WZRDS 1.0.3

1.0.3

New and Improved

General

-added run save mechanic. your run now saves on entering and leaving a shop

A new boss

Added a brand new boss, the Lightning Stormrider, including a new unlock and achievement. The Lightning Stormrider has a 50% chance to spawn instead of the Pumpkin Poltergeist.

• Added a boss health bar underneath the wave timer

• Defeating the boss now automatically ends the wave

Player

• added a slight acceleration and decceleration to the dash.

• it now takes 0.1s to complete a dash

ui

I've made multipe changes to the UI across the game to make it more responsive and informative, and easier to navigate

wizard selection

Made the Wizard selection screen easier to navigate

• removed the arrows, replaces with a wizard grid

• Moved the Ascension selection to it's own dedicated screen

• Buttons are larger and more visible

• Added a summary box that tallys every selected difficulty modifier

shop

• Updated discipline display

• weapons in shop now show increase to disciplines

• added sound effects to shop

• added various flashes to better indicate why you cant buy a given item or weapon

• you can now see a summary of your main attack and ability by hovering over the wizard sprite in the shop

pause screen

I have completely redone the pause screen. previously just quickly hashed together, now

• allows you to view stats, weapons, inventory, and difficulty selection

• allows you to quit game, go to main menu, or change options

• now accessible on gamepads (X on Xbox controllers, Square on Playstation controllers)

end of run screen

• now shows difficulty modifiers

• now shows round you lost on/boss you defeated

• now has a quick restart button on loss

• now has an ascend button on victory

balance

general mechanics

The level curve felt off. It felt levels came too fast in the early rounds and too slow in the later rounds

• completely redid the level up curve

• expected levels is 2-3 per wave before exp modifiers

• this should make it overall easier to level up, especially in later rounds

• challenge waves no longer give extra exp

• max health gained on level up 2->1

I believe that the dungeon traps are one of the more compelling aspects of WZRDs, and locking that behind 4 levels of difficulty mean very few people get to experience that. According to steam achievements, only 1% of players have unlocked dungeon traps

• Dungeon traps now have a 25% chance to spawn after wave 1

• The fourth tier of difficulty remain unchanged

weapons

I have decided to completely overhaul weapon upgrades. On level up, weapons previously gained 2x damage. this makes sense for weapons who's only goal is to do damage, but for weapons that traded raw damage for special effects, it meant that they didn't get as much of a boost and thus fell off. Instead, Given that each weapon has 2 stats that scales with the elemental stats, I decided to move some of the power increase out of the damage and into the other stat.

• weapons no longer give a 2x damage boost on leveling up

• weapons now gain a 1.5x boost to both of their elemental stats on level up

These changes did affect some weapons more than others, so I have made additional balance changes

• [buff]poison staff no longer gains range with plant power. instead, bramble lifetime scales with plant power

• [nerf]necronomicon +10 cooldown (50->60)

• [nerf]Eruptome deals significantly less damage

• [nerf]Seed Shot level 3 brambles -2 damage,-2 pierce

• [buff]Steam Scepter +1 base damage (1->2)

• [nerf]Steam Scepter level 3 ability 3xArea->2xArea

• [nerf]Knockback on Tome of Skies and Wind WZRD base attack reduced

• [buff]Wind Mage base attack +1 Damage (6->7)

• [buff]Ice Mage base attack +2 Damage (6->8)

• [nerf]Fire Mage base attack -1 Damage (3 -> 2)

• [buff]Fire Mage base attack scales with Fire Power

• [nerf]Plant Mage base attack range no longer scales with Plant Power

• [buff]Plant Mage base attack trail lifetime now scales with Plant Power

• [nerf]Corrupt Mage base attack -1 range (3->2)

• [buff]Cane of Thorns cooldown -10 (60->50)

• [buff]Cane of Thorns level 3 deals 4 damage a second

• [buff]Cane of Thorns +1 base damage (2->3)

• [nerf]Scroll of Cursed Flame -2 base burn damage (4->2)

• [nerf]Scroll of Frostflame ticks less often and has less ticks

• [buff]Scroll of Frostflame slow now scales with Ice power

• [nerf]Hailstorm Staff slow no longer scales with Ice power

• [buff]Hailstorm Staff damage now scales with Ice power

• [nerf]Orb of Polar Night level 3 deals -10 damage (20 -> 10)

• [nerf]Orb of Polar Night +10 cooldown (30 -> 40)

• [buff]Orb of Polar Night armor reduction increased by 1 (1->2)

  • Orb of Polar Night should now be a stronger, but more support oriented weapon

• [nerf]Heart of the Jungle +10 cooldown (50->60)

Items

Now that the weapons gain less stats on level up, relying on their elements is more important. Thus, I have raised every element giving item by 33%.

I have also made additional changes to certain items

• midas finger now gives +1 income (2->3)

• [nerf]shield amulet is unique

• [nerf]shield amulet cost +2

• [nerf]knight shield +25% iframes -> +16%

• [buff]knight shield unique -> limited(3)

Shop

When watching some playtesters play, it became clear that dumping all of your money into shop level and bee-lining to high powered items was an extremely consistent unintended strategy. rather than strictly nerf this strategy, I decided to rebalance the rate at which the shop levels naturally, adjust the cost, and add some benefit to keeping the shop lower level.

