Greetings Wizards,
We’re happy to announce that Rogue Wizards closed alpha program has begun. If you backed us on Kickstarter at the Shaman level or higher, you’ll be receiving a Steam key to join and play the alpha over the next couple of weeks to try out the game and provide us feedback and report issues. We’ll be adding users into the alpha in groups every week; so if you don’t receive your key right away don’t worry, it will arrive soon.
Missed the Kickstarter but still want to play the open beta when its ready? Subscribe to our Spellbind Studios Newsletter and we’ll be recruiting players from that list to join the open beta in 2016.
Whats in the Alpha
- Play through the main storyline until defeating Gaderian, the Guild Wizard of Fire
- Build the Wizard Tower, Blacksmith, Armorer, and Jeweler
- Run through 4 basic story quests plus random dungeons are available after building the Armory
- Find several item types with dozens of randomized magic properties
- Fight against 9 different monsters (and a few more that are incomplete with just melee attacks)
- Learn low to mid level spells across 6 schools of magic
- Play through the randomized Dungeon, Cavern, and Cosmic environments
What’s coming next?
- Storyline quests, NPCs, and structures beyond the Rift of Fire
- Creating special and magical attack for monsters and bosses that don’t have them yet
- Colorable character variations
- Town presentation experimentations
Now on to our regular development update for November 2015.
Over the past month we’ve been working very hard to get ready for the alpha. The biggest change in the gameplay comes in how the player acquires spells. Spells now rarely drop in the dungeons and instead the player acquires spell points when they level up. Spell points can be spent at the Wizard Tower in town to upgrade existing or learn new spells.
We’ve also got functional UI screens for video settings as well as user configurable keyboard control mappings.
Finally, we added new UI for comparing weapons and armor with the equipped armor or any of the readied weapons on the shortcut bar. Now a simple red or green arrow will appear on the item being inspected if it is more effective at attack or defense, and for weapons on the shortcut bar if the new item would do more damage than each of them they’re hi lighted with a glowing green box.
Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.
Features
- Alpha build now available on Steam for some users
- The “Blink” spell is now called “Regroup”, and does a teleport and heal
- Regroup spell now can only teleport the player to a tile that they have previously occupied, this keeps the spell from randomly teleporting you further into a dungeon and typically into a group of monsters or other danger when in fact you’re supposed to be falling back to get out of a bad situation
- Added new Spell Tree UI available off the Wizard Tower in town where the player can select which spells to acquire and upgrade
- Spells are now acquired via level unlocks and spell points acquired on level up
- Feedback UI now has edit boxes where people can enter the name and email
- There is now a UI element in the turn mode UI where you can pass your turn (activated by space bar too)
- Added keyboard control UI with user configurable key mappings
- Resolution switching now functional from a new menu in the settings
- Item comparison UI has been reworked to show an up/down arrow at the item being tooltipped, and pulsing green boxes when that item is better at *all* possible locations it can be equipped at to be more effective
Changes
- Stalagmites spell now deals damage
- Stalagmites damage and radius now increase with ranks
- Reduced upgrade costs at vendors
- Sundries now re-populates the goods inventory every time the player comes back to town
- Removed all spellbook drops except the first one that grants the player fireball (magic shrines can still drop books tho)
- Your Wizard Tower now has a floating spellbook icon over it if there are spells that you can upgrade at the tower (you meet the requirements and have spell points to spend)
- Completely removed spellbook drop from default loot table tree (still present on magic shrines tho
- Added some tutorial logic to guide the player through the interaction at the Tower and upgrade of their first spell
- The game will now remind player via a message box at the start of every 4th dungeon to leave feedback to us via the Home menu option
- Level themes (Dungeon, Cavern, Cosmic) are now slowly opened up to the player as they progress. Dungeons can occur from the start, Caverns can occur at level 4+, Cosmic can occur at level 10+
- If a level them becomes available and has never been seen so far, the next quest generated is guaranteed to use that level theme
- 2nd tier spells now become available when 1st tier spells reach level 10 instead of 15
- Gaderian now summons fire minions during the battle
- Gaderian now has a lot more health
- Gaderian now gets scared at certain health ranges like Champions do to provide a break in battle
- Increased champion and boss health
- Drastically reduced the turns required for mastery of all equipped items.
- Decreasing XP bonus from all level clearing awards
- Critical hits now do 125% damage instead of 300%, it was just too much
- Removed magic rank +3 affixes from the game. Set magic rank +1 and +2 to appear at 90% and 10% frequency
- Dungeon loot is now always generated using the player base rank instead of the level base rank, this assures that the player is always finding level appropriate gear even if they have leveled up within a dungeon
- Fixed enemies not selecting their ranged attacks as much as they should have been, especially if they were the only enemy on screen with the player and the player was moving around
- Message box buttons now have text describing their action and are no longer and just x and checkmark images
- Increasing the effectiveness of burn to 25% health
- Increased frequency at which fireball causes burn
- Added visual feedback for a locked door
- Added a chest in the first room of the Wayside Inn so that player don’t get frustrating looking for something valuable in the first room like the player indicates should be there via thought bubble
- Removed blueprints from all loot drops
- You can now turn off the more help style tooltips on HUD buttons via an option in the settings menu
- Removed material crafting, you can now only create health potions at the cauldrons
Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.