Balance Changes, UI Fixes, and a New Grimoire: Weekly Update #7

Weekly Update!

Hello! Welcome to our Seventh Weekly Update!

We remain on schedule for our 1.0 release in August!

Just like all weekly updates these patch notes are divided into the Default Branch and Beta Branch Updates. This week the previous Beta Branch has been rolled into the new Default Branch completely.

The new Beta is focused on ability/combat reblancing and UI readability/standardization. The game is starting to feel a lot more like a completed product to me and I hope you all feel the same way =)

Enjoy!

DEFAULT BRANCH UPDATE:

NEW FEATURES

The biggest change this update is stealth is now usable outside of dungeons. Its tied to a toggle you can turn off and on at will with the drawback that when its own you move twice as slow (two ticks pass vs one so enemies will move faster than you).

Sneaking near mobs slowly trains your Stealth skill, so you can finally level it without ever setting foot in a dungeon. Fair warning though, stealth doesn't have a 100% successrate. If an enemy is higher level than you they have a chance to see through your cover and give chase. Since you are moving at half speed that means they'll instantly enter combat with you if they are withing one grid of you when you're spotted.

This stealth rework should satify any player who wants to live out the true rogue playstyle =)

Hope you all enjoy!

Open World Stealth

• Press X to toggle stealth on and off. It is off by default and toggling is free, much like how Z lets you wait in place. Nothing changes while it is off.

• While stealthed you move at half speed but draw no new aggro. Slip right past enemies without them chasing you.

• Going stealth will not shake an enemy that is already chasing you. An active chase still runs its course and ends after its normal duration, so plan your escape before you are spotted.

• Sneaking next to a mob trains your Stealth skill, which means you can now level Stealth entirely out in the world.

• Detection. A much higher level enemy can see through your stealth and give chase anyway. Be careful when sneaking in higher level areas.

• Clear visual cues. The controls line shows the toggle state inline as X=stealth(OFF) or X=stealth(ON), and your @ marker on the map greys out while you are sneaking so it should be easy to tell if you're currently in stealth at a glance.

Obcassus Patrols

• Three new Obcassus enemies, the Herald of Obcassus, the Obcassian Swornsword, and the Obcassus Devoutee, now spawn and roam the land around the Lair of Obcassus.

• They appear over time and spread outward from the Lair, and they stick around across visits until you clear them out. This should add a layer to the game where now the player has a small penalty if they take their time as they'll have to grind through more enemies to get to the final boss the more time has passed since the games start.

• Each of the new patrol mobs have a unique ability kit that intentionally requires strategy to deal with. Swornsword's taunt that locks your targeting, the Devoutee's battlefield healing, and the Herald's void bolt, weakening curse, and stun. You'll need to prioritize your targets and use your own abilties well to avoid being at a disadvantage against them.

• The Monster Grimoire lists their real moves so you can study them and plan ahead.

Balance Changes

• Balance changes were mostly smaller tweaks to certain abiltiies or damage numbers

• The reduced time to level from last week remains as well as the increased player damage

• Still working on finding a good balance in player damage, enemy health, and overall time to kill.

• Slowly working my way through abilities to make them feel more accurate to their tier, mana cost, and class identity.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a double Press Enter prompt when learning Basic Arcana from a book or an NPC.

• Removed a large amount of unused legacy code tied to the old patrol system, keeping things clean for future updates.

• Removed a few more annoying bugs that had been affecting status affects

• Fixed some aggro ranges

• Changed the way enemy generation works to reduce file size

BETA BRANCH UPDATE:

NEW FEATURES

This weeks my main focus for this update is on balance changes. I went through the entire ability list from top to bottom and made sure every ability actually behaves the way its should for its tier. Some abilties with multiple effects were also simplified. That is all fixed now, and on top of it the whole status system got rebuilt so it is consistent and it scales properly into the late game. I also added a finite quanitity mechanic for items so you will no longer be able to buy an infinite number of items from any shop. The number of items a shop has it based on the shops focus (ex. an Alchemist Shop will have more potions than a General Store) and the item itself (Armorsmiths will only sell a couple pieces of each armor type they wont have 50 sets of armor lying around). Stock automatically refreshes on a global timer. This should help make the world feel alot more realistic.

The secondary focus this week is readability. The View Abilities menu, the Prepare Abilities menu, all buying menus, all selling menus, and the Monster Grimoire all got reworked into clean aligned columns that you can actually read at a glance, with numbers, tags, and quantities that line up instead of drifting all over the place. Everything should feel much more uniform and clean!

And finally, the companion change I promised last time is done. The three starting companions have left the front porch of Mount Greywind and gone out into the world, and two brand new residents have moved in to take their place. The three previous starting companions are place along the three main roads out of the starting zone where you can recruit them after completing their quest.

