Dear Alchemists,
The first few weeks of the demo have passed, and we are finally addressing some of the most pressing balance issues, QoL improvements, and requests players have had while playing the demo. This is a major update, with changes to 193 Flasks, almost all elements, many statuses and core run economy changes. Here's a rundown:
Elements Rework
The goal of the element system should be to enhance the different strategies players come up with, but never replace them. The Flasks should be the main build-around, so we are pushing some nerfs across the board to a bunch of Elements, as well as full, or partial remakes, of a few. We will continue to monitor the feedback and data, to see if our goals have been achieved.
Chaos:
The monster Flasks had too much variance and it was hard to provide the necessary visibility needed for an Element activation. Chaos has been fully reworked to fill a different niche, while still maintaining the chaotic effect and highroll feeling.
Blood:
We were mostly satisfied with blood, however the nature of its ability made it activate constantly in combat, and while it did perform decently, it was very hard to see what was going on, and why it was good. We have slightly changed to effect to create a "pool" of blood-healing, which then gets distributed to allies at the end of Round. This makes it much more visible when it activates, and prioritizes the lowest health allies to avoid overhealing.
Death:
Death was the least utilized and one of the weakest elements. The issue was that it's too situational and oftentimes you will lose the combat before it actually goes live. The effect has been fully reworked, into a more aggressive effect which rewards early damage and executing enemies.
Water:
Water was too swingy and would create setups that are hard to balance, and hard to understand for most players. In addition, we are making major changes to the Tier3 effects of certain elements, and Water's old effect didn't fit with those. It now takes a more defensive spot and a niche that has been missing in the game, with an ability to cleanse debuffs.
Other elements:
Dark: now always gives 1 claw, increased tiers give stronger claws, and the claws now also activate if exhausted.
Wind: now always activates your wind flasks 1 additional time, but with greatly reduced power (now counts as a full activation). Tier3 now makes all your flasks Wind.
Fire, Earth, Thunder: Tier3 now makes all your flasks have the element in combat. This is to enable some cool combinations as well as make it so crystal & tokens aren't useless on them anymore.
Order: Now counts turns passed, rather than activations to avoid infinite loops.
Light: The Bonus now gives +100% power if a level 5 flask is upgraded - however it is now capped.
Thunder: Nerfed the damage.
Combat Visuals
For the longest time we have struggled with combat visuals, both during combat and after. We are now taking active steps to improve both the flow of combat, give you expectations of where to look for numbers and a more visual indicator of when things are going right for you.
Main highlights:
Characters now have a positive row of numbers behind their model, to indicate buffs, heals, shields and so on.
They have a negative row of numbers in front of them to indicate Damage & Debuffs.
All element activations now have a bit of space to see exactly what they do and when. Improved the bottom visual of elements to be more meaningful to each element.
Reduced chain activations across the board for flasks that activate flasks, so that it's a bit more reliable to understand when a character is taking their turn.
Lots of other small adjustments have been made, but a lot of it has to be felt. The goal is to have players get a good understanding of what is going on when playing on the regular speed - with the ability to speed up and get a summary at the end, if they don't want to watch it all.
We will continue to make improvements here and monitor the progress and feedback.
Ranger nerfs
Everyone correctly identified that the Ranger was a bit stronger than the other characters and often would have a lot of ways to cheat out especially very strong debuffs that could set the enemy team up for certain doom.
The Ranger is our newest character and oftentimes it takes us a few rounds of balance to get it right, but this round offers changes to over half the Ranger flasks currently in the game. Here are the biggest notes:
Mostly removed flasks that both load bullets and shoot in the same flask. Loading bullets and shooting should feel separate and planned, rather than given for free with very strong flasks that combine them.
Added more synergies with Exhaust around the rest of her kit, in addition a large part of Ranger's kit now works with the new Dark Claws (where they activate when Exhausted).
Generally reduced the hyperscaling percentages on her kit, which would sometimes take bullets to crazy numbers. This can still happen, but you have to work a bit more for it.
Added more Shoot flasks in general, to again emphasize the Gain Bullet --> Shoot style which is the main mechanic of the Ranger.
Charm has been renamed to Control, to better account for future characters using this mechanic.
Reduced Confusion values slightly across the board, and more greatly reduced AOE Confusion flasks which would apply Confusion to your entire team.
Status Changes
Certain statuses have gotten some changes to make them more intuitive to work with, while still accentuating what makes them strong.
Poison no longer decays itself.
Flourish no longer decays itself.
Burn no longer doubles in value after activating.
Focus is no longer removed by attacks, the gameplay now focuses more on gaining and using Focus through various flasks.
Lock has been capped at 1. A flask is now simply locked or unlocked.
Certainty renamed to Luck - more intuitive.
Kunai now always throws all stacks of Kunai on your character.
Various balance changes
Warrior flasks buffed across the board. Warrior had the lowest winrate by far, and would tend to fall behind the longer combat would go on. Now has more tools at disposal with more strong defensive options, coupled with the Focus change and Dark changes which she can take advantage of.
Artificer heat now properly set to gain 10 burn on 3 stacks. Burn also is reduced by armor, goes into your Shield and you are given more ways to mitigate it. In addition many flasks that previously read "While below 50% Health" now instead read "While on 3 Heat", to further add options to the aggressive playstyle and end fights quickly.
Some Druid and Rogue flasks adjusted.
Removed 1 refresh from Shop, so now you can not Refresh when you only have one character, you gain one refresh on the 2nd, and two on the 3rd. Also increased costs of refresh to make it more expensive to search for certain flasks in the shops.
Removed Element Tokens from combat rewards - they were too swingy and we are trying to reduce the overall amount of Element Tokens you gain during a run.
Flask exclusion system extended to Items, so you should never see the same flask or item twice on the current map or the next. This has been added to events that take and give flasks as well, so you can't see the same flasks in Forward Camp, Recycler or similar.
Visuals & Sound:
New hovers and hover system. Now in order to see "nested" statuses, you must enter examine mode. Various cleanups to pop-ups at certain parts of the game, including items equipped to the top character in tower should now be readable.
More animations added to combat, more VFX to statuses, this is part of the ongoing process to make everything in combat feel more smooth.
SFX has started to be added once again. Ranger has received a few and we expect more to come very soon.
Bugfixes
Dragging flasks/items now survives transitions. Event open/close, map changes, should no longer bounce your flasks constantly.
Fixed a leak related to spam-clicking flasks. Should improve performance on lower-end devices.
Fixed a hover-equip bug that allowed you to equip flasks from the wrong character.
Changed the flask Scoot system. Now when you hover a flask over another in the timeline, the flask behind will start shaking, and you can then scoot the entire line left or right if you move your held flask left or right - or simply drop and replace the flask behind.
Many more, minor bugfixes.
And Finally, some fun stats for the previous patch:
Highest winrate Flask: Iron Barbs (Druid flask), with a whopping 82% winrate.
Highest winrate Element: Thunder overall.
Most dangerous monster: Mudbeast
Highest winrate comp: Artificer, Druid & Ranger.
Highest winrate Item: Piecekeeper!
That's it for now! We hope you will give us feedback on the changes, and let us know if we've achieved the goals we set out to do.