Build 0.9.3 - Huge Balance Update!

Visible traps will now adjust pathfinding so the player can tell where they can really walk to. None of the paths will walk on a visible trap, unless the player selects the trap itself as the destination.

New Build:

We have another update this week. This time the focus was almost entirely on Balance and there are a lot of changes all over (about a 100 different line items). The main goal was to bring "up to par" various class growths, passives and counters, as well as resolving some abusable combos (around quicken and evasion mostly).
Oh, and we updated the pathfinding to account for visible traps now too :)

The patch notes are quite lengthy this time around, but here's the rough highlights:

• Traps avoidance: When a trap is made visible by the player, the pathfinding will update to block paths that can't be reached anymore (because the trap would interrupt the player). The player can still decide to walk right on top of the trap, but that's the only way they'll hit a trap, as none of paths shown will walk on it.
• Class Growths: Most growths were slightly adjusted to bring up classes that were lacking and bring down some classes that had growths quite a bit better than others.
• Passives/Counters: A number of passives and counters were changed or removed. Some new passives were added to replace them.
• Quicken: There were various scenarios involiving infinite turns with Quicken. This should be fixed for the most part (it might still be possible to cheese things partially with Critical Quicken, but it's quite risky and involved, so we're not touching that one).
• Thorns: Redid the way calculations are done for Thorns damage. The damage will now be based on the targets DEF stat (the target of the thorn damage) rather than be a portion of the damage dealt to the thorn-user. This will make it so high defense units won't do weaker thorn damage anymore. Thorn reflection ratio changed to 0.25x (from 0.35x) to compensate for this.
• Portraits: By popular demand, adding more of the enemy portraits to the list avaible to the player. I believe pretty much all of them are available now, with a blue color rather than red to limit confusion.

That's really only a small subset of the changes we added this patch. The full list is at the end of this post.

Also, we're not done with balance, as we still have pages of changes we want to get in.

Please, keep the feedback and comments coming in the Forums, as the end of April is approaching fast!
We'd also like to mention that while we don't answer all the posts on the Forums about balance/etc, we read all of them and the feedback is very appreciated (even if we don't act on all of it)!

Progress Report:

We've mostly worked on balance this week, as can be seen from the patch notes. But we've also put more work on the Ancient Path and wrapped up all the the loot and treasures in that place. The only thing missing is some special AI code for one of the levels and it should be done. We expect it to be done next week, which will make all the content finished.

Change log:

04/05/2019 - Version 0.9.3

New Content:

• Traps avoidance: When a trap is made visible by the player, the pathfinding will update to block paths that can't be reached anymore (because the trap would interrupt the player). The player can still decide to walk on top of the trap, but that's the only way they'll hit a trap, as none of paths shown will walk on it.
• Soul Binder: Soul Binder will now correctly trigger the 100% Charm chance if the target is asleep, as well as trigger Mind Control on the target.
• Portraits: By popular demand, adding more of the enemy portraits to the list avaible to the player. I believe pretty much all of them are available now, with a blue color rather than red to limit confusion.
• Visuals: Adding forgotten visuals for Pick Off and Rusty Stab.

Balance:

• Sturdy Grip: Now also allows for shield usage as well as equipping a 2H with 1 hand.
• Into the Fray: Slightly adjusted the value for "2 enemies in range".
• Health Siphon: Increasing range to 2 to better match the rest of the Fellblade's abilities.
• Alchemystic:
  • Insight: Spell now costs 8 MP and has 3 range like other Alchemystic buffs.
  • Fortitude: Passive has been moved to the Plague Doctor.
  • Side Effects: New Passive: When successfully applying a buff on a target, it will also heal them at 0.3x. When successfully applying a debuff to a target, it will damage them at 0.25x.
  • Thorns: moved to Plague Doctor.
  • Soul Tendrils: Adding a long range high damage high MP cost non-elemental spell to the Alchemystic.
  • Reorganized Skill tree to accommodate new abilities.

• Plague Doctor:
  • Armor Proficiency: Removing passive. Granting Heavy Armor to the Plague Doctor to compensate.
  • Fortitude: Armor Proficiency was replaced by Fortitude (previously on Alchemystic).
  • Into the Fray: Moved to the Reaver.
  • Permanence: New Passive: Buffs and Debuffs casted by this character will last 1 turn longer.
  • Thorns: Thorn spell moved to the Plague Doctor. Spell is now an AoE and MP cost increased to 8 (from 6). Also, we redid the way Thorns damage is calculated so it won't be reduced from the user having high defenses anymore.
  • Total Shield: spell is removed (moved to Druid).

