We just pushed another big update to the game!
On this one, we've been focusing mainly on balance changes and there's a lot of them!
The full and lengthy notes are at the end of the update, as usual, but here are the brief highlights:
- Significantly changed the Fellblade class.
- Changed some weapons and abilities for Gadgeteer, Reaver and Templar.
- Many changes to the Scoundrel abilities.
- Lots abilities and passives got updated.
- Lots of changes to the level caps for most story battles and patrols. The idea is to have a small amount of maps "tuned for very low levels characters" and most other maps tuned for higher levels characters, which will give more viable options for players wanting to run random maps. (We are also working on adding a lot of new patrols to maps, but that's not ready yet).
- Enemies now have access to a stash of items, much like the player does. This is a pretty big change to their possible power, so we'll need to make sure things are tuned properly.
- Lots of AI improvements were made and the AI should be even smarter now, especially around decisions involving buffs/debuffs
- Adding a lot of sounds and visual effects.
Progress Report
In terms of progress this week, other than getting this update ready, we've been working on new maps and spells. We've also started work on the Difficulty Settings option. I think it should be ready next week probably.
I know the difficulty settings were further down on our Roadmap, but we've been noticing a lot of feedback about players wanting the game to be easier, or harder, as well as some people struggling with the injury system, so we decided to start on those settings a little earlier.
We'll have more information next week, but the basic idea is that the player can select between many different options for injuries, level scaling, enemy power levels, and a few more things. You'll be able to select between presets labeled easy, normal, hard or make your own custom setup by tuning those values as you want.
We think it should be pretty awesome :)
On the art side, here's one of the new maps we've been working on:
And the final in-game version of that big dragon spell we showcased before:
Change Log
Version 0.3.4
Including notes from hotfixes for clarity.
New Content and features:
- Adding a lot of missing sound effects. The first temple scene specifically has now a lot more sounds going on.
- Updating all songs with final remastered versions. We also updated the volume of all sounds to better match the music. Some volumes might still need tuning from this.
- Adding new spell effects: Pulsar Generator (for real this time!), Blood Trophy, Spearvault, Barbed Blades, Mercurial Dance, Rally Howl, Diamond Form, Rally and updated many others.
- Adding guest characters to many patrols. If they survive the fight, a small AP bonus will be awarded.
Balance:
- Doing more adjustments to map level ranges: story minimum level was raised a bit in general. Patrols got changed so there is more "high level zones" in general. Starter maps (The Crossroads, Timber Roads, Alpine, Gyaum Tor) have their patrol levels kept low so they can be used to level up very low level teams. Other maps in general have higher level ranges.
- Exchanging Vangal and Ercinee passives (Hallowed Body <-> Fortitude).
- Increasing Life Font HP restored from 8 to 10 per step.
- Rebalancing the stats and resistances of most monsters and associated bzil classes. Changes are too numerous to list, but in general: cleaning up resistances and lowering some stats that were too high.
- Changing the Mirage buff to proc only on actions that deal damage (so it will not protect from pure debuff abilities anymore).
- Knight lost Doublehand passive, gained Life Font passive.
- Gunner lost Life Font passive, gained Concentration (formerly Arcane Sight) passive.
- Sorcerer lost Arcane Sight passive, gained Eruptor passive.
- Duelist lost Perfect Focus passive, gained Blood Mark passive.
- Mercenary lost Heavy Blows passive, gained Health Expert (formerly Life Expert) passive.
- Templars gained access to weapon: Scythe.
- Reaver changes: the general idea is that Reavers have good offensive growth and a very versatile ability kit, so they shouldn't have access to the highest damage weapons as well (2H weapons), so they are losing those.
- Reaver lost Deep Wounds passive and gained Doublehand passive.
- Reaver lost access to Scythes and Mauls, and gained access to Swords.
- Scoundrel changes: the general idea is to make scoundrel abilities more worthwhile to use in general.
- Changing Steal GP to also do some damage (0.75 ratio for now).
- Changing Fleet of Foot to a regular buffs with 3 turns duration, but reduced the bonus to +1 (from +2).
- Changing Exploit Weakness to act as Heavy Blows (+50% to critical damage).
- While Steal Items currently remains unchanged, you'll now actually be stealing items that enemies could use, so it should feel more impactful.
- Fellblade changes: the idea is to make the class overall stronger and more interesting. They gained range/height on most abilities and their abilities are now more special, as they count as "regular attacks", which means they use the built-in weapon statuses and elements and benefit from regular-attacks themed passives. They might be a little too strong after this, so we'll monitor.
