The Alchemist

The Alchemist Game Modes

• Three new Story Mode games that introduce Golems.
• The Laboratory is a new game mode that works similarly to the Crucible in that it has its own leaderboard and progress system.
• Rewards from the Laboratory include Alchemic Loot Chests and Alchemic Fragments used at the Artisan to craft powerful new item components.
• Alchemic Loot Chests also have a small chance to drop unique cosmetic items. Rare: Alchemist Tongs, Epic: Alchemist Flask, Legendary: Alchemist Goggles, Artifact: Alchemist Mask

Other Alchemist Features

• An entirely new set of Alchemic Item Components have been added.
• Helmet slot items can now use Alchemic Fragments to roll a new Skill Override component that adds a skill not normally found on helmets. This will allow a wide variety of new builds for players.

Seasons on Hold

Game Difficulty

• Adventure and Story game difficulty starts low and ramps higher through the game rarities at the following multiples of potential player maximum values; Common: 50%, Uncommon: 75%, Rare: 100%, Epic: 125%, Legendary: 150%, Artifact: 200%.
• This makes the End Game of HEXAD impossible unless you are properly equipped. Even well equipped Heroes are going to find these games challenging (as should be expected).
• Action Points in battles has been modified in a way that makes positioning more accessible. This change also helps reduce some extreme kiting tactics. See Battles section for more info.

Town Removal

• The Town area has been removed for this release. It was an interesting experiment but it had no functional value other than showing off your items. In the future there will be new ways for other players to see and interact with your Heroes. It also created more work for each release and retracted from my original vision of a Lobby centric design.

Heroes

• You can now purchase more Hero slots with Diamonds.
• The Guild Leader can now be renamed for free and any rename will change your name on the leaderboards also.
• Guild Members can now be renamed at the Guild Registration Office for a fee of 2 Diamonds. Member names are strictly enforced and randomly chosen by the GRO and are unique across the game.
• Base Power is now 12 down from 36.
• Base Health is now 72 down from 180.

Item Changes

• All rarity items now generate with 6 component slots. This change is not retroactive.
• High level items are too easily obtainable and they makes many parts of the game trivial. Many of the changes below are done to increase game longevity.
• Salvage fragments earned for higher tier item components has been increased significantly.

Item Components

• Resist Magical has been renamed to Resist Elemental.
• Resist base values have been changed from 2 to 6. This increase makes it possible to overcap resists for endgame content since debuffs to resistances are taken from the overcapped value.
• Damage base value has been increased to 2 from 1.
• Healing Inherent values on items is now 3 down from 6.
• Warding Inherent values on items is now 3 down from 6.
• Components on Items from loot chests can roll with up to + 2 to component level. Components rolled this way will be marked as Fused. Fused components cannot be Rerolled or Upgraded by any means at this time. All existing item components that have a higher rarity than the item have also been retroactively marked as fused.
• Components no longer have a minimum rarity. This makes nicely rolled high level items much more rare.
• Fused components provide no salvage Gem Fragment value.
• Penetrate components have been moved to Honor Fragments.
• Skill Multiplier (Greater) renamed to Skill Multiplier.
• Skill Multiplier (Lesser) has been removed and items with this component have been given Skill Multiplier.

Loot Chest Changes

• The Loot Chest window is now more of a stash looking UI that only shows loot chests you have unopened.
• The chance of an item being Epic, Legendary, or Artifact has been decreased.
• The first item in a loot chest is guaranteed to be the same rarity as the chest
• Items in chests are guaranteed not to be more than 3 levels below the level of the chest (Artifact chests roll Rare at a minimum).
• All items have a 10% chance to be upgraded one rarity level higher.
• The chance for loot chests to drop gold and fragments has increased significantly.

Honor

• The Honor merchant has been removed for now and will be brought back to sell cosmetic and/or QoL items.
• Existing Honor has been converted to Honor Fragments for use at the Alchemist.

Artisan Changes

• The reroll cost of each component on an item now starts at 1 Fragment. Each reroll increases the cost by 1 Fragment no matter what rarity the component is.
• The Artisan now has three categories for components: Standard, Honor, Alchemic. All categories require Gem Fragments while Honor and Alchemic require Fragments of those types as well. The Fragment cost for Honor and Alchemic = (Number of Rerolls on Component / 6) * 6. So Rolls 1-6 on a component require 6 special Fragments, rolls 7-12 require 12 special Fragments, etc.
• Components cannot be upgraded beyond the value of the rarity.
• The Artisan no longer needs to be upgraded.

