Update 0.81.0 - Transmuting, Radial Looting, New Equipment, CD/MC tweaks, and much more!

Hey guys!

As I was preparing to port the game to a new engine I realized I should probably leave you guys with some fresh content before I disappear for a while working on that, so here's a content update!

This update introduces a lot of new stuff.. could almost have made it a Major Content Update! Some highlights of this update includes the new Transmutation crafting NPC, Theo! He'll help you craft and combine new items from some known recipes.. and some from hidden, unlisted recipes that only the most clever and perceptive heroes will find. He can also help you modify your items in new ways, such as unlocking previously augmented Enchants, or empowering Legendary items to copy the base stats from True legendary items. All for the min/max :-)

There's also some neat QoL features like "hotswapping" selected active skills, allowing you to pick one of their alternatives at a whim without resetting your point allocations. There's also a new Radial Loot feature, where you will loot everything matching your item filters (set up in the Gameplay options) within your Pickup Radius. Pretty nifty!

This update will also address some recent chance and concerns with my ongoing iterations of the cooldown and resource management. There's always room for improvement, but we have found a pretty good base for things now, I believe!

The game now also officially supports community translations to Simplified Chinese, and all skill descriptions and names has been added to the pool of external text, for anyone to take a look at and/or translate. Future updates will bring item text and the remaining in-game text to a readable format as well! However the game does not ship with any translations at this point.

As always I'd like to thank everyone for continuing to support the development by reporting bugs, posting feedback, and sharing ideas!

I'll be around for the next few days to keep an eye on things and see if there's any bugs that need fixing, but after that I'll start the porting which, depending on how difficult ti becomes, may result in a bit of an update drought until it's done. But after that you can expect some big things on the horizon!

Stay tuned!

Update 0.81.0:

New Mechanics:

Transmutation:
• A new NPC has moved into The Chronicon, speak to him to learn about Transmutation!
• Many new items (equipment, consumables, relics) has been added that can only be obtained through Transmutation
• Unlocks account-wide after beating Act 3 on any character (yes, retroactively too)

Damage Stagger:

• This is a new stat available to all classes that staggers a portion of all damage taken over 3 seconds
• The Berserker has 15% Damage Stagger as base
• Damage Stagger is calculated after resistances, Damage Reduction, etc, but before Shields
• Damage Stagger stat stacking is multiplicatively calculated, like Damage Reduction, Evasion, etc

Global Damage Diminishing Returns:

• Slightly lowers damage of "shotgunning" effects that happen instantly on the same frame, by lowering the damage of each individual hit that frame
• Only affects direct damage, so skill procs etc remain unchanged
• It's mostly intended as a way to lower the amount of extreme damage spikes on the player, which along with Damage Stagger makes for a more smooth experience without "cheap shots" - especially in Hardcore mode

Radial Looting:

• Pressing Q (default, can be changed) now loots all items fitting your filters within your Pickup Radius
• Can be set to only loot non-equipment

Dungeon Shady Dealer:

• A Shady Dealer may spawn in any area of the game at random, from level 30 and up.. he's got some interesting wares for sale, which will vary somewhat each time you find him

Skill Hotswapping:

• You can now hotswap skills from the same skill slot in the skill trees, meaning if you for example picked "Cleave" instead of "Shield Slam", you can swap between them without resetting all points spent
• The hotswap can be done by right-clicking the skill in the skill tree (as you would when binding it) and clicking "Swap" instead of a hotkey
• Note: Hotswapping will clear buffs and companions just like the Elixir of the Mind does, so you can't hotswap between two different buffs (or ultimates) and use both - it is simply a tool to make rapid changes to your build with little effort

Empowered Shrines:

• Shrines may spawn as Empowered, granting two random effects instead of one!
• All Shrine spawns are now also randomized between sessions and area resets

• Removed all narrow cave layouts
• Added many new combinations of layouts and locations

Classes:

Berserker:
• Slightly lowered rage generation from taking damage
• Doubled minimum rage generation from dealing damage, and slightly lowered maximum
• Increased the rate of which Rage fades, and the amount faded per tick
• Rage fade is now paused during cutscenes
• Now has +15% Damage Stagger as base stat

Warlock:

• Soul duration now refreshes when collecting a Soul while at max Souls
• Soul fade is now paused during cutscenes

