Hello Hunters, how are you doing?
In the last quarter, we finished migrating our backend to Gearbox’s SHiFT, did a critical reading on the Abapotim story and implemented the necessary changes, did several changes in Seven’s skills and skill tree, and added new cool features and improvements to the game.
Today’s dev blog is full of great things (and info) for you to read. Let’s check them all!
Revamped Seven’s skills tree
Ok, we have LOTS of news about Seven. Here’s what happened in the last 2 months:
One of the most important things we did was revamp Seven's active Skills and Skill Trees. Our goal was to make Seven's kit more exciting with skills that feel more active and less reliant on late-game skill nodes and Legendary items to be fun to play with.
The biggest change is Re:Aligment, which was a supporting ability that regenerated your Shields and is now a CC ability that freezes all nearby enemies.
Another significant change (and much requested by our Founders!) was Seven's Ultimate skill. You'll now have the ability to shoot your own time rays at enemies, replacing your equipped weapon.
For the build nerds out there, you'll be happy to know that the Ultimate area not only freezes enemies as it did before but now also marks them with Paradox Mark which is very important to enable many different builds to keep working when the Ultimate is on.
We also added a new mechanic to Seven's Blink skill: Gain a Levitation buff for 1 second if your Blink ends in the air. This allows for some cool new maneuvers and will also save you from falling down pits.
The changes don't stop there: All of the starting nodes on Seven's Skill Trees (The Paradox, The Constant, and The Savior) have been redesigned, with interesting new effects so that you can feel like a damage dealer, a tank, or a healer, respectively, right from the start of the game!
Another major addition has been the introduction of the Overshields/Overarmor mechanic (we explain this right below), which replaces several nodes on Seven's trees related to Shields, Shield Recovery, and Damage Reduction.
We can't wait to see what you think of the new Seven on the Friends & Family build! Your feedback will shape not only future changes to Seven, but also similar revamps to other characters (especially Jimmy, who was the first character we ever coded skills for in Legend, and as such his kit is feeling a bit underwhelming at the moment).
Overshields & Overarmor
The dynamic between damage, healing, and overall attrition in the last build was inconsistent, especially at the endgame. To create more challenging content in the future, we would have to either “one-hit-kill” our players or make healing too weak and feeling ineffective. To improve that, we developed this new “Overshields/Overarmor” system..
This is how it works:
- Some items and skills will give Overshields or Overarmor buffs, and they will become a secondary Life bar located above the current one.
- There is a new flashy VFX around characters who have Overshields or Overarmor.
- Overshields and Overarmor won’t be affected by healing effects and will decay over time, losing points until they’re gone. The decay is faster if you have more points, and will slow down as you reach lower numbers.
Here is a visual example of how the Overshield/Overarmor buffs will work:
Don't Lose Progress If Disconnected from Solo Activities
Afraid of your connection dropping while on a Story Mission or any kind of Solo activity? Fear not, Hunter! From now on, if a player is disconnected while playing Story Missions, they can keep playing in offline mode and finish the mission.
Once the Mission is finished the player will be redirected to the Galaxy where two options will be available: 1) Wait for reconnection or 2) Quit the game. In either case, after their connection is restored, the progress is synced and no items or mission completion will be lost!
Teena's Rewards - Legendary Gear sneak peek
On our last dev blog, we introduced you to Teena’s Rank Rewards system, and now we invite you to take a look at some of the Legendary Gear we have already developed for this feature: Frost Star, Jet Boots, and Kinetic Belt!
Teena will reward you with a Legendary Gear piece and a Legendary Weapon, selected randomly from a limited pool if you reach Rebel Rank 1.
Regular Enemies and Champions
There are a few new regular enemies with different behaviors for you to encounter.
Each region has now enemies that match the environment they are in. The new Champions are all implemented in the game and you can already face them: Captain Go, Lt Speedy, Lt Frosturtle, The Obedience Unit, Kami Stakes, Kami Dune, and Fluffy Junior. They have unique Legendary drops so get ready to farm!
