Build 0.9.5 - New difficulty setting, visuals, balance...

In case you missed it, our Release trailer is up on our Steam page!

New build:

We have another build this week and once again, it's one of our biggest updates yet.

We've been working on the final balance changes and various loose ends, so the changes are all over the place, but there's a lot new stuff!

Here are the highlights:

• Difficulty Setting: The "Extra Enemies" setting has a new option called "Elite", which will add/replace some enemies on many maps. The new enemies are custom-made to be dangerous. This should increase the difficulty quite a bit and is meant as an alternative to make the game harder, other than +Stats% on enemies. Enemies added by this mode will have the "Elite" tag rather than "Enemy" on their info panel. A BIG thank you to Dabor for this!
• Title screen: Switching to the Animated Titlescreen we've been preparing for a while. Big thanks to Brodie Swift who created it!
• Exclusive Fullscreen: Adding an option to enable Exclusive Fullscreen.
• New Assets: We have a new character portrait, haircut and some revamped portraits for many NPCs, as well as new spell visuals and sounds. We also added ambient props to a lot of maps.
• Balance: We have a bunch of new balance updates again, including tweaks to some passives the community has been feeling needed love, such as:
  • Focused Rage: Is now an action command (like Double Casting), so the player can choose to use it or not.
  • Hallowed Mind: Now a new passive: grants bonus damage on the next action after using a Regular Attack.
  • +Damage Passives: Adjusted a lot of their numbers.

• AI: Various AI updates and improvements.
  
• Monsters: Monsters will have their tier increased automatically in patrols. To tier 2 if their average level is 20 or more and to tier 3 if the average level is 30 or more.
  
• A lot more! Seriously, there's a lot of changes in this one! You can see them all at the end of the update.
  

Progress Report:

This should actually be our last big update before release. At this point, we'll be focusing on fixing any bugs that are found, some polish and a few modding additions. This week was spent wrapping up everything and testing everything. It's looking very solid and we're happy with where Fell Seal is standing right now!

Even though we're pretty much done with all the features for the game for Release, it doesn't mean we're not hoping to keep getting everyone's feedback!
We'll keep fixing bugs and adjusting things after Release and if there is enthusiasm from the community, there's a good chance we'll start looking at some DLC options as well. So, keep the feedback coming please! :)

State of the Early Access:

With our Early Access closing soon, it's a good time to take stock of things and we have to admit we've been very happy with the experience.
All in all, it's been very positives, and I would say that the feedback and support of everyone alone has made this an incredibly fruitful Early Access for us, and we think Fell Seal is a much better game for it!

Once again, a very big thank you to everyone for all the feedback and support!

Change log:

04/19/2019 - Version 0.9.5

New Content:

• Difficulty Setting: The "Extra Enemies" setting has a new option called "Elite", which will add/replace some enemies on many maps. The new enemies are custom-made to be dangerous. This should increase the difficulty quite a bit and is meant as an alternative to make the game harder, other than +Stats% on enemies. Enemies added by this mode will have the "Elite" tag rather than "Enemy" on their info panel. A BIG thank you to Dabor for this!
• Title screen: Switching to the Animated Titlescreen we've been preparing for a while. Big thanks to Brodie Swift who created it!
• Exclusive Fullscreen: Adding an option to enable Exclusive Fullscreen.
• Portraits: Adding 1 new female portrait.
• Portraits: Updating the portraits of some story villains.
• Sounds: Adding a dozen or so missing sounds. We are now fully done with sounds.
• Visual Effects: Adding the last remaining missing visual effects. We are now done with those.
• Troops Menu: When in combat, deployed units will be shown in the "casting" motion in the Troops menu so they can be spotted quickly.
• Iirzkt'ara Gorge: Adding a new patrol to this map.
• Ambient Props: More ambient props added to various maps.
• Character Customization: A new haircut was added for male/female characters.

