Update 1.20 More Items!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Just wanted to get this modest update out in time for the holidays. Thank you for all of your well wishes, our daughter was born healthy and happy on Nov. 19th. We've been adjusting to having another one around really well and I'm starting to get back into the swing of work. Wanted to get a small item update out for Christmas and it go a little out of hand. Excited to get back into the full swing of things in the new year. Lots of content planned for next year!

With this update I had three goals: #1 Add some new items to the game (we haven't had a good item update in a long time). #2 Smooth out the reward curve so that the player is still getting good upgrades right up to the end of the last branch. Previously I think it often felt like you'd get most of your gear worked out by the mid game and then it was mostly just junk that dropped after that so completing the branches didn't feel quite so rewarding. #3 A bit of class balancing. I still need to setup some official feedback threads to get some more opinions on where to make changes and of course I'm not really concerned with getting it perfect at this stage in development. Just some changes based on my own gameplay.

MAJOR BALANCE:

• Reverted the Talent-Reqs to the old system which I definitely preferred. So this is like Tier-1: 10/12, Tier-2: 12/14, Tier-3: 14/16.

• Boosted Staff damage as they had an odd progression curve where they started stronger than bows and ended weaker. Mages have also been consistently weaker so this should help them. Tier-1: +1DMG, Tier-2: +2DMG, Tier-3: +2DMG.

• Moved the spike in bow damage from Tier-2 to Tier-3 in order to make those end game drops more rewarding. (5DMG, 7DMG, 8DMG) => (5DMG, 6DMG, 8DMG).

• Moved the spike in staff damage from Tier-2 to Tier-3 in order to make those end game drops more rewarding. (6DMG, 8DMG, 9DMG) => (6DMG, 7DMG, 9DMG).

• Charms now only fit in the weapon slots in order to force a harder choice (you have to give up a weapon). Otherwise they are just a light shield. I plan on making charms (esp Tier-3 charms) quite a bit stronger to compensate.

• Increased monster HP in Branch-1 and beyond by about 10% to somewhat offset a lot of the increased play power I'm pushing into the game at that point.

• Yendor now agros immediately (and plays his dialog) upon entering his room. This is actually just an old bug that hadn't been fixed for a long time. Will adjust some of the rooms for difficulty if needed.

LOOT BALANCE:

• Changed the item drop tiers for a smoother progression. You will no longer get Tier-3 drops before the branches but then you will ONLY get Tier-3 drops in the branches. This pretty much guarantees that you continue to get upgrades. Similarly in Fortress/Palace you will ONLY get Tier-2 drops instead of still having Tier-1 mixed in (which is almost always useless at that point).

• Guaranteed Char-Dev Drops: 33%-Attribute, 33%-Talent, 33%-Enchantment => 25%-Attribute, 25%-Talent, 50%-Enchantment. Another part of this upgrade is pushing a bit more power into the equipment side of character development.

• Acquirement Scrolls will not summon modded equipment (its already useful without summoning +2 Tier-3 Weapons).

• Merchant will always stock equipment of the max loot tier for where he spawns (he will never stock Tier-1 items). This makes his stock much more useful.