Alchemortis is available for playtesting!

Alchemortis is available for playtesting!

The fourth Alchemortis playtest is now live for everyone!

A lot has changed in this version of the game. I would love to hear your thoughts about the changes. Please be sure to join the Discord to leave your feedback:

https://discord.gg/4DYepmB3dj

I hope you enjoy, and thank you for your support!

Firebelley

Patch Notes

Map Gameplay Overhaul

The map has received a significant rework.

• The map is no longer free roam. The map is now vertically oriented, with directed paths to keep the player moving forward. This change should create more meaningful navigation decisions.

• The Inquisition strength mechanic and notoriety penalty have been removed.

• Event frequencies and combat have been rebalanced to accommodate this new map structure.

Board Overhaul

• Players now start with a 3x3 board, reduced from 4x4

• The board cell unlock system has been removed

• Board growth is now guaranteed after boss fights

Boss Souls

A new boss soul reward system has been added:

• Defeating a boss now awards a boss soul, a new reagent item

• One or more boss abilities are captured as an absorbed ability and applied via alchemy

• Boss soul sizes are randomized, with different sizes granting different ability counts

Enemy Board Preview

Players can now preview the enemy board during combat. The preview includes:

• What kinds of damage and statuses the enemy board will apply over 30 turns

• The exact enemy board layout, which enables players to inspect enemy items prior to combat

• Data like the health of the combat encounter and rewards

Alchemy Overhaul

Alchemy has been significantly reworked for clarity and consistency:

• Turn cooldowns are no longer affected by input reagents and are no longer randomized

• Players can now take all alchemy outputs, instead of choosing only one

• All current abilities and enchants of items are preserved in the output; only 1-2 new abilities are added or randomized based on inputs

• Enchants are preserved on outputs

• Item tiers, crit chance, and critical multipliers are no longer randomized

Ability Changes

Items now have a limited number of ability slots based on their size:

• Alchemy fills empty ability slots first. Abilities are only randomized if no empty slots remain

• Larger items receive more ability slots, one additional slot per 3 item cells

• Reagents that add guaranteed abilities have been reworked to fit this system

• Items that naturally exceed their calculated slot count (e.g. Aberration) have their slot count overridden appropriately. This makes Aberration a 1x1 item with support for 6 abilities!

Additionally, the concept of "Innate" abilities has been introduced. Innate abilities are not modifiable or transferrable via alchemy.

Currency Overhaul

The currency system has been reworked for clarity:

• Alchemical Residue has been renamed to Dust

• Alchemy now costs a flat amount of Dust

• Items now sell for Dust instead of Blood

• Events purchased via the shop now cost Dust instead of Blood

Legendary Item Rework

Legendary items have been significantly reworked:

• Legendary items are no longer immutable. They can be altered via alchemy, upgrades, etc. like normal items

• Legendary items now receive additional ability slots

• Legendary items are set to maximum tier automatically

• Legendary abilities are now treated as innate

Meta-Progression Framework

A full meta-progression system has been implemented, though is not finalized.

• Goal-based unlocks tied to various stats like victories, damage dealt, etc.

• Characters, items, item bundles, and artifacts can all be unlocked in accordance with their unlock conditions

• Statistics are tracked permanently across runs and trigger unlocks when thresholds are met. This also sets up the ability to introduce a statistics screen for those of you curious how many millions of damage you've dealt :)

• In-game loot tables now only include items that have been unlocked (or which have no unlock conditions). Unlocking items happens after completing or abandoning a run. Unlocked items will not appear during an in-progress run, in order to preserve the consistency of map seeds.

Save System

A comprehensive save system has been implemented across the game. The system now persists all critical run state, including:

• Ability internal state (e.g. Flagrum, Legendary Fire ability)

• Artifact internal state (e.g. Unicorn Horn, Gauntlet)

• Map state and map node changes made via Obelisk

• Alchemy pot state, including board size increase from Death Orchid, and the seed for the next random output to prevent save-scumming alchemy results

The game is saved automatically and frequently at appropriate points. You may quit out of the game at any time and return to your saved run. Abandoning a run clears your saved run, allowing you to start a new run. If the save frequency feels off to you, please let me know!Additional save system features include save file migration support, a backup save file written before each save, and file saving in a background thread to prevent hitches and stutters. NOTE: Saves will not be carried over from the playtest to the full game. During development, all save files will be wiped until release. As such, there is not currently Steam cloud save support, though this will be implemented prior to the release of the full game.