Champion Enemies Presentation
This feature was a suggestion from our Founders and Backers since our last playable build. It adds a special touch to our Champion enemies and perfectly matches the cartoonish style of Relic Hunters Legend, so we took the suggestion seriously and are finishing developing boss presentations for every Champion in the game.
Act 1 - Sounds and VO
We have new sounds for Side Adventures, Kami Cave, and new Guns SFX! All the VOs are finally implemented and now you can have a more immersive in-game experience.
New Weapons
We are implementing new Weapon types to help you create your perfect build to fight the Ducans: Grenade Launcher, Beam Rifle, and Machinegun. The SFX of the weapons are also under development.
Friendship Adventures and Relic Hunts
We are working on the new Ace and Raff’s Friendship Adventures! Those stories will make you know our awesome Hunters a little more.
We are also developing new adventures called Relic Hunts. They will reward you with blueprints so you can find and craft your Relics in the future.
Mission areas
Red Mouth Mines
Previously, Red Mouth Mines had a Scavenge placeholder even though the level is a Defense mode. Now the placeholder has gone and the Mission is on its second pass and you’ll be able to access it soon at Galyno Desert!
Ubabela Dunes
Get ready for a good time at Ubabela, a beautiful region where the Ducans often spend their vacations. Ubabela is situated to the west of the Trash Sea.
The second pass of Ubabela Dunes is almost done, so get ready for an exploration mission with your friends.
Critical reading of the Abapotim story
The Abapotim story has elements of Brazilian Indigenous cultures, so we hired an indigenous person who is a specialist in this rich culture to read our story and make a critical reading on it.
We have made several changes based on the feedback, such as changing the Abapotim clothing and the narrative tone. They now look a lot better, less generic, and more creative, and we are more confident that we are honoring and respecting our native people!
Gamepad support
Relic Hunters Legend now fully supports the X360, Xone, SeriesX, PS4, and PS5 controllers, with the inclusion of specific labels and mapping for each.
Loading times issue fixed
For almost 2 years now, as the project grew, we've experienced a very bad issue that plagued every Relic Hunters Legend player, regardless of their setup: Loading times becoming longer and longer as you play, leading to boring wait times and eventually requiring you to restart the game (or just crashing altogether).
This is too complicated to explain in just one dev blog but to sum it up: Over the years we have accumulated several small mistakes in our programming that caused objects to "leak" from mission to mission. Our engine was loading stuff that was no longer needed because it didn't know better. Eventually, the leak became so huge that it started to heavily affect the gameplay experience!
We've spent a LOT of time and effort going back through every system in the game and optimizing the code to get rid of most of these "leaks". The problem is now mostly fixed - we say "mostly" because there's always room for improvement, but at least the user experience is stable.
Although the loading will be smoother compared to the old builds, you will still experience longer-than-intended load times in the upcoming Friends & Family build, even more in a multiplayer match where you're not the party leader. We'll address these in the near future as our ultimate goal is for Legend to be a smooth experience with relatively short load times, especially on PC.
Bugs & Improvements
The QA team is on fire tracking down all the bugs and finding solutions. Here are some bugs and improvements we made this Quarter:
- The visual bug where Bounty was lost when buying items is fixed.
- The bugs where the gamepad couldn’t reach the World Map or the gamepad disappeared are now fixed.
- Fixed the bug leash that was happening after you shoot some enemies.
- Ambient profile problems fixed.
- Backend errors don’t block party transition anymore.
- ADN gameplay polish.
- Fixed the bug that made it impossible to open the screen through Tab after finishing a Mission and returning to the Galaxy.
- Fixed the bug where boss Cobran was vanishing from the arena.
- New login screen for Steam.
- Claim Faction Quest corrected.
That’s it for this quarter, Hunters. We’re still improving and implementing a lot of things, so stay tuned on our Social Media and Discord Channel to keep up with the latest news and hang out with us. We’d love to hear from you.
Cheers,