Added new enchant:
• Damage Stagger:
  • Adds to the new Damage Stagger stat, is considered a Major enchant, and can only be rolled on Helmets, Armors, and all offhands *except* Shields


Changed existing Enchants:
• Maximum Rage:
  • Max augment is now at +22 Max Rage, down from +30

• Mana On Hit:
  • Slightly increased augment caps and roll ranges
  • Can now be rolled on all off-hand items and helmets

• Health on Hit:
  • Can now be rolled on Boots

• Evasion:
  • Can now be rolled on Armor

• Damage Reduction:
  • Can now be rolled on Armor

• Effect Duration:
  
• Reach:
  
• Mana Cost Reduction:
  • Can now be rolled on all Weapon types

• Pickup Radius:
  • No longer rolls on *everything*
  • Can now only be rolled on Armor, Accessory, Weapon, and Boots
  • Max Augment lowered to 40%, down from 45%

• Kyanite Cube:
  • While in weapon, now increases mana on hit by 10/15/30%, up from 5/10/20%

• Zoning now grants slightly less bonus time on killstreaks
• Troves now more clearly indicate that they're special by showing a message when opened
• Players are now completely purified and healed when killing a boss
• HP/MP Regeneration ticks no long happen during cutscens
• Hitting enemies mid-spawning animation where they're invulnerable now refreshes the killstreak timer by a very tiny amount
• Added some more telegraphing to various skills
• Improved the visuals of telegraphing effects
• Added a "radius loot" button based on your pickup radius, default is Q and will loot everything in range according to your loot filters
• Does not have a default button for gamepad as we're running out of buttons! But you can bind it in the options if you want. Gamepads will receive some love soon!
• Quest-related NPC's are now always revealed on your map
• The "Annihilation" and "Godlike" killstreak meteors now deal damage based monster health and difficulty/anomaly level, rather than player stats
• Made many improvements to Click To Move movement based on player feedback:
  • Can click more freely in void/unreachable areas and character will still attempt to move
  • Can bind skill slot hotkeys more freely without issues (ie all keys on LMB will now work with click to move)
  • Improved responsiveness and slightly tweaked pathfinding

• Added an option to the gameplay menu to pause the game if it loses focus (if you click outside or minimize etc)
• Added an option to the gameplay menu to completely remove filtered out items from the game world
• Added another option to gameplay menu to allow filtering out equipment from the new Radial Loot thing, so you can use it to grab consumables or materials for example
• Updated some item power descriptions to be more clear
• Updated damage number visuals to be a bit more clear and crisp
• Time played is now displayed in hh:mm:ss, now including the seconds (this also affects tombstones)
• Fixed mana costs being displayed with decimals (now all rounded)
• Buff/debuff UI now shows up to 15 effects each, increased from 10 each
• Pressing F10 while not hovering any skill in the skill tree will save the entire skill tree as an image to the cards directory - should speed up the guide-making process
• Time of death on Tombstones is now drawn in a unified format for all players (rather than in the system format as it would produce unsupported characters or too wide outputs)
• Updated difficulty descriptions to include some base monster stats and give better guidance on what to pick
• "Veteran" difficulty renamed to Heroic
• "Heroic" difficulty renamed to Epic
• "Mythical" difficulty renamed to "Mythic"

Items:

• Adjusted minimum drop levels for many Legendary items to be closer to the required level for the skills they affect Added many new items only available via the new Transmutation NPC:
  • Mightcap
  • Elementium Stone
  • Health Injector Mk2
  • Mana Injector Mk2
  • Spell Codices (many!)

  Added other new items:

  • Champion's Crown (Crafting Material):
    • This is a special crafting material that is used for some Transmutations, it only drops from Champion enemies
    • These drop after level 50 on Veteran and higher difficulty

  • Gravity (True Legendary Amulet):
    • Doubles all satellites and increases their damage by up to 150%

  • Rahlence's Resolution (True Legendary Accessory):
    • Adds a chance to get random buffs (similar to Shrine buffs) on kills

  
  Changed items/powers:
  All:
  • The Boomer:
    • Now causes enemies to explode for up to 10% of Maximum Health in a 3 meter radius on death

  • Vampire Lord's Cape:
    • Now heals the wearer for up to 150% of all mana spent

