Beta Update: Merge Changes, Level 6, and more!

Happy new year folks!

With technical efforts like localization and controller support satisified for the the moment, I'm excited to bring new gameplay improvements to Throne of Bone.

Initial Minion Choice

Turn 1 now features a shop choice of 3 minions, the leftmost guaranteed to be the necromancer's "starter minion". This hopefully provides a bit of choice and variety to the beginning of each run.

Minion Merging Changes

Improving or perfecting a minion no longer provides a choice of 3 random merge power-ups, but instead rewards a choice of:

• Strength (doubling this minion’s base stats)

• Skill (doubling the effectiveness of this minion’s abilities), or Resummon (retrigger this minion’s “On Summon” ability) for Ferals with “On Summon” abilities.

• A random power-up from the standard pool.

Strength and Skill stack additively with the previously obtained Strengths and Skills, so you can potentially get the long coveted “Quad Ability” if you’ve chosen Skill each time in a perfected minion’s “merge tree”.

That said, improving a minion no longer automatically doubles the base stats, and Perfecting a minion no longer automatically doubles the effectiveness of abilities. With Skill and Strength, you now get to make the choices of how you want your merged minions to evolve. Or maybe those lowly minions are just a means to hone your necromantic skills, because...

Perfecting a minion rewards a spell choice

Instead of a choice of 3 random higher level minions, perfecting a minion now grants a choice of spells one level higher than the minion! This reward has proved to be considerably more fun than just getting a higher level minion, as there's more variety in the spells available. “But what about level 5 minions?"you ask…?"How can I get a spell one level higher”...

Necromancers can now reach Level 6

Level 6 spells are available as reward when you perfect a level 5 minion. Level 6 can be reached through XP gains, but without sufficient combats to get that much XP naturally, you'll need to pick up extra XP through Rests and Wisps.

Area Changes

The Area 3 (Throne Room) board now stays 2x3 (same as Area 2 Castle), rather than jumping up to 2x4. This gives combat a different flow, and allows players to focus more on improving and perfecting minions. The jump to 2x4 now happens in Area 4 (The Siege). I expect to do some rebalancing based on this change, but I am curious how folks feel about the new flow.