Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas!!!
What a week it’s been! We ended up releasing a little early, so everyone can enjoy the holiday break and give us some extra time for the next patch. So thank you everyone for being so supportive of our game and without further ado here are the patch notes.
Follower Changes:
(Keep in Mind all effects are stackable)
Scout - Added “Fire Arrow”, similar to a regular arrow but automatically causes burning effect on the target. Learned at level 2.
Lumberjack - Added “Hatchet Throw”, now capable of throwing his weapon at the target causing higher damage and automatic bleed effect. Learned at level 2.
Rogue - Added “Poison Injection”, similar to regular attack, but will cause automatic poison effect to the target. Learned at level 2.
Adventurer - Added “Last Stand”, a special ability that allows the character to increase his maximum health by 30% as well as his current health. Additional effects are a 10% physical damage reduction from all sources. Effect can only be used once per battle and lasts for 5 Turns. After which the health is lost and the character suffers a “Shaken” effect. Learned at level 2.
Spearman - Added “Impale”, a deadly stab with the spear that causes high damage and automatic bleed effect with a chance to cause an additional bleed. Learned at level 2.
Crossbowman - Added “Reload Crossbow”, before the crossbow could fire every turn. The crossbow is extremely powerful and to offset its high damage was to require the player to reload after each shot.
Alchemist - Added “Smokescreen”, Can throw a bottle that causes smoke on impact. Smokescreen causes the enemies to lose 10% to their Hit Chance. Learned at level 2.
Also changed “Poison Bomb” to be learned at level 3.
Bard - Added “Heroic Tune”, Adds 3% to all stats, no stack limit, effect lasts until end of battle. Learned at level 1.
Mercenary - Added “Grappling Hook”, The mercenary can now throw out a hook which will grab the target (causing bleed) pull them towards the mercenary, where he will strike with his weapon causing another stack of bleed. Learned at level 2.
Enchanter - Added “Fireball”, Single Target, fire damage with burning effect. Is now the default attack. “Fire Blast” has been moved to level 2 and is now an AOE ability.
Forge Apprentice - Added “Head Crack”, A overhead strike with the hammer that will cause the target to be stunned.
Conscript - We decided not to make any changes to the conscript because Richard is getting close to finishing his new model of the conscript at which time we’ll be assigning new animations and abilities to it.
Quest Changes:
In 0.1 the quest system sucked and was very outdated. So we decided to throw it out the window and remake a new system.
The new quest system now allows players to track their progress, show up quest markers on the navigation bar (Some quest may not have this feature to maintain it’s mysterious location), and where to bring back the quest. It also lists what the rewards are before you accept the quest, can let you know during the quest, as well as finishing the quest.
The 3 main quests that were in the game have been redone to fit into the new system, so anyone who has finished those quests will lose their progress. We’re really sorry, but after setting up the new foundation, this won’t happen again. Also those quests now properly work with steam achievements and you will get them after completion and finishing the dialogue with Korith.
Added 3 new quests to the notice board, each one will give a steam achievement upon completion.
Music
Efe has finished two tracks for us already (The first one was a demo he completed for us when we first met). We’ve switched out the generic theme in the game and swapped it out with his track. Even though the previous track was good, it was being used by hundreds of other games. Also added his demo track to the main menu. So main menu has new music and Auguston has new music.
[Weather]
We’ve added a working weather system into the game with day/night cycle. It’s still in it’s infancy, but it gives us what we need to build on top of it. Expect more tweaks to the weather system in the future.
We also changed the general feel of Auguston. Blood of Magic is suppose to be a dark fantasy game and we want to start transitioning into that. So you’ll notice the weather seems a bit more gloomy, it also matches the new track a lot better too.
Combat
I know, I know. The combat is impossible. Well that’s what we want to fix.
All enemies have had their base health reduced by 50% except for bosses. Keep in mind that they will still have their regular bonuses from Stamina.
Combat AI has been completely redone to give a more tactical feel, instead of pure RNG.
Melee enemies will always choose a target nearest to them. Ranged enemies will still choose their target with RNG. Enemies with a wide variety of abilities now run through a cycle, using buffs/debuffs on their first turn and gradually moving to towars using their power move instead of using it right off the bat.
We’ve added a new feature in the battle menu known as “Tactics” which we will be consistently updating features for this new ability in the future. However, for today we have 1 new tactic that players can use to accommodate the new battle AI.
The new ability is known as “Advance Forward”, it can only be used when all your front line units have died and the user is positioned in the back. This allows a combatant in the backfield to move forward and take position at the frontline. Since melee units attack the nearest enemy, this tactic helps protect the arcanist when the tanks are down.
Harvestables
Added all harvestable plants to the game world. Now players can harvest all alchemical plants for potion crafting at the Alchemy Lab.
Camera
Changed combat cameras will need feedback.
Additional Changes
-More optimization tweaks
-Added an Inn-Keeper upstairs of the Inn who can heal your party for 150 coins.
-Fixed a section of a cave that was missing it’s entire level!
-More collision tweaks
-Added volume options in the game for those who couldn’t save those options from the main menu.
-Exit now finally works in every instance, no more black screens!
-Tutorials from Korith now have “OK” buttons, so the story won’t be zipped past you.
-Changed starting party to Mercenary, Spearman, Scout, and Crossbowman all starting at level 1.
-Health and focus potions can now be used out of combat.
-Focus has now been properly fixed, it was matching the max health, it has now been changed to max focus.
-Experience has now been fixed. Before experience was compounded, now every time you reach a level the experience bar will start back at 0.
-Other minor bug fixes.
-No more annoying mouse hovering noises.
Final Thoughts
It’s a lot of changes and we hope you’ll enjoy them. I’m sure there might be some bugs, but we’ll provide hotfixes over the weekend if needed. Also please give us feedback, whether good or bad, we’d like to hear it and it’s going to help out our development in the long run.
In this patch we didn’t make much changes to the UI even though there has been a lot of complaints about them. Don’t worry! the UI is our top priority for the next patch 0.3. We’re going to throw out the old ui and redo the whole thing from scratch. We want to build a strong foundation for a very modern UI filled with seamless information and statistics, because knowing is half the battle and we want our players to enjoy stat checking and strategy balancing.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pass out. So I won’t be able to reply to any immediate feedback.
Thank you,
Stoneworks Games