This update was a big step to the final version of the game and I hope you all like what the game is becoming!

Stealth Polish

• Tightened up how movement feels while you are sneaking. Stealthed movement is now throttled to a single deliberate step at a time, so holding down a direction can no longer "run" you across the map and straight into a mob you meant to creep around. Combined with the half speed drawback, sneakingshould feel more thematic and there should be more reasons not to be in sneak than before (ie wanting to travel on roads quickly).

• The flicker caused by switching off or on Stealth has also been fixed.

Combat and Ability Overhaul

• Every ability description was audited against what the ability actually does. Stale multipliers, missing damage numbers, wrong durations, and flat out false claims were all corrected across the board and the Monster Grimoire copies were re synced to match.

• Passive abilities all work now. Damage reduction, dodge, lifesteal, damage reflect, magic barrier, bonus crit, and flat passive defense were previously dead on many abilities. They are all live and are summed properly, so stacking two dodge passives actually gives you more dodge, etc.

• Damage multipliers are written in one consistent form everywhere now (2.0x, 5.0x, 20.0x) instead of a mix of "200%", "Triple damage", and "x". Percentages are reserved for buffs, debuffs, HP thresholds, and proc chances, this should make everything a lot more readable at a glance.

• Recategorized some damage types to better fit certain abilties, so an ability themed around fire actually rolls fire, an arrow that should bleed bleeds, and so on.

• Passive defense is now folded into your DEF stat on the HUD and stats screen, so you can actually see it instead of it being an invisible bonus.

Status Effects Rework

• Every status is now uniform. A burn is the same burn no matter who or what applies it, same for bleed, poison, decay, frostbite, blind, corrosion, and daze. Before this, the same status could be strong or weak depending on which ability applied it. Because its all percentage based it now scales automatically to higher tiers so you might be able to find a place for a low level ability in your kit even if your tier is well above it

• Non status damage over time effects are also now percentage based (a percent of the target's max HP per turn) instead of a flat number. DoTs scale with the enemy and stay relevant in the late game instead of falling off to nothing against big health pools. This matches the status rework and should again help lower tier abilities be more viable later in the game.

• Statuses now stack additively on duration. If an enemy is burning with 2 turns left and you hit it with another fire spell, the burn becomes 5 turns. The damage per turn does not increase, only the timer.

• Every damage type now has a themed status roll. Slashing and Piercing weapons have a chance to cause Bleed, Blunt can Daze, Dark can Blind, on top of all the existing elemental types. Physical and Arcane are left as pure damage on purpose.

• Creatures that should not bleed (undead, constructs, elementals, and gods) correctly ignore bleed from every source now.

Ability Menu and Prepare Menu Redesign

• The View Abilities menu is now a clean column grid: Name, Damage Type, Tier, and MP cost, all aligned.

• Enter an ability's number to expand its full description in place, and you can have several expanded at once. Press it again to collapse.

• The Prepare menu shares the exact same layout and ordering, and you can jump straight between View and Prepare with a single key without backing all the way out so it should be easy to switch between the two when deciding what you want to prepare and choosing between abilities.

• Damage type is shown as a clean tag, dual type abilities display correctly (for example Fire+Cold) also types in general should be easier to read so you know what chance you have to proc and effect.

Combat Menu Cleanup

• Your basic Attack now shows its weapon damage type inline, so you know whether you are swinging Slashing, Piercing, Blunt, and so on.

• Ability rows in combat are aligned into Name, [Type], and MP columns for both you and your companions, and each shows a quick damage preview.

Monster Grimoire Rework

• The Grimoire now opens on a threat tier index (Weak, Average, Strong, Very Strong, Deadly, Very Deadly, Do Not Approach, and Run) so you can browse enemies by how dangerous they are. I hope this makes the grimoire feel like you are the one actually writing down these entries.

• Only the threat tiers you have actually recorded something in show up, and they are numbered cleanly with no gaps.

• Entries are condensed. Enter an enemy's number to expand its full ability descriptions in place, the same way the ability menus new drop down menus work.

• Removed the hard stats and scaling numbers. The Grimoire now focuses on where the enemy is found, its weaknesses and immunities, and any abilities you have.

• Enemies are now recorded the moment you enter combat with them, not only when you kill them, so fleeing a zone boss still logs it in your book.

• Fixed the "Found in" line, which used to show Unknown for most enemies. It now shows the correct spawn zones.

Shops and Per Store Inventory

• Every shop now has its own randomized stock that can sell out and restocks over time. You can no longer buy infinite copies of everything from one vendor.

• Sold out items and items you cannot afford are greyed out.

• Wandering merchants and caravans carry their own separate stock, and travelers passing through a town will slowly thin that town's shelves, so what is available shifts as the world moves around you.

