Hey there, it’s ModusPwnenz again from the design team and I’m going to chat about Trinkets: what they are, what our goals for them are, and where we see them evolving as the game matures and opinions coalesce.
Trinkets are equipment selected in the Atheneum that give large amounts of power throughout a Dive. The power can come either from gaining raw stats over time, increasing the options you have during a run, or from narrowing the pools of rewards down to more usable Vestiges and Font upgrades. Everyone initially starts with four available trinkets to pick from, but more are unlocked via keys gained through the level progression.
Here are some of the main goals for what we wanted Trinkets to cover:
Give impactful upgrades
Support core playstyles
Have crazy effects that shift how you play
Assist in completing quest
I’m going to give a Trinket as an example of meeting these goals. Although, many Trinkets can and ideally do fit in multiple buckets, such as giving both an impactful upgrade and supporting a core playstyle.
Give impactful upgrades
Heart of a Hero is one of the starting Trinkets, and a good example of giving a nice impactful upgrade. Legendary Fonts are supersized in effect so they can feel really good to get. Even though they are super powerful, this Trinket is balanced around the fact that it is delayed power, meaning it doesn’t have any effect at all until after the first Guardian is defeated. Also, there is both randomness and opportunity cost when selecting a Font upgrade. If you don’t have any glyphs you might get a Font upgrade you don’t want… which can lead to other interesting outcomes where you may need to pivot your build to take advantage of it.
Support core playstyles
There are currently a handful of Trinkets that affect the core keywords, giving them an initial boost and building up into something stronger later in the run. Essence of Quillion is one of them, building up Spiked by utilizing sources of Shield, and eventually creating both naturally at the start of each turn. The main idea here was to build into the tank fantasy, but also give an option for a more supportive role as well, since the shield bonus applies to all allies.
Additionally, these Trinkets have something we internally call “Tilt”, meaning they make certain keywords show up more often. Like many systems, it’s something we’re still iterating on and improving but generally we like how it can help with solidifying a build without outright forcing it.
Have crazy effects that shift how you play
Sometimes people just want to see what happens when you spin the wheel of fortune, and that’s what this next Trinket is all about. One of my personal favorites, the Blessing of Kwills will continually upgrade the rarity of a Draft’s choice as long as you keep rerolling the options. Aside from the dopamine of getting an epic or legendary upgrade, this Trinket is also interesting as it really changes how to approach rewards. Glyphs have higher value, so taking more hard battles for Glyph Globes is a viable strategy, same with going to more Tethered Shrines or Binding Empowerments to get the extra juice.
Assist in completing quests
One piece of feedback we kept hearing is that people wanted ways to help tackle the more complicated quests in the game. Trinkets are one of the solutions to that problem, as seen in the Chart of Stars guaranteeing that the Derelict Starship shows up in the first book selection, making any Starship based quests easier and more efficient to complete. Although we recently made a change that enforces all Books show up as a selection during a Dive, sometimes it’s just nicer to get your quests done in the first book!
Process of creation and iteration
Almost all of the Trinkets went through several stages of updates for balance and fun factor, and many didn’t make the cut for the initial addition. Generally we want to make sure each Trinket hits multiple of the goals listed above, and if not it should be a standout selection in the goal that it does achieve.
Balance was also a big factor for Trinkets. The one issue we did not want to cause is that there would be a clear meta in terms of power level; if any Trinket was always clearly the best one to choose regardless of the circumstance that would lead to stagnant gameplay and dissuade people from trying out more fun Trinkets or ones that they personally enjoy playing.
The Future
More Trinkets are on the way! As people play with them and we see what’s working and isn’t working as well as we hoped, a heap of new ideas spring out of that data and discussion. Also, we want to make sure that all of the core playstyles are supported, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if we had a Critical Charge focused Trinket, or a Bleed Trinket, or a movement based Trinket on the horizon. What else would you like to see? Let us know in the comments or in discord, we’re always listening!
Early Access Patch 0.2.3
Letter from the Team
We're working hard to get improvements out to you all as fast as we can, this tweaks balance in a variety of areas and fixes a number of reported bugs.
We think we've improved a lot of the outlier combats at this point but please, as always, send in feedback if you think something doesn't feel right.
Release Timing
This patch will be released at approximately 10 am PT (UTC-7) on September 1st, 2023.
Reduced base damage of Creeping Blight from 3 >>> 2.
Reduced base damage of Blight Puddles from 4 >>> 2.
Inflict Burn run quest decreased from 750 >>> 650. Quick Mode decreased from 600 >>> 500.
Apply Spiked run quest increased from 100 >>> 130. Quick Mode increased from 80 >>> 100.
Star Captain
Fixed Chillazer ascension Stimulate scaling with Magic Power instead of Physical Power.
Fixed Mission Leader ascension Shock Trooper missing tooltip for Shocked.
Clairvoyant
Updated Spirit Bomb Uncommon augment Quickened Spirit Bomb to only be chosen once maximum since Spirit Bomb cooldown can't be reduced any further.
Magma Miner
Fixed Uncommon Magma Miner vestige Worm Trophy granting Heat stacks every other turn.
Enemies
Increased the damage of Argolath's Tentacle's "Slap" attack.
Reduced Inkzooka AOE attack scaling from 75% base damage >>> 50% base damage.
Slightly reduced Mimic Magma Miner and Mimic Mosscloak AOE size.
