[I]Visible traps will now adjust pathfinding so the player can tell where they can really walk to. None of the paths will walk on a visible trap, unless the player selects the trap itself as the destination.[/I]
New Build:
We have another update this week. This time the focus was almost entirely on Balance and there are a lot of changes all over (about a 100 different line items). The main goal was to bring "up to par" various class growths, passives and counters, as well as resolving some abusable combos (around quicken and evasion mostly).
Oh, and we updated the pathfinding to account for visible traps now too :)
The patch notes are quite lengthy this time around, but here's the rough highlights:
Traps avoidance: When a trap is made visible by the player, the pathfinding will update to block paths that can't be reached anymore (because the trap would interrupt the player). The player can still decide to walk right on top of the trap, but that's the only way they'll hit a trap, as none of paths shown will walk on it.
Class Growths: Most growths were slightly adjusted to bring up classes that were lacking and bring down some classes that had growths quite a bit better than others.
Passives/Counters: A number of passives and counters were changed or removed. Some new passives were added to replace them.
Quicken: There were various scenarios involiving infinite turns with Quicken. This should be fixed for the most part (it might still be possible to cheese things partially with Critical Quicken, but it's quite risky and involved, so we're not touching that one).
Thorns: Redid the way calculations are done for Thorns damage. The damage will now be based on the targets DEF stat (the target of the thorn damage) rather than be a portion of the damage dealt to the thorn-user. This will make it so high defense units won't do weaker thorn damage anymore. Thorn reflection ratio changed to 0.25x (from 0.35x) to compensate for this.
Portraits: By popular demand, adding more of the enemy portraits to the list avaible to the player. I believe pretty much all of them are available now, with a blue color rather than red to limit confusion.
That's really only a small subset of the changes we added this patch. The full list is at the end of this post.
Also, we're not done with balance, as we still have pages of changes we want to get in.
Please, keep the feedback and comments coming in the Forums, as the end of April is approaching fast!
We'd also like to mention that while we don't answer all the posts on the Forums about balance/etc, we read all of them and the feedback is very appreciated (even if we don't act on all of it)!
Progress Report:
We've mostly worked on balance this week, as can be seen from the patch notes. But we've also put more work on the Ancient Path and wrapped up all the the loot and treasures in that place. The only thing missing is some special AI code for one of the levels and it should be done. We expect it to be done next week, which will make all the content finished.
Change log:
04/05/2019 - Version 0.9.3
New Content:
Traps avoidance: When a trap is made visible by the player, the pathfinding will update to block paths that can't be reached anymore (because the trap would interrupt the player). The player can still decide to walk on top of the trap, but that's the only way they'll hit a trap, as none of paths shown will walk on it.
Soul Binder: Soul Binder will now correctly trigger the 100% Charm chance if the target is asleep, as well as trigger Mind Control on the target.
Portraits: By popular demand, adding more of the enemy portraits to the list avaible to the player. I believe pretty much all of them are available now, with a blue color rather than red to limit confusion.
Visuals: Adding forgotten visuals for Pick Off and Rusty Stab.
Balance:
Sturdy Grip: Now also allows for shield usage as well as equipping a 2H with 1 hand.
Into the Fray: Slightly adjusted the value for "2 enemies in range".
Health Siphon: Increasing range to 2 to better match the rest of the Fellblade's abilities.
Alchemystic:
Insight: Spell now costs 8 MP and has 3 range like other Alchemystic buffs.
Fortitude: Passive has been moved to the Plague Doctor.
Side Effects: New Passive: When successfully applying a buff on a target, it will also heal them at 0.3x. When successfully applying a debuff to a target, it will damage them at 0.25x.
Thorns: moved to Plague Doctor.
Soul Tendrils: Adding a long range high damage high MP cost non-elemental spell to the Alchemystic.
Reorganized Skill tree to accommodate new abilities.
Plague Doctor:
Armor Proficiency: Removing passive. Granting Heavy Armor to the Plague Doctor to compensate.
Fortitude: Armor Proficiency was replaced by Fortitude (previously on Alchemystic).
Into the Fray: Moved to the Reaver.
Permanence: New Passive: Buffs and Debuffs casted by this character will last 1 turn longer.
Thorns: Thorn spell moved to the Plague Doctor. Spell is now an AoE and MP cost increased to 8 (from 6). Also, we redid the way Thorns damage is calculated so it won't be reduced from the user having high defenses anymore.
Total Shield: spell is removed (moved to Druid).
Templar:
Equip Shield: Passive is removed (it was fused with Sturdy Grip on the Mercenary).
Resilience: New passive: debuffs applied to this character will last 1 less turn than normal (min 1).
Reaver:
Desperate Blow: Increasing MP cost to 16 (from 6).
Doublehand: Passive has been removed.
Into the Fray: new passive for the Reaver (previously on Plague Doctor).
Spread Pain: Will now also cause damage to the target.
Primal Blow: Adding MP cost of 6.
Primal Wave: Adding MP cost of 8.
Druid:
Shield and Aegis: Replacing by Total Shield, with MP cost of 6. This should synergizes better with their Dual Casting feature.
Dispel: Lowering MP cost to 6 (from 8).
Counter Magic: Moving the counter on the Wizard.
Adaptive Affinity: Moving the counter from the Wizard to the Druid. Also changing the way the calculations are handled so that if the caster is ever targeting himself, the "affinity" bonus will be granted before damage calculations are made.
Adaptive Affinity: Now not restricted to 1 buff and a character can have 1 per element. They will last 3 turns now though.