• Templar:
  • Equip Shield: Passive is removed (it was fused with Sturdy Grip on the Mercenary).
  • Resilience: New passive: debuffs applied to this character will last 1 less turn than normal (min 1).

• Reaver:
  • Desperate Blow: Increasing MP cost to 16 (from 6).
  • Doublehand: Passive has been removed.
  • Into the Fray: new passive for the Reaver (previously on Plague Doctor).
  • Spread Pain: Will now also cause damage to the target.
  • Primal Blow: Adding MP cost of 6.
  • Primal Wave: Adding MP cost of 8.

• Druid:
  • Shield and Aegis: Replacing by Total Shield, with MP cost of 6. This should synergizes better with their Dual Casting feature.
  • Dispel: Lowering MP cost to 6 (from 8).
  • Counter Magic: Moving the counter on the Wizard.
  • Adaptive Affinity: Moving the counter from the Wizard to the Druid. Also changing the way the calculations are handled so that if the caster is ever targeting himself, the "affinity" bonus will be granted before damage calculations are made.
  • Adaptive Affinity: Now not restricted to 1 buff and a character can have 1 per element. They will last 3 turns now though.
  • Skill Tree: Was reworked slightly since 1 ability was removed. Dual Cast was moved to a lower node as well.

• Knight:
  • Chivalrous Spirit: Lowering MP cost to 18 (from 22).

• Vessel:
  • Hallowed Body: Changing the passive from: +15% to ATK/MND to: +20% of ATK to MND and +20% of MND to ATK.
  • Spells: Increasing damage a bit for some spells, to better compensate for high costs.
  • Psyhie: now restores only 5 MP, but MP cost lowered to 18 (from 22).

• Weaken: Now lasts 3 turns (from 2). Now is removed by Regenerate and Balm as well as other abilities that removed it before.
  
• Evasion: Evasion can easily reach high numbers, especially for the player, and it presents too easy an opportunity to "cheese" things.
  • Cap: Adding a hard cap to the evasion stat of 50%.
  • Gear: Reducing evasion of most gear pieces. Specifically, Main Gauche, Shields, Cap of Ages, and Exo Gloves had their evasion reduced, but many other small tweaks.
  • Passive: Reducing evasion from the passive to 13 (from 15).

• Debuffs: When applying debuffs, the debuffs from the selected ability will be applied last (so, weapons, passives, etc, will come first) to give the user more control over which debuff will get absorbed by Barrier. This is a fairly advanced feature to be honest.
  
• Thorns: Redid the way calculations are done for Thorns damage. The damage will now be based on the targets DEF stat (the target of the thorn damage) rather than be a portion of the damage dealt to the thorn-user. This will make it so high defense units won't do weaker thorn damage anymore. Thorn reflection ratio changed to 0.25x (from 0.35x) to compensate for this.
  
• Quicken: There were various scenarios involiving infinite turns with Quicken. This should be fixed for the most part (it might still be possible to cheese things partially with Critical Quicken, but it's quite risky and involved, so we're not touching that one).
  • Using Quicken on a character will give them the debuff "Exhausted", which will prevent further Quicken spells from affecting them until it wears off. It will wear off the next time they get a "natural turn". Counter: Critical Quicken ignores the debuff (so it will always trigger if the critical condition is met), but will still give the debuff to the unit.
  • Self: Because of the above debuff, Quicken can now be casted on "Self" again.

• Class Growths: Small update to stats growth to get up-to-date with recent balance changes. All changes are very small amounts unless specified. None of these changes are retroactive (ie, current stats will not change).
  • Sorcerer: HP up, Res up, Spd up, Atk up, Def up.
  • Reaver: HP down, Res up.
  • Demon Knight: Def down, Res down, MP down, HP down.
  • Assassin: Atk up, HP up.
  • Wizard: Atk up, HP up.
  • Lord: MP down, Res down, Def down.
  • Ranger: Hp up.
  • Mercenary: MP up.
  • Gadgeteer: HP down, Def down, Res down.
  • Knight: Res down.
  • Vampire: Mp up.
  • Plague Doctor: Mp down, Def down, Mnd up.
  • Warmage: HP up, MP down, Spd up.
  • Fellblade: HP down, Atk Up, Spd down.
  • Alchemystic: Spd up (a fair amount), Res down, Mnd up.
  • Peddler: MP up, Hp Up, Res Down.
  • Vessel: Hp down, Atk Up, Def up, Res up, Spd up.
  • Lich: Large changes for this one. HP up, MP down, Def down, Res down. Atk up.
  • Anatomist: Spd up, Atk up, HP up.
  • Princess: Spd up, Res down, MP up, Atk up.
  • Spymaster: MP up, HP up.
  • Exiled: MP up.
  • Marked: Mp up.
  • Scoundrel: MP up.
  • Druid: MP down, Res down, Spd up.
  • Mender: Spd up.

