Greetings fellow Alchemists, we interrupt our usual Monday Musings with MoteMancer's first major gameplay update!
When MoteMancer first launched, I said that I wanted to build this game with the community and I meant it. This update features many of the community's top requests wrapped into one elegant system that will take the already strong fantasy factory foundation of MoteMancer and bolster it with a brand new axis of gameplay and automagical problem solving. There's a lot here, so buckle up.
Entropy Overhaul
I always knew that a proper automation adversary was a tough needle to thread, and while Entropy and Rifts in their current form sufficiently throw a wrench in your plans, they are more of a nuisance than anything. That can be fine, but we can do better. As of this update, Entropy now gives way to an entire research tree dedicated to studying the forsaken force that unravels the world.
The very first node in the tree grants access to Entropic Echoes, which are Blueprints in Motemancer, but we'll get to those in a moment. After that the tree splits into 4 main branches:
- North - Entropic Logistics. Harnessing Entropy's inter-planar nature, these researches unlock Planar Reliquaries and Bridges between planes that allow you to leverage their elemental prowess across the gap. In addition to these technologies, Planar Portals now have an up-front repair cost but stay permanently open afterwards. This encourages players to take a little more time to prepare before they go on their temporary one-way trip to a new set of challenges and puzzles, and the freedom to traverse without dedicated infrastructure. Maintaining portals as part of the factory is still a fun challenge and will likely return as an affix.
- South - Transmutation. Is there a type of power or logistics you simply cannot live without? Do you enjoy creative sushi-belt mechanics? Would you like access to all the elements all the time with an upfront logistics challenge? This area is for you. Pyrolyzers and Void Chests and Lava Barriers can all be gotten from this branch of research, but with the requirement of using Entropy as a catalyst. Spin up Entropy farming locations and harvest the chaotic tumult condensed into Entropic Shards.
- West - Path of the Spindle. If you want to automate in peace, this is the way. Portent allows you to see rift locations before they spawn. Warding allows Structures to continue to operate even while inside Entropy. Soothe, Satiate, and Reality Loom all work to slow and diminish the spread of Entropy, culminating in the Spindle, which when placed on a Mote Field will permanently keep new Rifts from forming.
- East - Path of the Scythe. For those that want to tear reality asunder and reap the raw concentration of dissolution. This path harbors heavy productivity and resource gains in a variety of ways. While you normally have to choose between research and reagent when it comes to Entropy, Tithe allows you to double dip and get the benefit of both. Beckon, Rend, and Blight all fray the fabric of reality and hasten the advance of Entropy into your waiting clutches. Refractory joins Brinery and Pyrolyzer as a tier 2 Salt Prism specialist, and Rift Reaper (formerly Scorched Earth) turns Rifts into Mote Fields when sealed, reclaiming that which was taken. Rounding out the suite of course is the Scythe itself, which creates a concentration of power in an area so immense that a Rift cannot help but pierce the veil to feast on the abundant energy.
Blueprints
But we are far from done. Blueprints has been the number one requested feature and I'm happy to say that they too are live in this update. Blueprints are saved to your account and have multiple folders to sort your creations. Also since blueprints are sharable and I expect many magnificent creations to be born of this system, it felt only fitting to encode them into a runic spell. Huge shoutout to the community for seeding the idea, we ran with it and here is my first gift to you:⌬First Lesson
ᛝᛃ🝂ᛮ🜃ᛮ🜃ᛮᛇᛝᛃ🜃ᛮ🜁ᛮ🜃ᛮᚠᛮ🜃ᚨᛝ🜁ᛮ🜁ᛮ🜁ᛮ🜃🝂ᛝ🜁ᛮ🜃ᛮᛃ🜃ᛮᛇᛮᚢᛝ🜃ᛮ🜃ᛮᛃ🝂ᛮ🜶ᛝ🜃ᛮᛃ🝂ᛮ🜃ᛮᚨᛮ🜃ᚨᛝ🜃ᛮᛃ🜃ᛮ🜁ᛮ🜃ᛮᛇᛝ🜃ᛮ🜁ᛮᛃ🜃ᛮᚨᛮᚢᛝ
B will open your blueprint menu, Ctrl+B will immediately enter blueprint drag select mode, and Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are your copy and pastes as usual. Blueprints in Hexagons are especially challenging, feedback is very welcome on this feature!
