Narrative Update + Hero Ability Rework for new Demo Patch

Narrative and Player Tips

The full-release is planned to include a meta-narrative that spans across runs and explores some of the relationships between the different bosses as well as the history of the Shareholders and its company. Much of this will be explored through short pre-combat dialog scenes that will progress the story as the player faces each boss over multiple runs.

The demo now includes some narrative events for the demo bosses.

This system is also utilized to help provide useful tips to players during their first few runs, explaining concepts not covered by the tutorial like hero pathing and building movement.

Gameplay Changes:

• New Minion Headquarters Building. This is a special building which starts in the dungeon after the player has unlocked the Yorick's Skull Memento. The Minion Headquarters can be upgraded to increase the draw size of the player as well as how many minions can be held in hand at the end of each night.

• Hero ability rework. Some hero abilities have been reworked to create more cohesive enemy designs. Previously, a high-level hero is spawned with a random set of hero Items specific to their class. Now, most of the high-level heroes spawn with a single class-specific item that scales based on their level. In addition, more of the hero abilities synergize with the number of heroes in the party, making larger parties in later encounters more challenging.

• New Entrance Spawn. The entrance spawning logic has been changed so that instead of spawning from the dungeon chest, new entrances spawn from a combination of existing chambers and existing entrances, leading to a tighter map and allowing players to utilize some of their existing defenses for the new waves.

• RemovedTutorial Pacingthe tutorial option has been removed from the main menu. Players launching the demo will automatically be dropped into the tutorial for their first game. In addition, the Yorick's Skull and Weird Cauldron mementos are unlocked after a player completes two runs.

• Added an option for players to reset their game files.

Balance Changes

• Veteran and Heroic difficulty includes increased health scaling for heroes with each infamy level. This should make these difficulty levels more challenging for experienced players.

• Mastermind's Grand Plan ability limited to 5 other buildings.

• Slimes no longer have fragile and the budding ability has been changed to add a temporary copy of the slime when drawn .

• "The Gem of Intellect" tool upgrade has been split into four separate tools: each one converting either build, mine, upgrade or channel of a single minion into wild skills.

• Soul of Ice spell buffed with increased stun duration.

• The Chest can now be moved like other buildings.

• Mary of Nijmegen Tome reduced maximum burn stacks applied from 10 to 5.

• Rangers spawn with Cloak of Feathers: which applies hidden to nearby heroes after taking damage. Cooldown scaling with the level of the ranger.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed bug report url

• Fixed issue where sometimes minions can spawn in the same location as a entrance pillar and not participate in combat

• Fixed graphical issue with traps that replace the dungeon floor