The notes of this update internally are becoming bulky so I need to push it to clear my notepad and my brain. In this one, I'm still thinking about how to give player better and more interesting tools while also focusing on streamlining the enemy creation process for CoA2 by changing the way enemy Defense-Typings are calculated. This is part 1 of a multi-part update, which will make more sense in 8.2.1. I could ramble all day about what is different and why, but I think it suits everyone better to experience it in practice then ask questions or make criticisms after.
Some Key Takeaways For This Update:
(1) - Warp-line spells are now more effective.
(2) - Barrier-line spells are now more effective.
(3) - Poison and Burn have been reworked internally to match the recent addition of tiered Bleed effects, but no skills or enemies have been adapted to make use of them until the next update. However, this does temporarily disable the effectiveness of Plague Strike. This is the focus of 8.2.1.
(4) - Enemy elemental resistances can now be modified and managed by effects like Soak, replacing their previous elemental resistances rather than stacking alongside them.
8.2.0.0 Notes
- Many enemies have had their attack element either changed or split into dual element with their primary element plus physical so long as they have striking visuals (sword, claw, horn, etc). Elemental bubble, gazer, etc enemies no longer deal physical damage on Normal Attacks. This change also affects bosses. (For an enemy like a gazer, the only source of Physical damage now comes from the Slap ability, which has Physical as an over-riding element)
- Mech prefab converted into a state. 200% Electric, 300% Machine Killer, 0% Poison, State Resist Bleed, Poison, Fear, Poisonfear. Additionally, mechs now universally have 0% Soul (full immunity).
- Flying prefab converted into a state. 0% Earth, 200% Bird Killer.
- Ice state weakness to Ice-Killer now 300%, up from 200%.
- Earth state weakness to Earth-Killer now 300%, up from 200%.
- Flying state weakness to Bird-Killer now 300%, up from 200%.
- Hell's Gate mechs now have multi-element attack with combos including up to all 3 of the following: Wind/Fire/Physical.
- Fire type enemies can no longer be Burned.
- Water type enemies can no longer be Soaked.
- Soak now changes the afflicted character's elemental defenses to match that of WaterType state and is always applied for 5 Actions, changed from 3-5 turns.
- Wind enemies can no longer be afflicted with Air Current or Shear. Shear II & III can still be applied.
- Air Current now increases Wind damage by 5%.
- Shear stacks now cap at 300% increased damage with Shear III, up from 150%.
- Regular bleeds now increase the chance to apply pet special Bleed I by 10%.
- Warp I now removes 100 barrier per turn, up from 10.
- Warp II now removes 250 barrier per turn, up from 100.
- Warp I, II, III, IV, & V now apply for 2-3 turns with new applications adding turns instead of resetting them. This is changed from the previous fixed 5 turn application with reset functionality.
- Barrier I-V now mirror Warp I-V.
- Barrier I, II, III, IV, & V now apply for a fixed 20 turns with new applications resetting the count instead of adding to it.
- Deflection Shield now has a 20% chance to apply Barrier I.
- Regeneration I & II now have a 25% chance to apply BleedResist, which will remove Bleed I-V and prevent them from being applied for the rest of that turn. This state does not have a visible icon.
- Stitch now applies BleedResist for 1 turn, down from 3, but it also affects Bleed I-V.
- Under certain conditions, the Arcane Mage class can now learn additional Barrier related abilities via the Learn Skills menu.
- At level 10, the Swordsman class can learn an anti-barrier Skill for 1000G/20 Essence of Life/20 Essence of Magick.
- At level 10, the Swordsman class can learn a Bypass Barrier Skill for 100G/20 Essence of Life/20 Essence of Magick.
- Tail Strike is now Physical instead of Dragon type and can bypass the damage cap.
- Knight class now requires Swordsman level 15, down from 20.
- New State series: Poison I-V. Poisons I-IV can stack and each increase the probability for the others to land. Poison V clears I-IV and lasts until cured while dealing (a.mat)+(a.luk*4) + 1% of the target's current HP per turn.
- New State series: Burn I-V. Burns I-V do not stack and grant resistances to the lesser tier burns, culminating in V which lasts until cured while dealing (a.mat*2) + 1% of the target's current HP per turn. Additionally, each tier reduces the afflicted's Attack stat by an additional 5% per tier, ending at 25% for Bleed V. This Attack debuff cannot be cleared without cleansing the Burn itself.
- Poisonfear state 80 now increases the likelihood to apply Poison I-V by 10% each.
- Poison, Burn, Poisonfear, and Air Current have new icons.
