Hello everyone!
It’s finally here! The last major zone rework in what's ended up being a nearly 2 year long journey. This time its The Vault of Yendor so for the first time, the game actually has a proper end game that doesn't make me wince every time I reach it! I'm quite excited :)
The next few months will be a lot of clean-up and polish as well as lots of additional content filling in obvious holes. A complete race rework is the first major priority and I’d also like to add an additional class or two. Achievements are definitely also on my ‘must have’ list and I'm sure there's some other important stuff. The current plan is to have the game totally finished with an official end to Early Access by mid December in time for the Steam winter sale. I'd love to hear from you all what sort of things you'd like to see in these next updates that you think should really be in the final game.
So now onto the update!
The Vault of Yendor:
The main bulk of the update is a complete overhaul of The Vault of Yendor, its monsters and the final goblet level. I’m calling this a first draft which I’m releasing ‘early’ since I’d like to get feedback on the difficulty level here. I think getting the right balance in this last section of the game is pretty critical.
In contrast to the rest of the dungeon, The Vault of Yendor is composed entirely of hand-made levels, each with a carefully planned theme and challenge. There are over 30 of these already and I’m planning on quite a few more. The 4 main levels of the zone are selected so as to avoid repetition. So for example there will never be two fire themed levels. The idea here is to have the widest possible set of challenges to really test the players build.
These levels are intentionally pretty tough and during testing I’ve often found myself just searching desperately for the exit in order to save consumables for the last level.
The final level is now a proper boss fight with the Wizard Yendor himself. Several fights in fact due to his ‘immortality’. There's a pretty simple ‘trick’ to actually finally killing him which should be pretty obvious by design.
I’m trying to strike a fine balance here between providing an interesting and challenging last fight, while not totally screwing over the player at this final moment. With a good character build, a decent stock of consumables and no silly mistakes he should be pretty straightforward. As amusing as it would be to make this into some sort of elaborate death trap, I’d really rather not see a ton of character deaths at this late stage of the game. The fight should sort of be won or lost long before arriving here i.e. build a good character, don’t blow all your consumables, play the fight carefully and he should be ‘easy’. So please let me know how it goes, feedback here is very appreciated.
Yendor Taunts and Messages:
With the addition of The Wizard Yendor as an actual character in the game, I’ve added some dialog taunts as the player progresses through the dungeon as well as a bunch of signs and messages in various vaults. Though I have no intention of adding much of a story to the game beyond ‘goblet good, go get it’, I think it doesn’t hurt to characterize Yendor himself as a classic evil overlord persona and give a bit of context to the players quest. I’d love suggestions for more signs, messages, taunts, or anything else of this sort.
Attribute Point Rebalance:
Another big chunk of the update is a final major rebalancing to character development, specifically with regards to attribute points.
There were two main issues that prompted this rebalance:
First, with all the new attribute items, shrines, potions and fountains, I was finding that all my characters were ending the game with an absurd number of attribute points. I’d often end up with characters with a maxed primary stat, a very high secondary stat and still have some points left over for the third stat. This resulted in all builds sort of converging on a single ‘do everything’ build rather than each character being distinct.
The second problem, which has been around for awhile is that 1 Speed Point per point of Dexterity is just really really good compared to the other two attributes. Previously it was even set as 1 Speed Point per 2 dexterity but I really dislike these sort of odd break points.
So with that in mind I changed attribute points to be gained on even levels only instead of every level and began rebalancing from there. With a lot less total points, I’ve been able to make each point more powerful. So instead of nerfing Dexterity and Speed Points somehow, Strength and Intelligence are simply stronger in comparison. The changes are as follows:
- Attribute points are gained on even levels (talent points on odd).
- Strength now grants +5HP per point (previously +3HP).
- Intelligence now grants +3MP per point (previously +2MP).
- Intelligence now grants Ability-Power instead of Magic-Power and so effects most of the abilities in the game. Intelligence has always been the least useful attribute in the game which non-casters tended to just ignore. This change should not be enough to encourage some kind of ridiculous pure melee build with maxed INT but instead make hybrid casters much more viable and make finding INT items not completely useless for non-casters.