Updated Tuhning Guardians to move every turn and do less damage with their blast attack.
Increased Shadow of Ruhnstone’s health from 14000 >>> 15000.
Increased Ruhnstone Guardian’s health from 2500 >>> 3000. They now do slightly more damage.
Increased Book 1 Nimbit’s health from 100 >>> 120.
Increased Book 2 Nimbit’s health from 300 >>> 360.
Increased Book 1 Janus’ health from 2200 >>> 2600.
Tuned down a few combats with slightly too many enemies.
Reduced Inkblaster and Inkzooka base attack from 6 >>> 5.
Tuned down the number of Support Spindlecasters that show up at once in Edges combats.
Added updated tooltip for Support Spindlecasters that shows their heal amount.
Updated Rhinferno lava puddle to last only 1 turn instead of 3 turns.
Fixed Rhinferno not moving out of the shrinking Ink.
Visuals
Added a new flash effect on damage procs.
Improved eye of the storm FX and Gaze FX.
Improved treasure pot FX.
Engine
Changed MSAA default to 2X to potentially improve performance for players on older PCs who may never check the settings. All existing options are still available. Feel free to change the MSAA option back to 8x if you wish in the settings menu.
Fixed a voting bug caused by improper handling of "voting stopped" events that could lead to a softlock when voting to move forward.
Fixed a few bugs with multiplayer save resume that could result in it not working under certain circumstances. We still have at least one more bug to fix in this area related to a player abandoning the run from the main menu and then others attempting to continue that run. We're working on it.
The Mimic
I’m Albert A from the design crew. Today let’s talk about the Mimic!
The Mimic is a Guardian you can fight in the Derelict Starship. As Brendan was writing the story for Season 2, he came up with the idea of the Mimic, a formless alien creature made of liquid opal with the capability to morph their bodies into other forms. There were an abundance of inspirations we drew from, the T-100 from Terminator 2, Morph from Treasure Planet, Ben 10, and the art team went out to concept a rendition of a ‘shapeshifter’ creature.
The question was what would it do? Initially, we wanted the Mimic to be able to change shape into all of the current classes in the game. But as we drew it out, it became increasingly clear that it would have been too large of an undertaking. Each new form for the Mimic is akin to making an entirely new enemy – it would need its own concept, model, rig, and set of animations and abilities. So, instead we set out to limit it to 3 forms, Magma Miner, Mosscloak, and Weaver, the three starting classes in the game.
Designing what each form would do came down to 3 things:
It needs to be reminiscent of the class it was playing, with identifiable moves as Bindings.
It needs to have its own ‘spin’ on each of the Bindings to work as proper threat.
It needs to shapeshift at some point during the combat. Otherwise, it wouldn’t feel like a ‘shapeshifter’.
So as the art team chugged along to get the Mimic in the game, I prototyped a placeholder asset with abilities. Having designed the starting 3 classes, it was nice to be able to sort of ‘recreate’ them in a different context. You couldn’t just plug in a player Binding to an enemy ability, each ‘Mimic Form’ would have to be its own iteration of each of the classes.
Magma Miner was the easiest to translate into an enemy, Bonk and Smash translate pretty well as direct attacks, and Leaping Strike just worked as a larger AOE. The main difference is, instead of gaining Heat only from attacking, the Mimic’s Magma Miner also gains Heat from being attacked, as a way to give the player agency during the fight.
Screenshot depicting the Mimic in Magma Miner form attacking player
Mosscloak’s initial design was a bit different. The initial design revolved a bit more around Shuriken. Rather than doing a Flurry AOE attack, Mosscloak’s direct attack would hit 1 time for each stack of Shuriken. So if it had 3 Shuriken, it would multiattack three times. The reason we ultimately didn’t stick with the idea is because it didn’t jive too well with Evasive, there wasn’t a way we could make that interaction clear, and we had plans for the future to grey out direct attack arrows that were getting dodged, so it wasn’t clear how it would work with that system either. A big benefit with how it’s currently implemented is that it’s less direct-attack heavy, and probably resembles Mosscloak more than the initial design.
Screenshot depicting the Mimic in Weaver form attacking player
We were inching closer to releasing the season, and we had a working prototype, but the art for the Mimic was still coming down the pipeline. Safe to say, we were getting pretty worried if we could get the Mimic to ‘work’ in time. Animation-wise, we hadn’t done anything like this before. Whether or not it would work out of the box was an open question…
The answer to that question was no, it would not work out of the box. In fact it was very broken, so broken that the enemy wouldn’t play any of its animations. Instead of walking it would slide across the battlefield like the silver surfer. So me and a bunch of other devs scrambled to try to find a fix. And we tried a lot of stuff, some of them would get one thing to work, but then cause the animation to break or start T-posing.
But thankfully after several discussions, we found a way to get it to work. The ultimate fix had to do with combining rigs together into one, and a bunch of other small things. Thanks to Griffin and Merlyn for getting the Mimic to work in the nick of time! Retrospectively there are a few things we could’ve done to smoothen the process a bit more, like shifting the Mimic further down the pipeline earlier, knowing that we were likely to run into problems out of the box.
In general, whenever you’re trying something new, you should always account for running into new problems. And, you need to weigh that with whether it’s worth the effort in trying to make that idea come to life. Sometimes, you might decide it isn’t worth the headache. But other times, if you have people who are excited about an idea, you go, “Why not?”.
