Frost Slimes
I started populating the frost slime monster horde, which required adding new abilities and conditions, and that led into many updates on abilities and conditions. :)
Here are the frost slimes I’ve got:
- Guardian (the boss, protects the rift)
- Condenser (the healer)
- Blaster (AoE abilities)
- Spitter (ranged)
- Basher (blunt melee damage)
- Slasher (slash melee damage)
- Slimeling (swarm/scout)
All slimes get the abilities Pseudopod Spike and Frost Touch. The spike is a stamina-based physical ability, while frost touch requires ambient water mana.
All slimes (so far) will be able to plant and tend their monster growths that increase ambient water mana.
Damage Reflection
I re-implemented damage reflection. Reflection is based on damage type, and simply requires a successful enemy hit of its damage type, and does true damage to the enemy, bypassing resists.
I think that might be an interesting build choice: to focus on stacking reflects and armor for various kinds of damage, while making yourself as easy as possible to hit. :)
Note that reflect doesn’t mitigate incoming damage. Also, it gains exp based on amount of reflect.
Other Damage Changes
- I also re-implemented lifesteal. Lifesteal requires direct damage of its type, and can be no more than damage done, or the starting health of the target. Lifesteal gains exp based on health stolen (even if not needed).
- The evasion mechanic is now merged with the hit difficulty mechanic. Hit difficulty and crit difficulty experience can be gained on successful enemy hits that aren’t AoE or blindsides.
- Physical damage now has blunt, pierce, and slash variants.
- Added falloff for accuracy, steal, and armor piercing (for abilities with repetitions like a machine gun burst).
- Repetition and cooldowns are now levelable stats (leveling an ability might increase repetitions, and decrease cooldowns).
- Can do massive crits (triple damage) versus normal crits (double damage). Massive crits are either from blindsides, or direct attacks in which accuracy is more than double critical defense.
- Can now get exp for character stats that boost conditions, armor-piercing, ability power, and resists to negative conditions.
Ability Classes
Abilities now have a power source class and a target effect/resist class. Resist classes can either be resistance to hostile effects, or resistance to beneficial effects.
Piercing damage, for instance, could be done by an Icicle ability powered by water magic, an Earth Bullet ability powered by earth magic, a Stab ability powered by physical stats, or a Rifle Shot ability powered by technology.
Each power source determines the powerups applied to the ability (Icicle might gain power from ambient water magic, and Stab might gain power from the Strength attribute), as well as what stats gain experience (Icicle might increase water affinity experience, while Stab might increase strength experience).
Resist classes determine experience and powerups for stats like resistance, armor-piercing, accuracy, and lifesteal.
I also added condition classes, that define much the same things for conditions, and I added new conditions like Frostbite, Wounded, and Stunned.
Other Ability Changes
Toggles can now allow other abilities to skip costs, and block use of abilities. For instance, I added an Industrial Cutter item. Its innate abilities can’t be used unless it’s powered on via a powered cutter toggle, and then it both boosts scavenging skill and provides a Powered Slice ability, whose cost is covered by the toggle.
The cutter is Noisy, which blocks and cancels stealth abilities.
I added a Chainsword item that does the same thing, except it does more damage, and doesn’t boost scavenging so much. I also added a Jetpack item that allows for noisy flight (no stealth). :)
Leveling Requirements
Monster experience leveling requirements are now set by leveling, and can be customized per monster type.
User (and player)-based path leveling now works the same way. Mana requirements are set by the level of the mana investiture, and can vary.
This means costs are no longer set by a formula that directly uses level. Instead, levels 1- 10 might cost an added 50 per level, while 11 - 20, might cost an added 100, but only for water mana: air mana could be cheaper, or have a different profile.
Resource Priorities
The base priority system will no longer tend to the average by auto-increasing priority on projects that weren’t selected. I think this will make for a more interesting overall experience, while making priority shop purchases weightier.
Details:
- Projects have hard-set priority max of 10;
- On successful project start, priority goes down one (except for hiring, which sets to 0);
- Max priority sets eligibility for instant completion (except for hiring and overall resource priority);
- If instant completion is successful, priority resets to 0.
Output Changes
I added an action right-click dialog, with information on requirement checks (you can see that in a previous screenshot). I also added info on experience levels and other components for the stat dialog.