- The 4 basic Slices abilities now do Mixed Damage.
- They now have a range of 2.
- They now count as regular attacks, which means they can apply weapon effects and work with passives that work on regular attacks.
- Half of their abilities are Skills and the other half are Spells, so the Fell Blade won't be stopped by Mute or Cripple alone.
- Their vertical range has been increased to 4, so they are as long as 2H weapons.
- Health Siphon now does a lot more damage/healing with every debuffs on the target.
- MP costs have been adjusted upwards in general.
- Passive Versatile now also has the former effect of Exploit Weakness (on critical hits, some HP and MP is restored).
- Gadgeteer changes: the idea is to make them a little less difficult to unlock and have them be a little more interesting as a main class.
- Changing requirements to unlock to Scoundrel-4/Wizard-4 (from Gambler-3/Wizard-3).
- Lost Daggers, gained Maul.
- Lost Life Expert passive, gained Perfect Focus passive.
- Increasing Mana Expert passive MP from 10 to 15.
- Slightly increasing def and speed growths.
- AI will now have access to a list of gadgets based on their level.
- AI will now have access to a list of items based on their level. Stealing items from them will deplete their stocks, etc.
- Scout will now also grant the Crit Up buff to the caster.
- Updating Ercinee AI to make it smarter and less prone to spamming Kamikaze right off the bat. Damage of Kamikaze was also lowered.
- Enemies will now have a chance at using Scout if the player places some traps.
- Made the enemies less likely to use a debuff that the target already has.
- Made various AI improvements. AI should be smarter in general, especially around buffs and debuffs.
- Adjusting the vertical range of most physical abilities that were mistakingly tied to the user's weapon vertical range.
- When "actions that aren't doing anything" are taken (such as healing a character that's already full), there is no EXP granted anymore.
- Cleaning up the Focus buff: won't proc from counter attacks and will proc on damage and heals. Description has been updated.
- Bringing the level of special guest characters "in line with the party" so they can't be abused to earn massive EXP.
- Adding Bandit Gloves as loot to the Banyan story battle.
- Reducing the amount of EXP gained from using Double Cast to compensate for getting 2 actions. The base exp is reduced by 1/2 per action, but the kill bonus is unchanged. This makes double casting "as good as normal" for exp gains for the most part.
- Reducing the cost of sorcerer spells to 24 for basic elements. This should allow them to use a "regular" 6MP attack once in a while to be a bit less 'idle'. Holy And Dark are now at 26 and Non-Elemental at 28.
- Lowering the MP growth and starting MP of several classes. This should make your max MP a little more relevant at earlier/mid levels (not retroactive).
- Adding missing passives to generated enemies list.
- Increasing the damage per debuff of Opportunistic Bullet from 0.3 to 0.5 and lowering base damage from 0.9 to 0.8
- Adding an option to GameOptions.txt to allow the setting of the maximum amount of units the player can field to be changed globally there, rather than just "per encounter" like before.
UI:
- Adjusting rain effect to be a little transparent and adding a small full screen darkening. Looks better :)
- Switching the names of Gamblers Wild Cards so colors are grouped for positive vs negative.
- Updating many tooltips and descriptions throughout the game to be clearer and have more information.
- Updating various tutorial tooltips to have better information.
- After using Double Cast, the Double Cast spell list will come up again rather than the regular list.
- Adding the Enter key as a default 2nd binding for the "confirm button" (so now by default Space and Enter will act as a confirm button). This only applies if you reset your key bindings/install the game for the first time.
- Adding a menu button to the Guild and Shop for faster access.
- Removing "Vsync" from the graphics options. It should really always be set to ON because the game's FPS is often too high. You can still manually change it in the Gameconfig file.
- Adding options to control the worldmap gamepad-cursor speed and the worldmap scrolling speed. Moving the battle map speed into "graphics" from "gameplay".
- Fixing a bug where Root and Bleed would always be part of a help description for abilities, regardless of their use in the ability.
- Adding a version number to the GameConfig.txt file to better reset values that need to be changed due to code updates.
- Resetting most volume values and vsync value in the config.
- Characters with invalid gear will now have that gear unequipped upon loading a save file.
- Improving the information shown in the Item list from the Menu screen to show the usual "full information".
- Fixing various visual issues that arose from allowing the targeting of blocked tiles.
- Showing the cursor "over everything and semi transparent" when using the mouse to select a tile that is visually masked by another tile. Should make it easier to use.