I hope you guys enjoyed this deep dive in the process of making the Mimic, game development isn’t always a smooth ride, but it sure can be an interesting one.
Early Access Patch 0.2.2
Letter from the Team
Our latest update aims to improve balance with a mix of buffs and nerfs to a variety of areas. In addition we've fixed a number of reported bugs. Thanks for all the feedback, keep it coming!
Release Timing
This patch will be released at approximately 10 am PT (UTC-7) on August 30th, 2023.
Tuned down the amount of enemy damage scaling for 2 player parties, making 2-player co-op runs slightly easier.
Players can now ctrl-click to force moving to/consuming a pickup when out of range. This is usable for battle pickups - Orbs, Cultivate flowers, and Cynder Mushrooms.
Fixed bug where some players could not see the quests to unlock new Aspects. Those quests should now show up for affected players.
Cleaned up a few abilities which may have been showing duplicate or incorrect tags.
Fixed Spiked damage tooltip not scaling with physical or ability power, although Spiked itself did the correct damage.
Fixed bug where Critical Lightning augment wasn't completing quest.
Fixed bug where ascending Smoke Bomb to Cluster Bomb also completed the Smouldering Incendiary quest.
Separated all of the status effect Run Quests so that there are no longer any hybrid versions. There is now a different quest for inflicting Burn, inflicting Poison, inflicting Frostbite, and gaining Spiked. Bleed and Dodge no longer appear in Run Quests.
Essence of Quillion status effects no longer have extraneous words.
Increased Movement related quest from 35>>>90.
Fixed some unclear objectives + repeat Gardener conversations in the Anchoring the DARVe quest.
Vestiges
Updated Rare vestige Heavenly Eclipse: "On dealing Magic damage, gain 1 stack of Dawn. On dealing Physical damage, gain 1 stack of Dusk." >>> "On using a Magic Binding, gain 1 stack of Dawn. On using a Physical Binding, gain 1 stack of Dusk." Dusk grants 1 Magic Power per stack >>> 2 Magic Power per stack. Dawn grants 1 Physical Power per stack >>> 2 Physical Power per Stack.
Everfrost of Arcutria trinket: Frostbite damage amount reduced from 2 >>> 1.
Blaze of Brigid trinket: Burn damage amount increased from 1 >>> 2.
Star Captain
Currently the Star Captain is performing higher than all other Aspects so we’re going to reduce its overall damage slightly, and take some power away from Cryoclasm’s AoE. The defensive power gained from both shields and dazed in the Cryoclasm augments proves to be too useful at mitigating damage, so those are modified as well.
Sentinel Drone damage reduced from 50 >>> 40.
Reduced the AoE size of Cryoclasm.
Reduced the Frosbite stacks from secondary Cryoclasm from 2 >>> 1.
Shielding Cryoclasm augment: Shield on secondary hit changed from from uncommon >>> rare.
Dazing Cryoclasm augment: Dazes all targets hit >>> Dazes primary target only. Changed from rare >>> uncommon.
Fixed the weapon cosmetic rewards granted from Star Captain aspect quests.
Granted Star Captain cosmetics to players who already completed Star Captain aspect quests before cosmetic was swapped out.
Weaver
Fixed Stitch Pull range not increasing with Widened Stitch augment.
Draftable Bindings
Fixed Quicken Augments Magic Quicken, Physical Quicken, and Enhanced Quicken not triggering on Quicken ascensions.
Fixed Blink Uncommon augment Shielding Blink showing up as Common.
Enemies
Removed countdown effect from Support Spindlecasters that increased attack of enemies on using a Binding.
Increased Book 1 Support Spindlecasters HP from 150 >>> 200. Increased Book 2 Support Spindlecasters HP from 450 >>> 600.
Tuned down several early combats that were killing players too fast.
Fixed Mimicked Threads not being removed from the player on defeating a Mimic that shows up in villains.
Reduced Book 1 Lusk’s base damage slightly.
Reduced Lusk’s projectile area of effect damage.
Increased health of Book 2 Lil’ Lusks from 200 >>> 260.
Nim now only gets attack bonuses from Nimbits dying.
Reduced Book 1 Nim’s base damage slightly.
Increased health of Book 2 Nimbits from 250 >>> 300.
Book 2 Captor now creates Chompys instead of Inkstains.
Argolath now gives 2 stacks of the damage increasing buff to the tentacles.
Argolath no longer gives the damage increasing buff to Mimics.
Ghostquill now will stand slightly closer to players by default.
Rhinkling will now stand slightly closer to players by default.
Reduced Thantaloupe and Razorshade collision size.
UI
Slightly tweaked the display of Movement rings so that the player's new movement area is more visible.
Fixed issue where fill bar could show wrong experience value at the end of a run.
The HP bar no longer shows over-healing values.
Visuals
Added a new batch of environmental VFX for the Derelict Starship.
Audio
Fixed sea of ink humming, Argolath scream, and Barbed Banshee volume.
New Items on Sale!
Check out the latest items on sale in Inkbound's Cosmetic Shop!
Grub-Tooth Hammer
Was 700 now 500 Shinies
Eastern Kingdom Set
Was 1250, now 1000 Shinies
Troll
Was 300, now 200 Shinies
Drink animation
Was 150, now 50 Shinies
Glitter Trail Effect
Was 700, now 350 Shinies
Yeet it animation
Was 300, now 150 Shinies
Share a screenshot of you and your new item here! And, as always, thank you so much for your support.
