Hey guys!
With the weekend just around the corner I figured I'd release a new update!
Unlike most updates, this one does not fix all reported issues, but rest assured that I will fix them over the coming weeks, in smaller updates.
In addition to new items and many added community suggestions, this update changes the difficulty scaling entirely so be prepared for a real challenge in high anomalies!
As such, your Anomaly progress have been reverted down to Anomaly level 50.
Anomaly level 200 is approximately equal to what Anomaly level 1000 used to be, and it scales in a much steeper curve now, so I'm looking to gather as much feedback as I can on the new difficulty curve. This is also a good opportunity to mention that I will never wipe your saves or anything like that, but things like Anomalies may suffer resets due to balance changes.
Hopefully the new difficulty is in a good place!
I expect that I will need to tweak it based on your feedback, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
I also realize most Legendary and True Legendary equipment is focused on offense, so expect more defensive options in the near future as well. I threw in two samples of this in the shape of a new helmet and ring, which I hope you will find useful! If you are doing companion builds you may find the ring especially helpful.
Aside from that, I have added many community suggestions, and I have more on the list still. Something I really wanted to add was a new minimap, but I wasn't able to squeeze that and some other things with this update, so update 0.63.0 will focus a bit more on community suggestions! Expect it in a few weeks time.
Meanwhile, I am also working on Act 4, so that isn't too far away either - expect it around March-April somewhere, with plenty of content updates up until then.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the new difficulty scaling. I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks!
0.62.0: Community Suggestions & Balance Update - part 1
Notes:
- With large changes to difficulty scaling, you can expect more defensive options in both Mastery and equipment in the future
Achievements:
- Adjusted some values on the stat Achievements "Elemental Master" and "Elementalist"
Anomalies:
- Some small Anomalies have been made a bit larger
Area Layouts:
- Adjusted many odd spawn locations of doors in Act 2 and Act 3
Balance:
- Melee classes (Berserker & Templar) now take a flat 30% less damage from all sources to compensate for their need to be closer
- Mastery exp requirement has been increased, particularly after reaching over level 300
Companions:
- Idle companions now target the monster the player attacks
- Companions now slowly regenerate health when not in combat
- Companions now copy player resistances, with a minimum of 0% (can't go into negatives because of difficulty penalty)
- Companions can now receive "damage reduction" from special items, lowering their total damage taken
- Companions now also mirror the player's "crit damage" stat
- This means that the following stats are now transferred to companions:
- Crit chance
- Crit damage
- Movement speed
- Resistances
- Damage and Health based on listed skill values
Difficulty:
- Completely rebalanced to better suit the new skills and Mastery systems - some tweaking is likely needed
- Difficulty now scales more steep, especially from Legendary and up
- However Casual difficulty should feel a lot more Casual now, too
- Anomaly difficulty is highly affected by the changes, and you will be lowered to Anomaly 50 if you have made it further
- Anomaly Level 200+ roughly translates into what was previously 1000+
- Monster extra affixes has been capped at 6 for Champions and 5 for Elites, and are now more consistent through the difficulties
Enchanting:
- Scrambling and freshly generated items now properly follow the same set of rules. These rules have been updated to the following:
- Rings and Amulets must always roll an additional enchant, this additional enchant is always an Epic enchant
- Weapons, Armor, and Boots have a 25% chance to replace one of their Major enchants with an Epic enchant.
- Scrambling Weapon, Armor, or Boots, may replace the Epic enchant with a Major, and vice versa. You can only roll one Epic enchant per item.
- You can now enchant directly from your equipment rather than only from the inventory
- You can now also Augment (lock) enchants that have rolled their maximum value
- There is now a full index of all possible enchants when you hover/inspect an item placed in the enchanting slot
- Enchanting materials no longer drop until you finish the Missing Codex quest, and Chantie will tell you where to find them when completing the quest
- The "Chance to burn on hit" and similar enchants are now using percentages, making it scale much better in endgame. These enchants can now also be Augmented very high. The old versions have been made absolete.
- Bleed enchants now use "Bleed Damage" instead of Physical damage, ignoring enemy resistances and relying on the "Bleed Damage" stat.
- Health Injector power can be augmented a little higher
Equipment:
- Added 2 new True Legendary items:
- Life Guard
- Unbreakable Bond
- Added new powers to the following Legendary items:
- Berserker:
- Brutal Stompers
- Firebreather (previously known as Cataclysm)
- Warden:
- Forest Embrace (was previously not exclusive to Warden)
- Packleader's Vest
- Storm Pendant (previously known as Stormcaller's Pendant)
- Warlock:
- Infernal Horns
- Berserker:
- Updated Set:
- Sun & Moon: now buffed to be more useful and an endgame alternative for mixed fire/frost builds
- Updated Power:
- Golden Guard: Now deals thorns damage as holy damage in the form of holy bolts (does not replace thorns), rather than just flat holy damage
- Nature's Barbs: Now also turns Thorns into Poison damage
- Tweaked drop rates of True Legendary items (they are now separated from regular Legendaries in their own loot pool)
- Updated names and base enchants of many items
- Lowered level requirements of several Legendary items
Interface:
- Added support for tiny healthbars that are always visible - check the Interface menu to toggle "Display Enemy Healthbars"
- Player Overhead Healthbars and Companion Overhead Healthbars are now also tiny
- You can now also toggle companion nametags on or off regardless of healthbar visibility
- Champion, Elite, Unique, and Boss monsters have been given slightly larger healthbars with a golden accent
- "The Name Tag Scale" option is now a "Healthbar & Name Tag Scale" option, allowing you to adjust the new healthbars
- Damage Number, Text, and Name Tag scaling sliders now scale to each 10% rather than each 100%
- Empty skill snows now have a "+" icon on them to make it more clear they are selectable
- You can now hover on your skill bar to get your selected skills' info rather than having to enter the skill tree to check
- You can now also hover the skill notification icons for a text notice, and you may also click to open the skill trees
- You can also hover the experience bar for exact details on your experience and mastery experience
- Player healthbar now gives off a shine when below 30% health
- Added a new option to enable cooldown numbers on your skill bar
- Mouse over will now prioritize enemies over loot so you don't get loot tags or pick up loot in combat when trying to attack
- The bag slots now have bag icons on them & the belt slots have potion icons
- Added a dark background behind portal names so they're easier to read
Killstreaks:
- Now awards more Crystals, and exponentially increases with large streaks!