- Magic-Power is still a stat on robes, staves, and the Magic-Mastery talent. It simply adds on top of the more general Ability-Power and of course only works with spells.
- The super specific Fire-Focus, Toxic-Focus etc. have been replaced with this Magic-Power stat. These were just way to specific. Either you found one that matched your class and it was stupidly over powered, or much more often it didn’t match and was useless.
- Speed points previously had an absurdly long regen time (20 turns), as a clumsy attempt to balance them which resulted in weird feast or famine balance. Either you had a full bar of speed points and were effectively unkillable or you were out and no amount of kiting around would regen them. This has now been cut in half to 10 turns making it actually possible to regen during a fight.
- Finally talent attribute requirements have been reduced so that talents are still learnable at approximately the same levels.
This ended up being one of those changes that unraveled a lot of design knots that have been bugging me for awhile. I did a ton of testing for this update and my observations have been:
- A pure class is now totally possible and quite viable. Maxing your primary attribute often leaves little room for the other two. Due to the increased power of the attributes this results in some pretty nutty characters. Tanks with 150HP or more, casters with 60+ mana, dexterity characters with… well 14 speed points was already pretty nuts, but now it regens faster!
- Hybrids still totally work but don’t end up maxing either attribute and generally have nothing to spare for the third. The change to Ability-Power makes it much more viable to take a spell talent as a non-caster and start raising INT since your other abilities will also benefit.
- Its still totally possible with the right combination of equipment, potions, shrines etc. to build a ‘do everything’ character, its just the exception now instead of the rule.
- Generally speaking all 3 attributes now feel reasonably useful to all character builds. Every point at least adds some usable bonus.
- Items in general are now quite a bit more powerful since a +2 attribute ring is a big swing, which can really make you rethink your build going forward.
- The starting stat differences between different class/races is now quite substantial.
- The overall difficulty level of the game has not really been effected. Its not harder or easier rather there are just a wider variety of character builds now possible.
Damage Caps:
Max weapon damage will now only apply to bonuses gained from attribute points. Any bonus from items or talents will now always be added. I was constantly annoyed when, say as a melee focused character, I’d find a +2 ring of slaying which should be the most amazing item ever, but I'd often be damage capped or close to it so it would be useless.
With this in mind the Weapon-Mastery talent has been reverted to once again simply add melee damage since this is now always useful.
Monster Balance and AI:
Tons of minor tweaks here which I wont list, mostly fiddling with cooldowns, damage, defenses, exact hit point numbers etc.. Some more important ones:
- Substantially increased the damage of Smite on high level priests. Considering that this ability is quite easy to dodge, failure to do so should be very punishing.
- Monsters now lose agro when the player leaves the level.
- Tornados will no longer be summoned next to each other (this was getting a bit out of hand).
- Enemies will no longer cast discord on an already discorded player. It was possible to get hit multiple times in a single turn and instantly die even with full HP.
- Bojack the Berserker is no longer fast moving. A fast moving, high damage boss, this early in the game was pretty unfair.
- Minotaur King had no cooldown on charge (who knows why lol). He would charge constantly, back and forth, back and forth, making him trivial to kill.
- The Vampire Lord will 'poof' into less bats each time, making him slightly easier to kill.
- Tentacle Spitters and Lava Eels have had their damage reduced but also their cooldown reduced (they attack faster). Their cooldown was super long and so they tended to sit around doing nothing during a fight, but in many vaults where they appear in a group, they would all fire on the first turn and do pretty massive damage. They are actually more dangerous now in a fight, but less likely to gank you when rounding a corner.
- Orc Berserkers will now wait until they are close to the player to go berserk. It has a short duration and would often wear off by the time they even got close.
- Pathfinding changes: when enemies would bunch up in a doorway, some of them would often start to take an absurdly long alternate path around. I fiddled with this a bit so that the closest enemies will just wait their turn since its likely the player is either going to move, or kill the guy blocking the door. Of course the guys at the back should still try to find an alternate route, especially if its short. This is a work in progress which I'll be adjusting going forward. Does anyone know of any resources regarding this sort of thing? I'm having trouble even articulating on paper how this should work.