See you in the Atheneum! Cami Community Manager at Shiny Shoe
Launch Week Roundup
Hey, Inklings!
I hope you’re enjoying The Starship of Terrors! It’s only been a few days since the patch went live but I’m having a blast seeing everyone in the Atheneum and am so impressed by all your Daily Challenge scores!
To celebrate the update going live, Inkbound is 20% OFF until September 4th! We also have our first cosmetic store sale for this update! For this week, the following items are on sale:
Clairvoyant Plague Prophet Set
Was 1,250 now 1,000 Shinies
Toxic Puddle Trail
Was 700 now 500 Shinies
Fishface helmet
Was 450 now 300 Shinies
Make it rain animation
Was 450 now 300 Shinies
Boop emote
Was 300 now 50 Shinies
Golden Nib Guards
Was 450 now 200 Shinies
Now, I know there have been a lot of changes to the game in this update. If you’re interested in learning more, the team have written some fantastic blog posts that go into more detail on such features as…
Offline Mode: That’s right, rain or shine, you can now play Inkbound! Read more about offline mode in this blog post by our CEO, Mark Cooke! Movement: You can now see how much movement points and what you will have left after using a binding simultaneously. For more details on the design and implementation of this change, check out Andrew’s blog post, ‘Movement 2.0’ here! Newest Bindings: For players who want even more, you can read all about the newest bindings. New Player Class: Finally, don’t forget about the Star Captain, whose designer wrote an in-depth post about the ins and outs of the newest player aspect here!
Want to share your Daily Challenge score? Have goofy decals you’ve paired with the Star Captain’s armor set? Share them on our Discord! This is also a great place to ask the team any questions you might have.
And, as always, I cannot express how much you, our amazing Inkbound players, mean to me! You make this the best game to work on and I can’t wait to see your reactions to The Starship of Terrors!
See you in the Atheneum! Cami Community Manager at Shiny Shoe
Early Access Patch 0.2.1
Letter from the Team
We hope you've been having a great time playing The Starship of Terrors update we released on August 23rd! Thank you for all the bug reports, feedback posted in-game and on Discord, etc. We always strive to be responsive and the goal of this patch is to resolve as many common issues as possible.
In addition to the fixes, at the start of a new patch we always get a lot of insight into balance and tuning. This patch is intended to lightly address some of the main areas we're seeing for improvement. Expect more in depth adjustments over the coming weeks!
Release Timing
This patch will be released at approximately 10 am PT (GMT-7) on August 25th, 2023.
Generally spawn orbs a bit closer to players, making them less of a movement penalty to pick up.
Increased Movement granted from Fonts at all rarities by +5.
Fixed Daily Challenge Non-cumulative score to be inclusive.
Resolved issue with Always-on alt information in combat preview display.
Fixed issue with Mimic Magma Miner's Leaping Strike and Mimic Mosscloak's Dash sometimes causing the enemy to visually be in the wrong position after the dash.
Quests and Victory Board
Updated some quest objectives for clarity.
Kwilling Run quest reduced from 750 >>> 700. Quick Run/Daily from 600 >>> 575.
Inflict Burn or Poison runquest reduced from 2000 >>> 1600. Quick Run/Daily from 1500 >>> 1400.
Inflict Frostbite or Bleed runquest reduced from 350 >>> 320. Quick Run/Daily from 275 >>> 260.
Reduced quest progress needed to complete Quicken cooldown quest.
Updated name of Cryoclasm augment in quest.
Fixed bug with Sentinel Drone damage in an action quest not working.
Fixed bug where Healing below 10% quest was not working correctly.
Updated Predator's Quintessance quest to be completed within a single battle instead of a single turn.
Fixed a bug where Defeat Enemies with Smoke Bomb wasn't progressing correctly.
Fixed bug where acquiring the Blink Ascension Flash would count towards Blast quest progress.
Fixed bug where killing Mimic wouldn't contribute to Defeat Guardians daily.
Fixed visual bug where Star Captain quests didn't appear to unlock class specific vestiges.
Fixed bug where Incendiary Ascensions weren't triggering quest progress.
Fixed bug where Obelisk class quest set could be hidden sometimes.
Fixed bug where Nib+Bin weren't showing up in the intro Sea of Ink in non-Quick Dive modes for players who completed all quests prior to update.
Fixed text for Cone of Frost VB quest that said Cleave instead.
Fixed bug where Poison Vapor VB quest could only be completed by winning a run with Pilfer.
Fixed quest referencing incorrect mode for Captive quests.
Fixed bug where VB Ranked quests were completing incorrectly.
Fixed malformed text in Grasp Augment quest.
Enemies
Slightly increased Guardian health in quick play and slightly decreased Villain health.
Increased enemy attack values slightly in multiplayer to account for increased access to Dazed.
Lusk's spawned minions now will stick a little closer to the player, but continue to spread out from each other.
Reduced Book 1 Nim the Lost’s attack power slightly.
Reduced Book 1 Captor’s attack power slightly.
Reduced the amount of attack power Villains and Guardians gain from Challenge Tier 10.
Slimpe Eggs created by Guardian’s due to Challenge Tier reduced from 3 >>> 2. They appear much closer to the Guardian now.
