Build 0.5.0 - New Content update, Balance update

Sneak Peek at one of our new spell in the works.

Hello everyone!

This week, we're releasing our next chunk of new content, along with a lot of balance tune-ups and a big dialogues update.

Here are the highlights of the build:

Highlights:

• Story Content: Adding 4 new story encounters, 3 new patrols, 1 optional small event.
• Dialogues: All dialogues in the game were reviewed/updated by writer Scott Hamm. We have a proofreading pass coming at the end of the month, and then they should be final.
• AI: Lots of AI improvements again.
• Balance: Balance updates for many classes, including abilities and requirements.

Full notes are in the build and at the end of this post, as usual.

Progress Report:

First, a big thank you to everyone for all the incredible feedback we've been getting on the game! We made another big round of balance tuning from it and it's looking better than ever!
We have several pages of balance notes that still need to go in though, so expect even more improvements in the coming months!

We spent a lot of time testing and tuning this week and we started the final dialogue editing process. We have about 70% of the dialogues in what should be pretty much final form after writer Scott Hamm finished his giant pass on them. We'll still be focusing for 2 more weeks on creating the rest of the game's dialogues, then it'll be updated by Scott again, and then off to localization.
We're keeping a good pace on that front and we're on schedule. :)

We're also about 95% finished with the Voice Over for our intro movie. It's looking and sounding amazing and we can't wait to show everyone the final version! It should be ready Monday or Tuesday, so expect a quick update early next week!

Lately, we've been working on maps for optional/secret dungeons as well as the final battles of the game, so we can't quite show all of them, but here's one that should be safe to show:

Lastly, we've been working on the visuals for the abilities of one of our special classes. They should have a pretty unique style! (like the one at the top of this post).

Change log:

11/16/2018 - Version 0.5.0

New Content and Features:

• Story Content: Adding 4 new story encounters, 3 new patrols, 1 optional small event.
• Dialogues: All dialogues in the game were reviewed/updated by writer Scott Hamm. We have a proofreading pass coming at the end of the month, and then they should be final.
• Cutscenes: A few cutscenes had minor updates.
• Sound Effects: Adding sound effects to many abilities.
• Outfits: Adding a new outfit to the game for males. The female version should be ready in a bit.

Balance:

• Map balance:
  • Alpine Woods: Making one of the Daodrenners a "more enemies" option.
  • Gyaum Tor: Making one of the Mercenaries a "more enemies" option.
  • The Highlands: If the character doesn't have 7 units in total, one of the Vangals won't spawn.
  • Yates Cabin: Changing the player spawning tiles to make things a little easier.
  • The Banyan: Changing on the Rangers to be a "more enemies" option.
  • 2nd Temple: Changing the Wizard to be a "more enemies" option.
  • Ekhidna Falls: Changing the component yield on the 0,5 tree to 2 (from 1).

• Difficulty Settings: Changing Hard mode to use "more enemies" and "regular stats" and Very Hard to use "Regular Injuries".
  
• Berserk: Reducing duration to 2 turns (from 3).
  
• Thorns: Thorns damage will not apply to counters anymore (when a counter hits a target with thorn, thorn will not reflect a portion of the counter damage).
  
• Self Buff Counters: Those will not proc if the effect is already on the target (which means that damaging dispels won't trigger them anymore).
  
• Smart Casting: Disabling Smart Casting for all Single target attacks.
  
• Consumables: Reducing the vertical range of many items to 5 (they all had 8 before).
  
• Story Characters: Story characters that depart from the party will receive some bonus AP to basic classes after they rejoin. New story characters that join will get more AP when joining.
  
• Demon Knight:
  • Demonic Might: Adding Renew to the effects.
  • Vicious Punt: Lowering damage to 0.85 but increasing vert range to 4.
  • Vicious Slash: Increasing vert range to 4.
  • Cleave: Cleave won't grant 10MP on the bonus turn anymore.

• Ranger: Increasing vert range of Multishot (6 to 7). Increasing damage of Rain Of Arrows (.85 to .9).
  
• Knight: Exchanging Taunt and Defensive Hit positions on the skill tree.
  
• Warmage:
  • Requirements: Changed to Plague Doctor-3, Fellblade-4
  • Stasis Burst: Removing it from the Warmage. The ability doesn't fit very well with their kit and they still have 10 without it.

• Scoundrel:
  • Sneak Attack: Adding a MP cost of 6.
  • Steal abilities: Steal abilities that deal no damage will not trigger most counters anymore.

• Fellblade:
  • Sleep Slice: Increasing the MP cost to 12 from 8, reducing damage from 0.8x (from 0.85x)
  • Poison, Bleed Slice: Reducing damage to 0.85x (from 0.9x).
  • Mute Slice: Reducing damage to 0.9x (from 0.95x).
  • Black Blade: Damage is now non-elemental rather than Dark.
  • Health Siphon: Damage is now non-elemental rather than Physical.
  • Miasma: Reducing range to 2 (from 3), increasing damage to 0.6x (from 0.5x), increasing vert range to 7 (from 6) and changing shape to Square (from Cross).