- Pathfinding changes: ranged enemies will now do a better job moving to a tile from which they can attack the player, rather than just giving up the moment they get blocked and running straight at you. This problem was very apparent with archers on fortress walls who would often conga-line to the steps away from the player (since this is the only walkable path), rather than just stepping towards the player back into range.
Items and Equipment:
- All non casters now start the game with a healing potion (casters have always started with a mana potion).
- Rogues now start the game with a short bow instead of a short sword. Considering that they are DEX based character I think its fairer to start them with a bow and let them find a melee weapon rather than the reverse. Not that characters are totally defined by their starting weapon, but this does give a more even split of 3 classes starting with melee and 2 with bows.
- Due to attribute points being stronger, many items that provide raw stats have also been buffed.
- Two-Handed weapons have had their damage increased quite substantially. Giving up the shield slot is a pretty big penalty so these things need to be sufficiently over powered to compensate.
- Archery Goggles, which were always pretty junk, now add +4 range damage. Given the changes to damage bonuses this makes them a very powerful item.
- Added rings of Flaming, Toxic, Frozen and Stormy Energy. A mix of resistance and mana.
- Added Boots of the Wind with levitation and reflection.
- Boots of Vampirism now heal 10% max HP per blood puddle absorbed instead of just a flat +1HP.
- Wizardy Armor (dropping in The Arcane Tower), now grants fire, cold and shock resistance along with intelligence. This is end game armor and should be some of the best in the game.
- Shadow Silk Armor (dropping in The Crypt), now grants toxic resistance along with dexterity.
- All blunt weapons have had their damage increased. They now have the distinction of being the highest damage weapon type along with their armor penetration property.
- All cleaving weapons (axes) have had their damage reduced. Cleave is just absurdly powerful and honestly still is, even with this nerf. That said, I think these changes have at least made the sword vs polearm vs axe vs blunt comparison a bit more balanced.
- Serpent-Fang-Dagger and Blood-Stringer have had the Parry stat added since they are of the sword type.
- Greater Staves have had their damage increased (they should have higher damage then comparable bows).
- Protection now scales linearly with enchantment bonuses. This was actually a bug introduced... who knows when. It was absurd to enchant a +5 protection piece of armor a few times and get +10 protection.
Charms:
A new and powerful item type that fits in the melee, range or shield slot. Still debating if shield slot should be included here. These items should have the highest stat bonuses in the game as well as some stats that don’t occur on any other items.
They make it possible to create say a pure archer who gives up his melee weapon for some big stat bonus. Or the more extreme case of the true pure caster, duel wielding charms, with no weapon at all. I’ll be adding more of these in the future. A lot of stats or effects that may have been broken on other equipment may find there way onto charms.
Merchant:
- The merchant will now provide a wider variety of equipment, hopefully resulting in more actually useful stuff to buy.
- The merchant will not add his stock until you actually talk to him. Previously just visiting the level would add the stock.
- Reduced the cost of many items (in some cases by quite a bit). For comparison I’m considering that a talent point or attribute point costs 75GP and stacks on top of everything you have, while a piece of equipment is often replacing another piece and so is not actually giving that much.
Talents:
- Tomes of knowledge will try to provide a more even spread of passive/active talents and talents of the 3 attribute types.
- Recovery buffed: 20HP, 40HP => 30HP, 60HP
- Freezing Cloud range increased by 1
- Rogues now start with Evasive and Stealth-Mastery while precision has become their Tier-II talent instead of Second-Wind.
- Rebalanced talents that provide a raw stat bonus which is also provided by an attribute point. I felt that evasion at 10%,20% always felt good and this is equivalent to 3DEX and 6DEX so I used this as the reference.
- Fortitude: 15HP, 30HP,
- Mental Clarity: 9MP, 18MP,
- Melee Mastery: 3DMG, 6DMG
Bug and Crashes:
- Summoned-Skeletons will now path through poison clouds (they are immune).
