Hello miners,
The august update is here! Today's patch is big. It might seems it doesn't add a lot of new content (that is true) but the list of changes and the impact all of them have is pretty massive. Like always, before listing everything I wanted to share my thoughts and goals regarding this update to provide more context and details. Here we go.
The main new feature in this update is the addition of a new type of random event. New dwarves will regularly visit you at the mine entrance to offer new opportunities to collect relics, bonuses, and resources. These events are designed to help players get stronger faster and add more variety to the game. Eight events are available in this version, and more will be added in the coming weeks, featuring new types of choices and opportunities.
The duration of a classic run currently doesn’t give players enough time to fully unleash their power and create interesting synergies. Until now, this issue was offset by the option to continue in Endless mode, but some players missed out on it, thereby missing the chaos and fun of this extended playtime. To give players more room to express themselves, the base game duration has been extended from 10 to 15 days. It’s still possible to go beyond that with Endless mode. Miner difficulty is still a 10 days run format to satisfy players who prefer a shorter run duration.
The chances of finding a rare relic or building were very low, even with certain perks that increased those odds. Many players would finish a run without obtaining a single rare building, for example. However, rare relics and buildings are important elements in a player’s build, so I felt it was important to do something about it. To that end, the chances of obtaining uncommon and rare items have been significantly increased (and as a direct result, the perks that boost those chances have also become more powerful).
Now, let’s move on to the changes that were the most challenging to implement. I’m referring to the complete rework of how enemies scale each night. With the addition of new random events and the increase in run duration, it seemed like the right time to take a fresh look at the balance of enemy waves.
Many players raised issues with certain waves or enemies, noting that the power spikes seemed too unfair (especially around night 20). Another issue was related to game performance: once a certain threshold was reached, the number of interactions between different effects became so high that the game could no longer remain stable, regardless of your computer’s specs. So I’ve spent the last few weeks significantly readjusting the number of enemies per wave and the health and movement speed bonuses they gain with each new wave. Those changes should improve battle performance for everyone (especially if you reach waves higher than 20) and allow more players to reach waves 25 and above.
Patch Highlights
New Random Events
Run Lenght Increased
Better Uncommon and Rare drops
Battle Balance Rework
New Relics and a New Building
Wizard, Sea Witch, Rogue and Knight buffs
Steam Cloud
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Patch Notes - Early Access Version 0.7.52
Addition
Added 8 new random events
Added Old Coffin Building (exclusive to the Explorer event).
Added Sundial Relic (exclusive to the Explorer event).
Added Sharp Dagger Relic (exclusive to one variant of the Relic Trader event).
Added Hedgehog Puppet Relic (exclusive to one variant of the Relic Trader event).
Balancing
Flying Skull enemies base health has been reduced from 40 to 36 and base speed from 38 to 34.
Common drop chance has been decreased from 65 to 60% chance.
Uncommon drop chance has been increased from 30 to 32% chance.
Rare drop chance has been increased from 5 to 8% chance.
All difficulties now start with 3 rerolls.
Reworked Dice Bag Relic: “Gain 1 free Reroll every day”. => “Gain 5 Rerolls.”
Increased Mithril Shards dropped by the Mimic Enemy from 3-5 to 5-10.
Added extra mithril shards depending on the amount of night survived when a Mimic enemy is killed by heroes. Mimics no longer drop mithril shards once you reach the maximum amount of perks (20).
Enemies scaling has been reworked to make the difficulty increase each night more progressive.
Some nights can have an atypical amount of bats or trolls to offer more variety (in those cases, the base amount of skulls is slightly reduced).
Score points granted per enemy killed has been increased from 2 to 3 to reflect the balancing changes.
Score points granted per night survived has been increased from 1000 to 1200.
Bat Fury Spell (Bat Cave Building) damage per second has been increased from 5 to 8.
Tornado (Wizard Power) damage scaling has been increased from 50 to 100%.
Sparks (Wizard Power) damage scaling has been increased from 60 to 100%.
Water Dance (Sea Witch Power) attack speed maximum bonus has been increased from 100 to 200%.
Hidden Threat (Rogue Power) trigger chance has been increased from 30 to 60%.
Last Stand (Knight Power) knockback bonus duration has been increased from 5 to 8 seconds.
Other Changes
The base structure of the run has been changed to reflect new addition and balancing changes.
The length of the base run (before endless) has been increased from 10 to 15 days. Miner difficulty (medium) is still a 10 days run.
The new day transition no longer shows the timeline. Instead, the next events indicator near the health bar has been extended.
Next events indicator now displays a different node color for day in endless.
Reduced animation scaling when mouse hovering an intractable element.
Quest and Leaderboard visual panels have been updated.
UI scaling depending on screen aspect ratio has been slightly improved. Some work is still required for some resolution and aspect ratio.
Overall performance in battle has been slightly improved.
Power trigger pop up text size has been slightly reduced.
Brutal damage number pop up size and color has been slightly adjusted to make it more easy to see.
Steam Cloud is now available.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where Burning Sword relic was not displaying the Burn status effect tooltip.
Fixed an issue where screenshake settings were ignored when a block was dug.
Fixed an issue where Chrono Bomb (Engineer Power) sound would be played multiple times for a single trigger.
Fixed an issue where Gold Digger Tent pickaxe animation would be incorrect in some cases, causing some damage to not trigger properly.
Fixed an issue where Heavy Slam (Bastion Power) would only add +1 Knockback when the basic attack hit a slowed enemy instead of doubling the bonus from the power.
Fixed an issue allowing stat to be shown in 2 lines instead of 1 when moving the cursor over a hero at the surface.
What's Next?
Next big update will be released in September. It will includes several new random dwarf events, new weathers (including one with a unique new enemy ?!) and new buildings.
I made several progress regarding damage tracking, so it's possible I'll be able to include a proper way to see damage in real time during battle per source. The game compendium is also progressing, even if I need more time to make a proper UI so navigation is smooth and every data is easy to read.
You must be wandering what happened to the mid run saving. I know it's been so long since I first talked about it, but I wasn't able to work on it because of the run structural changes. It's still something I want to tackle before the game reaches 1.0. It should be available between september and october.
That's all for today. Thank your for your support, don't forget to leave a review if you haven't done it already.
Paci
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