Inkling Jabbers created by Guardian’s due to Challenge Tier now take their first move similarly to Jabbers in normal combats. In short, they will move in closer to the Player and nearer to other Enemies.
Increased Book 2 Mimic’s health from 10000 >>> 12000.
Increased Mimic’s base form damage resist from 50 >>> 75.
Increased Book 2 Rhinferno’s health from 7500 >>> 9000.
Increased Book 2 Lusk’s health from 8500 >>> 10000. Attack power slightly increased.
Increased Book 2 Captor’s health from 4000 >>> 5000.
Increased Book 2 Janus’ health from 8000 >>> 9500. Attack power slightly increased.
Tuned several combats that were dealing low amounts of damage.
Fixed Sap and Marked staying around on Phasing bosses.
Fixed the Quillion enemy visuals occasionally showing up on the incorrect position on the battlefield after its roll attack.
Fixed Mimic combat in Book 2 not spawning additional enemies.
Trinkets
Essence of Quillion status tooltip now correctly states that it will grant a shield.
Vestiges
Updated Uncommon vestige Scattered Samples: "On consuming an item in combat, gain 1 Will." >>> "On consuming an item in combat, gain 1 Will and 20 Movement."
Updated Common vestige Stationgrade Klaxon: "On your first turn, gain 100 Movement." >>> "On your first turn, gain 50 Movement." 0 Movement per turn >>> 10 Movement per turn.
Updated Legendary vestige The Stonesteel Boulder. 20 Max HP >>> 5 Max HP. 4 Shielding >>> 3 Shielding.
Updated Legendary vestige Needle of Endless Duplication. "On hitting, gain 5 stacks of Spiked." >>> "On hitting, gain 4 stacks of Spiked."
Updated Epic vestige Malformed Tracing: "On using a Binding, gain 3 stacks of Shattered Will." >>> "On using a Binding, gain 2 stacks of Shattered Will.".
Updated Epic vestige Shaheen's Shimmering Shadow. "On critting, gain 5 stacks of Shattered Will." >>> "On critting, gain 3 stacks of Shattered Will.".
Star Captain
Big Game Hunter ascension status tooltip now states the correct values.
Weaver
Increased Thread damage from 30 >>> 35. Increased Thread ascensions damage to match.
Increased Stitch damage per thread from 25 >>> 35.
Increased Stitch ascension Sew damage per Thread from 40 >>> 60.
Increased Stitch ascension Splice damage per Thread from 125 >>> 135.
Increased Stitch ascension Tangle damage from 100 >>> 150.
Updated Thread Uncommon augment Critical Threads: No longer can appear multiple times. 1 Crit Chance and 15 Crit Damage per Thread >>> 2 Crit Chance >>> 25 Crit Damage per Thread.
Fixed Thread Epic upgrade Sapping Threads healing only on detach and not on defeating an Enemy.
Draftable Bindings
Fixed Quicken ascension Accelerate not granting unlimited movement.
Fixed Grasp Uncommon upgrade Sapping Grasp not inflicting Sap before you defeat an enemy if you defeat an enemy in one hit.
Fixed Grasp Rare augment Quickened Grasp not stacking properly.
Slightly decreased Smoke Bomb size from 8 >>> 7.
Fixed Smoke Bomb showing 'Magic' in the tag list when it's a Physical ability.
Fixed Cultivate showing the Magic tag twice in the tag list.
Updated Lightning Bolt. Removed range limit for selecting a unit.
Audio
Added Mimic Mosscloak dash sound.
Volume balanced sentinel and orb collect.
Fixed sounds for cleansing shrooms and other plants.
Technical
Reduced CPU overhead when rendering Stat Details screen.
Enable late binding of Units to Cosmetic VFX to fix glitches during early asset loading on slower machines.
Resolved potential visual artifact in targeting controllers if turn is ended while hovering an enemy.
The Starship of Terrors - Patch Notes
Welcome to the Starship of Terrors update!
This update to Inkbound is absolutely massive and includes new gameplay features, quality of life improvements, bug fixes, and a lot more. Our goal with the update has been to expand what our players love about the game while responding to feedback and also adding in all sorts of other surprises. We hope for both new and returning players you'll find something here to delight you.
We’ve tried our best to capture accurate patch notes from the past three months of development. If you’re interested in all the details, read on!
New Features
New Aspect: Star Captain
With a Blaster on your arm and Drones by your side, lead your allies and defeat your enemies using the power of cold space technology.
The Star Captain is a Frostbite and teamplay focused aspect. If you’re interested in all the gritty details, we have a deep dive available here.
To get access to Star Captain complete the short unlock quest. You can find it in the “Aspects of Lost Binders” quest tab.
New Book: Derelict Starship
The unsealed DARVe, once a lab now a prison.
Uncover the secrets of this new book via quests, meet a new NPC, and fight a brand new set of enemies with unique mechanics.
Trinkets
Trinkets are a new way to customize your run. After unlocking the feature via a quest, you’ll be able to pick from a few trinkets that are unlocked by default. Trinkets are equipped while in the Atheneum and persist across the entire run. Each Trinket gives a different benefit, supports different playstyles, and can help complete quests that have challenging criteria. Trinkets are unlocked by leveling up and earning Trinket Keys. We hope you’ll have fun experimenting with them and finding the Trinkets that suit your playstyle best!
To gain access to Trinkets start a run and complete the short unlock quest found at the start of any book.