- Stopped monsters that were casting discord from outside of LoS.
- Freezing and enemy will stop constriction.
- Enemies were activating charge when netted or otherwise immobile.
- The player will now immediately stop moving when enemies spawn in via portals.
- Large enemies are now knocked back by charge and miss their turn (same as other sizes).
- Dash attacking across a bear trap had a very odd bug where you would be trapped but your next click would complete your dash. Very odd, but now fixed.
- Even more odd. Dash attacking across an enemy that was standing on a bear trap that had just opened would trap the player on the same tile as the enemy resulting in crash or odd behaviour. In this very obscure edge case, the bear trap will simply be ignored and the player will complete his dash attack. I have no idea how else to even resolve this :P
- Force walls will now block pole arm attacks.
- The player can no longer rest while levitating over a pit. I totally didn’t discover this by falling to my death on an end level…
- Enemies that were standing behind a door were blocking auto-explore. The player now includes the door itself in the list of explorable tiles.
- Player was often opening doors with auto-explore and then darting off to explore some other area before returning to explore the hall. This has been somewhat fixed.
- Torment was effected by the the double discord multiplier and would insta kill you.
- Perfect-Aim was not adding range to thrown weapons.
- War-Wagons were oddly trampling their own orbs of fire.
Well that about sums it up for this update. As always I'll be doing a lot of quick hot-fixes in the next week for any issues or bugs that crop up. After that I plan on doing a lot of smaller, more frequent updates as the project wraps up. Thanks as always for all your support, I'm looking to hearing your feedback and suggestions!
Hot-Fixes:
Update 1.39.1 - September-20-2021
- Lava had NaN damage in Vault-Of-Yendor:5/5 which caused any enemies taking damage from it to also get NaN HP and become unkillable.
Update 1.39.2 - September-20-2021
- Fixed issues with Yendor not spawning portals on his death.
- Related but, also clicking some portals in Yendor:5/5 was crashing the game.
- Fixed a crash when mousing over items in inventory or shop (a stat rand-arts was causing the crash).
Update 1.39.3 - September-20-2021
- Fixed a crash occurring when triggering portal spawned monsters while also picking up an item in the same tile.
- Fixed some typos
Update 1.39.4 - September-21-2021
- Fixed a crash/lockup when wishing for a staff from scrolls of acquirement or wishing wells.
- Auto explore will no longer open doors if there is nothing to explore on either side.
- Added gates to the last level of The-Iron-Fortress to prevent levitating over the conveyor belts.
- Fixed: there were a few angles where the player or NPCs could shoot, cast spells, or otherwise interact through walls.
- Fixed: game would lock up when talking to the merchant occasionally. There was an infinite loops as he tried to stock unique equipment in some cases.
- Fixed: goblin storm mage (possibly others) was constantly swapping places with player when in melee range.
Update 1.39.5 - September-22-2021
- The game timer will now pause when dialog window is open.
- The game timer will now pause when loading new levels.
- Ranged enemies will now prefer to move to tiles from which they can attack you that are as far away as possible. They should not be rushing towards the player quite so much. Still working on pathfinding, not happy with it yet.
- Wizard Yendor will no longer regen HP. I'd like to let the player chip away at him without having to beat his quite high regen rate.
- Fixed: A crash in which Yendor was killed either while on a bear trap or when being knocked back onto a bear trap.
- Fixed: Charging the Wizard Yendor would cause the portal to spawn beneath the players feet and lock all movement.
Update 1.39.6 - September-23-2021
- Fixed: Killing a War-Engine w/ shields up resulted in a crash.
- Fixed: Game would crash when Yendor tried to blink away from the player while surrounded by force walls.
- Fixed: An enemy whipping the player into a pit would result in the whip graphic stuck on screen for the rest of the game.
- Fixed: At a specific angle, ranged enemies were not shooting but also were not moving into range.
- Fixed: At very specific angles, an enemy would be out of vision (greyed out by fog-of-war), but still attackable. It was actually the vision LoS that was not permissive enough since there was in fact a clear line between the two tiles. So the vision LoS is slightly more permissive to cover this specific angle.