Skill Tree: Was reworked slightly since 1 ability was removed. Dual Cast was moved to a lower node as well.
Knight:
Chivalrous Spirit: Lowering MP cost to 18 (from 22).
Vessel:
Hallowed Body: Changing the passive from: +15% to ATK/MND to: +20% of ATK to MND and +20% of MND to ATK.
Spells: Increasing damage a bit for some spells, to better compensate for high costs.
Psyhie: now restores only 5 MP, but MP cost lowered to 18 (from 22).
Weaken: Now lasts 3 turns (from 2). Now is removed by Regenerate and Balm as well as other abilities that removed it before.
Evasion: Evasion can easily reach high numbers, especially for the player, and it presents too easy an opportunity to "cheese" things.
Cap: Adding a hard cap to the evasion stat of 50%.
Gear: Reducing evasion of most gear pieces. Specifically, Main Gauche, Shields, Cap of Ages, and Exo Gloves had their evasion reduced, but many other small tweaks.
Passive: Reducing evasion from the passive to 13 (from 15).
Debuffs: When applying debuffs, the debuffs from the selected ability will be applied last (so, weapons, passives, etc, will come first) to give the user more control over which debuff will get absorbed by Barrier. This is a fairly advanced feature to be honest.
Thorns: Redid the way calculations are done for Thorns damage. The damage will now be based on the targets DEF stat (the target of the thorn damage) rather than be a portion of the damage dealt to the thorn-user. This will make it so high defense units won't do weaker thorn damage anymore. Thorn reflection ratio changed to 0.25x (from 0.35x) to compensate for this.
Quicken: There were various scenarios involiving infinite turns with Quicken. This should be fixed for the most part (it might still be possible to cheese things partially with Critical Quicken, but it's quite risky and involved, so we're not touching that one).
Using Quicken on a character will give them the debuff "Exhausted", which will prevent further Quicken spells from affecting them until it wears off. It will wear off the next time they get a "natural turn". Counter: Critical Quicken ignores the debuff (so it will always trigger if the critical condition is met), but will still give the debuff to the unit.
Self: Because of the above debuff, Quicken can now be casted on "Self" again.
Class Growths: Small update to stats growth to get up-to-date with recent balance changes. All changes are very small amounts unless specified. None of these changes are retroactive (ie, current stats will not change).
Sorcerer: HP up, Res up, Spd up, Atk up, Def up.
Reaver: HP down, Res up.
Demon Knight: Def down, Res down, MP down, HP down.
Assassin: Atk up, HP up.
Wizard: Atk up, HP up.
Lord: MP down, Res down, Def down.
Ranger: Hp up.
Mercenary: MP up.
Gadgeteer: HP down, Def down, Res down.
Knight: Res down.
Vampire: Mp up.
Plague Doctor: Mp down, Def down, Mnd up.
Warmage: HP up, MP down, Spd up.
Fellblade: HP down, Atk Up, Spd down.
Alchemystic: Spd up (a fair amount), Res down, Mnd up.
Peddler: MP up, Hp Up, Res Down.
Vessel: Hp down, Atk Up, Def up, Res up, Spd up.
Lich: Large changes for this one. HP up, MP down, Def down, Res down. Atk up.
Anatomist: Spd up, Atk up, HP up.
Princess: Spd up, Res down, MP up, Atk up.
Spymaster: MP up, HP up.
Exiled: MP up.
Marked: Mp up.
Scoundrel: MP up.
Druid: MP down, Res down, Spd up.
Mender: Spd up.
Princess: Reordered the skill tree around significantly and changed some AP costs a bit.
Counter Shield/Counter Aegis: Now became Counter Total Shield.
Crossbows: Increased attack values a tiny bit for all of them. Adding a small accuracy bonus to all of them as well. Increasing existing MND bonus to those that had one and added a MND bonus to Aerolus.
AI: Made AI smarter with Infused Edge in general.
Counter Haste: Was changed from Critical: Haste to Haste, so it will now proc from being attacked, rather from being at critical health. This might be a little too strong, so we'll keep an eye on it.
Light Armors: Making tiny adjustments to Lorica Musculata and Lorica Mentis (higher offensive bonus, lower RES) and to Golden Garb (small MND bonus).
Pick Off: Reducing base damage to 1.6x (from 1.7x). Increasing the reduction for "nearby ally" to 0.6x (from 0.4x).
Gadgeteer: Changing the damage type of certain gadgets to Mixed and certain to ATK (most were MND before).
Daggers: Reducing speed bonus of Flash Knife and Dragon's Nail.
Swords: Increasing MND bonus of swords with a MND bonus a tad. Giving a small speed bonus to Eternias.
Spears: Increasing MND bonus of spears with a MND bonus a tad. Godray's stats bonus were slightly increased.
Scythes: Reaper now has a small MND bonus.
Maces: Increasing their MND bonus.
Guns: Adding a small MND bonus to Hell Muzzle.
Staves: Reducing MND and DEF bonus for Godsleg.
Archafflictor: Replacing Reanimator with Plaguestorm, a spell that deals damage and has a chance to inflict a random debuff on all enemies.
Archafflictor: Reducing AI odds of using items a little bit for this monster.
Scoundrel: Making Fleet Of Foot an AoE around the caster rather than self target.
UI:
Into the Fray: Tooltip has been updated to show that it applies to damage and healing.
Various Spell Names: Renamed many spells to Mass "name" to be more consistent with the naming scheme.
Stats Growth: Making layout a little easier to read.