  • Jeopardy:
    • Now stacks with 20% each, down from 40%

  • The Unbreakable Bond:
    • Can now be augmented to 90% reduction, up from 80%

  • Tome of Knowledge:
    • Is now an accessory

  • Saboteur's Hood:
    • Now increases movement speed when breaking breakable objects

  
  Berserker:
  • Brutal Stompers:
    • Now also affects Dragon Leap and Arctic Leap

  • Bloodsoaked Claw:
    • Now rolls +Bleed Damage% rather than a Bleed DoT

  
  Templar:
  • Ayeela's Guard:
    • Is now a Tome to better fit the build
    • Renamed to Ayeela's Wisdom
    • Now always rolls HoH

  
  Warden:
  • Storm Pendant:
    • The Nimbus is spawned at rank 1

  • Stormdweller Hood:
    • Now reduced mana cost of Storm skills by up to 50%, down from 100%

  
  Warlock:
  • Icecrown:
    • Now causes Frost Spear to also be fired from any active Frost Satellite enchants when cast

  
  
  
  

• Improved gamepad detection (hopefully)

Localization:

• All skills text (names, description etc) is now externally stored and available for translations
• Skill keywords etc is now also stored externally
• Added support for Simplified Chinese for community translations (change font_type="latin" to font_type="chinese" in the text data file to load up the correct font)
• Items and remaining text is coming soon

Monsters:

Affixes:
• Bleeder now damages much less
• Added new "Frost Blitz" affix to the affix pool for Champions
• All Bleeding effects/DoTs now stop enemy Regeneration affix from working for the duration

Boss:

All:
• Boss Health now scales slightly higher with base difficulty, and increasingly so with Anomaly levels
• Bosses now clear any active spells when dying, so players don't die after the boss has died
• Bosses now get double resistance bonuses from higher difficulties

Captain Moore:

• Now announces his axe throw attack, and will pause slightly when doing so


Uniques:
The Botanist:
• Slightly lowered damage
• Increased cooldown on Fairy Ring skill (poison shrooms)


General:
• Reduced damage of some projectile spells when used by monsters, such as Poison Bolts
• Monsters can no longer leap, dodge, warp, or evade while frozen, paralyzed, or otherwise stunned
• Enemies now start stacking base resistances at Legendary difficulty (lowered from Mythical), and now stacks them much higher

• Shrine locations are now randomized between sessions/resets
• Added new "Empowered Shrines", which may randomly spawn. These shrines will always grant two random effects!
• Empowered Shrines (nearly) always appear in optional areas
• Added new effects:
  • Cooldown Reduction
  • Mana Cost Reduction
  • Physical/Fire/Frost/Lightning/Poison/Holy/Shadow resistance

• Removed effect:
  • Death (this also removes the Achievement for it)

• A new experimental change has been added to select skills, where they have had their cooldowns drastically reduced and their mana costs equally drastically increased
• Removed some Active Skill slot dependencies from the Templar skill trees because that was just dumb and inconsistent
• Mana cost of skills have been overall changed to not grow linearly with your base mana anymore, instead, most skills will require much less on lower levels before they reach their intended per-level cost, so you get a smoother progression and learning curve Berserker:
  • Frost Winds:
    • Can no longer crit when triggered via Cooling Off, preventing double crits

  • Molten Veins:
    • Now has a visual effect
    • Now breaks breakable objects

  
  Templar:
  • Holy Fire:
    • Since it's now counting as direct damage, meaning triggering passives, the damage has been lowered to compensate
    • Now deals 35/40/45/50/55% damage, down from 60/70/80/90/100%

  • Devotion:
    
  • Beacon (M):
    • Both now add to an "Aura Effect" stat visible on the Templar's stat sheet, rather than trying to manually change Auras (also scales and stacks more predictably)

  
  Warden:
  • Wild Growth:
    • No longer reduces cooldown of Leaf Wind / Root Veil, but instead increases their duration

  • Ice Dash:
    • Now lasts 1.5 seconds (down from 3) and increases Movement Speed by 50/60/70%, up from 15/20/25

  • Nimbus:
    • It's exactly the same at max rank, however each point spend adds a larger bonus now, meaning it starts off much weaker
    • Damage changed to 101/112/123/134/145%, from 125/130/135/140/145%
    • Duration changed to 3.4/3.8/4.2/4.6/5 seconds, from 5/5/5/5/5