• shop now takes 3/4/5/6 pips to level up

• paying for shop levels costs +3 gold (5->8)

  • overall cost to max out shop has gone down

• shop now has a 6th level that takes 7 pips

• reroll cost is now equal to the shop's level

  • this means rerolls are cheaper early and more expensive later in a run

• shop can no longer have weapons you have already maxed

  • while technically a bug fix, it affects shopping enough to mention it here

waves and enemies

I decided to reduce the default health scaling from 20%/wave to 10%, so enemies feel less damage spongy at the end, including the Boss.

Even after adjusting the weapon's power, I felt the game was too easy at low difficulty, to the point where making good decisions didn't matter.

As such, I raised the base spawnrate of enemies by 50%. From there, I reduced the amount of additional enemies per wave, so the game doesnt end up an un-killable cluster

after that, I decided to look at each enemy one by one

• [Nerf]Earth Golems drop -1 exp when killed

• [Buff]Cloud Spirits drop +1 exp when killed

• [Nerf]Cloud Spirits lighting bolt deals +1 damage (2->3)

• [Buff]Slightly reduced amount of Fire Ghosts on wave 6

• [Nerf]Fire Ghosts deal +2 damage on Dash (3 -> 5)

• [Buff]Firespitter has half the spawnrate across the board

• [Buff]Firespitter has +50% exp drop (4->6)

• [Nerf]Firespitter has +25 base health (35 ->60)

• [Nerf]Firespitter flame does +2 damage (1->3)

• [Buff]Stone Titans have half the spawrate across the board

• [Buff]Stone Titans have +60% exp (5->8)

• [Nerf]Stone Titans have +50 base health (50->100)

• [Nerf]Stone Titans deal +5 damage on ground slam (5->10)

I felt the Pumpkin Poltergeist boss fight, while fun to try to dodge, was ultimately a bit of a pushover, not able to really a run threatening challenge like intended

• [Nerf]Pumpkin Poltergeist boss spin projectiles now deal +6 damage (2 -> 8)

• [Nerf]Pumpkin Poltergeist boss spin projectiles now ignore 3 dodge and 3 armor

• [Nerf]Pumpkin Poltergeist boss +3000 health (5,000 -> 8,000)

  • Boss still has less health after the hp scaling overhaul

• [Nerf]Pumpkin Poltergeist summons +6 health (4 -> 10)

difficulty modifiers

The difficulty modifiers start off with and end with adjusting the enemy's stats. while it is a way to simply increase the difficulty, it's not a compelling way.

Additionally, I felt the gap in enemy stats at base difficulty and max difficulty to be way too high, making it difficult to balance the game for both

As such, I have decided to adjust and lower the amount of stats these modifiers give

health is a particularly aggregous case, because just making enemies damage sponges doesnt affect the difficulty in a meaningful way at all

• flat health difficulty +10% (+10% -> +20%)

• health scaling difficulty -3%/wave (+5% -> +2%)

• final flat stat difficulty -10% (+30% -> +20%)

• final scaling stat difficulty -8%/wave (+10% -> +2%)

• total health increase has been reduced by 179% (295% -> 116%)

speed is arguably the most important difficulty stat, as most enemies focus on contact damage

• flat speed difficulty -10% (+15% -> +5%)

• final flat stat difficult now gives +5% speed

• speed scaling difficulty -0.5% (+1% -> 0.5%)

• final scaling difficult +0.5% (0% -> 0.5%)

• total speed increase has been reduced by 5% (34% -> 29%)

As I moved some of the damage from the difficulty modifiers into the base damage of enemies, I have decided to reduce the damage difficulty modifiers

• scaling damage modifier -3%/wave (+5% -> +2%)

• final flat stat -10% (30% -> 20%)

• final scaling modifier damage -3% (+5% -> 2%)

• total damage increase has been reduced by 124% (240% -> 116%)

spawnrate is an interesting stat to play around with, as having more enemies means more experience, which means more leveling.

• flat spawnrate +5% (15 -> 20)

• scaling spawnrate -3% (5/wave -> 2/wave)

• finale scaling difficulty spawnrate -3% (5/wave -> 2/wave)

• total spawnrate decreased 109% (225% -> 116%)

I also felt some of the enhanced versions of enemies needed adjustments

• [Nerf]Fire Ghost Explosion damage +1 (4->5)

• [Nerf]Stone Titan spike damage +3

bugs and performance

performance

• enemies offscreen no longer create hit particles, damage numbers, or play hit sounds

• completely overhauled the debuff system

  • works exactly the same, but much, much faster

• enemies can only create damage numbers, particle effects, and sounds every 0.12 seconds

  • no effect on gameplay, but should improve performance in cases where many enemies are rapidly hit

  • most notably, Fire Mage's ult and Ice Mage's ult

• exp offscreen coalesces after 5 seconds

bug fixes

• unlocks now verify with steam achievements

  • step to prevent loss of unlock progress in case of crash or other save corruption

• game no longer has permanent warning message after failing to communicate with steam client

• Game no longer crashes after failing to communicate with steam client

• fixed auras flashing the incorrect radius when running multiple aura weapons

• fixed silver scope applying it's buff to auras repeatedly

hotfix 1.0.3.1 - fixed enemies still dealing contact damage while paused