Bug Fixes:
AI: The AI wasn't valuing using Panacea the way it should, so it almost never bothered. Should be fixed, but we'll have to keep an eye out to ensure the AI isn't too trigger-happy about this now.
Sunder: Passive wasn't being applied correctly in general.
Blood Mark: Will not be applied to "fixed damage" anymore.
Bandit Kawas: There were instances where Bandit Kawas would take a movement action that was a little weird (such as moving on top of other units or moving before a counter would trigger, etc). Fixed.
Sleep Visuals: The visuals would be shown over/under the target oddly before. Now they are always correctly over the target.
Revival: The camera would move to where the target died, rather than where it would be revived. Fixed.
Leeching HP/MP: Even when missing, it would still leech HP/MP. Fixed.
Mirage: Fixing various interactions with Mirage, including not gaining EXP in some cases when removing Mirage with an attack from a target.
Visuals: Adding some GameConfig.txt options to help the few users having some weird flickering. Adding "Vsynccount=" and "targetframerate=" properties to the Graphics tab.
Class Mastery: Mastered classes that the character doesn't have full access to yet (from being recruited in an advanced class) will still correctly grant their mastery bonus now.
Floating: Fixing a rare instance where the floating animation would disappear from a unit.
Countershot: The damage prediction box would show it as active even if the weapon range wasn't good enough (even though the counter would correctly not trigger).
Modding:
GearFill: Adding "noboots" an a gearfill option. It will prevent any accessories with a move or jump component from being place on the unit by the randomizer.
Thank you for an amazing PAX East 2019!
Hello everyone,
We safely returned from our voyage to Boston where we presented Fell Seal to the visitors of PAX East. It was our second year there, and it was once again a great experience. We met plenty of new excited fans as well as people who are already enjoying Fell Seal at home. It is always wonderful to meet you guys and chat about the game, other games in the genre, or just chat about stuff in general.
Looking forward to meeting you somewhere else soon! :)
Build 0.9.2 - Big UI update, Balance update
[I]New looks for information placard.[/I]
New Build:
Hello everyone!
This week, we've been focusing on UI updates and more balance updates.
Actually, pretty much all the visuals for the UI were redone and we think they're looking better than ever. Give it a look and let us know what you think!
Here are the highlights for this week:
UI: We redid most of the visual components of the UI to give them a slicker look. Adjusted some colors and positions here and there to look better as well.
Class Mastery: Adding Class Mastery to the game. For each class mastered, the character will receive a permanent bonus to various stats (the class doesn't need to be selected for the bonus to apply). You can see the bonuses in the Class selection screen.
Town Art: Adding town art when the player selects a town node on the world map.
Class Select: Adding a button to view the character's Abilities of the selected class in the Class Wheel menu, for classes that are discovered.
We finally added the Town art to the worldmap. It'll be visible when selecting a town node.
The biggest change to the game balance is probably the "mastery bonus" we've added. When a character masters a class, they get a small permanent stats bonus from then on (even without using said class).
Progress Report:
We've been quite busy this week, as usual. On top of the above changes, we've also been working on the Ancient Path dungeon and we have 1 more encounter left to create for it before it's all finished!
Otherwise, lots of bug fixes, balance changes and some UI improvements. There's still a lot of balance tweaks we want to get in and a few more UI upgrades as well.
Change log:
03/29/2019 - Version 0.9.2
New Content:
UI: We redid most of the visual components of the UI to give them a slicker look. Adjusted some colors and positions here and there to look better as well.
Class Mastery: Adding Class Mastery to the game. For each class mastered, the character will receive a permanent bonus to various stats (the class doesn't need to be selected for the bonus to apply). You can see the bonuses in the Class selection screen.
Town Art: Adding town art when the player selects a town node on the world map.
Class Select: Adding a button to view the character's Abilities of the selected class in the Class Wheel menu, for classes that are discovered.
UI:
Help: Darkening the rest of the screen when showing the help screen, to make things a little more visible.
Abilities Descriptions: Clarifying some descriptions, including Sabotage, Snapback, Flip Kick. Adding numbers to passives that didn't have them.
Vangaals: Renamed their ability to Alpha from Savagery (another class already uses that term).
Balance:
Height Advantage: Will now cap at 35% bonus. Bonus increased to 5% from 4% per height.
Stats Expert: Now gives a flat amount of their STAT, based on character level. Their overall value was increased to a little over ~20% (from 15%) for ATK/MND and to ~30% for DEF/RES. These numbers might need further adjusting. This should make these passives more attractive even for characters not already stacking the STAT since it's a flat bonus.
Doublehand: With the changes to "Stats Expert", Doublehand will need a rework, but we haven't gotten to it just yet. Soon!
Stats Buffs: ATK/MND battle buff were increased to 20% (from 12.5%) and DEF/RES were increased to 25% (from 15%).
Templar: New counter is Evade Attack. It evades all regular attacks (rather than just melee regular attacks).
Ranger: New counter is Countershot. It counterattacks with a regular attack against any ranged regular attacks or skills (so, not spells).
Life Font: Now restores 4+lv/4 HP per step, rather than 10/step. It means it will start a little weaker, but end up much stronger at high levels. In general, it should be more consistent throughout the game.
Dirty Hit: Increasing base effect chance to 62% (from 50%).
Hallowed Body: Increasing bonus to 15% (from 10%).
Soul Gear: Increasing the max stacks to 60 (from 50). Reducing starting values a bit. Reducing Soul Armor "offensive bonus" by 50% per stack. Reducing Soul Eater "defensive bonus" by 50%. Reducing crit/eva/speed bonus by 50%.