Merchant Changes

• The Merchant has a much lower chance of rolling Epic and above items.
• The Merchant no longer needs to be upgraded.

Attention

• Pretty sure no one reads these patch notes, but in case there is... the first person to say the word 'Flabbergast' in game or in the Discord General Chat channel will earn 900 Diamonds. These have to be awarded manually so just wait for me to see your message.

Leaderboards

• The Leaderboards now have a screen for Laboratory.
• Each Leaderboard now shows the Guild Leader Model for the top 6 ranks.

Game Log

• The game log displays the last few lines of log items on a transparent background at all times. If no new text has come in for 30 seconds these log items are hidden.
• When the chat box is clicked or Enter is pressed the game log now shows as a solid background window. Custom game log transparency has been removed.
• The game log now shows the levels and names of all players that are online. Clicking on these names will show that players profile.
• The game log now only has two different heights.
• Fixed a bug where the scroll wheel was not scrolling the game log.

Party System

• The Party System has been removed. Now when you join a game you can pick any Hero from your Guild Roster.
• In the future, this system will be re-added similar to how it worked previously but will be used for co-op mode.

Adventures & Story

• 3 new games have been added to Story Mode!
• The first time you complete an Adventure you will earn 3 Loot Chest currency. Completing the same Adventure again only awards 1 Loot Chest currency.
• Extra Diamonds and Gold earned from completing an Adventure the first time has been removed.
• The Halloween Mini adventures are now available in the Adventures game mode, but they no longer offer Halloween Loot Chests.

Crucible Changes

• Crucible difficulty ramps up faster with fewer levels between rarity types.
• Existing Standard Geared Leaderboard Max level has been divided by 4.
• Existing Standard Vanilla Leaderboard Max level has been divided by 2.
• Crucible rewards now follow the Adventure rewards formula based on game rarity and do not continue to scale with higher level crucibles.
• Crucible mobs now have base resists dependent on their rarity type.

Battles

• Heroes now get 6 AP per turn and skill costs have been increased to 3 AP.
• Attack with a Basic Attack skill now use either Physical Damage or Magical Damage as a primary component type depending on the Main Hand weapon type. These new damage types use the average of your Physical (Slash, Pierce, Crush) or Magical (Fire, Ice, Energy) Damage Types. This skill will also use a new Physical or Magical Penetration value which works in the same way.
• Defending against a Basic Attack Skill uses your Physical Resist or Magical Resist internal values, which use the average of your Physical (Slash, Pierce, Crush) or Magical (Fire, Ice, Energy) Resist Types.
• Max AP is now 9.
• Damaging Skills that are single target (including Basic Attack) now apply a 40% damage bonus when the target is attacked from behind, and a 20% damage bonus when attacked from a flanking position.
• Changing your facing now costs 1 AP.
• Non player Mobs now have base resists of 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 at their respective rarity levels.
• Having the high ground when an attack is used against you will reduce damage taken 20%.
• Fixed a bug where the high ground damage bonus was being applied when the source mob was below the target mob.
• Fixed a bug where logging back in to a game in progress would not show ground effects until the next round started.

PvP Battles

• The honor calculation for games has been changed to apply a maximum of 64 Honor Pool split amongst the participants. The pool is then split between the teams using the point differential. The Winner will earn 150% of their pool share. The Loser will earn 50% of their pool share. Each teams pool share is then split amongst their Heroes. The more points you score the higher a percentage of honor that Hero will earn.
• Games that don't make it to 6 rounds or higher will have a smaller Honor Pool.
• When a team earns less than 25% of the pool share the game will be marked non-competitive. The loser receives no honor and the winner has a 50% penalty.

Halloween Event

• The Goblin Lantern is an Uncommon level adventure that awards Uncommon Halloween Loot Chests. In this chest you will sometimes find a Lantern Off Hand cosmetic item.
• Skeletons at the Feast is an Epic level adventure that awards Epic Halloween Loot Chests. In this chest you will sometimes find a Scythe Main Hand cosmetic item.
• Jack Hallow is an Artifact level adventure that awards Artifact Halloween Loot Chests. In this chest you will sometimes find a Pumpkin Helm Head cosmetic item.

Town

• The town camera can now be zoomed in a bit further.
• The town camera can no longer be rotated with the arrow keys.