Balance:

• Monsters: Monsters will have their tier increased automatically in patrols. To tier 2 if their average level is 20 or more and to tier 3 if the average level is 30 or more.
• Vessel: Changing Hallowed Mind to a new passive: grants bonus damage on the next action after using a Regular Attack (after using a melee attack: 45% bonus, after using a ranged regular attack: 35%).
• Pandora's Box: Will now be 'smarter' about what is used and try to favor using an ability that works better with the ATK or MND stats of the caster. It's still random, but it's skewed a bit to be 'better'.
• Sunder: Now works like Chilling Touch and Deep Wounds: it will apply to any offensive action and have less chance of hitting per target the more targets the attack has.
• Sunken Ship: The guest in this balance will now have a Pure Band to protect against Poison.
• Very Hard: Changing the presets to enable Elite enemies. Lowering the +Stats to 10% (from 25%) to compensate.
• Boss Levels: Many bosses would bypass the "story level cap" even without that specific difficulty setting. Fixed.
• 4th Temple: Lowering the level of the boss characters a little bit, on top of the above fix about boss levels something not getting capped.
• Focused Rage: Is now an action command (like Double Casting), so the player can choose to use it or not. It will not work with Infused Edge anymore though.
• AI: Various improvements to the AI.
  • Better AI for Tangrels, Malcubus.
  • Taking better account of various counters, including less likely to "kill themselves" via Counterattack/etc.
  • AI will now make use of Sabotage.
  • AI will now make use of Pile On and Refresh.
  • AI could have some strange behaviors with Collect abilities on rare occasions. Fixed.

• Optional Story Character: A certain optional story character that joins late in the game will now start with 15% more AP on his classes.
  
• Story Character: A certain story character that joins fairly late will now start with a little more AP than before on certain classes.
  
• Sorcerer: Reducing the AP needed for most abilities.
  
• Leech MP: Adding a cap of 15 MP leeched maximum per regular attack. Leeched amount cannot be negative anymore (due to elemental resistances, etc).
  
• Siphon: Adding a cap of 25 MP drained maximum. Can't yield a negative amount anymore (it probably couldn't before in practice).
  
• Versatile: Adding a cap of 15 MP for the amount of MP restored on a crit.
  
• Poison Swamp: Will now be prevented by Barrier. Also won't refresh the duration on every turn spent in the poison anymore, but only on the turn it wears off.
  
• Pounce: Pounce will now try all 4 possible positions around the target, favoring the closest, rather than just the closest. Damage ignores direction and uses the real autoattack of the unit (which means it will use Dual Wielding and apply weapons effects).
  
• Malice: Will now correctly apply to Chilling Touch, Sunder and Deep Wounds.
  
• Somier's Rescue: No enemies will spawn with boots anymore.
  
• Charm: The Charm ability on the Vampire class is now "not a spell, not a skill" rather than a spell. It means it won't work with double cast and infused edge anymore, but now won't be prevented by mute.
  
• +Damage Passives: Adjusted a lot of their numbers.
  • Eruptor: Increasing the bonus each turn from 10% to 18% and the cap to 72%.
  • Blood Mark: Adding a cap at 80%.
  • Into the Fray: Damage for 2 targets increased to 32% (from 30%).
  • Height Advantage: Cap increased to 40% (from 35%).
  • Perfect Body: Bonus reduced to 32% (from 35%).
  • Avenger: Increasing damage reduction to 12.5% per stack (from 10%).
  • Execute: Increasing bonus to 45% (from 40%).
  • Legendary Healer: Reducing bonus to 45% (from 50%). Also adding the value to the GameOptions.txt.
  • Stampede: Adding a cap of 60%.

• Rain of Arrows/Rain of Spines: Greatly increasing the Vert range and AoE Vert range to make it easier to use.
  
• Bzaro: Will now get bonus AP from slaying Bzils, for the class that Bzil was using. Since Bzaro doesn't get Essences from Bzils, he will only get this bonus AP if he's already learned the class.
  
• One for All: Now, melee attacks made by One for All will do 1x damage and Ranged attacks will do 0.75x damage.
  
• Turnabout: Turnabout and similar counters (where the target explodes on death) will not trigger if the target is defeated by a counter ability anymore, to add more counter-play.
  
• Arena: Arena enemies will no longer be able to spawn with "unique gear" (that was technically a bug).
  
• Lich: The player can now get the class a little earlier: exchanging the special treasures from The swamp and the ship.
  
• Vessel: The player can now get the class much earlier: exchanging the special treasures from the forest with that of the canyon.
  
• Worms Fight: The player will have more time to move out of the big ground effect that signals the arrival of a certain boss.
  
• Patrols: Now, when running a patrol on a map, until the player has seen all the patrol possible for that map, the "next patrol" will be automatically selected. Once all have been seen, they will become randomized as before. This should help the player see all the possible patrols for all maps. This is not retroactive.
  
• Interstich: The boss that uses Interstitch will now have lessened chances of using it (or Teleport Other).
  