Soulreaper: Renamed to Reaper, to avoid confusion with Soul Eater.
Oldebzar: Setting static passives on enemies that had a randomized one, for more consistency.
Bzil Capital: Tweaking some enemies for better balance (making things slightly easier).
Second Temple: Making one of the Rangers an "extra difficulty" enemy.
Righteous Blade: Adding Righteous Blade to the list of abilities the AI can't use until they're at least level 30.
Pick Off: Lowering damage from 1.8x to 1.7x.
AI: Improving AI behavior in a few situation, including in dealing better with Mystic Shield on player units, and being smarter about dual casting buffs (not the same buff on the same target 2x).
Bug:
Last Story Cutscene: The current "last story cutscene" was always triggering as if no "special items" had been gathered the first time the player would see it, even if they had gathered all "special items". This is fixed.
AI: Abilities with a "Drain HP" component could be valued higher than they should by the AI. Fixed.
Berserk: Berserk wouldn't recognize "2x2 monsters" as being closest to the Berserk target for some of their edges. Fixed.
Skills: Skills with "counts as a regular attack" will now correctly use the status effects of the 2nd weapon as well as those of the 1st weapon.
Evade Skills: Will now correctly prevent "Steal" abilities from working on the character.
Tarnished Locket: Fixing an issue where a cutscene might not trigger when it should, tied to this crafting component.
Menus: Fixing small memory leaks in some menus.
Maps: Fixing a few more priorities-of-drawing for some maps.
Learn Abilities: Character box would not update with new passives until after changing screen when learning a new passive on the current class. Fixed.
Pick Off: Pick off would not work correctly on "large targets", as they would detect their own large bodies as being "nearby buddies". Fixed.
Character Customize: Changing an existing character's visuals while they are injured would show them crouching when using the "select a sprite from the list" layout. Fixed.
03/31/2019 - Version 0.9.2a
UI:
Load Menu: Now showing the difficulty preset name on the load/save screen for each save file.
Bug Fixes:
Teleport Other: Some enemies that should have been immune to "Teleport Other" could still be teleported away. Fixed.
Gelligh City: One of the encounters there late game could load the wrong battle under certain circumstances. Fixed.
03/31/2019 - Version 0.9.2b
Balance:
Character Events: Adding a small reward (Desert Garb) to one of the story-character cutscenes.
Bug Fixes:
Save/Load: Fixing an issue with certain save files possibly breaking the menu.
AI: Fixing rare cases where some special enemies would just skip their turn instead of taking an action.
We also updated the screenshots to reflect the new UI.
Build 0.9.1 - Big Balance Update
[I]Those nifty town images still need to be added. Hopefully next week![/I]
New Build:
Hello everyone!
This week's build focuses on balance changes and polish. We also have some very exciting UI updates in the works, but that'll wait until next week!
For now, balance changes to Marked, Scoundrel, Demon Knight, Fellblade and more... Most of the changes came from feedback from the community, so a big thank you to everyone for helping us getting the balance ever better!
The notes for this update are actually pretty long, so the summary doesn't do them justice. Feel free to check out the full notes at the end of the post.
Highlights:
Portraits: By popular request, adding some of the Enemy portraits (with different colors for clarity) to the list available to the player.
AI: Substantially speeding up AI calculations in the rare cases they're not "instant".
Intro Video: Changed the way we handle the intro video to a different format. It should be more compatible hopefully. Let us know how it goes!
Balance: A LOT of changes, including to the stats cap, AI, Marked, Demon Knight, Fellblade, Scoundrel, many monsters, abilities, etc.
Modding Update: The list of classes in the store will now correctly accomodate a lot of user-adder classes.
Progress Report:
This week was spent working on balance changes mostly and we made good time. Despite that, we still have a lot more to go though, with many passives, counters and weapons getting some tweaks soon. There's even more than that, but that's probably what's going to be around next week, on top of some nifty UI updates.
We've also been working on the Ancient Path, our special end-game optional dungeon and it's 50% done now. It should be finished next week, which will wrap up all optional and regular content in the game.
Change log:
03/2/2019 - Version 0.9.1
New Content:
Portraits: By popular request, adding some of the Enemy portraits (with different colors for clarity) to the list available to the player.
UI:
AI: Substantially speeding up AI calculations in the rare cases they're not "instant".
AI: In the rare cases where the AI makes a decision that takes longer than "instantly", the game could visually stutter during the process. This is now fixed.
Intro Video: Changed the way we handle the intro video to a different format. It should be more compatible hopefully. Let us know how it goes!
Status Effects: In the rare cases when applying the same status effects more than once with an attack, the odds will be combined into 1 odd and the effect shown only once in the prediction.
Counters: Cleaning up camera movement during counters. Countering from "very far from the target" will lose the unnecessary "center on counter-caster" at the end of the sequence it sometimes had.
Switcheroo: Changed visuals a little bit.
Errors: Improving error logging a little bit so "repeated errors" don't keep getting logged.
Balance:
Stats Caps:
Monsters will now have their own stat cap to compensate for them relying on higher stat since they don't have equipment (currently, 700).
AI: New functionalities and smarter AI:
The AI will now properly use Double Cast when it has it. This should be the last "big functionality" that the AI was missing and only fine tuning should remain at this point.
Making the AI a little more likely to want to dispel Charm from its allies.
There was an issue that made the AI slightly more likely to use hp/mp draining attacks than it normal. Fixed.
Marked: The main goal is to give the class more options that aren't "Dark element", since mid late game has a lot of Dark resist.