- Now also awards some more experience, depending on difficulty and size of streak
Misc:
- Crystals now shoot out of chests and monsters in a rapid stream rather than all at once (I just thought it looks neat)
- Improved load times in some large forest areas
Monsters:
- Putridus: Now always drops a 4 slot pouch
- Thorns and DoT effects now deal a maximum of 10% of the player's health
- Explosive monsters can no longer kill the player in one hit, and will at the very most deal 50% of their health (non-champion monsters deal much less)
- Mana leechers now drain a maximum of 5% mana per hit
- Bosses now drop more Crystals
Quests:
- Protect And Serve: Now rewards a 6-slot bag in addition to the helmet
Skills:
- General:
- Projectiles should no longer count breakables as hits and trigger effects / proc / spend hits
- Berserker:
- Rime: The Use effect now adds a % of Frost damage into Chill damage per hit, rather than set values
- Dragon Stomp: Slightly reduced range
- Templar:
- Hallowed: Now has a range modifier which is affected by the Reach stat
- Blaze: Now triggers "on hit" effects and passives
- Pyre & Ember: Lowered screen shake from these skills
- Holy Fire: The Use effect now adds a % of Fire damage into Burn damage per hit, rather than set values
- Star Struck: The damage radius is now affected by the Reach stat
- Warden:
- Multishot & Volley: Chance to trigger splinters & overdraw is now independently calculated for each arrow
- Warlock:
- Screaming Skull: No longer damage foes through walls
- Infernal Demon: Now affected by Companion stats
Sounds:
- You can now set the maximum amount of sounds to be played simultaneously in the Audio options
Stats:
- Base Health Regeneration and base Mana Regeneration now scales much faster as you level up
- Added a damage reduction stat, which will reduce all damage after resistances. Templar + Berserker has 30% damage reduction. Special items may increase this value!
- There is also a special damage reduction stat for companions, which can be increased by special items
- Blockrate is now capped at 75%
- Damage blocked is now capped at 50%
Tinka's Domain:
- Added an Enchanter NPC to this area
Fixes:
- Fixed several instances of the Forest areas generating unreachable areas
- Fixed some problems with the statistics calculations of experience gain and experience loss from deaths
- Fixed several problems with enchanting scrambles
- Fixed Berserker's "Hotfooted" not working
- Fixed auto-targeting spells targeting invulnerable or spawning (also invulernable) foes
- Fixed "on kill" effects not triggering from foes who died of DoT effects
- Fixed not being able to use the analogue sticks when creating a new hero
- Fixed issues with analogue sticks and sliders in option menus
- Fixed issue where connected but unused controllers could be used to pause game and change settings, making it possible to get unresponsive menus
- Fixed issues with getting large amount of experience points at once and it not correctly carrying over into the next levels' progression
- Fixed an issue with the calculation of Combustion damage with the Burning Hells set
- Fixed Flashfire being considered a Sorcery spell instead of the intended Bane spell
- Fixed Achievements "Elemental Suppression" and "Doctor Huu?" not triggering
- Fixed issue where champions didn't improve their Shadow resistance, but did for all other resistances
- Fixed issues with temporary companions like Wisps, Clots, Living Blood, and Demon Lord set bonus hounds not properly being affected by companion bonus stats
- Fixed buff typos
- Fixed item name & description typos
- Fixed bad wording on some skills
- Fixed issue where Storm Mender had their heals improved by the players Lightning damage
- Fixed damage falloff calculation for Explosive monsters (the further away you are the less damage you take)
- Fixed issue where you might get stuck in some animations
- Fixed issue where Leap and similar skills sometimes wouldn't deal damage
- Fixed "Blizzard" not slowing foes
- Fixed draw height of Nimbus clouds
- Fixed errors on affix calculations based on difficulty
- Fixed hero select screen being imprecise about character versions
- Fixed boots "Boots of Hermes" and "Nimble Boots" not showing their special enchants in the enchanter (not retroactive, you will need a new pair for the effect to show up)
- Fixed several issues and crashes in multiplayer which could occur when a player enters a portal with one or more players navigating their inventory menus at the same time
- Fixed menu "blip" sound being played several times when pausing the game
- Fixed issue where doors to new areas sometimes wouldn't be generated