Labyrinths & Loot
Hello, Soulfallen. It's been a couple months since my last major update, and I have been very busy slowly chipping away at the massive feature list I am implementing into Soulfall prior to any official "1.0" release. I am very excited for this one, as I think I have added a significant amount of depth, replayability, and build diversity that makes games like this shine.
Labyrinths
This will be the most immediately obvious aspect of the update. Previously, each Act was kind of a closed-off "open world" where there was no real direction or pathing. I have added a procedural labyrinth system that generates a completely new map/path overlaid on top of the original level each time you descend. This adds a layer of navigation (made easier with a helpful minimap) and requires situational awareness to not back yourself into a corner for an untimely death.
Loot Rework
Loot and gear as you know it in Soulfall is now completely different. Your old items are still intact, and nothing has been retro-actively changed or deleted, however you may feel that your old gear is "out-dated" compared to new drops with new attributes and modifiers. I have added 60+ new modifiers, greatly increasing gear variety and making more situational "builds" that you can experiment with. Additionally, all armor is now wearable amongst all classes. This might seem counter-intuitive but I think it helps each drop feel more valuable, and due to class traits being tied to certain armor types, warriors will still generally prefer plate, hunters prefer leather, and mages prefer cloth, but you will able to experiment with strange combinations. It's worth noting that weapons are still class specific. Maybe this will change in the future but I really doubt it.
Gear Vendor
The gatekeeper is a pretty cool NPC, and I felt like he was under-utilized since his only utility was assigning a one time quest for a starter weapon. With the gear rework I really wanted a reliable way of getting gear outside of crafting, and a gear vendor perfectly solved that problem. The gear vendor loot table rolls just like an elite enemy or a boss, and only rolls once per character per rank. This should also help de-clutter inventories and stashes because gear can be sold for GP which can then be used to buy better gear.
Summoning Stone
I have found that there are times when you are so over-powered whether through gear, or spellbook ability upgrades, that by minute 12-13 of a run you feel unkillable. Prior to this update you would have had to stand around waiting for the final boss for 7-8 minutes which can be a bit dull. Now, you can find the summoning stone after completing all quests, and force spawn al remaining elite enemies at once. If you can survive that, the final boss of the Act will immediately spawn allowing you to finish the Act much earlier than before. I will likely add some "speedrun" type leaderboards in the future to track fastest completion times.
Evasion, Energy Shield, Block, and Absorb
Part of new gear traits was a rework of what made classes feel different. Naturally, warriors want to stack armor, but this makes less sense for hunters and mages. Still, each class needs a way to maximize survivability. This problem is solved by heavily weighting loot types to have class specific survival toolkits. Plate rolls armor, leather rolls evasion (% chance to dodge a hit completely), cloth rolls energy shield (a temporary health shield that depletes and regenerates separate from the health bar). Shields now have block rating allowing for full damage reduction of certain hits, and offhand spellbooks have spell absorb, allowing energy shields to fully absorb a hit without depleting.
QoL Changes
Larger Inventory
Larger Stash
Improved UI
Better lightning (warmer, less cold)
Better camera perspective
Improved VFX for spellbook abilities
Increased item stacks
Added specific healing amount numbers to potion descriptions
Increased amount of materials gained from higher tier resource nodes
Added hover tooltips to attributes on player stat screen
Increased price to buy new stash tabs
Bug Fixes
XP shards were getting "stuck" on terrain which made XP magents fail to provide all XP, this is now fixed
Rot clouds from poison could force an infinite loop and crash the game, this is fixed
Mystic Hand level up trait had no name, this has been fixed
Certain abilities and effects that only worked for bows, now work for crossbows as well
Fixed bug where crafting with full inventory would delete items
Fixed issue where cape would clip thorugh warrior after a leap slam
NPC helmets were also being hidden by hide helmet toggle, this is fixed
Performance increase by fixing enemy physics collisions
Myriad of steam deck/controller navigation bugs on UI screens
Armor/loot chest shrine was behaving incorrectly and spawning a chest when it shouldnt, this is fixed
Player color was changing to default any time they would enter an Act, this is now fixed
+ roughly 100 more bugs found during development and testing not mentioned here
Closing Thoughts
Something that has really inspired me lately was playing through the campaign of Path of Exile 2. That game is something truly special, and I found myself spending a lot of time listening to talks given by the co-founder of Grinding Gear Games, Chris Wilson. He is what I would call nothing short of a genius, and his talks helped solve something important for Soulfall when it comes to the concept of "what makes a player play a game for 10 hours, versus a game they play for 1000 hours?". This update is just one small step towards that goal, and in time you will see where I plan to take this game. It will be a long road but I know in my heart that the end result will be worth it.
Easter is coming soon, I hope to have another update before then but life can get crazy. So if you don't hear from me before then, know that I will be thinking of you and wishing you a very happy and blessed Easter.
My hint regarding the next update is: imagine if enemies "roll" the same way traits and modifiers "roll" on gear. Would certainly add a lot of gameplay and situational variety!