Heroes

• Renaming the Main Hero works again. Using this feature will change your name on leaderboards as well now.

Games Window

• Fixed a bug where you could not queue for Geared 1v1 from the games window.
• Added a new Halloween Event section.
• Completed Adventure/Story games now do a better job of showing their pool rewards when you have already completed the game and earned the bonus rewards.

Item Tooltips

• The skill description should now calculate stat changes to the skill that are added by equipped item components. This only works if the item is currently equipped on a Hero.

Audit

• Fixed a bug where item salvage audits were not being recorded correctly. Fragment totals are still correct but some crafting leaderboard stats will seem skewed.
• Fixed an issue with the audit migration script in the last release duplicating items salvaged leaderboard stats.

Skills

• Heal skill now has a chance to apply Regenerate instead of Rejuvenate.
• Leap Slam skill can now be self targeted.

Settings

• Fixed a bug where disabling shadows setting was not being applied when restarting the game.

PvP

• Fixed a bug where Geared PvP was not enforcing the turn time limits.

Battles

• Fixed a bug where Vanilla game modes were adding in Crit Chance values from items.
• Fixed a bug where Vanilla game modes were adding in Crit Multiplier values from items.
• Fixed a bug where Vanilla game modes were adding in Skill Stacks from items.

Crucible

• Fixed a bug where the new stats system was not recording Crucible progress correctly.
• Fixed a bug where Geared Crucible was loading Vanilla Crucible stats for Heroes and Mobs.
• Fixed a bug where Geared Crucible was not enforcing the turn time limits.

Server

• Reworked the server architecture and changed how player load is handled. This is either going to work really well or make things really unstable. Let's find out together!

Seasons

Seasons Overview

• When a new season begins, you'll have the option to see your Standard Heroes/Stash/Loot, or your Season Heroes/Stash/Loot. I've not decided how this will be done visually and technically yet!
• Seasons will have separate leaderboards.

Seasons and Diamonds

• Your Season Stash and Standard Stash use the same Stash size calculation. Purchasing more slots in one mode will have an affect on the other.
• Your Cosmetic items will be visible and available in your Standard Stash and your Season Stash, however each cosmetic item can still only be equipped on one Hero.

Season Rewards

• There will be several cosmetic items that can only be earned during that Season and will never be available after.
• There will be unique cosmetic items for the top N players (of each leaderboard?) for that season.
• Each Season will introduce a new Item Influence type that cannot be earned in Standard until that season is over. There is also a chance that these Influences do NOT get rolled into standard or into the next season.

Season Close

• When a season closes, your Season Main character will be deleted. Their experience will be rolled into your Standard Main character.
• Other Heroes will be moved into your Standard Roster as room permits.
• Currencies (except diamonds), and Loot Chests will be rolled into your Standard account.
• Diamonds used for dyes on your Season Main will be reimbursed if there isn't an alternative to diamond dyes costs yet.
• There will be a bit of downtime in between Seasons so that players can take a small break and get their stashes and Heroes sorted.

Mini Events

• Save up your currency to purchase cosmetic items that are only available during that mini event.
• Remaining currency at the end of the event will likely be converted to Diamonds at some ratio.

Timeline

Town

• There is now a greater focus on being in town. The lobby-like feel of the game has been mostly removed.
• The design of the town is still a work in progress...
• Most game screens can be opened by clicking on one of the NPCs in town. to ease into town mode, all game screens can still be opened form the buttons at the top of the UI.
• When a screen is opened (profile, merchant, etc.) the game background will blur slightly. If this causes a performance issue with anyone please let me know and I can add a toggle in settings to disable that.
• The camera can no longer be panned around in town.

Diamonds

• Diamonds can now be purchased via Paypal and applied to your account. At this time Diamonds are priced at 300 for 1$. Click the + icon at the top right of the UI to purchase Diamonds on the HEXAD website.

HEXAD and RMT

• My current philosophy on RMT is to only provide QoL and cosmetic features for purchase using diamonds.
• Will you be able to purchase high end items that give a competitive advantage, or items otherwise unobtainable without RMT? No, never.
• Will you be able to purchase items that allow you to advance faster (time limited bonus to gold/exp/fragment/etc)? Maybe. This is a bit of a grey area for me and I'll look to community input before I make any decision in this regard.

