Warriorlock Steam Build #3328629

Thank you everyone for your helpful feedback over the past couple of months!
You are ALL awesome, and I really appreciate you taking the time to write reviews, leave comments and otherwise help me improve The Warriorlock.

This update establishes many of the adjustments and bug fixes I have been hard at work on lately. The latest build has been uploaded/updated this morning.

It is important to me that you are challenged in this game, but that you are also rewarded in return as you progress through the story and along the road. With your feedback I was able to better gauge a variety of player experiences to find a middle-ground which is more fair to both sides.

Rather than simply making enemies 'easier,' I have taken the time instead to adjust a few factors which now may give the player a little more breathing room in certain situations, and also benefit from improved odds at helpful item(s) discovery. Keep in mind that you will still die hard of course, perhaps just not as often.

Enemy Swarming

This rarely happened to me, until lately when I was caught in a corner of the Black Passage by a mob of three shadows that spawned simultaneously and I got hit with back to back mayhem and died so hard. As requested by some of you, I have tweaked the instances per second of each and every enemy spawn group in the game so that they now respawn with an additional 5 seconds in between groups of the same location. Basically what this means is that you will have a little more time in between spawning events, but enemy groups will still spawn together in pairs or more.

So, if you beat or bribe a few enemies, you will now have a few additional precious seconds to get out of the way or sort/check your inventory for much needed assistance before the next group spawns. My advice is to avoid corpse piles and/or corners if you are low on health, as more enemies like to haunt these areas. Sometimes you can't just get every item either if there are too many monsters. Prioritize, and when all else fails, RUN.

Drop Rate for Helpful Items

This one is a tricky balance because I have designed an item spawning system that completely randomizes the number and type of items that spawn in each area, and many of the enemies are almost assured to drop some form of item as well. This means that no two people will ever play The Warriorlock and find/receive the same items in the same places as they progress. It's exciting because you never know for sure what you're going to get. However, in some cases the luck of the draw is just really not in your favor and things can quickly become daunting. As suggested by you, I have slightly increased the probability % of almost all healing and recovery items in all areas, yet I have left the awesome randomization mechanic intact. So, although you will have a higher chance of finding the really good stuff when you need it most, there's always still a chance you'll draw a crappy card sometimes. But it's a fair compromise this way, and keeps the challenge level right where it belongs.

Recycled Text & Dialogue

In some locations with story characters, their dialogue will recycle if you leave and return to a shop location or the inn. As per your suggestions, I have made some adjustments to the dialogue strings so that they do not recycle as often. I have not adjusted it for each and every location though, as I already implemented a skip text function when reading messages throughout the game in general. You can press the action button to speed up the text drawing, and then skip to the next section/window.

Auto Save Slot

Due to some confusion with the auto save being labelled 'Slot 1' in the save menu, I have gone ahead and changed it to read Auto Save, as well as relabeling the ascending 3 slots 1-3. This will help to organize your saves better, and keep things simple.

Curative & Boost Spell Success %

Sometimes a spell talent would fail completely, even if your level was improved and you had equipped one or more stat-boosting accessories. You guys have suggested making these types of talents more probable in their execution, and I have done so. All curative and boost spells targeting the player and/or party members now have an inherent 95% chance of success, BUT, I have also added a random variable by a factor of 0-3 on each end of that action based on your character's SPEED and KARMA stats, so that there is still a little suspense once in a while. Nothing is a sure thing when you are fighting for your life in The Warriorlock, but now at least you can use your awesome healing and boost talents with a little more confidence!

Bug Fixes

*Fixed transport/teleport bug when returning to an area later in the game after exiting that area via the same method. The player would be 'stuck' in a room with no exit, leaving them to have to start from their last save point.

*Fixed 'image not found' bug when picking up Celestial Tears and not seeing it in the inventory. Checked all other items for similar issue. None found.

*Fixed combat animation freeze when attacking with Gordo's special talent. Process to search and swap spritesheet graphic was not updating properly, so I added a slight wait time (15 frames) to the queue to prevent overlap. It works!

There are also some other minor text box mis-alignments and tile overlap on a few maps (nothing noticeable), so I will be working to get those updated by this weekend.

I hope that you will be encouraged to share The Warrirolock with others in your Steam groups and social media. I'm one person doing all of this, so every little bit helps a lot!

Thanks you!

Dee Snuts

p.s. Feel free to nominate The Warriorlock on Steam for 'Labor of Love.'