World Seeds and Generation
Also highly requested - random world seeds are also in. Seeds can be set inside your main menu before beginning a game, and of course can be shared. When the affix update comes in there will be a much more formal UI, but for now living inside the Gameplay menu works very well. Alongside this, both Planar Portals and Mote Patches changed their generation algorithms substantially. Neither get more sparse as you go further away from the Great Portal anymore, and both of them have received tuning to make them a bit more balanced. Seismic Flare will now also always find the two portals closest to you regardless of distance. Life and Shadow have had their terrains tuned slightly to be better balanced with the other planes. Please note - any games created before this update Will Be Preserved, the new suite of procedural generation applies to new games only.
Early Game Pacing
MoteMancer is a complex game where the floor is high, but the ceiling is astronomical. The early game has a ton of information to take in, and so there have been changes to smooth that part of the journey out and teach some lessons a little sooner. There are more visual helpers as well, look for the ? signs next to the early tutorials if you feel stuck at any particular point. To accompany the new onboarding, a new sweeping change has been made: All newly unlocked Structure recipes now grant at least 1 of that Structure to your inventory. MoteMancer has many unique structures, and often by the time you get all the materials you need to craft something, you've forgotten why you were doing it in the first place. This design serves MoteMancer well because of how unique every structure is, and allows you to see it first hand when your research completes. Your Infusion Altars have been hard at work for many cycles finding the right reagent configuration. Think of this as the prototype made from that journey of discovery.
So much more
Here's a quick hitlist of other things not mentioned above
- Echotracer is in - Shadow's Aura spell that will automatically fill Blueprints from your inventory.
- Elemental Prisms, Keystones, and intermediates (Brimstone, Coralite) now take 3 seconds to craft from 1.
- Completing Adept level research now reveals tiers 2 And 3 for a given element.
- Barrage has replaced Scorched Earth in the Fire tree - Increases Meteor Swarm splash radius.
- Void Chests now start at 1 slot and grow to 3 and 6 with research.
- Rifts that spawn at the start of the game will fade naturally, the Entropy will remain for you to cleanse and begin Entropy Research.
- More tooltipping and UX around reminding the player that their first journey to a new plane is a one-way trip at the start.
- Harvesting elemental flora will no longer cause Rifts to spawn, only harvesting Motes with a collector will now.
- Many more performance and bug fixes
- Also in case you missed it, Maps were implemented a few weeks ago!
MoteMancer has been updating weekly for the last 2 months, and has already grown by leaps and bounds thanks to community feedback and discussions. Come in and join the fray, all are welcome!
State of the Game and the Future
Many players have already gotten hundreds of hours of gameplay out of MoteMancer. The Entropy Tree and Blueprints will provide many more. My initial plan was to dive straight into Affixes following this update, but if I'm being honest, the game could stand a coat of polish all over. Therefore the next update will be focused on two things: Completing the Research Tree, and overall Aesthetics. This means more animations, more FX, better lighting, and UI improvements. There are several shattered nodes remaining in the research tree, most of which have been designed but not fully implemented - many of which have been replaced with better ideas from community conversations. Those are the main targets for the next update, and as always, community suggestions will sneak their way into each and every patch.
Affixes themselves are also pretty well planned out and will contribute even more to MoteMancer's replayability. But with this massive Entropy update now available, it's time to take a step back and spec into art mode. Updates will likely slow to every 2-3 weeks, but I will continue the weekly Monday Musings ritual, as the order demands.
Thank you all for joining me on this journey. To a long and automagical future 🌿
~CyanAvatar
If you’ve been waiting to jump in, now’s a great time! MoteMancer is 20% off during the Entropy Update and Autumn Sale!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3320980/
Full Patch Notes - v0.2.466
Entropy
- Entropy Tree - a separate research tree [Y] unlocked by cleansing Entropy. Available as soon as you research Riptide and start cleansing Entropy around the Great Portal.
