Hello, adventurers! Today's patch is another sizable one. Ultimate perks can now be unlocked should you find yourself with a 7th point to spend, enemies have undergone some training and are now much harder to exploit, and a difficulty setting has been added to the game that can be changed at any time to make things more manageable or more challenging. Read on for all the details or check out the latest devlog below!
Ultimate Perks!
After maxing out both perks of a given combat discipline, you can now unlock a 7th ultimate perk for that discipline which will significantly increase your effectiveness in combat. These are:
Melee: Specialists in melee can unlock the ability to dual wield as their ultimate perk! This one is pretty straight forward. You effectively double your damage output and your ability to parry. Rock two enchanted blades for maximum killing power or maybe combine a scepter and sword for more flexibility with your spell casting. However you decide to take advantage of this skill, you'll notice a significant increase in your combat ability.
Magic: Those who choose to focus on their mastery of Serafin Magic will unlock new spells that require both hands to cast and can turn the tide in battle at a moment's notice! Casting these spells requires one free hand, but your other hand can have a different spell school selected, be holding a weapon or doing anything else at all. The 2 handed spells you'll unlock are as follows:
- Flame Nova(Destruction) - An eruption of destructive power that emanates outward from you in all directions dealing huge amounts of burning damage to all nearby enemies and igniting them for additional burning damage over time if possible.
- Kinetic Pulse(Kinesis) - An explosion of pure kinetic energy that emanates outward from you in all directions impacting enemies and the environment. Enemies in close proximity are put off-balance and have a high chance of being knocked down.
- Lifeleach(Restoration) - Unleash a wave of life stealing energy that directly steals health from all nearby enemies!
- Illusory Armor(Protection) - Conjure a bubble of protective magic around yourself that deflects incoming projectiles and absorbs incoming damage. The bubble will disappear after 30 seconds or upon absorbing 200 damage, whichever comes first.
Archery: For the archers out there, you'll unlock the ability to imbue your bow with Serafin Magic! Firing arrows from your imbued bow will impart certain properties to your arrows for no mana cost. The properties you'll be able to imbue your arrows with are as follows:
- Fiery Arrows(Destruction) - Fiery arrows will ignite enemies they hit, dealing a fraction of their damage every second for 5 seconds. If the arrow strikes something other than an enemy, it will explode, dealing a small amount of damage to and possibly igniting nearby enemies.
- Homing Arrows(Kinesis) - Homing arrows will seek out the heads of the nearest enemies along their paths, altering their trajectories slightly to improve accuracy.
- Lifesteal Arrows(Restoration) - Lifesteal arrows return a small amount of the damage dealt to enemies back to the archer as healing energy, restoring missing health.
- Anti-Defense Arrows(Protection) - Anti-Defense arrows reduce natural protections of enemies hit, increasing the damage they take from all incoming attacks for a short duration.
Difficulty Settings!
One of the other improvements introduced in this patch is a bump in the AI of the enemies you'll face. With this improved AI, the game becomes considerably more difficult by default, so to offset this increase in difficulty, we're finally introducing a difficulty setting for those who find the current level of challenge to be too much or who want to make things even less forgiving! You'll now be able to choose between three different difficulty levels from the options menu (your chosen difficulty will be saved with your progress and can be changed at any time).
The game will default to "Apprentice" difficulty which is more or less what it's been up to this point, although a bit harder as it includes the newly added AI improvements like melee enemies detecting if they're being kited and performing jumping attacks to compensate, as well as knowing if you're stepping in and out of their attacks and behaving accordingly. Archers will also no longer switch to their melee stance once an arrow is nocked to their bow. They'll now always fire an arrow before switching to a melee stance, so you can no longer step in and out and trick them into never actually attacking.
Novice difficulty is the easiest option. With the game set to novice, melee enemies will behave less ferociously. They'll never lunge or continue chasing while mid attack and parrying their attacks are more likely to result in them losing balance. Beyond that, you take 25% less and deal 25% more damage. Additionally, melee enemies will spawn wearing fewer pieces of armor.
Master difficulty is for those seeking a true challenge. All melee enemies will always continue chasing at full speed while attacking, so dodging is much more difficult and parries/blocking with a shield become much more necessary. Additionally, enemies are more likely to chain attacks following a parry, making their offense practically relentless. Even more dangerous though is that all sources of incoming damage are doubled. If you've struggled on the standard difficulty up until now, you may want to hold off on this mode until you're very comfortable with the combat of the game and the tools you have at your disposal.
Full Patch Notes
- Ultimate Perks can now be unlocked in the Isle of the Divines once you've earned your 7th perk point!
- A new difficulty setting has been added to the options menu for those looking to enjoy a more casual adventure or beef up the challenges they face!
- Enemy AI has been improved to make melee enemies and archers much harder to exploit, especially when playing on Apprentice and Master difficulty.
- Melee enemies now make sounds when attacking, both making them more lifelike and easier to detect when they get the jump on you from behind.
- Changed the look of the enemy health bar and removed the decreasing health animation as some people were mistaking it for regeneration.
- Added a new type of barrier before the giant golem fight at the end of chapter one to introduce players to the mechanic required to defeat the boss before they're actually in the fight.
- Added an attention grabbing particle effect to the Stealth Gem reveal after defeating the Spider Queen in chapter one to make it harder to miss.
- Added a couple of additional frames to the horizontal melee attack of enemies to increase the window for a successful parry slightly.
- Tweaked the priority of some of the sound effects when placing objects into holsters on your body or interacting with your inventory, making it less likely that you won't hear them in certain situations.
- Walking into a portal will now fade the screen to black before loading into the next area to make the transition less harsh while loading.
- Changed the skybox in the Forbidden Mine dungeon.
- Changed the wording above the magic and archery ultimate perks for clarity.
Corrections and Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where your teleport distance was being calculated from the center of your playspace and not from where you were standing (affecting whether or not you were considered to be moving stealthily).
- Corrected some floating props in the Stormy Swamp and in the graveyard of the Serafin Castle.
- Fixed some invisible wall issues around the water wheels in the Forbidden Mine.
- Fixed a bug that would occasionally cause the screen to stay black and not reload the level on death.
- Fixed a bug preventing the magic beanstalk in the Stormy Swamp from being fully grown if you loaded into the scene after having activated it.
- Fixed a bug that was triggering the free cast for casting spells if you had points in the perk even if you didn't have a scepter in hand.
Additions and Improvements
See a lot of this stuff in action in our latest devlog!
That's it for today, everyone! As always, we invite you to join our discord to share your feedback on the game and help us shape development going forward. Let us know what you'd like to see as the game continues moving toward chapter 3 and beyond!
Happy adventuring, everyone!