  
  Warlock:
  • Demonic Fury:
    • No longer triggered by non-damaging skills

  • Soul Feast:
    • Now restores 2/3/4% of Health and Mana, down from 4/6/8%

  • Ritual of Necromancy:
    • The Use effect now also refresh the duration of existing Skeletons

  • Curses:
    • Lowered radius on most low-mid tier curses
    • Updated all curse skill animations

  
  

• Adjusted brightness of some late Act 4 areas to be lower
• Slightly adjusted shape of The Chronicon to better fit the NPC's
• Added a Trove the the Lost City Temple in Act 4

Fixes:

• Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to check the most recently played character on Linux
• Fixed some skill description typos
• Fixed Movement Speed gems not working correctly
• Fixed quest "Storms on the Horizon" not having an end objective
• Fixed time played on Hardcore Tombstones being written in seconds only
• Fixed rare crash related to enemies using projectile spells like Flashfire (such as the boss Pyre in Anomalies)
• Fixed issue where some skill procs sometimes would deal too low damage because of an unknown rank (now defaults to rank 1)
• Fixed Root Veil visual not fading when the effect fades
• Fixed Razor Tips (Warden) carrying Pods even if you didn't have the Seeds passive
• Fixed the possibility for other players to be locked out of the Moore fight in co-op
• Fixed Korem The Guide not having a marker above his head for handing in the Act 4 finale quest
• Fixed "chilled" debuff generally applied by Frozen affix enemies overriding immunities
• Fixed some Mastery references to old skill names
• Fixed some inconsistencies between Templar Auras and the Devotion passive buff
• Fixed Field Training (Templar) being a Buff skill and not an Aura skill
• Fixed Overgrowth (Warden) granting some unintended bonus damage
• Fixed Blinding Light (Templar) having over 100% stun chance with Tome of Redemption
• Fixed some selection wrapping issues in the inventory when using a controller
• Fixed being able to reset areas from the waypoint while in other areas then The Chronicon if using a controller
• Fixed waypoints in The Chronicon lighting up and showing names even if you hadn't unlocked them yet
• Fixed some bad Puzzle spawns in Rosewood and Deepwood
• Fixed some text corruption in various NPC interfaces
• Fixed issue where some monster Affix spells would persist between loading screens
• Fixed some combinations of monster affix spells potentially causing crashes during cleanups
• Fixed Repulse (Templar) not getting better with points spent
• Fixed some Act 3 areas spawning Act 1 shrines
• Fixed some lights having the flame circles offset incorrectly
• Fixed the nametag and overhead health bar overlapping
• Fixed speech bubbles overlapping health bar
• Fixed issue sometimes preventing you from scrolling all the way down in some menus while using a gamepad
• Fixed names not being centered when inspecting Shrines, Chests and other interactable objects
• Fixed Freezing Breath visual effect persisting through loading screens and sometimes sessions
• Fixed issue with some buff/aura effects resetting their triggers constantly when attacking etc (for example Holy Fire)
• Fixed Thundercharged 3 set bonus resetting similarly
• Fixed Dragon Leap dealing damage through walls
• Fixed several rare inventory scaling related crashes
• Fixed being able to enter portals through walls
• Fixed issue where the NPC "Vengeful Spirit" wouldn't appear under certain circumstances
• Fixed a bad spawn of The Whispering Cavern in The Whistling Canyon
• Fixed some items with long item type name such as "Augmented Legendary Spellbook (Offhand)" having overlapping text on item cards
• Fixed tooltip delay not working in the skill trees and skill selection popup when using mouse
• Fixed Captain Moore moving while throwing his axe
• Fixed crash on opening anomaly reward chests under very specific circumstances
• Fixed some issues with click to move and the Act 4 final boss
• Fixed companions becoming unresponsive and stopping attacks
• Fixed some issues with monster health calculations and re-entering areas
• Fixed spawned monsters dropping in total health after a player levelup
• Fixed waypoints not lighting up in some cases when starting a new Act
• Unstable Dimensions portal spawns should now properly clear other Unstable Dimensions (there can only be one)
• Avenger (Templar) is no longer triggered automatically with the Thundercharged set if the skill isn't learned