Slightly adjusting AP cost of some abilities, mostly lowering them.
Adding Holy Bolt, a holy version of Dark Bolt.
Adding Holy Beam, a holy version of Wrathful Beam.
Changed Holy Burst to do Physical damage like Wrathful Burst. Lowering the cost to 14MP, from 18MP and the damage to 1.1x (from 1.15x).
Demon Knight: Slightly shoring up some weaker abilities, as we feel the class is in a good spot in general.
Vicious Slash: Now does 1/6th of current health rather than 1/4th.
Demonic Might: Now does 1/5th of current health rather than 1/4th.
Fellblade: The class is in a decent spot, we're just revisiting the Skill Tree, some AP costs and small tweaks. Since the Skill tree was changed, some "learned abilities" might change a bit, but nothing that can't be fixed with a little of AP.
Health Siphon: Changing the damage to ATK (from MND) and reducing the base ratio from 0.7x to 0.65x. The skill should be more effective based on ATK.
Skill Tree: Moving some things around. Mainly, making Counter: Evade Magic less costly and moving it up the Skill Tree, as well as Health Siphon.
Chaos Slice: Now, it will roll a random debuff taken from "any debuffs that would be valid on the target", so it should never fail to apply a debuff (unless the target is immune/afflicted by all debuffs already).
Versatile: The ability was a little strong, especial at high levels. It will not restore HP anymore and the MP restore was changed to 5% (minimum 5MP) from 10% and can only happen once per spell (that part was always intended actually, so it is more of a bug fix).
Scoundrel: Mainly a few tweaks to give them a few more offensive options.
Arterial Cut: Adding a new ability that has a chance to inflict Bleed with a 0.85x ratio. Counts as a regular attack. (Localization is not done for this yet, it'll be in the next update).
Dirty Hit: Getting the "counts as a regular attack" flag as well. The idea is to give a few options to the rogue that works well with their daggers.
Steal Items: Now has a 0.75x damage component. Steal abilities have a fixed "lower" chance of hitting, which mean the damage will only work if the steal is successful. An interesting side effect is that since the hit chance is fixed, it works just as well against rare "high evasion enemies".
Steal Buffs: Now has a 0.75x damage component.
Skill Tree: since we added an new ability, the skilltree got changed a little bit and some of the AP costs reduced to compensate having an extra one.
Plague Doctor: Treatment will now remove Weaken as well.
Gambler: Changed the way Wildcards work. They will now only roll buffs/debuffs that the target doesn't already have (unless it rolled for a "bad outcome", in which case it won't work if the target already has the effect). Also changed how the better rolls work by giving "more buffs/debuffs" rather than fixed ones.
Heavy Potion: Changing healing tiers from 200, 400 to 150, 300.
Stampede: Reducing damage bonus from 12.5% to 10% per move.
Undead Kawas: Their missing passive has now been set to Plaguebearer.
Fortitude: Will now also protect from Weaken, Bleed and Poison.
Absorb MP: Now renamed Absorb Mana and will only trigger on "offensive abilities that don't heal the target" (so, healing an ally with Fire I will not absorb the cost).
Collect Abilities: Will now have 0% chance of success against a target that can't be collected (eg. Collect Bounty will not work on a Monster) to make it clear none of the effects will trigger on an invalid target.
Druids: Replacing Poison with Bleed, a spell that inflicts bleeding damage rather than poison damage. The bleed effect wasn't present enough and this is a good way to give the Druid a spell other classes don't have access to.
Desperate Blow: Now has 1 range, 3 vert range, rather than "weapon range".
Blood Magic: Changing the ratio to 1.5%/1MP (from 1%/1MP) as it feels a little strong. We're considering moving it to 2%/1MP, but we'll see how this goes first.
Net: Removing the MP cost (was 6).
Enemies:Slightly reducing the odds of Demi Gauntlet spawning on very early enemies.
Tangrels: Replacing "No Flank" with "Health Expert".
Deep Wounds: This passive will now apply to all Regular Attacks, rather than just critical hits.
Snack Stash: Now will only select a Buff that the target doesn't already have, so there should always be 2 buffs used, unless there's no more buffs to cast.
Weapons: Switching around the Ebony Dagger and Kunai, so that the 1/2 Dark mod is "early into the game" rather than at its current tier.
Weapons: Toothed Sword: now has a chance to inflict Bleed.
Battle Rewards: Gold rewards will be lessened on "low level maps", the same way that AP gains are.
Zotzits/etc: Disabling those special spawns on the maps meant to be a training ground for very low level characters (The Crossroads, etc.). Also very slightly reducing their initial spawn chance.
Aeoths: Now will not have a cap on their HP, just like bosses. Also, they will not spawn with poison/bleed protection, to maximize "%hp damage" options to deal with them.
Archafflictor/Therva: Their counters were exchanged, so Therva how has "Absorb Mana" and Archafflictor has "Adaptive Aegis".
Difficulty Setting: The AP Malus Injury setting will now have a 20%/injury malus (down from 25%). And the the malus will never be greater than 60%, so a unit that died 4x in a battle will still get 40% AP.
Bug Fixes:
Skull Crusher: This mace had an incorrect price (an extra 0 snuck at the end of the price). Fixed :)
Mirror Trick: Removing some abilities that would cause problems from the list abilities that can be copied.
Maps: Fixed a few "sprite ordering" issues on various maps.
Sabotage: Sabotage was changed from being a "healing" ability to an offensive one that won't trigger counters on allies. Making sure it bypasses all counters correctly.
