Playtest - New class, patches and improvements

I have been hard at work solving bugs, polishing the experience, while also adding a bit of content that I already had prepared. There are also lots of new additions coming (more than 10 new fighter classes almost finished)

Below you will find the latest patch notes of version 0.6.6 and details about the latest mercenary class: the necromancer. The playtest progression is way deeper with the new abilities upgrades, look at this 5 beam upgraded ability for the Reaper Mage class:

Playtest Patch #5 - 0.6.6

New Features

• Added new class: Necromancer.

• Added different types of Skeletons: Skeleton Guard summon stays near the summoner and intercepts nearby threats.

• Skeleton fighter and archer as basic summons.

• Skeleton Vanguard a tank with shield, Skeleton Mage with a weaker lightning strike and Skeleton Wilding with whirlwind.

• Added Channel Life Drain, a charge-based Necromancer drain that releases more siphon waves at higher charge.

• Added summon stat inheritance, allowing summons to scale from their summoner’s base stats.

• Added summon power scaling from ability upgrades.

• Added Mouse camera control while spectating/deathcamera.

• Added season average performance tracking and display in mercenary details.

• Added featured leaderboard stat display when opening a mercenary from leaderboard context.

• Added ability upgrade summary rows to Mercenary Details, showing skill levels and upgrade effects.

• Added knockdown floor/recovery animation.

Changes

• Improved summon spawning so self-cast summons appear in clear nearby positions instead of stacking directly on the caster.

• Added round-start lock/stabilization so units stay paused and stable during countdown.

• Added safety snapping to prevent fighters from being pushed outside valid arena bounds.

• Improved raised skeleton behavior with summoner metadata, cleanup tracking, spawn animation, and stat records.

• Improved AI range detection for summon abilities and effects marked as ranged attacks.

• Improved AI summon usage with a summon condition to avoid over summoning.

• Improved AI target selection for summoner guards, so that they die and try to avenge their master.

• Improved Life Drain targeting, charge scaling and healing factor.

• Improved ability upgrade progression display in Mercenary Details.

• Improved leaderboard availability so current-season leaderboards show data from 1 battle by default.

• Improved average damage/healing display by rounding values consistently.

• Improved market listing price caps so the UI respects the player listing max price.

• Removed random teams from outside the league having 50.000 and more budget.

• Improved round-end cleanup by canceling active casts before ending the round, fixing some crashes.

• Added spawn animations to mercenary, champion and summon sprites.

Balance

• Nerfed Thunderclaw HP from 185 to 170.

• Nerfed Thunderclaw move speed from 175 to 165.

• Removed Storm Counter as a guaranteed Thunderclaw ability.

• Increased Thunderclaw Pounce cooldown from 7s to 9s.

• Reduced Thunderclaw Dash knockback from 600 to 300, while adding 20 impact damage.

• Moved Static Overload from tier 2 to tier 3.

• Increased Static Overload cast time from 0.3s to 1.0s, but allowed casting while moving.

• Reduced Storm Counter cooldown from 8s to 5s.

• Changed Shadow Poison to tick faster (more total damage).

• Adjusted several ability upgrade families and scaling hooks for projectile, burst, chain, lightning, ice, and summon abilities.

• Adjusted Necromancer summon cooldowns, mana costs, and ability weights.

• Adjusted Skeleton Guard as a high-defense protective summon with shield bash utility.

• Adjusted Skeleton Mage as a fragile ranged summon with low-damage lightning.

• Adjusted summon cleanup/death behavior so skeleton summons vanish with a puff instead of leaving normal corpses.

Fixed

• Fixed several combat performance issues around VFX pooling.

• Fixed VFX pool memory growth by freeing excess ready instances.

• Fixed repeated procedural texture creation for shadows, cast flashes, and particle gradients.

• Fixed round-start pause/countdown state leaking or allowing pause input during intro locks.

• Fixed casts resolving after round end.

• Fixed spectator draw handling for league spectator battles.

• Fixed summoned unit kill credit so kills can be credited back to the summoner.

• Fixed player summons damage numbers to show with "PlayerOnly" seting.

• Fixed skeleton summons leaving dead bodies behind instead of cleaning themselves up with the new PuffVFX.

• Fixed summon visuals sometimes missing sprite frames after spawn.

• Fixed animation fallbacks trying to play empty or unplayable animations.

• Fixed spawn/get-up animation fallback logic for summons and knockdowns.

• Fixed knockdown animation conflicts with entangle, shield bash, headbutt, and other bash-style effects.

• Fixed melee hitbox payload values leaking between swings by resetting swing state after each swing.

• Fixed projectile and melee status applications so suppressed floor knockdown animation is passed through correctly.

• Fixed Glacial Nova spike setup for typed spike scenes.

• Fixed round-start motion drift by stabilizing mercenary movement during countdown.

• Fixed mercenaries being knocked or moved outside arena spaces in ArenaAztec.

• Fixed reported dash icon assignments and updated dash ability icons.

• Fixed Spirit Shield icon assignment.

• Fixed average damage simulation/stat recording updates.

• Fixed Hetuxo AI/config issues reported during testing.

• Fixed Cup History/Fighter Stats UI entry styling and localization sync.

• Fixed market list price UI exceeding the allowed maximum listing value.

For everyone new joining or reading about the game, you are welcome to join the game and the discord. Any feedback is welcome. Thanks again!

Franz.