Daily Challenges and Leaderboards
Calling all competitively-minded players! We’ve added the ever-popular Daily Challenge with rotating mutators that change core game systems to keep things fresh. Each Daily Challenge dictates the classes to play, the books you’ll visit, the Villain, and the mutators you’ll have to deal with. A new run scoring system feeds into competitive leaderboards.
Because you can also play Inkbound co-op, to keep things fair there are actually 4 separate Daily Challenges each day, separated by party-size. Each challenge has a separate leaderboard. If you wish, you can compete on both the Solo and 2-player leaderboard for example.
You can only upload a score once per day per player count. So make your runs count! Daily Challenges currently update once a day at 10 am PT (GMT-7). Your first challenge each day also offers an XP bonus!
Victory Board
The Victory Board is a new list of seasonal achievements to accomplish with cosmetic rewards tied to completing objectives. While some of the objectives are more straightforward, some are a lot trickier, like “Win a Run without equipping a Vestige.” We migrated the prior Villain kill and ranked run completion tracking into Victory Board objectives.
New Draftable Bindings
We’ve added three new draftable Bindings (abilities) that can show up in runs: Smoke Bomb, Quicken, and Grasp. Each offers new ways to fight with three ascension upgrade paths to explore. We have a deep dive on the new Bindings available here.
New “Anywhere” Enemies
To mix up combat across the entire game we’ve added four new enemies that can appear in any book. The new enemies include Chompy, the grumpy big brother of the existing Biter enemy.
Offline Mode Beta
We heard from you, our players, that you’d love if we supported playing Inkbound in a variety of contexts, including when fully disconnected from the Internet, and we are excited to have been able to get a beta version of this support completed earlier than expected and are rolling it out as a part of this update. While Offline, you can continue to progress your existing character, and then later bring that progress with you when online again. Some features are not available when offline, like multiplayer and Daily Challenges. Please don’t cheat though, when you reconnect we will validate this data and cheaters will be banned!
We have supported saving and resuming single player runs since launch. And now we’ve added the ability to save and resume multiplayer runs in this update! If all players in a multiplayer run quit the game, they can come back on at a later date and resume play. The first person to resume the run becomes the party leader. It’s up to players to coordinate outside of the game for when to resume the run. We see this as a great feature for friend groups who are playing co-op and want to continue their run at a later time.
New Villain Battle Music
Enjoy a pumping new combat music arrangement for your Villain battles. Jordan Chin has done it again.
Reworked Systems and Quality of Life
Player Movement in Combat
We’ve re-built how player movement in combat works. It no longer consumes Will and instead has its own resource that depletes the more you move in a turn. We think it’s significantly more intuitive compared to the prior system and makes combat easier to understand and more fun. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback. Want to know more? We have a deep dive post on the new movement system here.
Enemy Movement and Aiming in Combat
To reduce intense enemy area attack overlapping we’ve updated the way enemies choose their position and attacks in combat to spread out more. This reduces the chance of “death zones” where many overlapping enemy attacks affect the same area of the arena and also increases the clarity of combat outcomes by reducing overlap of enemy attack UI elements.
Revamped Ranked Mode with Higher Difficulty Tiers
Have you already reached the max rank of “Inkbound” in the Story Begins season? Good news, we’ve added even more challenging ranks. The overall rank system has been reworked to refer to ranks as numbers instead by name. Ranks now go from 0, where you start, to 20. The prior “Inkbound” rank maps to rank 10 in the new system. We have migrated your existing rank into this new system.
Separately, we are now also tracking rank independently for Solo and Group play. We think the experience and challenges feel different enough to track these independently.
Each rank ladder has player nameplate rewards to earn as you rank up.
Quest Multi-tracking
As a small but impactful quality of life feature, we’ve added the ability to track up to 5 quests at the same time. May your questing be successful and easily tracked!
Quest Objective Indicators in Drafts
Need to draft something for a quest? We’ve added indicator pips to drafts that will lead to quest progress to make these easier to keep track of.
Player Stats Visible in HUD
To make it easier to keep track of your stats during the current run we’ve put them on screen in the lower right corner at all times.
Increased Clarity of Class Passive in HUD
Every aspect in Inkbound has a passive ability that you need to utilize to maximize your chances of success. Previously, the indicators for the status of the passive ability were a little bit hidden. We’ve brought it directly into the middle of the HUD so that you can, for example, more easily track how much Heat you have built up as Magma Miner.
Reworked Run Types
When Inkbound launched, we had two types of runs: Unranked and Ranked. Other than difficulty rules, the run types were the same.
In this update, we’ve reworked the two original types of runs. Unranked is now called “Quick Dive”. It’s a shorter run with fewer battles and a faster start, designed for people with limited time or those who are looking to complete quest objectives that don’t require playing at higher ranks.
Ranked is now called “Deep Dive.” These are longer runs and utilize your rank and progressively get harder as you rank up. We’ve simplified how increasing your rank works. Now you must simply win once at your highest rank to progress to the next rank.
Many Vestige Unlocks Moved to Progression Reward Track
We have moved a number of Vestige unlocks from quests into a new progression reward track. These rewards are earned by leveling up. We wanted to simplify how players unlock access to more types of Vestiges and felt that too many were tied to challenging quest objectives. Now many are unlocked by simply playing runs and leveling up naturally. We’ve also moved some previously locked Vestiges to be unlocked by default. We felt new and returning players who didn’t progress very far should have more variety earlier in their journey.
