to use its power in weapons.
New:
Each element now possesses inherent characteristics, allowing players to utilize its power immediately upon assigning the element to a weapon. The characteristics are as follows:
- Stone: Knockback +1
- Fire: Critical damage +50%
- Cold: Base chill chance 15%, base freeze chance 5%
- Lightning: Chain lightning +1
- Chaos: Attack power reduction curse
Dash
Old:
- The base cooldown was 10 seconds.
- Players could reduce the cooldown by 1 second through upgrades.
- The distance traveled increased proportionally with character speed.
New:
- The base cooldown is now 5 seconds.
- Players can reduce the cooldown by 0.5 seconds through upgrades.
- The distance of the dash is now fixed, and it will only increase proportionally with character speed if the speed exceeds a certain threshold.
- The action speed of the dash has been doubled compared to before.
- If the dash is not imbued with any element, the elemental imbue for the dash will always appear in the elemental upgrade options.
- Flame Dash (dash imbued with fire) now creates a larger critical damage zone.
Tip. With the lightning elemental meta-upgrade, the initial cooldown of the dash can be further reduced; however, players will not be invulnerable during the dash.
Defense
Old:
- For player, Defense offset the initial damage.
New:
- For both player and enemy, defense now reduces damage proportionally from final damage calculations.
- As a result, the effectiveness of damage reduction from defense decreases at higher damage thresholds.
- The defense values in the level-up reward upgrade options have been adjusted accordingly.
Knockback
Old:
- (Bug) Previously, knockback motion appeared interrupted, or the physical force seemed excessively exaggerated.
New:
- Knockback now persists for a brief duration, ensuring a stable and reliable knockback effect.
Stun Effects
Old:
- Enemies in a frozen state cannot attack.
- Enemies in a chilled state experience reduced movement distance for charged attacks.
New:
- Enemies in a frozen state cannot attack; however, dash attacks are an exception.
- Enemies in a chilled state will not have their dash attack movement distance reduced.
- Enemies can be interrupted during dash attacks by applying knockback.
This concept aligns with the idea that the stone attribute (knockback) counters the lightning attribute (dash).
Curse
Old:
- One curse is applied per hit, with each curse stacking up to 10 times.
- Each stack of a curse occupies 1% of the enemy's health and grants a buff to the enemy.
New:
- All applicable curses are now applied simultaneously per hit, with each curse stacking up to 10 times.
- Curses no longer occupy the enemy’s health and consistently apply debuffs to the enemy.
Tip. With the chaos elemental upgrade, curses can instead occupy the enemy's health rather than applying debuffs.
Changes to Upgrades
1. Adjustment of Level-Up Reward Values
- Weapon damage: 20% → 30%
- Normal weapon damage: 30% → 40%
- Focus weapon damage: 40% → 50%
- Elementalist damage: 50% → 75%
- Weapon critical chance: 10% → 3%
- Focus weapon penetration: 20 → 30
- Main weapon More damage: 30% → 20%
- Projectile damage: 30% → 40% & AOE damage: -15% → -20%
- AOE damage: 75% → 60% & projectile damage: -15% → -30%
2. Adjustment of Threshold Levels for Higher Upgrades
- Condition for "Gale Force" upgrade appearance: Fluttering Feathers LV. 10 → LV. 5
- Condition for "Titan's Tread" upgrade appearance: Broad Hooves LV. 10 → LV. 5
3. Stone Elemental Upgrades
New Upgrades:
- Cardio Surge: Movement Speed +5
- Prismatic Armor: AOE Resistance +10%
Removed Upgrades:
- Regeneration Suppression
Fire Elemental Upgrades
Revised Upgrades:
- Combustion (Old): Consumes 1% of maximum health until low health. Damage increases when not at low health.
- Combustion (New): Consumes 1% of maximum health until low health. More Damage by 15%. Maximum health increases by 50.
- Edge of Pyre (Old): Experience gain increases by 50% when at low health.
- Edge of Pyre (New): Experience gain increases by 50% when at low health. Maximum health increases by 50.
- Bellowsing (Old): Damage increases by 50% when at low health.
- Bellowsing (New): Penetration increases by 50 when at low health. Maximum health increases by 50.
- Furnace (Old): Damage increases by 100%. Attack speed decreases by 33%.
- Furnace (New): 50% More damage. Attack rate is reduced by 25%.
- Giant Slayer (Old): Damage to elites increases by 50%.
- Giant Slayer (New): Penetration against elites increases by 50.
- The critical damage zone created by Flame Dash has been significantly increased.
Cold Elemental Upgrades
Revised Upgrades:
- Absolute Zero (Old): Increases block chance by 5%. Maximum block chance increases by 5%.
- Absolute Zero (New): Grants +15% critical resistance.
Removed Upgrades:
- Icicle (Old): Increases the number of projectiles for Cold elemental weapons by +1.
Lightning Elemental Upgrades
New Upgrades:
- Storm Cloak: Increases block chance by 5%. Maximum block chance increases by 5%.
Revised Upgrades:
- Wrath of Thunder (Old): Periodically strikes enemies with lightning, increasing damage taken permanently based on maximum health.
- Wrath of Thunder (New): Increases the number of projectiles for Lightning elemental weapons by +1.
- Teleport: Players are now invulnerable for 2 seconds after teleporting.
Removed Upgrade:
- Slow Zone: Every 20 seconds, summons a zone that slows the speed of enemy projectiles.
Chaos Elemental Upgrades
New Upgrades:
- Energy Siphon: Instead of a debuff, Curse occupies 1% of the enemy's health per stack.
- Desecrated Land: Causes enemies within item acquisition range to lose N% of their health per second and suppresses health regeneration.
- Slow Zone: Every 20 seconds, summons a zone that slows the speed of enemy projectiles.
- Eye of Devil: Grants +15% projectile resistance.
- Decay: Enemies that are poisoned cannot regenerate health.
Revised Upgrades:
- All curses now do not occupy health and apply debuffs instead of buffs. All possible curses stack individually with each hit.
- Imminent Doom: Damage taken per curse 50% → 30%.
Enemy Nova Changes
- Flame Artillery (Fire-imbued): Now moves while bombarding with artillery strikes.
- Frost Nova (Cold-imbued): Damage is reduced, but the nova is generated from multiple locations.
- Enigmatic Shooting Stars (Chaos-imbued): Damage is reduced, but the nova covers a larger area than before.
Dialogue Popup
- Default settings have changed: Dialogue text now remains for 5 seconds before disappearing. (Players who installed the game previously must press the "Reset" button in the settings to restore default settings.)
- The size of the dialogue popup has been adjusted from occupying 1/3 of the screen to occupying 1/4 of the screen.
Tutorial Improvements
- At the beginning of the game for the first time, players can trigger the Shrine event in the tutorial without consuming resources.
Also, the Dragons are embodiments of the elements. With the clear definitions of the five elemental affinities, we have implemented balance adjustments, such as giving each dragon resistance to specific attack types. We plan to present this information later in the Guide as part of the monster details.
This concludes the improvements made in the v. 0.1.0 Stage Customization Content Update.
If there’s anything we may have missed, we will add it here. Additionally, we will provide a separate announcement for future balance patches.
Thank you!