Beta Branch Update: October 19th - Mystical Items

Notes

• This update focuses on two major things: Mystical items and faster combat in the late game!
• The first thing, Mystical items, are boss-specific items that only spawn with their corresponding boss. Each boss has a unique weapon and armor piece that only spawns with them. A Mystical item has a 20% chance of being chosen instead of a regular weapon/armor piece. Mystical items have unique effects that aren't seen anywhere else in the game! I won't go into details about every single Mystical item, but there are now 28 new Mystical items to look out for while playing!
• The second thing, faster late-game combat, is the result of me going through every spell in the game and ensuring the amount of stats they handle are as minimal as possible. So instead of a spell doing something like "Deals 100% Attack Damage plus bonus Damage equal to 10% of your Maximum Health" which implies the spell will deal 2 different instance of damage, the spell will now read "Deals 100% Attack Damage, increased by 10% of your Maximum Health". The new wording and application ensures that effects will only activate a single stat change instead of multiple. The damage dealt is effectively the same but the amount of changes dealt has been reduced.
• In the late-game I found turns can take a very long time for all the effects to activate all their changes. You can wait several seconds every single turn for the changes to make their way through the pipes. This can make late-game combat tedious which I wanted to avoid as much as possible. By reducing the amount of changes that get passed through that means combat will be as quick as possible!
• I'm happy to say with this update I have pretty much everything in the beta branch that I wanted to make! The following updates will be quality-of-life changes, bugfixes, and small adjustments as I get the final release tuned exactly how I want it! I'm excited for the next leap in this game and can't wait to present its final version to you all!
• Note: With the changes to many spells and effects this version is incompatible with old versions of the game, I apologize for this

Bugfixes

• Fixed the combat targeting keybinds targeting the wrong enemies if any got spawned/removed during combat (looking at you, Shadow Manifest)
• Temorarily fixed the combat log sometimes displaying off screen if many things happen in a turn. The fix itself simply makes text invisible if it gets displayed off screen but I want to apply a proper fix later
• Fixed enemy item generation getting off-sync if you used battle veils
• Fixed the Gold value in stats adding incorrectly. I've reset the gold value and highest gold stats since this issue allowed those stats to climb to exponential values
• Fixed the Assassin's Endless Kills not displaying how much total Instant Kill Chance you've gained from it
• Fixed the Knight's On Your Feet active from healing more than it should have been
• Fixed the Skeleton Knight's Defender not adjusting the Necromancer's Damage Reduction properly
• Fixed the Jester's Disturbing passive from applying on their dead allies
• Fixed the Tower Knight's Hew sometimes causing an error when the ability was used

Changes

• Changed the item special icon. Instead of a dark star that appears across the entire item icon it's now a smaller, but still very visible, star in the top-right corner of the icon. I made it smaller so the art of the item isn't obscured
• Changed the Berserker's Collateral Damage first upgrade. It now reduces only the health cost by 15% instead of reducing the health cost by 10% and the minimum cost by 10
• Changed the Dragon Slayer's Tunnel Vision. It costs more Health and has different functionality for increasing its damage, but the overall damage bonus is slightly higher. Here's a detailed breakdown of the spell:
  • Deals 100% Attack Damage, increased by 20% 15% per use of Tunnel Vision. All stacks are lost at the end of Combat
  • Cost: 7.5% 10% Health (5 25 minimum)
  • Upgrade: +15% +10% Damage Dealt per stack
  • Upgrade: -2.5% Health Cost Every second Cast of Tunnel Vision grants a single 0-Cooldown use
  • Notes: These changes are overall a nerf to this spell. Though the damage increase is slightly larger (+75% every 2 turns at max upgrades compared to +70% from the old upgrades), the Health Cost will make this spell take away more of your Health as you use it

• Changed the Knight's Forceful Impact. I felt the first upgrade was a little niche and I wanted to change it to go with the theme of condensing spell effects from activating multiple damage instances. Here's the breakdown of the changes:
  • Deals 75% Attack Damage, increased by 10% 15% of your Maximum Health
  • Upgrade: Deals an additional 10% Maximum Health Damage if used below 50% Health +25% Initial Damage
  • Notes: I made these changes in an attempt to keep a balance with the previous amount of damage this spell can deal. I'm projecting the spell will deal slightly less damage now since 10% Max Health damage can get pretty high in the late game, but I think the +25% initial damage makes up for it

• Changed the Templar's Smite. The damage is no longer capped against Bosses but the overall damage has been reduced. Here's a breakdown of the ability:
  • Deals 75% Spell Damage, increased by 20% 15% of the Target's Maximum Mana (against Bosses this cannot exceed 25% of their Maximum Mana)
  • Upgrade: +15% +10% Maximum Mana Damage
  • Notes: There's few spells that have unique restrictions against bosses and I felt the player should be rewarded for picking the Templar by allowing them to more easily dispatch mage enemies and especially mage bosses. Even though the mana multiplier is reduced it will be able to deal more damage to bosses

Buffs

• Increased the Duelist's Assault second upgrade Mana Cost reduction to 15 from 10
• Increased the Dragon Slayer's Bloody Death second upgrade Attention gain to 250 from 100

Nerfs

• Increased the minimum cost of the Berserker's Collateral Damage to 50 from 35
• Increased the minimum cost of the White Mage's Energy Blast to 25 from 5
• Reduced the Dragon Slayer's Offensive Stance infinite Bonus Damage gain per level to 2 from 3
• Reduced the Knight's On Guard infinite Damage Reduction per level to 2% from 2.5%
• Reduced the Shaman's Deep Chant second upgrade Heal on each party member to 25% Maximum Health from 35%
• Made the Ninja's Shroud Stab infinite a Debuff instead of an invisible passive effect applied to enemies at the start of combat. This means the effect can be resisted from enemies' Debuff Resist
• Prevented the Shield Wall's passive, Absorption Shield, from negating the Health cost of Overshield
• Reduced the Gatekeeper's Ascended Form Damage Reduction to 35% from 50%

Known Issues

• There seems to be an issue with enemy generation if you play the game for a long time. I've gotten reports of the game attempting to generate multiple enemies but there only being one in the combat room with the game throwing an error. I'm trying to figure out where this issue is stemming from

To-Do

• Repair Room. This room will allow you repair your items, removing negative conditions or applying positive ones. This room will also allow you to upgrade your item rarities, for a price of course! This will allow for your items to have better multipliers than they otherwise could get from spawning naturally
• Run modifiers. I want to add some optional modifiers to make the game more interesting. Maybe something like permadeath or persistent buffs/debuffs to make any given run easier/harder for the player
• Change the way enemies level up. Right now they are always the level of your party members, but I feel this makes the experience multiplier worthless. An idea I have floating around is giving the enemies a set pool of experience based on your run length and current floor, not affected by your experience multiplier. This would mean you could curve faster than enemies, which will make the experience multiplier a stat you will actually need to take care of if you want to get ahead
• Re-add inventory sorting and quick-destroy options
• As I put in more enemies and more spells, I get a better understanding of what my code is capable of. I want to make spells that are extremely dynamic and unique for each class. I'd like to spend some time going through older classes I've made and see if they could use any sort of tweaking to bring them up to my current standards