• Werewolf:
  • Leap: Updated how it works. Give it a go to see just how it works! The visual effect is temporary as it's missing the damage visuals, but the functionality is there.
  • Fetid Breath: Is now a cone (it was meant to be a cone, so it was technically a bug).
  • Gear: Adding swords to the list of weapons.

• Plague Doctor:
  • Treatment: Reducing MP cost of Treatment to 8 (from 10).
  • Mass Slow: Increasing base success rate from 50% to 75%
  • Weaken: Increasing base success rate from 75% to 100%. More changes will come to make this spell more attractive soon.

• Assassin:
  • Sleep Powder: Increasing vert range of to 1 (from 0).
  • Dispel Powder: Adding 0.6x damage to it.

• Druid:
  • Requirements: Changing to Mender-3, Wizard-5, Alchemystic-3
  • Dispel: Changing MP cost to 8 (from 10) and range to 3 (from 2).

• Gadgeteer:
  • Requirements: Reducing to Scoundrel-3 (from 4) and Wizard-3 (from 4).
  • Dispelotron: Reducing MP cost to 8 (from 10).

• Peddler: Can now equip crossbows.
  
• Duelist: Increasing elemental Flourish damage to 1.7x from 1.6x. And Cripple Flourish to 0.9x from 0.85f.
  
• Gunner: Changing requirement to Mercenary-4, Knight-4, Ranger-4
  
• Sorcerer: Changing requirements to Druid-5
  
• Templar: Adding MP cost of 8 to Soothing Chant.
  
• Human Classes: Lowering the MP growth of most classes.
  
• Bzaro: Starting Bzaro with the Daodrenner class unlocked as well.
  
• Rakkerjak: Changing passive from Cleave to Execute (that was actually a bug).
  
• Monsters: Updated the elemental resistances of most demonic creatures (mostly the Dark element).
  
• Bulldrakes: Increasing base stats. Increasing damage to Breath attacks.
  
• AI:
  • The AI will instantly switch targets if its current target moves to a spot where the AI could never follow (due to height issues, etc), rather than sadly follow it for a few turns.
  • Revive Items: The AI will now have a chance to use Revive items at times.
  • AI will be less likely to shove targets into their allies when using long ranged shoves.
  • AI will be smarter about including allies when buffing itself with AoEs.
  • AI will be less likely to self buff if it has the special "waiting for the player to get closer" flag.
  • AI will be smarter about using abilities that have scaling damage with proximity to the target.

• Equipment:
  • Vigil Band: Adding the Vigil Band, an accessory that protects against Sleep.
  • Judogi: Reducing Armor value.
  • Silver Helm: Changed the ATK bonus to a MND (it was always meant to be MND).
  • Main Gauche: Increasing ATK value. Also reducing the chance of enemies using it.

UI:

• Azure Plains: Making the tall grass 85% opacity so the movement tiles can be seen through them. It's still hard to see, but it should be more obvious where you can move to this way.
• Abilities: Cleaning up and adding details to a lot of abilities information.
• Special Classes: When prompted to use a Badge to learn a special class, the prompt will now mention how many badges you have in total.
• Difficulty Settings: Renaming "Easy" to "Beginner". Updating the description of Veteran to make it clearer the battles will be challenging for most players.
• Help Compendium: Fixing typos. Adding missing camp fire sprites to the background.
• System Menu: The Start button/Key will now close the menu (as well as the Cancel Button/Key).
• Accuracy: When an attack or a debuff has 0% to hit, the 0% will now be written in Red (rather than white) to make it more obvious.
• HP/MP Bar: The bar wasn't precise at low levels. Fixing it so it's accurate now.
• Items: Updating the Items command description to mention they are shared and refill automatically.
• Fullscreen: Changing the behavior of the game to remain "Visible in Background", as it seems to be the default recommended behavior. Sadly, Unity doesn't allow this behavior to be changed at runtime as it should, so we have to pick one or the other.

Bug Fixes:

• Abilities Learn Menu: Fixing issue with character panel not updating when switching characters from the Ability Learn menu.
• Mouse/Kb: Fixing: Mouse wheel icon could remain visible when it shouldn't if using the keyboard rather than the mouse.
• Difficulty Settings: Fixing an issue where starting a game on a different difficulty setting than the default one, quitting the game and starting a new game would show the wrong difficulty setting name.
• MP Values: After switching passives or before deployment in combat, the current MP value of characters can show the wrong value at times (this is cosmetic, as the correct MP is always used in combat).
• Various Maps: Fixing priorities that were a little wonky on many maps.
• Bzaro: Fixing a bug were Bzaro would start with most classes unlocked.
• Debuffs: Now correctly showing that Barrier was removed when a Counter: Debuff is triggered by a character with Barrier on.
• Crafting: Fixing rare case where Gear or Badges crafting categories would be flagged as unavailable after browsing components.
• Sound: Fixing a caching issue with the sound effects.
• Crash: Fixing a rare crash with Adaptative Affinity.
• StealTables: Fixing a bug where enemies that spawn during battle all had an empty steal table.
• Charge: Charge abilities can now correctly hit targets in the water, assuming the charge itself doesn't go into the water.

Modding:

• Encounters: The "apbonus" field can be used on enemies to have them grant a flat AP bonus to the player if they were killed during the battle.