Update 0.5.0.2: Signature Skills, new skill types, new uniques and more!

Hi everyone!

After being introduced in the last devblog, the first 7 Signature skills are now usable in the game. You can find an extended presentation of this new feature in our devblog: http://steamcommunity.com/games/424370/announcements/detail/2307387167873635353

To go along with them, all the PST sections have been reworked and slightly rebalanced, which is why we had to clear your PST progression on existing characters. The update also include more than 30 new passive skills to help you personalize your Signatures and your playstyle.

A new type of spells has been added to the game : Charged spells (or spells with charges) have little stacks on their icons which indicate how many times you can use it without triggering the cooldown. Charges can fill up in many ways, whether it’s a simple timer or when killing enemies, blocking attacks or performing special actions. They also can be used one by one or rather all at a time, depending on the spell, and can increase its power or effects when more charges are used in one launch. The first Charged spells added by this update are Bladeslinger, Ironguard, Hunting Ground and the new Ammunition spells.

Another new spell category added by the update is the Semi-passive spells, or Sigils. When slotted in your bar, they will provide you passive effects that will work until you use the spell, triggering its active function. While the spell is on cooldown or its active effect is resolving, you won’t benefit from its passive bonus, but will gain it again as soon as the cooldown ends. The first two Sigils of the game are Spellbinder and Infiltration, but we’ll add more in the future.

Old Ammunitions spells have been removed, since they needed a lot of rework in order to be fun. We thus added the first version of the new Ammunition spells, the Elemental and Impairing ones, which are cycling skills that are always active when slotted in your bar and makes use of the Charges system. When using them, you switch to the next type of munition (ex: Fire, Frost and Lightning for Elemental), and all your shots are affected by the active one as long as you still have charges. Those two spells are Signature spells and already have a few variants in the PST, unlocked in the Hunter and the Trickster sections.

Skills using charges also gave us the opportunity to experiment with items that interact with skills. New unique items can now add modifiers to skills, allowing for even more customization beyond the possibilities of the Active Skills Tree. This is the very first iteration of this system, and new unique items will be added on a regular basis.

Finally, potions now provide permanent bonuses when equipped, depending on the potion type.

Here’s the changelog for this update!

CHANGELOG

GENERAL:

• The game’s lighting has been slightly reworked to deliver a better readability of the player and the enemies in the different environments.

VISUALS:

• Handforged Dagger magic effects are now correctly placed on the blade.
• Missing material in old civilization architecture
• Fixed rare occurrence of overlapping armors

UI:

• The way temporary effects icons are displayed above the ROS has been reworked and improved, and keep positive and negative effects separated while allowing to stack a higher number of different icons. The tooltips of those icons can now bear colors (green / red) to quickly tell positive and negative effects apart inside the same global effect.
• Improved multi-resolution/multi-aspect ratio support for item info UI solving multiple positioning issues
• Enlarged item & skill info UI
• On ground items text will now appear when hovering the item, removing the need to press alt
• Fixed flash rendering issue
• Optimized skills icons (size divided by 4)

QUESTS:

• Fixed a bug where you could exit right after killing the first Corrupted Heart and respawn with it being still there.
• Fixed a bug preventing you from achieving certains quests goals involving Nodes destruction depending on the weapons you were using.
• Fixed a few occurrences where Seren could run and roam around on loading.

NETWORK:

• Optimization of the network messages resulting in a 80% bandwidth usage reduction (in average) when sending messages to our cloud servers.

ENVIRONMENT:

• Various improvements in the Open world
• Overhaul of Dhur surroundings
• New rooms for house caves
• Most chests and containers now have a chance to appear when you load the world, they won’t necessarily be at the same spot every time (except for a few fixed chests).
• A new type of chest has been added : unique chests. You will recognize them from their red glowing effect, and they will likely contain Unique or Rare items, even Legendaries if you’re lucky enough, and will have a small chance to appear in unexpected places - thus rewarding the most attentive explorators.
• Interaction radius with the PST is now 50m instead of 25m.
• Fixed a bug where the player could walk on an invisible bridge leading to the Ravengarde Fortress.
• Fixed some Bounty generation issues.
• Improve randomness in deep level of Bounty.

CHARACTERS:

• New optimized models for all the orcs!

GAMEPLAY:

• A new value is now shown in the Character Sheet : the Presence level. Presence is assimilated to your current visibility level to enemies : at 100%, enemies target you in a regular way. Below, they start making more time to see you and lose targeting more quickly, whereas above 100% they are much quicker at spotting you. At 0% presence, you are invisible to them. This will allow us to create interesting interactions in the future and will be a complementary system to aggressivity. The only enemy that doesn’t handle Presence level for now is the Ghoul since it uses a different AI system, but we’ll fix this in the future. For now, let’s just say the Ghoul has very sensitive senses!
• Modified the scope of many of the game’s values. To sum up, player health, armor and enemy damage has been halved, while player damage (from spells and weapons) and enemy health has been doubled.
• All passive skills working on the Movement status of your character will now work as intended and be more forgiving, to be used easily.
• Increased default Stamina regeneration time from 3 to 4 seconds.
• Fixed a bug causing the player to get Cursed instead of inflicting Curse to enemies.
• Maximum Status ailments stacks number you can inflict or receive is now 15 per ailment instead of 10.