- Entropy Research starts at cleansing 1000 then proceeds to 2000, 3000, and so on. There are 51 nodes in the tree. Each Entropy cleansed grants 1 Research point, Sealing a Rift grants 1000.
- Rifts formed at the start of the game will now seal themselves once they spread to max range.
New Entropic Structures
- Athanor - The eternal forge where all Entropy Structures are created.
- Entropic Alembic - Crystalizes nearby Entropy into Entropic Shards, which are the catalyst for most Entropic Structures to function
- Transmutation Engine - Able to transmute a variety of items into other elemental counterparts, can also collapse entropy to a random Mote using Salt or Aether as a stable ingredient to catalyze with Entropic Shards.
- Refractory - Combines opposeing elements to create Salt Prisms directly, akin to Brinery and Pyrolyzer
- Spindle - Must be placed on the center of a Mote Field, prevents future rifts from spawning
- Scythe - Consumes excess Power, creates a Rift at full capacity.
- Planar Reliquary - A unique structure per reliquary slot that can be placed in the world. Counts as an inventory slot for all purposes. Can be transferred into or out of with your logistics network. Unique per plane, each unlock grants a slot per plane. Useful for contant supply of frequent items, as a gauge for the throughput of a buffer chest, or dropping items into long term storage.
- Reliquaries show up in a bar at the top of your screen, they can be opened independently of the inventory by pressing P, but will also automatically open and close with your inventory unless overridden.
Blueprints
- Blueprints are in! Unlock them by starting Entropy Research
- B will open the UI once unlocked. Strings can be copied and pasted and are saved in the cloud to your account, not your save game.
- Blueprints use a runic symbol set to copy paste, but old json format works as well.
- The Blueprint pane has 7 icons that represent folders for organization, each folder can contain an unlimited number of blueprints.
- You currently cannot walk while in blueprint mode, so a blueprint is limited to the size of your screen.
- Ctrl C, V and B are the hotkeys for the system
- New Spell - Shadow: Echotracer - Fills nearby Entropic Echo blueprints from your inventory.
Terrain Generation
- Random seeds are in! Loaded games will continue to use old logic, but that spawning algorithm is only used for old saves. All new games will use new rules.
- Worlds should now be consistent between different computers.
- Life Plane chasm level has lowered slightly to increase landmass and curb island spawning.
- Shadow Plane chasm level has raised slightly to balance it more with the other planes.
- Air Plane's portals have a taller splat around them to ensure connectivity.
- Portal and Mote patch generation has changed to be more uniform throughout and is now truly infinite.
- Doodad clustering has been toned down slightly.
Tuning and Pacing
- All Elemental Prism craft times increased to 3 seconds from 1.
- All Keystone craft times increased to 3 seconds from 1.
- Brimstone, Bismuth, Quartz, Quicksilver, Obsidian, and Coralite craft times increased to 3 seconds from 1.
- Unlocking a research with a structure recipe will grant 1 or 6 of that structure for you to use Immediately.
- Adept research for each element now also reveals master tier research
- Many early game tutorial objectives and ordering have been updated
- A Dialogue popup has been added reminding you that Planar Portals begin as a one-way trip.
- New passive - Barrage - Increases Meteor Swarm splash radius by 1.
- Void Chests now grow from 1 to 6 slots via upgrades in the Shadow Tree.
- Portals no longer automatically have their interplanar logistics, they can be earned via Entropy Research on the north side.
- Portals now require 100 keystones to repair, and after are permanently open (still one-way per Keystone type). The Demo still takes a single keystone to preview the next plane.
- Portals no longer share their contents with similar typed portals.
Bugs
- Fixed a bug where interplanar Streamways would draw incorrectly.
- Fix for Volcanic Chain not functioning properly
- Fixed a bug that could cause entropy to show Power Required
- Text input fields will no longer get into a bad state by pressing escape
- Fixed a few incorrect Rift footprints (should fix Incineration Spires hitting empty cells
- Space and enter will no longer select ui elements.
- A Plane Portal's PortalMask no longer starts active (fixes nearby portal masking bugs)
You're all awesome :)