Visuals: Fixing a glitch where changing the direction of sprites could have some odd layering for some rare sprites (usually, those with a beard).
Doppelganger: Fixing an issue where Infused Edge wouldn't be useable after being copied.
Zotzits/etc: On certain maps, they could spawn in unreachable locations. Fixed.
Phoenix Ring: Fixing a rare case where the ring wouldn't be active at the start of an encounter.
Modding:
Store: When at the store, or in the troops menu, and listing the classes that could equip a piece of gear, the box will now accommodate all classes correctly, even if the user added "a lot of them".
Stats Caps: The stat caps for hp/mp/stats/speed/level can now be adjusted in the GameOptions.txt file. Without redoing the Level Range of encounters, changing the level cap will probably not yield anything too useful, but otherwise changing these values should be fine.
GearFill: Adding "NoDots" as a gearfill option for encounters.txt enemies, no prevent them from spawning with an acessory that would protect them from Poison/Bleed (this is used with HP bosses and minibosses currently).
Abilities.xml: Slightly cleaning up the file so it's easier to read and each entry contains the Name and HashName for all abilities.
Error Checks: Adding more error checking for invalid classes.
03/2/2019 - Version 0.9.1a
Hotfix:
AI: The AI could act funny when somehow using 2x the same status effect on an attack (through having it on the weapon or from sunder/chilling touch, etc). Fixed.
03/24/2019 - Version 0.9.1b
Balance:
Stats cap: The human base Stats cap is now 600 rather than 500, which should bring the earliest point the cap applies to a player character to around level 85 for very specific classes. Most classes will not hit the cap. This was supposed to be in last week's build, but didn't make it in somehow.
Stats cap: The monsters cap is now 750 (from 700).
Rogue: Slightly changing the skill tree to move Arterial Cut a little lower, Fleet of Foot a little higher and Steal Items a little higher as well.
Bug:
Hallowed Soul: Description vanished after last patch. Fixed.
Stealing: Updated the description of Steal abilities that now do damage to reflect that.
Loot: The new "secret character" battle had an invalid loot entry for random drops. Fixed.
Errors: Adding more error messages for errors that could arise due to the base files being invalid for some reason.
Modding:
Error Checks: Adding more error checking for invalid crafting recipes.
See you at PAX East 2019!
We will be at PAX East this year and with us we are bringing the latest build of Fell Seal! If you are there stop by to say hi and check out the game if you haven't had the pleasure already.
Booth #19115 is definitely the place to visit (our booth)!
We have a big update today, our biggest yet!
With our Release date just around the corner, we're wrapping up all the content we want to get in and this update has (almost) all of it!
We also have important news about the price tag. The price for the game will be increased on Monday 18th from $19.99 USD (16.99 EUR) to $29.99 USD (24.99 EUR). This price is final and will remain the same even after the game leaves early access. With the current 10% off and lower price, there has never been a better time to get the time than NOW!
Let's list what it's missing, as that will be a much shorter list:
The current build stops a short ways before the game's end, which means our 2 different ending are not accessible. Those will only be accessible in Release.
We have a big 7 levels secret dungeon in the works, with a special boss, special loot, etc. That will only be added at Release as well.
Steam cloud saves and achievements. That will be added either for the Release build or a little before.
And that's it for the missing content. Everything else is in this build.
Now, onto what we're adding today! Here are the highlights:
Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
Optional Content: We're adding 3 secret optional battles with special rewards.
Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
Special Enemies: Adding special enemies that will randomly spawn during Patrols. These enemies will award a big bonus of AP or components if you manage to defeat them before they flee the battle.
Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.
With all this content in, the game experience should be pretty close to what it'll look like on Release day, barring the balance changes we have planned. We'll be very eager to get everyone's feedback during our balancing/polish phase, to make sure everything is as great as it can be!
So please, don't be shy, and let us know what you think! :)
Progress Report:
With Release approaching so fast, we've been focusing on handling any loose ends we have.
We're adding polish to cutscenes, abilities, menus, etc. We're hunting down and fixing any bugs we have in our list that haven't been fixed yet.
We also started work on the first wave of big balance changes we have planned, although that isn't ready for primetime yet.
Starting today, our main focus is going to be polish, balance and bug fixes. This includes various UI improvements that we've add planned for a while too.
Second to that, adding the Steam Integration (cloud saves, achievements) and finally, wrapping up our optional secret dungeon.
New Content Preview:
Here's what some of the new optional content looks like, to help everyone get started!
[I]The first Obelisk you can find.[/I]
[I]The Zotzits give a big AP bonus based on the monster tier. This story battle is the first time you can encounter one. They will start randomly spawning in Patrols from then on.[/I]
Change log:
03/15/2019 - Version 0.9.0
New Content:
Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
Secret Character: It's possible we added a secret character that's fairly difficult to unlock...
Optional Battles: We added 3 secret optional battles with some quests to unlock them.
Patrols: Adding a lot of new patrols.
Iirzk'tara Gorge: A new enemy was added to this map. Normally you would encounter him during your story battle there, but for people already past that content, you might want to go back there and check it out.
Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
Zotzits: We added a special enemy, the Zotzit, that randomly spawns during patrols after a specific point in the story. If you manage to defeat them before they run, you will be awarded with a large AP bonus.
Bandit Kawa: We added another special enemy that randomly spawns during patrols. Defeating them before they flee will yield rare crafting components and weapons.
Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.
Outfits: Adding some outfits/hats that only become accessible after completing certain quests in game.