ITEMS

• Most unique items have been redesigned and new uniques have been added, including some that can add modifiers to Active Skills. This is the first pass of the unique items redesign, and many more will be added in the future.
• You can only equip the same unique item once.
• Various optimizations have been brought to our Items system.
• Potions have been enhanced, and now bear permanent effects that are active as long as the potion is equipped and has at least one charge. Thus, all thematic potions will give you permanent bonus accordingly (ex: Umbra potions give a passive Umbra regeneration bonus) and complementary effects when used. Potions will only be truly inactive when completely empty. We believe this will be a great way to create synergy with existing systems in the future, and one more way of perfecting your own choice of gameplay.
• To accompany this modification, most Potions and Poisons have been rebalanced.
• Ten new weapons have been added to the game!
• Light armored Pauldrons have now been added to the game!
• Templar weapons now also deal sacred damage.
• Fleshbane can now summon skeleton that fight by your side.
• Nyhlus now sells exclusive rare templar gear in amarth, as well as the Harvester, a weapon that hits multiple time with each swing!
• The merchants in Dhur now sell rare glass weapons and the Gothic armor set.
• Cleave Damage is now consistent between weapon types.
• The range of most weapons is now more consistent.
• Crossbow Damage has been further increased.
• Increased the attack speed of most two-handed swords.
• Dagger damage has been decreased.
• Decreased the default Stamina regeneration bonus on rogue gear by one point.
• Saved items are now versioned and can be flagged as deprecated depending on your game version.
• Items stats are now versioned and we can force the reroll of all your items stats at launch if a new patch requires it (Damage, Armor, etc.).
• Fixed a bug causing Poisons to malfunction.

AFFIXES:

• Armor points will now roll on all armor types.

PASSIVE SKILLS:

• Many passive skills that give you temporary bonuses have been given icons, so that you know when they are active, with relevant stacks numbers and informative tooltips. That’s almost 70 new icons!
• All contextual timers such as passive skills triggering “right after” performing an action (kill, dash, dodge, etc.) have been increased, resulting in more forgiving margins and easiest usage of those features.
• All first skills for the first ring sections now unlock Signature skills, that allow you to quickly get a few utility skills that are class-bounds and will prove useful during your progression and even at higher levels. Two Ammunition spells are also present in the tree as Hunter and Trickster Signature skills. In the future, all sections of the tree will contain at least one Signature skill.
• The layout of several sections has been deeply changed for a better and more consistent progression, giving you the possibility to take skills based on the gameplay mechanics you want without being forced to take others that are too different from the main purpose of the class. The only true exception is Gladiator, which still needs a profound rework in order to feel as good as we would want to, but this will come in an other update.
• Fixed a bug which could cause the PST links between two sections to be misplaced.
• Performance when using the PST has been greatly improved, which mean you’ll encounter fewer issues when quickly rotating rings or spending points.

  Legionary:

  • New skill : First Step (Legionary), which unlocks the Signature skill Battle Art.
  • New skill : Combat Stance, which gives Battle Art two new powerful active effects.
  • New skill : Exposure, which allow Battle Art to generate Rage on hits done / received (depending on the stance you are currently using).
  • Change of Mind Strength bonus is now 6% instead of 1%.
  • Time Warp bonus has been doubled.
  • Healing Strike behaviour has been changed, and increases now your true Health Regeneration value instead of giving you a temporary one. Its bonus has jumped from 2% per hit to 5% per hit.

  Arcanist:

  • New skill : First Step (Arcanist), which unlocks the Signature skill Spellbinder.
  • New skill : Debilitate, which increases your chance to cause Frailty with all Umbra Damage.
  • New skill : Sorcery, which reduces all Rage and Umbra costs of spells during a short time when using Spellbinder.
  • New skill : Umbral Leech, which generate Umbra for each enemy around you when you launch Spellbinder.
  • Volatile Nature efficiency is now 8% instead of 5%.
  • Globes Magnet max bonus is now 50% instead of 30%.
  • New section exit link through the Battlemage skill.

  Guardian:

  • New skill : First Step (Guardian), which unlocks the Signature skill Ironguard.
  • New skill : Deflection, which makes your passive block work against all attack types, not just physical ones.
  • New skill : Deviation, which allows our Ironguard to deviate projectiles.
  • New skill : Provocation, which increases your Visibility for a short time each time you kill an enemy (Visibility can exceed 100%).
  • New skill : Joining the Fray, which gives you a Damage bonus depending on your Visibility level when it exceeds 100%.
  • Most “old” passive skills about Shield blocking have been reactivated and modified to be used with Ironguard (Guard Mastery, Mirror Shield, etc.)
  • Mirror Shield Damage return is now 10% instead of 5%.
  • Inertia Armor cap is now 10 instead of 20.
  • Shards Damage bonus is now 2% per stack instead of 1%.
  • Thorn value is now 8 instead of 4.
  • Metallic Aura radius is now 6m instead of 4m.

