Fellow decapitators of the King's loyalists! The brewing update is here, and with it:
The spell brewing mechanic
Craft your spells using your trusty chicken-legged cauldron!
Spell brewing upgrades one of your spells - you may select any already-owned spell as a base and add up to 2 ingredients to increase its power!
Each ingredient has a positive and a negative effect, e.g. "add armor piercing BUT reduce damage" or "Add bleed BUT make enemies faster". Think wisely when choosing your formula!
You may encounter cauldron nodes on the map that will reward you with spell brewing after the battle.
You can create really interesting combinations of different effects, but also fall into some traps with anti-synergies. Curious is the spell-maker craft. Have fun!
Redesigned map nodes
As a reward you can now have: a new spell, a spell upgrade, healing, more mana, a new perk
Instead of a general mana-boosting reward (+2 mana of choice), these nodes now are tied to a specific mana bar. Hatred nodes will allow you to pick +2 hatred OR +1 sorrow or spite. Sorrow nodes will give you +2 sorrow or +1 of hatred or spite, etc. Such a small change brings quite a lot into the decision making process. Choose your paths wisely!
Map rewards are also structured in such a way that you are most likely to get different rewards (spell or mana) at subsequent encounters (with occasional brewing or healing mixed in).
Oh! And now you start with a bit less mana. That should compensate lesser mana rewards. he hee heeee
Redesigned mechanics
It mostly boils down to the fact that buffs and debuffs NO LONGER STACK for most of their effects (the exception is e.g. Torment: deal direct damage on hit)
This change encourages you to spread your power across the board for better efficiency
It also favors using different spells instead of the same one on the same enemy over and over again.
QoL and visual improvements
Tutorial got revamped: until you reach a certain stage, you'll start with a predefined loadout (3 spells and a perk). This allows you to start playing faster, get to know different mechanics with a balanced build, fail and start anew with a standard "pick 3 spells at the run start" routine.
Added fancy targeting arrow. Now everyone knows which spell is selected.
Added a map legend so you're not as confused as before.
Added icons for different spell effects so descriptions are not as wordy.
Each effect icon has it's tooltip, but these show up only during the brewing screen at the moment. I plan to add them to the main battle screen as well.
Pretty sure I did add some other things but already forgot which ones...
Oh! The grass in the background and on the foreground moves with the wind! And leaves fall from the trees. HOW COOL IS THAT?!
Future plans
We are planning one more large content update for the demo. It will focus on adding the boss encounter at the end of Act One.
After that, full steam goes into creating more content in preparation for the 1.0 release: more spells, more enemies, more perks, more fun!
Have fun and let us know what you think about these changes! We're looking forward to your comments!
Feel free to leave them here, or visit our Discord! Let's chat about your ideas for improvements! :)
https://discord.gg/ZHhEEpvZ