Balance:
Bosses: Bosses (and some other special characters) will now ignore the "extra gear" flag when it comes to generating accessories in empty slots, to prevent them from spawning with boots and status immunities they are not supposed to have.
Somier: In a battle involving Somier, some adjustments were made to make sure his level always matches the player's. Also weakening a few enemies and ensuring some of them will not spawn with boots when they shouldn't on any difficulty setting.
Encounters: Many encounters have had small tweaks made to them, usually to make them a little easier. The "Extra Enemies" option brings all those maps to the same difficulty as before, or higher (usually higher, haha).
Counter: Mute: Changing the counter so it works on attacks from all ranges instead of only "ranged attacks". The goal is to make the trigger conditions of counters more uniform across the board.
Weapons: Crossbow "Willam's" now gives +10% accuracy.
Arena: Changing the arena fight bonus from +50% GP to +33% GP/AP, to account better for the increased difficulty of the battles. Let us know how that works for you!
AI: Adding new functionalities to the AI weights system so different weights can be added to specific targets (this helps get the AI to prioritize certain allies for heals/buffs). These will be made available to modders soon.
UI:
Next/Prev Enemies/Allies: When using the buttons to quickly switch to the previous/next enemy/ally in combat, if the cursor is already on a valid target, the cursor lookup will start on that target. This eliminates the issue where the "next target" is the same as the "current one" so the button press does nothing the 1st time.
Abilities: Cleaning up the description of a few abilities to be more accurate.
Extra Enemies: Enemies spawned by the Added Enemies difficulty setting will show "Extra" on their information panel in combat rather than "Enemy", for clarity.
Bug Fixes:
Crash: Fixing a very rare crash that could happen when canceling a cutscene.
Visual Glitch: Fixing a rare visual glitch where a dagger using enemy could spawn with a weapon with no name and a missing icon.
Infused Edge: Fixing an issue where the predicted damage from the spell part of the attack would account for the critical damage (so the player could tell if the spell was going to be a critical hit).
Learn Ability: The list where all known classes are shown could sometimes show the wrong selected class at times after a lot of class had been unlocked by a user.
Flying and Water: Fixing some visual oddities when flying in/out of water without the Float status.
Revives: Enemies that started their turn in water would revive other enemies in their starting position if they decided to revive on that turn.
Water: Not applying anymore the bonus/malus to being in water if having the status Float.
Sprite Priorities: Fixing various priority of drawing for sprites/maps on various maps.
Modding:
Errors: Adding more error checking for spawning enemies through Encounters.txt.
Encounters.txt:
Adding "shield" as an argument for spawning humans, to decide their shield (true, false, "item code"). This was already covered by "weapon2", but it's a little clearer now.
Changing the "shield", "helmet" and "armor" tags so that putting an accessory in them will now work.
Adding "noitems:true", to make a specific enemy unable to use items.
Edit: Hotfix notes:
03/15/2019 - Version 0.9.0a
Hotfix:
Ekidna Falls: The Seal there got its orientation changed at some point. Fixed.
Plains01: Missing a collision on a tile there. Fixed.
Bandit Kawa: They were using the wrong AI script. Fixed. They might be a little hard to catch now though. Let us know what you think!
We are streaming! Come to chat :)
UPDATE:
Thank you everyone that came and chat with us. We always like to interact with you :)
Hey everyone,
we are right now streaming Fell Seal on Steam! Go to our store page to talk to us and find out more about the game/development. Of course feel free to ask anything that is on your mind :)
There won't be a new build this week, as we're busy preparing for next week's big content update.
We'll be adding all our planned optional content next week, save for the Ancient Path, our big secret optional dungeon.
It's going to be our biggest content update yet and also the last one before Release, which is approaching rapidly (end of April)!
After next week's content update, we'll keep releasing builds until Release, with a big focus on balance, bug fixes and polish.
We'll be grabbing all the feedback from the forums and going through it in detail and making changes and adjustments from it. We'll be counting on everyone to keep giving us their great feedback and comments!
Again, a big thank you to the whole community for all the support until now: it has been invaluable and greatly appreciated! :)
Here's a quick preview of what's going to be in the next content update:
Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
Secret Character: It's possible we added a secret character that's fairly difficult to unlock...
Optional Battles: We added 3 secret optional battles with some quests to unlock them.
Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
Bonus Enemies:Some special enemies now have a chance to spawn and they will be giving either a large bonus to AP or special drops.
Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.
And quite a bit more... :)
Build 0.8.1 - Adding Credits, SFX and new VFX.
An older version of Sagittarian Cavalry, which was added to this build.
New Build:
We have a new build this week. We finally got around to adding our Credits section and we're adding a lot of new VFX and SFX to the game, as well as the usual bug fixes and small balance tweaks.
We've been busy wrapping up our optional content and end-game content lately, although we'll be saving the ending of the game as well as our large secret dungeon for the official release of the game.
The rest of the optional content (other than our large secret dungeon) will be in the March big-content-update, so there'll be a lot of new material to check out, including Reiner's special class, a secret character and many optional/secret battles.
For today though, here are the highlights:
Credits: Credits section has been added to the title screen.
Music: All music cues have been updated to their final version (following work by our musician on the game's OST).
VFX: Adding many new VFX, most of them for optional content battles we're currently working on, but also for Immortal Souls, Autotomize, Meat shield, Rekindle, Swarm Strike, Wild Slam, Vicious Push, Quetzalcoatl, and a few others.
SFX: Adding another 2 dozens SFX or so.
Localization: All missing localized text has been added. With this, the localization process should be fully complete!