Update 1.39.7 - September-25-2021
- Fixed a crash where tornados would kill a summoner, which would poof his summons, then try to kill the summons (all in the same turn).
- Fixed a crash with error message referencing 'noDuration' and statusEffects. Occurred when a dominated priest was constricted by, in this case, a golem and killed him with smite. There was a very specific order this had to occur in which was a fun little puzzle to figure out :P.
- Ballista's (and other rotating turrets) will no longer rotate and follow the player if they cannot see him.
Update 1.39.8 - September-29-2021
- Fixed a level gen crash in Ice-Caves.
- Dominated NPCs will no longer attack unaware or sleeping enemies.
- Healing potions now also cure Slow.
- Confused enemies will not summon orbs, blades etc. (confusion should not spread to their summons and so the summons would always attack the player).
- Freezing cloud, poison cloud, and dangerous terrain in general will no longer block spawners. If no safe tile is available they will spawn their monsters into dangerous terraion.
- Immobile enemies are now immune to slow (doesn't make sense).
- Players ability: Summon-Skeletons will summon into dangerous terrain if no safe tiles exist.
- Orc-Slavers now have a melee attack (same as Goblin-Slavers).
- The player will no longer perform melee strafe attacks on damage shielded enemies unless using a polearm or wearing Beast-Masters-Gloves.
- Sword-of-Energy now has parry stat added to it (like all other bladed weapons).
- Reduced the cost the merchant charges for enchantments on items from +20GP to +10GP. Continuing to try to make items in the shop more relevant.
Update 1.39.9 - October-02-2021
Hopefully this is the last hot-fix as I'm eager to get going on the next update. So assuming nothing is burning uncontrollably I'm planning on getting to work on 1.40 on Monday. Should be a quicker update since the focus is primarily on fiddling with the race stats and balancing talents and items in general. I'll likely release it somewhat earlier in order to gather feedback.
- Fixed: clicking fountains w/ explore. This was one of those infuriatingly simple fixes. I've seen this reported many times and experienced it myself many times. I've tried to fix it... many times, and was never able to actually replicate it in testing. I tried all sorts of different things. Finally I realized it ONLY happens with energy fountains, and in all my testing I was always using a healing fountain... durrrr. Literally the only issue was that 'Energy Fountain' was misspelled on the list of 'Spotted Objects', the objects that halt exploration and movement.
- Fixed some enemy pathing issues. Umbr had a good screen shot depicting ranged enemies that were out of range that would take the long way around rather than just stepping forward. Their pathfinding was prioritizing the furthest tile in range to the target (ranged enemies try to maintain distance). So this is now adjusted where they consider both the range to target (try to maximize) and the length of the path (try to minimize).
- Fixed: blinking out of a bear trap did not remove the 'immobile' status effect.
- Fixed: bear traps were not ticking their 'immobile' status effect on the first turn.
- Fixed: The-Spider-Queen will no longer become unstable on her own webs.
- Fixed: Dominating a hidden character will now make them unhidden. Previously they would remain hidden and never actually unhide / do anything.
- During my own playthroughs I noticed that there seemed to be a real lack of gold recently. I realized that by reducing the price of many items (in order to make them more affordable), this had the effect of reducing the amount of gold the player gets from selling items. Since the player typically sells more items then he buys, the net effect was slightly less overall gold. I really want the player to have a decent pile of cash before tackling Yendor in order to do final character development choices. So I've adjusted the sell price of items slightly from 0.25% => 0.30%. Not a huge change, but I'll be keeping an eye on this going forward.
- Fixed: enemies were fleeing while constricting the player.
- Fixed: enemies will no longer use their bolt spells when out of LoS of the player (even though they technically have a clear bolt path).
- Fixed another one of those odd angles where enemies were out of LoS but could still shoot the player (player could also shoot them). Actually did a ton of work on LoS and player vision and smoothed out a lot of odd things. Please let me know if you notice any more oddities in this area.