- Changing the layout of the AP rewards screen to show a bit more information.
- Realized the game doesn't show anywhere that Scythes give a bonus to Crit Damage. Now adding to their description.
- Changing equip screen so that a shield can be selected while a 2Hander is equipped. Equipping the shield will remove the 2Hander (much like a 2Hander will remove the shield currently).
- In battle, showing a red cursor rather than a green cursor when it is over a blocked tile.
- On the worldmap, you now have to "stop directly on" optional battle maps to trigger them. This will allow people to "walk past" the graveyard (and other potential optional maps) without triggering the fight.
Bug Fixes:
- Updating the volume of most sound effects to be "correct". This let us update the music volume as well to be closer to that of the SFX, which will result in better quality.
- Fixing issue with Opportunist doing more healing on targets with debuffs.
- Fixing issue where extra weapons sprites would get created upon leaving the menu from combat for some characters.
- Fixing an issue where the "speed up" could get stuck and persist outside of combat.
- Adding some code to make sure the game doesn't spin too fast if vsync is off.
- Enemy peddlers will no longer use a strange version of "Patented Use" that uses no items and does damage.
- Fixing an issue with Turkish locale and consumable items not playing nicely together.
- Fixing an instance where a weapon would show above the water for a swimming unit.
- Fixing an issue where one could revive characters on blocked areas.
- Now correctly hiding visual accessories when wearing a "full hat".
- Fixing issue in the visual customization screen where some layers where not always shown in the correct order for the sprite being customized.
- Fixing the "there is a treasure here" note in combat showing on the Graveyard chest even after it has been opened.
- Removing a stray Mastery star in the top left corner of the class change screen.
- Fixing a bug where Life Font and Mana Font would restore values based on the distance traveled, rather than the amount of steps taken. This should make them a little better than before in general.
- Adding a missing icon for PS4 controller icons (Up-Down Dpad icon).
- Fixing a bug where enemies could go over level 99.
- Fixing an issue where dismissing a character would leave an empty open slot in the menu that could cause various problems (such as eating your characters while manually sorting them).
- Fixing a small volume issue with sounds played at the start of cutscenes.
- Fixing an issue where walking to a tile with a trap and hitting a trap on the way there would trigger both traps instead of only the 1st one.
- Fixing an issue with autosaves that might have caused problems for some users.
- Fixing a softlock when not having any weapons equipped.
- Fixing an issue when entering the menu for some rare users.
- Fixing visual glitch when switching characters in abilities learn/set screens with a very large number of units.
Modding:
- Adding the ability to spawn guests in patrols (faction:player).
- Adding the ability to have enemies give some flat AP bonus if defeated (for enemies) or if kept alive (for guests) (apbonus:).
- Adding a global value to change the maximum amount of units that the player can deploy. This will still be restricted by the size of the zone where allies can be deployed in some maps, but we'll work on updating those as needed.
Hotfixes:
- Fixing issue with a Vangal passive being incorrect.
- Fixing issue with Bzarro unequipping his 'natural weapon' when loading a save file.
- Fixing issue with gear unequipping after loading a game if the gear was only equippable due to a passive.
- Fixing issue with some characters being shown in cutscenes when they shouldn't.
- Fixing issue where Bzil character gear would be unequipped upon loading the game after the patch.
- Fixing issue where AP earned after battles would be 0 after the patch >.<
- Reducing the amount of items enemies have access to significantly and fixing an issue where enemies sometimes had access to higher tiers than they should have.
- Reducing the odds of an enemy using an item in general.
- Adding the Bandit glove to save files that are passed that point in the story, so no one is missing out :)
- Cleaning up the way some assets are cached internally, which could improve memory usage in a fairly minor way for some users.
- Fixing an issue where players that started a fresh game on the new build would be using the new and not yet finished "Easy Difficulty Mode" rather than Normal.
- Adding a new hairstyle (shortlaced). Thanks to Hector Velar for those!
- Adding a Elf ears as a hat (making those a hat was the only way for them to show properly with our layering system). Thanks to Hector Velar for those!
- Fixing an extremely rare bug where damage would be applied to a different target than the selected one.
- Fixing an issue where killing someone with Forceful Strike could sometimes give them 2 injuries rather than 1.
- Fixing issues where AI would ignore the odds of "not using an item even if it needs it". This should make make AI use less items overall.
- Fixing issue introduced in earlier hotfix where some enemies would remain alive at 0HP after dying.