Shop UI

• The Sell menu now shows an aligned quantity column that matches the Buy menu layout.

• All buy lists (town shops, caravans, and wandering trader trades) render through one shared row format, so prices, stock counts, and greyed out states are consistent everywhere.

• One time purchases like hiring an adventurer, hideout upgrades, and recruiting residents grey out when you cannot afford them, matching the same clean look.

Companions

• Two new companions have moved into Mount Greywind: Sebas, the ever composed Greywind family butler, and Adriana, a rescued captive with a secret or two. Both have fully unique dialogue, bond tiers that unlock deeper conversations over time, and their own personal quest chain.

• Xen, Elara, and Una are now recruited out in the open world instead of waiting at Mount Greywind. Each has their own recruit quest.

• Companion recruit quests and personal quests show up in your quest log so you can track them.

• Talking to a companion cycles their dialogue in place instead of opening a fresh window every line, and companion class evolutions now offer next tier classes that match that companion's fighting style.

Crafting

• New Improved potion recipes let you combine 10 basic potions into a single potion that heals a percentage of your max HP or MP. These scale, so they stay useful deep into the game where flat heals stop mattering.

• These recipes are specific zone boss drops, folded into the existing zone boss recipe rewards. Get to hunting some zone bosses for them remember you can use the local Town Crier to find where the local zone bosses are!

Balance Changes

I am still hunting for the right balance between player damage, enemy health, and overall time to kill, so this is an ongoing effort, but here is what changed in detail this update (minus the status things we already covered):

• Iron Will was reworked from a flat 15 percent damage reduction to a straightforward +6 Defense.

• Cheap Shot lost its 30 percent attack debuff and is now a clean 2 turn stun with no damage.

• Status damage over time was rebalanced to be percentage based and uniform. For reference: burn and bleed are 5 percent of max HP per turn for 3 turns, poison is 4 percent per turn for 5 turns, and decay is 5 percent per turn for 3 turns plus a defense cut.

• Status debuffs are now uniform: frostbite is a flat 20 percent attack reduction, blind is a 40 percent hit chance reduction, and corrosion and armor break are a 20 percent defense reduction, each lasting 3 turns.

• "Nuking" abilities were moved up to Tier 7 where they belong, instead of being available too early, and Singularity now costs you down to 1 HP to fire, so it is a little less brokenly op than it was.

• The four Force abilties (Chaos Bolt, Arcane Overload, Reality Fracture, and Dimensional Rift) were rekeyed to scale with your magic power instead of being flat, with tier appropriate values (100, 125, 165, and 2500). Executes were also opened up to a magical scaling route.

• 21 combo abilities had bloated extra debuffs stripped off them so they are not doing five things at once.

• Drain Soul was retiered from Tier 2 to Tier 3.

• The reduced time to level and the increased player damage from the previous update both remain in place.

Bug Fixes

• Death is now a true reload of your last save. Death now cleanly restores your last save and rolls the world back with it.

• Fixed a bug where a world recruited companion could end up duplicated after dying and reloading. There are now guards that prevent a companion from existing both in your party and as a recruit marker at the same time, and it will even repair a save that already got into that state.

• Fixed several status effect bugs, including statuses being applied twice, weaker versions overwriting stronger ones, and stun handling that could make an enemy accidentally stun itself.

• Fixed descriptions that claimed a chance to stun or blind ("25 percent chance to stun") when the effect was actually guaranteed. They now correctly say the effect will land.

• Removed the false "ignores defense" and "ignores armor" text from abilities that did not actually ignore defense.

• Fixed the View Abilities menu piling up old frames and flickering when the list was tall.

• Fixed the Monster Grimoire showing "Unknown" for most enemy locations.

• Fixed shop and sell columns getting shoved out of alignment by large item quantities and colored text.

• Fixed a duplicate ability entry and a dead crit buff.

• Settings like text speed, player color, difficulty, and autosave now save and load properly with each save file.

• Changed the way enemies are generated and stored to reduce the save and file size, and cleaned out a large amount of old unused code left over from earlier systems.

• Restored four classes that were referenced by evolution chains but had gone missing: Gladiator, Void Blade, Bone Breaker, and Pit Fighter, completing their upgrade paths.

• Winning an arena tournament now awards the Grand Champion title, which was previously impossible to earn. That title unlocks the classes gated behind it.

• Eleven abilities that were technically impossible to learn (their class list did not include any class at the right tier) are now learnable.

Future Plans

This week I plan to continue playtesting to find the right balance to make the game feel competitve and enjoyable.

Please let me know if you have an idea for the game or if you run into any bugs!

Thanks for playing and have a great weekend!

-Lansdolli