UI

• This release has pushed more iconography into the UI than text. This is partly due to space constrains text imposes, and the lack of localization. Icon heavy UI has disadvantages, but we're going to try this out for a while and see how it goes. :)
• Hero and Item windows now open up on the left and right side of the screen, and the hero preview has been moved to the center of the screen. In these screens the game log will also shift to the middle.
• The game log now auto transparencies itself when it is not in focus. There are still some buggy aspects of using the chatbox due to this change, but it should be workable... In a future release the chatbox text will also fade out after a few seconds when the chat box is not in focus.
• Hero skill description screen has been removed temporarily.

Stash

• Stash slots now use square icons. As much as I like the novelty of hexagon grids for this game, I think for inventory the squares make more sense for now.
• Stash size has been changed from 75 to 90 slots by default.
• More stash slots can be purchased for 6 Diamonds each.
• Items can now be highlighted using filter keywords. 'artifact', 'fire', 'honor', etc. It's not a very smart filter yet; you cannot do phrases like "fire damage" in this release.

Dyes

• Metallic and Glowing Dye are meant to be rare; that is why they cost Diamonds. However, with this change and Diamonds being a purchasable cosmetic I want there needs to be a way to keep the dyes you purchased. I do not have a solution for this yet, but all Diamond costs for dye purchases are being tracked and will be refunded when a solution is provided.

Cosmetics

• Cosmetic Item Diamond costs have been modified to make purchasing them more meaningful.
• Added Off Hand Target Shield.
• Added Main Hand Wooden Sword.

Item Tooltips

• Item tooltip backgrounds are now colored to their corresponding rarity type.

Appearance Editor

• The UI for the Appearance Editor has been reworked.

Skills

• Charge skill description has been updated to show the potential status effects.
• Chain Hook skill description has been updated to show the potential status effects.

Models

• Fixed an issue with the Wand model not showing selected colors.

Training Items

• Fixed a bug that was causing training items to show health and power that had been removed from certain items.

Loot Chests

• The chance for items to be upgraded one level above the rarity of the box has been changed to 5% down from 16%.

Item Tooltips

• Added a 'Currently Equipped' tooltip and a stats comparison section to the main tooltip. This is only active when you are looking at a Heroes equipment.
• Tooltips now do a much better job of staying on screen and not being cut off on bottom.
• Pierce Primary Component text is now colored purple.
• Increased the contrast of tooltips against the background in the lobby.

Skills

• Fireball skill will now affect the caster if they are in the targeted area.
• Flame Strike skill will now target the caster if they are in the targeted area.
• Lightning Bolt skill will now affect the caster if they are targeted or are a target of the chain.
• Ricochet skill will now affect the caster if they are a target of the chain.
• Puncture skill can no longer target the caster.
• Pummel skill can no longer target the caster.
• Poison skill can no longer target the caster.
• Fixed a bug where Cone of Cold skill could be targeted on the caster with unpredictable results...
• Fixed a bug where Wall of Fire skill could be targeted on the caster with unpredictable results...

Leaderboards

• PVP Leaderboard has been adjusted retroactively and games won/lost that are now considered noncompetitive have been removed from the players records. Honor earned from those games has been removed from the players leaderboard reporting, but was not removed from their account.

Battles

• PVP Battles now determine if a battle was noncompetitive. If the game is determined to be non-competitive then neither participant gets Honor.
• Fixed a bug where a players turn would not end immediately if they died during their turn.
• Fixed a bug where the game results would not calculate if everyone died at the same time in a Multiplayer PvP game.
• Fixed a bug where the player could win an Adventure/Story but only get the loser rewards if an AI teammate exists.

Story Mode

• Fixed a bug where story games were not applying the 'Hide Completed' toggle when first logging in.

Town Beta

• Added an area where online players can walk around and see other players who are online. Not sure where this feature is going yet, but it is kind of fun.
• Players Main character is the Hero that is visible in Town.
• Players that log out should have their Hero removed from town.

Heroes

• New account Heroes now spawn with a Common Dye color set instead of as the Grey Blob color set.

Skills

• Chain Hook skill multiplier is now 100% down from 150%.
• Ward skill multiplier is now 150% down from 200%.
• Ward skill now has a 50% chance to apply 3 stacks of Rejuvenate.
• Mass Ward skill multiplier is now 75% down from 100%.
• Mass Heal skill multiplier is now 75% down from 100%.
• Heal skill now has a 50% chance to apply 3 stacks of Regenerate.
• Fixed a bug with skills that chain that could prevent chaining when a live mob was standing on a tile with a dead mob.

