Nomnomicon Difficulty Update! Just in time for Halloween!

Fellow Necromancers,

We apologise for the delay! While the Citadel may be a big place, in truth QuietPenguinGaming is just one person (me), and life has been pretty full-on lately.

Before I fully wrap up development for Necromancer For A Week, there were two things I really wanted to do:

1. Add more enemies

2. Introduce another game mode

With life being so busy, finding an achievable and realistic way to do #2 was proving difficult. I really wanted it to be some sort of draft mode where you pick extra Moves and your team changed between Battles, but I just couldn't figure out a fun solution that I liked and that could be coded in a decent time-frame.

Then while reading over the NFAW feedback form, I came across this submission:

"Silly submission; Nomnomicon - Book with teeth. Starts with 2 or 3 random neutral tome moves (could be at start of fight, could be upon selection. But if upon selection it would be funnier if they remained a mystery until after it is selected) only learns neutral tome moves, even from regular tomes."

This seemed like a fun idea! Having a Monster capable of both starting and learning any Move in the game would satisfy my desire for another game mode that let players combine Moves from many Monsters, while also being something I could realistically implement.

So, without further ado I introduce to you: Nomnomicon Mode!

Selectable just like any other difficulty, this will replace every Tombstone in your run with a Nomnomicon. It will have a random HP value from 35, 40, 45 or 50 (with 35 and 50 being the rarest), and 4 starting Moves chosen at random from any Move in the game EXCEPT a Move your chosen Starter knows or could learn. The first Move is guaranteed to be Offensive, but the other 3 could be anything; same with its Move Tomes. You can even get duplicates!

I've done a lot of playtesting and balance tweaking to figure out the best solution to make this idea fun. It's still random, but in a way that runs still feel winnable and interesting (only 2 or 3 starting Moves ending up being too few, and without a guaranteed Offensive Move too many Nomnomicons were unusable).

With the release of this game mode, I just need to add some more enemies to the game and then I'll be considering NFAW to be a finished project. While I may still continue tweaking balance numbers here and there, and perhaps adding a little bit of content should inspiration strike, I am excited to move on to figuring out what my next game will be.

I want to give a massive thank you to the user who submitted the idea for Nomnomicon, and to everyone for being so patient with me while I got this update out. I know it's been a long time coming!

I'll leave you with a couple of bug fixes and a balance change:

Patch Notes:

Etisara:

• Parasitic Offense - Tooltip reminder text was bugged (wouldn't show Dazed totals correctly, and could go into negative numbers)

• New Strain - Text said 'Forget' twice.

Hexiboar:

• Close Your Eyes - the 'Blind Charge' tooltip still had the old effect text (+4 instead of +3)

Volcurtle:

• Self-Destruct tooltip text wasn't consistent.

Stat-saving:

A couple players have submitted issues where stats weren't saved despite them reanimating that Monster in a run. I've done my best to track down the issue, but I could only reproduce this bug intermittently. If this occurs again, please let me know and be as detailed as possible (eg are you completing the run all in one sitting, or saving and coming back later?).

Balance Changes

Pengilla:

• Bicep Flex - No longer has 'Forget'.

This is a Monster that I've been wanting to give a slight buff to for some time, and while 'Forget' on Bicep Flex was cool from a flavour standpoint (only got 2 biceps to flex!), it was unnecessary from a balance point of view.