State of the Game Volume 10 - Let's Talk v1.0, Part 2

As we mentioned in our last State of the Game, the feature list for v1.0 was too large to fit into a single post. Rather than keep you waiting for too long, we’re back sooner than usual with the second and final part!

Star Power Overhaul

Right now, Star Power is a basic system: Earn Star Coins → Apply Star Coins → Gain minor bonuses based on Star Rank.

We want it to be more than that.

You’ll still earn and apply Star Coins to rank up your officers, but instead of a static system, you’ll choose specific bonuses for each rank based on the build you want to achieve.

For example, let’s say you’re into Frenetic Warriors—I mean, really into Frenetic Warriors. So, you make all five of your Officers Frenetic Warriors, but you want them to have different builds. With the new system, Star Power can be a powerful tool to fine tune each build.

• One could have Crit Chance, another Attack Power, another Haste, and the last two might focus on Armor, Ward, or Health.

And we’re not stopping at simple stat boosts. As you progress through Star Ranks, you’ll unlock more powerful effects. We won’t spoil too much, as we want the full Star Power system to be a surprise, but to give a very basic example or two, these could be things like:

• Every 4th spell hits +2 extra targets.

• Every 5th basic attack is a guaranteed crit.

You’ll be able to switch these bonuses at any time, for free, with no cooldowns or extra hassle. Build versatility is the goal—giving you the flexibility to tweak and optimize your heroes however you see fit.

Elite Rare Spawns

Current rare spawns are only a little dangerous, but also a little more rewarding. Elite Rare Spawns are on another level entirely.

These special encounters will be quite rare and only exist for a limited time once they appear. They’ll have set roaming paths and will only engage if provoked.

Think of them as walking world bosses. They’ll generally require at least three heroes to take down, and if you rush in unprepared, expect casualties. That said, the rewards will absolutely be worth the risk of a hero or two, offering powerful gear, crafting materials, and in some cases, an exclusive unique item or two.

Risk your heroes and face the challenge before the monster disappears—or wait, get stronger, and be ready next time. This is the kind of decision that will be common with Elite Rare Spawns.

Realm Map Upgrade

Right now, the Realm Map is just a map—it tells you where things are and a little about them.

The new map will track your progress in each zone, providing meaningful rewards for kingdom progression. For the completionists amongst us, you will be able to track:

• Missing discoveries

• Nodes that need upgrading

• Monsters yet to be hunted

• …more!

If there’s something left to do, the new Realm Map will make sure you know about it.

Bringing the Kingdom to Life

The Kingdom will see new life in a variety of different ways! This includes:

• New sounds for UI interactions, building selection, ambient environments, and new music tracks.

• More detailed in-world combat visuals—your heroes won’t just disappear into combat circles anymore. You’ll see them face off against their foes!

• Environmental upgrades—non-hostile critters will populate the world, and dynamic weather will break up those endlessly sunny days.

And don’t worry—if you’d rather keep things quiet, you’ll have detailed sound settings to adjust as needed.

Kingdom Upgrades

Right now, dungeons have ranks that grant better rewards as you level them up—but it’s easy to miss. We’re expanding this system significantly:

• Both gathering nodes and dungeons will be able to rank up.

• The max rank is increasing from 5 to 25. (Subject to change.)

• You’ll be able to customize each upgrade—for example, ranking up Wolf Den lets you choose whether to prioritize gold drops, XP gain, better loot and more.

This means you get to shape your kingdom based on your priorities—whether that’s gear, progression speed, material drops or something else entirely.

Game Pacing

Currently, the game plays like a dungeon hopper—clear a dungeon, grind for materials if needed, then move on to the next dungeon.

We want more depth than that.

With all the new open-world progression systems—guilds, node upgrades, crafting improvements, and more—dungeons will be significantly harder across the board. You’ll need to engage with the non-dungeon content to strengthen your heroes and kingdom before moving on. Your goals will still be centered around dungeon and raid progression, but there will be many different ways to achieve these goals and many different tools to aid your progress.

We want dungeons to be challenging, and raids to be terrifying.

With these added systems and challenges in mind, leveling will be slower out the gate, but you’ll have options to speed it up—acquire gear with XP bonuses, maintain appropriate food buffs and allocate XP bonuses efficiently as you upgrade your dungeon and gather nodes. But focusing only on XP will leave you vulnerable elsewhere. Balance will be key to achieve your main goals in the way you want to.

Critical Strike Chance Rework

Crit Chance is currently quite basic. You land a crit, you do 20% more damage.

We want to improve this system to make it more interesting and far more powerful.

Crit Chance will be split into two stats:

• Base Crit Chance (adds flat % to your crit chance)

• Increased Crit Chance (multiplicative bonus to your Base Crit Chance)

For example:

• If you have 5% Base Crit Chance and gain 2% more Base Crit, you now have 7% crit chance.

• If you instead gain 20% Increased Crit Chance on 5% chance to crit, your new crit chance is 6%.

So why complicate it? To make room for the upcoming crit stacking.

If your crit chance exceeds 100%, you’ll start rolling for stacked critical hits.

• At 120% crit chance, you’ll always crit for 20% bonus damage thanks to your 100% crit chance, but also have a 20% chance to hit a double crit which will add 60% bonus damage total. Explained later.

• At 200% crit chance, you’ll always double crit, resulting in a 60% damage bonus to each hit since critical strikes stack exponentially.

• The first crit earns you 20% bonus damage. The second earns you 40% bonus damage, and the third crit earns you 60%. However, each stack also adds the bonuses of the previous crit, so a triple crit will result in 120% bonus damage.

In a simple test we were able to get a hero dealing roughly 30 DPS to push over 300 DPS just by stacking crits and no other stats.

This opens the door to much more build potential. If you want to bank on crit stacking, the option is there. If you’d rather focus on more consistent damage, that’s still viable too. This small stat change ends up adding several new layers to how you will gear and empower your kingdom, and we are very excited to see the upper limits of potential be reached with a whole slew of upcoming new uniques, the new crafting system, and much more!

Please Let Us Know!

For launch, we’re holding off on adding more stats—while we’ve workshopped over 20 possible stats which we can add to the game, too many would make gearing overwhelming across officers, guild heroes, and world heroes.

That said, we’d love your feedback. Is gearing too simple? Too involved? Would more variety improve builds, or would it add unnecessary complexity? Is the crit rework welcome to making gearing more interesting?

Beyond stats, what excites you most? What concerns you? Is there anything you wish weren’t making it into v1.0? Anything we haven’t mentioned in this and our last State of the Game that you would love to see?

The v1.0 launch is going to be massive in many ways, and we fully expect that by combining our vision with the continued feedback from all of you, it will turn into something so incredibly special, and we cannot wait to see for ourselves what you all think of it!

Thanks for reading, and we will see you all next time!

-Devs