• Lockets: Increasing the DEF/RES lockets values (36 to 48) and reducing speed locket value (30 to 20).
  
• Daggers: Reducing Flash Knife (25 to 20) speed and Dragon's Nail speed (16 to 13).
  
• Cap of Ages: Reducing Speed from 13 to 8.
  
• Gear: Very minor tweak to some speed stats (we changed the rounding method for the speed stats on gear so some might gain 1 speed).
  
• Gogombob City: Adding a pair of hover boots on one enemy to patrol0.
  
• Henge Battle: Adjustments to the enemy AI and gear and to the guest's gear to give the guest character an easier time. Also giving the guest a subclass, a counter and some extra passives for the encounter to make it a little easier.
  

UI:

• Class Mastery: The first time the user masters a class, a quick tutorial popup will mention permanent stats are granted.
• Help Compendium: Smoothing out transitions to and from the Help Compendium so it looks better.
• Descriptions: Updating a few descriptions with more information.
• Guest Characters: Will now try to use the "generic enemy portrait made for the player" and if they can't find one, use a "non enemy portrait".
• Patrols: Adding a confirmation popup before running a Patrol to reduce the chances of accidentally starting one.
• Details Button: Adding a tutorial about the Details button for the first time the player sees a "delayed attack" (ie, in the Worms battle).
• Bandit Kawas: Giving them a new color so they look a little less "friendly".
• Colored Tiles: Updating the priority of ordered tiles so the "starting position" tiles are shown over the "passage tiles" to be clearer.

Bug Fixes:

• First Boss: When playing with extra enemies, the battle will now end after killing the boss, as intended (rather than needing to kill all enemies).
• Injuries A drowned unit wouldn't get an injury correctly under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Mirage: Fixing some strange interactions between Mirage and drowning.
• Bandit Kawa: There were still some issues where the Kawas would have odd behavior after moving (untargetable, etc). This should be fixed for good this time, although they will be more passive than before.
• Counterattack/Countershot: Will now correctly check for vertical height after getting pushed back (by Forceful Strike, etc) to ensure the counter attack is still valid.
• Worms: Counter Critical:Haste wasn't granting Haste correctly and had some issues in the description. fixed.
• Abilities Range: When using a Staff, sometimes the ability range in the ability description would be showing wrong values. Fixed.
• Collect Trophy: It had the wrong min range value. Fixed.
• AI: AI would still cast Quicken on allies with the Exhaust debuff at times. Fixed.
• Traps: With certain abilities (Bolas, Forceful Strike, etc), a trap could trigger at the end of the sequence even though the target was dead. Fixed.
• Quicken: Fixing a few weird issues when quickening multiple targets each turn with doublecast, including quickening the caster.
• Outfits: Adding missing "special outfits" to the list of outfits generated sprites can't spawn with.
• Wildcards: Diamond: Fixing an issue where Haste would be granted almost all the time as a buff.
• Save files: The save files could fail to load correctly if the user has an unrecognized timezone. I admit I'm not sure how that would ever happen, but stranger things have happened. Fixed.
• Large Enemies: Back/Side/Front attacks status was weirdly calculated on large enemies. It should now feel more natural.
• Thorns: Thorns will now correctly reflect damage for both attacks (grouped as 1 reflection) when taking damage from dual wielding attackers. Thorns will now correctly reflect damage for the spell part when taking damage from Infused Edge.
• Descriptions: Fixing some tooltip descriptions that had imprecise information (like Blood Magic).
• Old Armor: Anadine now correctly starts the game wearing the Old Armor.
• AI Double Cast: Fixing some small odd interactions between counters and the AI using Double Cast. AI will also not try to Double Cast on a target that has Counter:Mute unless it's immune to Mute.
• Hover Boots: Equipping or removing Hover boots at the start of a battle will correctly start the character with the "floating visuals".
• Reanimate: Was granting too much EXP, equivalent to a killing blow. Fixed to yield regular EXP now.
• Guardian Sword: Now correctly flagged as Unique and won't be equipped by enemies unless they can equip uniques.
• Ability Learn: The list to select the the class to learn abilities from could get messy under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Gelligh: After the city gets in a bit of trouble, the map used had a house shown over some units weirdly. Fixed.
• UI: Fixing some UI layouts that weren't correct in other languages than English.

Modding:

• Encounters.txt: Armor, Helmet, Shield slots can now be used for monsters/bzils as well and filled with accessories. They can technically be filled with "non-accessories", but it might cause problems.