Hey Hunters, how have you been?
During Q2 we’ve continued to do a lot of polish, improvements, and to develop new features for Relic Hunters Legend. You can check all of that below!
These months were a little bit harsh here at Rogue Snail. A significant part of our team got Covid and because of that, we had to manage efforts to continue developing and delivering everything we planned for this quarter. Fortunately, Gearbox has been an amazing partner and has helped us organize and plan the due efforts and everything is going smoothly now!
And our team continues to grow: we hired more people and everyone is working very efficiently and passionately. We hope you enjoy what we're showing you here today - we're excited for what's to come!
Teena’s Rank 1 Rewards
In this new feature, Teena is going to reward you with a Legendary Gear piece and a Legendary Weapon, selected randomly from a limited pool, if you reach Rebel Rank 1.
This is also the first time we’re using a whole new feature called “Events” in the game that we can explore to make new things in the future. Teena Rank 1 Rewards still need some polish but are pretty much done.
Regular Enemies and Champions
All of the regular Enemies and Champions that you’ll face at launch are implemented and playable in-game. The regular Champions are the ones that are not on Delve and Dungeons, and they’re going to have a dedicated drop (a Legendary Weapon or Gear).
We still have to develop all the special Story Enemies, but the most important part is done and we’re very excited to see what you’ll think about it.
Mission areas
We’re finishing developing and implementing all the levels on the mission areas of planet Cradle. There are a few visual things missing, such as the map nodes and some set dressing, but soon we’ll have everything ready and close to what we aimed for launch! We hope all of you enjoy your stay on the planet.
Coldstone Peaks Missions
Now Coldstone Peaks have all the 6 levels coded and done with the Set Dressing complete: Kami Peaks (Distraction), Pilgrimage Trail (Payload), Peaks Hideout (Defense), Broken Lake (Scavenge), Peaks Blockade (Skirmish), and Coldstone Peaks (Exploration) that is the most vertical map that we have on the game!
The Crater
This new area also has all 8 levels implemented with Skirmish, Scavenge, Rift, Distraction, Payload, Defense, and Exploration game modes.
The Trash Sea
We implemented the 10 levels on the Trash Sea with all the Story Missions and faction quests running smoothly so you can enjoy a “vacation” there and learn a lot about these “paradisiacal” places.
Kami Cave
This mission is the end of Act 01 of the Relic Hunters Legend story and is a new Delve that we implemented very differently from the previous one (The Shadow Valley Prison). The design of the space is much more in tune with what we need for a Delve mission in Legend, with a very different and cool Boss fight at the end.
Faction System
We already explained how the Faction System will work in the previous Dev Blog update, but now the feature is done. It has all the tracking icons and you can track up to 5 Quests at the same time, regardless if they are Adventure Quests or Faction Quests.
Skill Tree Icon
Every hunter has their own unique Skill Tree icons set. No more placeholder here, yeey!
Cosmetics
We still have a long way to have everything we wanted for launch and we’re excited about how many cool things we can do with our characters. We’re investing a lot of time into these cosmetics and now we have a few hairstyles, new color palettes, scarfs, accessories, jackets, sneakers, etc so you can create your own unique style.
We hope that selling Cosmetics will be our main source of revenue when the game is out, and allow us to keep supporting the game for years without any predatory monetization, so we want to make it really cool, fun, and cute so our community gets excited to customize their Hunters!
Onboarding system for Memories
Now, when you drop a Memory for the first time, the game will notify and guide you to the inventory, explaining how the Memory system works. Also, when you unlock Pinkyy or Jimmy, you’ll gain a few Memories and the game will teach you how to use them to level up these Hunters.
The Third Act
The third and final act of the Relic Hunters Legend is playable but in a bare-bones state. There's a lot of polish to do, and we’re also working on the script for a new fully-animated cutscene!
Epic Weapons & Gear
We finished implementing all the Tier 4 Epic Weapons and Gear. Now you can drop a lot of unique weapons with different styles and elements and Epic gear to complement your builds with better stats. Hope you enjoy it!
New music & Sound Effects
We developed two new songs and reworked some sound effects, especially the gunshots. Hopefully you'll find that shooting our guns will sound a lot juicier and even cooler than before!
Backend Migration
We have migrated from Amazon's GameSparks to Gearbox's SHiFT! The reason why we migrated from GameSparks (our previous backend system, powered by Amazon) to SHiFT was that after almost a year and a half of work to make our game stable on GameSparks, Amazon will be closing down the service for good soon. This forced us to switch to a different service, so it was helpful to have Gearbox offering us their SHiFT solution so we wouldn't start completely from scratch.
So we just pretty much had to rewire the entire game to work on a completely different backend system. This was the first time we had to do such a major rework in Legend, and hopefully will be the last.
UI Polish
We kept polishing the UI to make everything up to the same standards. The NPCs on the Secret Market have an icon above them and there’s a complete tooltip for the Reputation system with some lore and an explanation of what Reputation is. We also improved feedback for level up and quest completion.
Bug report tool
We polished up the feature and now it has a nice, cohesive, and easy-to-understand Bug report tool, with all the elements we need to understand the problem you’re reporting.
Bugs & Improvements
QA team keeps doing their best to track down all the bugs and find a solution to fix them. We also kept improving some experiences on our game modes. Some bugs and improvements that we have already tracked and fixed these months are:
- Exploit fix: We remove the possibility to fake the faction quest events, this exploit made the quests"repeatable" and the player could win constant rank
- Remember that horrible bug where you'd sometimes fall through random spots in the game world and die? We refactored all the movement systems and now this bug is fixed.
- Blocked Map Nodes on Trash Sea fixed
- Fixed some random missions at ADN that changed if the player reset their progress.
- Fixed ADN rewards that were delivered at every level, even if the player already gained that reward.
- Reset progress appeared on ADN as a null red when you clicked on a node.
- Fixed the check system related to the number of hunters allowed to enter a mission in the ADN
- Hover description at ADN when the level is blocked
- Item Drops fixed
- Fixed Help/tutorial messages that appear on the HUD not being hidden during cutscenes
- Fixed the Secret Chest sound effect so that it only triggers if you haven't opened the chest yet
Asteroid Dungeon Nemesis
ADN still need some balancing, technical and visual polish, but all the of Tier 1 and 2 missions are playable now. We made a major change to how the Character Selection screen works: You no longer hover and change characters automatically - you need to click on the Hunter to change it. This change prevents the screen from freezing when you hovered over the Hunters quickly.
Also, the whole party gets a warning now if someone is using a Hunter that was already used on previous Floors. When that happens, the game automatically opens the selection screenso the player can easily select a valid Hunter instead.
Exploration Mission rework
Exploration Missions are getting better, with puzzles, mini-bosses, secret areas, and new Daily Goals for players to get some awesome rewards every day.
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That's it for today, but there are many more things to come! Keep following us on social media, join our Discord Channel to hang out with us, and ask your questions about Relic Hunters! We’re always there to assist you, and our community loves to make new friends!
Cheers,
Rogue Snail Team ~