Season Pass Is Now Leveling Pass
The Season Pass feature has been reworked into a new iteration called “Leveling Pass.” Rather than going away at the end of each Season, we now maintain progress in each pass permanently. Your progress in The Story Begins pass has been migrated to the new system automatically. This is targeted at eliminating any concerns about losing access to rewards paid for, or even the opportunity to buy them in the future. Also don’t forget to look for the free Shinies on the top track. If you run the numbers you’ll find with some leveling up that you’ll be able to pick up the pass. These will refresh every season, so make sure to earn them all before then!
Finally, we’ve added a new Leveling Pass for The Starship of Terrors filled primarily with sci-fi and modern cosmetics.
Other Changes
Big Changes
Added new Starship of Terrors seasonal quests.
Added new quests for drafting all Bindings and their Augments and Ascensions.
Added ability to change default server region from the main menu. This is mostly meant for people whose networks block ping and where we can't figure out a suitable default, though it can be used by anyone.
Added Glyph rewards for picking books with negative mutators.
Added class icons for players in the top-left Party section.
Trimmed down the number of ‘task’ style quests in each core quest group. The goal here is to make progression between major story beats happen faster.
Eat fish off the ground like an animal. You can now ctrl+click consumables on the ground to consume them directly without needing to first add them to your hotbar.
Renamed “SP” (Season Points) to “XP” to make it more clear what it’s for, especially now that levels are less tied to passes.
Increased XP gain from runs to help make these contribute more significantly and flattened out XP gain from runs so it's more evenly distributed throughout the run.
Some daily quests have had their requirements lowered to match the new quick dive mode length.
Removed "general" chat completely. We still support “lobby” chat (formerly called “local”) to speak to players in the same world you are in and “party” chat for private conversations between your party.
Updated Fountains to heal 10 down from 15. This is part of an overall goal to have more chip damage and less death zones or big damage turns.
You can now choose to pass Font of Wisdom drafts to gain HP instead of taking one of the draft rewards. Regaining HP no longer needs to show up as a draft option, giving the player more choice. Common heal 5, Uncommon heal 7, Rare heal 9, Epic heal 12.
Players no longer automatically move to pickups on clicking, and instead receive a notification if out of range. This prevents accidentally ‘spending’ too much movement or moving to an undesired location when collecting them.
Some draft choices and your starting class now add some slight tilt towards Vestiges, abilities, or stats with similar attributes. If you draft a burn Binding, you are more likely to see more burn options show up, and so on.
Shrunk the size of the initial Sea of Ink to make you have to walk less to get to the action.
Run quests with less generic criteria only show up when you have an Aspect or Trinket that can help complete it.
The camera can now be dragged further than before.
Increased speed of draft open and close animations to make drafting snappier.
Made run quests with more complicated criteria easier to complete in multiplayer.
Display overkill in overhead UI to see how much damage the player needs to mitigate to survive.
When re-rolling Vestiges any Vestige you’ve already seen will not be shown again until the full pool of available options are consumed.
When re-rolling an Ascension it will avoid rolling the same base Binding whenever possible.
Status Effect keywords are now highlighted on tooltip and card body text to make them stand out more.
Implemented a more regimented system for restricting what enemies can get what Challenge Buffs. Overall should be more intuitive and less randomly punishing.
Reworked Shocked. Now when hitting an Enemy with Shocked you deal damage to all other enemies equal to 50% of the damage done, per stack. There were a few problems with the old version of Shocked we wanted to improve upon. The reward for Shocked was to be able to convert strong single target damage to area damage. But we felt Shocked wasn't always clear what it would do, and tracking it across the entire arena was difficult. Also, boosting damage on the target itself by 50% made it a powerful damage booster in its own right, making it hard to balance for what it was intended as.
Changed the starter vault from Uncommon to Common in order to make Common Vestiges exist again and to counterbalance other changes which otherwise have made the early run easier.
The cosmetic shop now offers sales on the first page. These change at 10 AM PST on Mondays.
The Changing of the Season
With the launch of The Starship of Terrors certain season change events have occurred, listed below.
Season level has been reset to 1. We’ve stored your Season 1 level in our database and in the future we will let you see your past season levels earned!
Milestones have been reset. You can now earn XP from them again!
The seasonal Villain Defeat rewards have been moved to the shop and a new Victory Board feature and series of rewards now exist (see above).
New in the Starship of Terrors
New season specific Challenge Buffs.
New season specific Challenge Tiers, found at Tier 11, with season specific rewards.
New Vestiges
Added Uncommon Vestige Scattered Samples: On consuming an item in combat, gain 1 Will.
Added Rare Vestige Malfunctioning Multitool: On critting, Smite.
Added Epic Vestige Wit’s Bloodboiler: On dealing Bleed damage, gain 1 stack of Vigor.
Added Epic Vestige Special-Issue Stabilizer: On hitting an enemy with Frostbite, proc an additional stack of Frostbite. Does not stack.
Added Legendary Vestige Gavel of the Dam: On hitting, gain 1 stack of Shattered Will.
General Polish and Tuning
Removed 'pass through ally' mechanics from Mosscloak (Scavenger’s Dash) and Clairvoyant (Telekinesis), since these slow down play in multiplayer, where the optimal playstyle is having your teammates move close together during a turn without them spending their movement.
All levels now require 70K XP.