Item Rendering Refactor

Items have been refactored to greatly improve performance:

• Instantiating 100 items in one frame went from over 100ms to 8ms. This allows displays like the Unlocks Screen to render all items within the time of 1 frame.

Clickable Color Scheme Update

All interactive elements have been updated to use a consistent and brighter color scheme:

• New, more vibrant Alchemy pot art, including a new liquid shader

• All event art, start menu buttons, recenter camera button, auto resolve button, drawer buttons, resurrection buttons, skip button

New Items

• Giant Mushroom

• Giant Mushroom Spore

• Strange Man (something stirs beneath his flesh)

• Sweet Roll

• Stonehew

• Phalanx

• Priest

• Stone of the Ancients

• Sword in the Stone

• Anvil

• Cursed Figurehead

• Crystal Ball

• Snake-Head Whip

• Mimic

• Idol

• Witch Hut

• Elf in a Jar

• Fist of Anger

• Small Boss Soul

• Medium Boss Soul

• Large Boss Soul

New Reagents

• Gemstone: Adds 1 empty ability slot to an item

• Mystery Tonic: Adds a random ability from any item in the game to the alchemy output

• Alkahest (reworked): Now strips all abilities from items

• Honey (reworked): Protects the abilities of adjacent items, preventing any changes from being applied

New Enchants

Enchants to apply each of the 5 item tags have been added.

New Artifacts

• AdjustedTactics ManualTurn cooldown reduced for allied minions, all other allied items have increased turn cooldown

• Adamantine Hammer: Items are upgraded by an additional tier whenever upgrading

• Hands of the Fallen: If the player board contains only weapons, grants those items crit chance, critical multiplier, and echo

• Chipped Whetstone: Increases weapon turn cooldown by one and increases weapon critical chance by 10%

• Cauldron Scrub Brush: Alchemy costs 1 less Dust

• Subjugator's Ring: 50% chance to award an enemy item after combat victory

New unlock conditions have been added for the following artifacts:

• Adamantine Hammer

• Noble Pedigree

• Sapling

• Subjugator's Ring

• Thorns

• Cloak

Innate Abilities Added to Large Items

Several large items have received innate abilities to make them more appealing choices:

• Giant Squid

• Iron Maiden

• Mosquito Swarm

• Skeleton Dragon

• Tapeworm

• Archangel Melzehel

• Mayor Albrecht

Tutorial

The tutorial has been reworked to be more interactive. Players are now presented tutorial guides contextually based on what's happening in-game. Tutorial progress is saved, and players will not see the same tutorial popup twice.

UI & Unlock Screens

There is a new unlocks menu to track all unlocks.

Combat VFX

New visual effects have been added during combat, to more clearly indicate what items are doing.

Status Icons

All description and status icons have been updated, and several new icons have been added to further differentiate the different buffs, debuffs, and statuses.

Language & Clarity Pass

All references to "cards" have been replaced with "items." Items are now what you place on your board.

• Preserve has been renamed to Armor

• "Converts all Preserve to Fire" is now "Converts all armor that this item applies into Fire"

• Holy, necrotic, and critical chance descriptions improved

• Instances of "double", "triple", "2x", "3x" damage in descriptions have been replaced with the calculated numbers instead

• Innate abilities now display a tag noting they cannot be transferred via alchemy

Gameplay Adjustments

• Poison now applies every 5 turns instead of every turn

• Armor nerfed by adding a turn lifetime of 20

• Items rewarded from combat now scale in tier based on the combat difficulty

• Item ability numbers reduced across the board to decrease combat burstiness

• Fire Arrow ability now works with any item

• Snail Cat nerfed

• Alembic buffed

• Dragon Scales conversion ratio nerfed

• Necrosis threshold increased

• Staff of Vel'a reworked

UI & Controls

• Tooltip toggle button removed. A held keybind (ALT) now disables tooltips while held

• Sell and stash text in inventory made more readable

• Scrollbar, default panel container, and buttons updated (buttons are now red/orange by default, brighter when selected)

• Mouse buttons have been swapped: LMB is now used for quick move and purchasing, RMB is now used for inspection

• Item tags have been added to tooltips

• Icons added for each item tag

• Reroll text is now always visible in the artifact screen

• Artifacts are now always visible and no longer hidden at any point

• A button has been added to the main menu to access the unlocks screen

• Items now quick-move back to their original positions when used in events such as enchant and upgrade

One Additional Surprise

There is a surprise waiting for you in this build which I have not noted in these patch notes nor shown on stream. Feel free to share your discovery in the Discord server (but please use the spoiler tag!).