• Princess: Reordered the skill tree around significantly and changed some AP costs a bit.
  
• Counter Shield/Counter Aegis: Now became Counter Total Shield.
  
• Crossbows: Increased attack values a tiny bit for all of them. Adding a small accuracy bonus to all of them as well. Increasing existing MND bonus to those that had one and added a MND bonus to Aerolus.
  
• AI: Made AI smarter with Infused Edge in general.
  
• Counter Haste: Was changed from Critical: Haste to Haste, so it will now proc from being attacked, rather from being at critical health. This might be a little too strong, so we'll keep an eye on it.
  
• Light Armors: Making tiny adjustments to Lorica Musculata and Lorica Mentis (higher offensive bonus, lower RES) and to Golden Garb (small MND bonus).
  
• Pick Off: Reducing base damage to 1.6x (from 1.7x). Increasing the reduction for "nearby ally" to 0.6x (from 0.4x).
  
• Gadgeteer: Changing the damage type of certain gadgets to Mixed and certain to ATK (most were MND before).
  
• Daggers: Reducing speed bonus of Flash Knife and Dragon's Nail.
  
• Swords: Increasing MND bonus of swords with a MND bonus a tad. Giving a small speed bonus to Eternias.
  
• Spears: Increasing MND bonus of spears with a MND bonus a tad. Godray's stats bonus were slightly increased.
  
• Scythes: Reaper now has a small MND bonus.
  
• Maces: Increasing their MND bonus.
  
• Guns: Adding a small MND bonus to Hell Muzzle.
  
• Staves: Reducing MND and DEF bonus for Godsleg.
  
• Archafflictor: Replacing Reanimator with Plaguestorm, a spell that deals damage and has a chance to inflict a random debuff on all enemies.
  
• Archafflictor: Reducing AI odds of using items a little bit for this monster.
  
• Scoundrel: Making Fleet Of Foot an AoE around the caster rather than self target.
  

UI:

• Into the Fray: Tooltip has been updated to show that it applies to damage and healing.
• Various Spell Names: Renamed many spells to Mass "name" to be more consistent with the naming scheme.
• Stats Growth: Making layout a little easier to read.

Bug Fixes:

• AI: The AI wasn't valuing using Panacea the way it should, so it almost never bothered. Should be fixed, but we'll have to keep an eye out to ensure the AI isn't too trigger-happy about this now.
• Sunder: Passive wasn't being applied correctly in general.
• Blood Mark: Will not be applied to "fixed damage" anymore.
• Bandit Kawas: There were instances where Bandit Kawas would take a movement action that was a little weird (such as moving on top of other units or moving before a counter would trigger, etc). Fixed.
• Sleep Visuals: The visuals would be shown over/under the target oddly before. Now they are always correctly over the target.
• Revival: The camera would move to where the target died, rather than where it would be revived. Fixed.
• Leeching HP/MP: Even when missing, it would still leech HP/MP. Fixed.
• Mirage: Fixing various interactions with Mirage, including not gaining EXP in some cases when removing Mirage with an attack from a target.
• Visuals: Adding some GameConfig.txt options to help the few users having some weird flickering. Adding "Vsynccount=" and "targetframerate=" properties to the Graphics tab.
• Class Mastery: Mastered classes that the character doesn't have full access to yet (from being recruited in an advanced class) will still correctly grant their mastery bonus now.
• Floating: Fixing a rare instance where the floating animation would disappear from a unit.
• Countershot: The damage prediction box would show it as active even if the weapon range wasn't good enough (even though the counter would correctly not trigger).

Modding:

• GearFill: Adding "noboots" an a gearfill option. It will prevent any accessories with a move or jump component from being place on the unit by the randomizer.