Graphics

• The Menu now has an option to toggle shadows on or off.

Home

• Added several more rankings to the home page.

Party

• Since players can only have 3 characters and all current game modes require 3 characters... Heroes will be automatically added to the party when they log in or create an account

Hero Appearance

• Using Common Dyes is now free and does not cost Gem Fragments.
• The Hero appearance editor now has a 'RANDOMIZE' button which will change all the item colors on your Hero using Common Dyes.
• Increased the size of the dye swatches to make them easier to click.
• Added tooltips to the dye swatches that tells how much each one costs.
• Chin Color options have been removed until Chin models are added...

Hero Stats/Equipment

• The following changes are being made since these extraneous stats server no purpose on items since they are static across all item types. They served a purpose when different item types had different health/power, but that purpose is no longer needed in the current design.
• Hero/Mob Base Health has been increased to 180 up from 36.
• Inherent Health has been removed from all Head/Chest/Hands/Feet armor items.
• Hero/Mob Base Power has been increased to 36 up from 6.
• Inherent Power has been removed from all Main Hand items.

Visual Effects

• Reduced the number of particles than fire hit effects and fire ground effects emit.

Leaderboards

• PVP Leaderboard now shows how much honor each player has earned in Vanilla and Geared.
• Merchant Leaderboard rank calculation has been changed to Total Gold Spent at Merchant + Auction Net Sales.

Merchant

• Merchant restock cost is now locked to 60 gold and no longer increased with the level of the merchant.
• Merchant now only stocks 6 items (down from 15) per restock. Players will have a method to increase the number of items the Merchant stocks in a future release.

The Quartermaster

• Fixed a bug where crystal scepters could roll from the quartermaster with stats.

Item Components

• Fixed a bug where some items could roll with Honor components when the item did not have Honor influence.

Item Tooltips

• Holding the Alt key no longer shows the 'Inherent' item stats. It now shows the salvage value of the item.
• The Alt key should not longer get stuck in a down state when alt+tabbing in and out of the game.
• Fixed a bug with tooltip Alt key behaviour bugging out after a game was played.

Status Effects

• Added descriptions for Flammable, Chilled, and Conductive
• Fixed a bug where Flammable, Chiller, and Conductive were not applying their debuff values.

Game Log

• Removed the global login/logout notifications

UI

• The Home and Away team colors are now brighter to improve contrast.

Artisan

• Fixed a bug that displayed influenced components in the available list when those components should not roll on the item.

Diamond Loot Chests

• Added a stat in the Server Economy tab that shows how many Diamond Loot Chests have been claimed.

Battles

• Improved the error message when a player tries to start a new game without 3 Heroes in their party.
• Fixed a bug where the Turn Timer was not being used in Multiplayer Geared and Crucible Geared Modes.
• The turn timer now shows "Pregame" instead of the name of the Hero will have the first turn while the pregame countdown is active.

General

• Made Generic Tooltips background are a bit more opaque.

Server

• Added a process to kill abandoned games.
• Fixed a bug where the adventure game completed calculation was wrong.

Heros

• Your first character is now considered your 'Main'.
• Only your main character can be renamed, and this must be unique across the game.
• All other Heroes are assigned a random name from the new name generator system.
• These changes will factor into the future HEXAD long term gameplay. More details on that system soon (?)

Story Mode

• Spent way too much time time working on the story mode of HEXAD. Not sure it adds any real value to the game or if it will make the cut for release.
• Stories now have a toggle to 'Hide Completed'.

Adventures

• Adventures now have a toggle to 'Hide Completed'.

Lobby

• Party window and play button have been moved to the bottom right corner.
• Right clicking a Hero Portrait in the party window will remove them from the party.

Battles

• Games can now be started by pressing the space bar when ready.
• The Mob Hover Tooltip will now stay visible even after leaving the hovered mob. This allows the player to get see details about the skills the mob has equipped.
• Fixed a bug where a highlighted path would remain visible after a turn was ended.
• Fixed a bug where rejoining a battle could result in being unable to perform any actions.
• Fixed a bug where rejoining a battle was not loading the cooldown timers on the skillbar.
• Upcoming turn mob portraits are now smaller and provide a new visual experience. Hovering over these UI elements also highlights the model now.