AI: Many updates to the AI system to fix some issues and make it better.
Progress Report:
We've just finished the final localization QA phase and we're done adding all our VFX right now.
At this point, all assets (including maps, VFX, sprites, text) are complete, save for a dozen or so SFX.
We're still missing some cutscenes and some encounters though, and that will be our focus for the next week or two. Afterwards, the rest of our time will be spent tuning/bug fixing and polishing the game, mostly from the feedback we'll be getting on the Forums, so don't be shy and drop us a line on there! :)
Change log:
03/01/2019 - Version 0.8.1
New Content:
Credits: Credits section has been added to the title screen.
Music: All music cues have been updated to their final version (following work by our musician on the game's OST).
VFX: Adding many new VFX, most of them for optional content battles we're currently working on, but also for Immortal Souls, Autotomize, Meat shield, Rekindle, Swarm Strike, Wild Slam, Vicious Push, Quetzalcoatl, and a few others.
SFX: Adding another 2 dozens SFX or so.
Localization: All missing localized text has been added. With this, the localization process should be fully complete!
Key Items: Adding some key items to the game. Some of those would already have been gathered by the time the player reaches the end of the current build and will be retroactively granted. Key items can be seen from the Troops Menu "View Inventory" section. Most of the key items are tied to optional content that's still being added.
Balance:
AI: Various small improvements to the AI. Many improvements to Cadavers AI specifically.
AI: AI wasn't properly taking into account when its attack would kill the target and wasn't being "more enthusiastic" about such cases.
AI: AI will be better when using Infused Edge. It wasn't tallying all that it should before when comparing options.
Alphine Woods Patrol: Switching Duelist for Templar (Duelist are a fairly late game class and it seems a bit early to introduce them to the player).
Gyaum Tor Patrol: 2 of the 3 Reavers were changed no another class. This is still early into the game and the player is unlikely to know much about Reavers at that point.
Resting Giants Patrol: 1 of the Reavers got chanced to a different class.
Cabin Fight: Slightly adjusting the base stats of a certain female guest character to she has more defense a little less attack/speed. The goal is to make sure more survivable mainly.
Princess/Lord: Reducing the AP cost to learn Equip-All.
Guests: Guests will never use "sacrifice" types of actions unless they have Rebirth on.
Vessel: Lowing MP cost of Immortal Souls and Fafnir by 2 MP each.
Cadavers: Changing the height values of some of their abilities a tad.
Vampire/Marked: Increase the damage ratio for Soul Suck and Soul Drain.
Holy Burst: Increasing MP cost from 16 to 18.
Weapons:
Lowered attack of True Flight a bit and lowered price.
Increased attack of Mach Bow a bit.
Giving "dark dmg bonus" to the Ebony Rod.
UI:
Status effects: When a crit happens, the status effect text will no longer be enlarged. Only the critical damage will be enlarged.
Volumes: Updated the way the volumes are handled by the game. The default volume is now 80% across the board. This will reset the user's currently saved volume values.
Movie Volume The intro movie will now use the "music volume" value when playing rather than the default Unity value.
Bug Fixes:
Items Usage: Maps that have a flag to prevent item usage would still have the AI use items after our AI rework. Fixed.
Blazing Trap: Trap wasn't ending the unit's turn upon stepping on it. Fixed.
Desperate Blow: Fixing issue where Desperate blow would show "remove:" instead of 0 damage when user is at full health. Fixing an issue where the damage would show "MISS" rather than 0 even if it didn't miss with 0 damage dealt.
AI: Fixed something in the AI behavior that didn't value mp damage correctly. This lead to using "mp-drain" abilities on allies a lot more than would otherwise make sense.
AI: The new AI was ignoring a flag that forces enemy to "never use skills". That flag is mostly used in some early maps. That functionality is now restored and enemies should use less skills in the early maps.
AI: Fixed an issue where AI wouldn't use Reanimate.
Infused Edge: Fixing an issue where using Infused Edge with Warmage "burst" spells would leave the target in "getting hit" stance at the end of the spell.
Abilities Descriptions: Fixing some missing icons and such on some abilities.
Mirage: Fixing issue with the mirage icon staying on the target after Mirage is removed by attacking (even though it would behave correctly). This issue could have affected other buffs too.
Blood Axe: This craftable axe was never properly added to the crafting list before.
Adaptive Aegis: The effect wouldn't wear off on the target after the buff timed out, until the target was attacked (or other conditions). Fixed.
Localization: Fixing a few strings that had some small mistakes.
Siege Ram: If Siege Ram was interrupted by a trap, strange things would happen. Fixed.
Steal %: After displaying a 0% chance number, the % chance of stealing abilities would be shown in red in the prediction box. Fixed.
Traps: When a unit would trigger a trap, it would use up the Boon status on the trap's original caster. Fixed.
Modding:
Names: All character names are now in terms2.txt, so modders can translate them if desired.
Errors: Adding more error checking for character outfits information.
Names: Story character names are now read from terms2.txt everytime a game is loaded. Before, the name would be saved in the savefile. This will enable "using the localized name" when switching languages.
AI: Adding "magic" and "skill" for weights name that can be used for the AI.
Weights: Fixing an issue where weights name had to be capitalized in the encounters.txt file to work before.
Summoning: Abilities that use the SummonAny flag can now be created for the player to use (they could only be used by the AI before).
Hiding the UI: Adding a new Debug option called "hideui". If set to true in the Gameconfig.txt Debug section, pressing 1 or the Left-Stick-Button will hide/show the UI.