- Plague Strike (skill 643) now consumes Poison V (state 266) instead of Poison (state 108) to deal ((a.atk * 20) + (a.mat * 5)) damage with Bypass Damage Cap, up from ((a.atk * 6) + (a.mat)).
- Terrain changes to the Veil (awoken)
- Additionally, background data has been added for a mini location near Auria. Leftover erroneous data will be removed in a future update.
- Recovery builds 8.0, 8.1.0.3, 8.1.0.4, and 8.1.0.5 have been removed from Steam.
8.2.1.0 Notes
I was able to get a few hours in today so rather than hold it back til next week, I'm dropping these back-end changes immediately. This follows up on the above notes but focuses on fixing ARMOR to reflect the new poisons and burns. In adjusting these, many typos and other errors were fixed. Reminder: changes affecting gear only affect NEWLY ACQUIRED gear, and not the gear already in your inventory.
Note: Skills that "now apply" something no longer apply the original version of that state. Additionally, most also have a chance to apply greater tiers of the effect at 1/2 the rate for each tier above the tooltip listing. Ex: Thermite Grenade applies Burn I at 40%, Burn II at 20%, Burn III at 10%, Burn IV at 5%, and Burn 5 @ 2.5% - however, only Burn I (via an icon) is displayed in the tooltip.
Skills that apply a higher tier state at a % will usually also have the same but separate % chance to apply the lower tier states. Ex: Insatiable Ravager now applies Bleed I, III, & III at 33% each, Bleed IV at 16.5%, and Bleed V at 8.1%.
Every individual hit of a skill has these chances to apply these states. For Insatiable Ravager which hits 3 times, all 3 hits have the 33% chance for Bleeds I, II, and III.
- PoisonResist (state 30) now resists Poison I-V in addition to the original poison, plus poisonfear.
- BurnResist (state 90) now resists Burn I-V in addition to the original Burn.
- Regeneration I now applies the Burn/Bleed/Poison resist states at 25% each rather than removing each of the individual tiered states (15 total) at 25% each.
- Regeneration I now has Reapply Add Turns.
- Thermite Grenade now applies Burn I at 40%.
- Sludge Bomb now applies Poison I at 25%.
- Rockbreaker renamed Rock Smash.
- Bloodthirst now applies Bleed I at 25%.
- Insatiable Ravager now applies Bleed I, II, & III at 33%.
- Thermite Blast & Sludge Blast updated to new Burn and Poisons.
- Cutter now applies Normal Attack states at 100% per hit, up from 75%.
- Shield Bash now applies Normal Attack states at 250% per hit, up from 133%.
- Arcane Ray now no longer inflicts Poison, has been updated to Burn I, and inflicts a single target with the lingering Arcstorm effect.
- Shield Bash (skill 227, activated by armor 230 "Ignition Defender") now applies Burn III at 100% and targets an enemys DEF rather than MDF.
It was at this point where my focus changed from Skills to Armor, seeing a mistake on Ignition Defender.
- Ignition Defender now adds the BurnResist state and correctly prevents all burn types.
- Frosty Shield resists Freeze and Blizzard by 25%.
- Heatweave Tunic now resists all Burns.
- Flamewind Battle Gear now resists all Burns.
- Updated tooltip for Flamewind set.
- Dark Princess's Band now utilize Passive State instead of Trait Elements.
- Phoenix Feather Shield now has +10% Taunt.
New keyword: Taunt. Refers to Target Rate (chance to be targeted by enemies)
New tooltip style: Resist icon +/-xy%. Shows a flat increase or decrease in elemental resistances given by the armor piece as indicated by the enchanted sword icons.
New tooltype style: Resist icon: +/-xy%. Shows a flat increase or decrease in STATE resistance given by the armor piece as indicated by the state's individual icon. Ex: Resist icon: -20% indicates an additional 20% weakness to the state, whereas Resist icon: +20% or Resist icon: 20% indicate a boost to defense against the state being applied.
New tooltip style: icon Immunity || icon, icon, icon Immunity. Shows a complete immunity to the state given by the armor piece.
New tooltip style: Resist icon, icon: %. Shows a partial immunity to multiple elements and states sharing the same percentage.
In a state resist tooltip, if multiple states of the same type are resisted, only the strongest is shown.
New tooltip style: icon-Attack. This indicates an elemental attack **addition**. Ex: Blazerblade (fire) and Green Ring (poison) are both equipped. Blazerblade changes the element of the Attack command from Normal (which defaults to the element of the weapon) to fire, Green Ring changes it further from Fire to Fire/Poison hybrid.
Updated the first 400 Armors in the game database to be in line with the above changes.