  Thief:

  • New skill : First Step (Thief), which unlocks the Signature skill Infiltration.
  • New skill : Shadow step, which makes your Infiltration spell go through enemies but prevent you to attack when cloaked.
  • New skill : Ghost, which decreases your Visibility when using Infiltration in passive mode.
  • New skill : Shroud, which allows you to drink potions without depleting their charges when you are invisible (not necessarily because of Infiltration).

  Hunter:

  • New skill : First Step (Hunter), which unlocks the Signature skill Hunting Ground.
  • New skill : Impairing Shots, which unlocks the Signature skill Impairing Ammunition.
  • New skill : Pitfall, which increases the number of traps you can set up with Hunting Ground.
  • New skill : Deployment, which allows Hunting Ground to work at long distance, instead of placing traps at your feet.
  • New skill : Imbued Charge, which makes your Ammunition skills work with Hunting Ground.
  • New skill : Killing Floor, which makes Hunting Ground leave a Frailty area on the ground after exploding.
  • New skill : Accuracy, which give Impairing Ammunition a chance to regain a charge each time you perform a Critical Strike
  • New skill : Crossfire, which give extra maximum charges to Impairing Ammunition but makes it trigger a cooldown if you spend the last charge.

  Warden:

  • Offensive Protection bonus is now 0.1% instead of 0.01%.
  • Muscularity bonus is now 6% instead of 2%.

  Elementalist:

  • Frostbite Damage output has been doubled.
  • Lightning Strike is now called Shock and its bonus went up from 5% to 10%.

  Trickster:

  • New skill : Power Coating, which unlocks the Signature skill Elemental Ammunition.
  • New skill : Extended Magazine, which give extra maximum charges to Elemental Ammunition.
  • New skill : Quick Reload, which give Elemental Ammunition a chance to regain two charges each time you perform a Dodgeroll.
  • New skill : Elemental Fury, which makes Elemental Ammunition regain two charges when cycling through the different shots of the spell.
  • New skill : Bouncing Shots, which makes your Ranged shots bounce against walls.
  • New skill : Sub-ammunition projectiles, which gives Bouncing Shots a chance to split into 3 shots when bouncing.
  • New links allow to get the Lethal Strikes skill without being forced to get all the Dash-related skills.
  • Rough Trick duration is now 2.5 sec instead of 1.5.

  Assassin:

  • New skill : Furtivity, which permanently decreases your Visibility.
  • New skill : Light Step, which decreases your Visibility even more when all your equipped armor parts are of the Light type.
  • Sneak Strike duration is now 5 seconds instead of 2.
  • Sequencing duration is now 3 seconds instead of 1.5 and its Critical Chance bonus went from 5% to 10%.

ACTIVE SKILLS:

• New Signature skills : Ironguard, Spellbinder, Battle Art, Infiltration, Hunting Ground, Impairing Ammunition and Elemental Ammunition. Signature skills don’t have AST progression, experience or levels. They have, however, passive skills that affect them in many ways, and will remain balanced at high level.
• Detail points in the AST window are no longer necessarily displayed in alphabetical order. Some of them will bear colors (green / red) for a better distinction of positive against negative effects.
• Charged spells have been added to the game, and several existing spells have been modified to use charges.
• Sigils have been added to the game, and Spellbinder and Infiltration already benefit from this system.
• All previous Ammunitions spells have been removed and replaced by the new Elemental Ammunition and Impairing Ammunition spells, combining Fire, Frost and Lightning shots on one side, and Poison, Bleed and Critical shots on the other. Bladeslinger
  • Now uses charges instead of a flat cooldown timer. The skill gains charges over time, and can stack up to two charges by default.
  • Its whole AST has been reworked and Bladeslinger is now the first fully complete skill, with 10 functional variants in its tree.
  • It is now considered at many levels as a Ranged attack, meaning it is affected by Ranged skills (ammunitions, bouncing projectiles, splitting projectiles, etc.). This give a great feel to the spell and we are sure you will enjoy throwing knifes on walls to split them in three and hit enemies behind your back.
  • Its base Damage has been rebalanced.
  Lasceration
  • Slightly decreased the default and enhanced range of the skill.
  Conflagration
  • Flames spread on ground by this spell will now start at the position of the target instead of the player’s feet, and will spread only if an enemy is hit.
  Umbra Blast
  • Fixed the Cost Reduced variant increasing its umbra cost.

MISC:

• Fixed a bug causing unlocked skill-slots to re-lock on loading.

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