Rarer potions are slightly more likely to show up.
Movement Per Turn stat and Max HP stat will appear at fonts.
Updated new player tutorials to explain new movement changes.
Updated Vigor status effect: "On being hit, restore 1 HP and lose 1. On end of turn lose all stacks. Max 10 stacks." >>> "On hitting, restore 1 HP. Lose 1 stack per Enemy hit. On end of turn lose all stacks. Max 10 stacks.".
Updated Vulnerable. "Incoming damage from all sources increased by +100% until end of turn." >>> "
Incoming damage from all sources increased by +50% until end of turn."
Updated Burn, Poison, and Bleed tooltip to specify it triggering on 'After Enemy attack' instead of 'On turn start'.
Updated Frostbite base damage from 25 >>> 30.
Updated potion Bloodthirst Blend: "Left Click Consume: Until end of turn, on being hit, restore 10 HP." >>> "Left Click Consume: Until end of turn, on losing HP, restore 10 HP".
Updated potion of Alacrity now gives 2 cooldown reduction instead of 3 but also gives 20 Movement.
Updated OHM quest to be more clear that they can be visited before beating the miniboss.
Made a change to hide all non-class Upgrade quest objectives until the upgrade has been found.
Made a change to hide all class Upgrade quest objectives until the upgrade has been found.
Split the damage over time run quests into two different versions, one that counts either burn or poison, and one that counts either frostbite or bleed. Rebalanced them to take into account that it counts the amount of stacks applied now.
Reduced XP gain from Milestones by 25% to balance against the other XP increases elsewhere.
Made Orb pickups higher priority compared to loot on the ground to fix issues where a Vestige could drop in combat, could be right on top of an orb, but then you couldn't pick up the orb.
Damage Reduction can no longer reduce attacks to 0.
Streamlined several quests by removing grindier tasks. Shifting over to granting XP instead of Vestiges.
Swapped Legendary items unlocked for 2 Villain quests to make Vestige-related quests easier to complete without villain kills.
Increased status effect infliction milestones now that progress is tracked per stack inflicted instead of per instance of infliction.
Fixed Regeneration healing based on the source's stacks instead of the target's.
Fixed rare potion Unstable Brew not granting -15 AP a turn after granting +15 AP.
Fixed Frostbite not splitting instances per player.
Fixed rare fountain magic power and physical power upgrades granting 4 Magic Power or Physical Power instead of 3.
Fixed a bug where the Theory of Lost Ink quest to defeat Janus before Training Mode could apply Inky
Might was becoming unachievable too early in multiplayer runs.
Fixed the issue where, when you had an augment and ascension upgrade available at the same time, an augment would disappear from the options if you ascended the Binding it was referring to.
Fixed bug with quests related to Hard Combat Encounters not working properly. Either counting progress or blocking progress depending on the quest.
Fixed issue with Blight dealing damage when spawned during the enemy turn.
Fixed bug with Treasure Chests not colliding with player after being opened.
Fixed Blight Ring rarely persisting after combat.
UI
Added player Rank and Season Level display above the heads of all players in the Atheneum.
Improved search functionality in Logbook Collections screen; search now will match keywords like 'Will'.
Resolved issue where Argoloth's tentacles could show their overhead bar while despawned.
Target selection for bounce/spread targeting types adjusted to account for larger hitboxes.
Adjusted dropdowns to be more consistently sized.
In drafts, tooltip text that previews damage amounts are hidden. So certain tooltips don't say "(Total 0 damage)" anymore in a draft context, which we felt was confusing.
Added keybind for opening the Party Details screen -- defaults to Tab.
Auras that affect enemies no longer show up on their status effect bar, since the information is otherwise contained on other locations attached to the player. The goal with this change is to reduce clutter on the status effect bar on enemies.
Fixed visual bug where holding Alt while hovering an enemy would sometimes fail to display the enemy's name.
Fixed issue where notifications would fail to fire when progressing ability draft quests.
Renamed the default names for the first two chat tabs from "Global" -> "Chat" and "Party" -> "Party Only".
Boss Overhead Visual now always shows predicted damage values.
Updated Party Details art to include trinkets and class passives.
Adjusted tutorial class select to show all class options, including locked ones.
Added tooltips to font of wisdom upgrades.
Hid Binding tooltip details like "(Damage: 123)" when hovering Bindings outside of combat because that information often doesn't make sense outside of combat.
Improved readability of text on various screens by removing colored text in certain instances.
Added a bunch of keyword highlighting in various places.
Added support to show player names in combat when holding Info key (default Alt).
Fixed Spiked tooltip showing incorrect damage values if the player had damage resist.
Improved load times of dynamic UI icons, particularly in the Main Menu.
Resolved issue with overhead attack indicators not showing when reconnecting in combat.
Even More Details
Steam has a limit for how long these posts can be and we ran out of room. Want to see 100% of the notes, including excruciating detail on numeric balance changes? All patch notes connoisseurs are welcome to come and view the rest of the details we couldn't fit in this post.
Lore Secrets, Part 1
Hey everyone, I'm Redbeard/Brendan, the writer and the loremaster on Inkbound, and I wanted to give you all a bit of an inside peek at the process of creating our world as we get really close to the launch of our new Season, "The Starship of Terrors"!
Creating the World
As you've no doubt noticed by now, Inkbound has a lot of books. Too many? Nah, not enough! Books are kind of an (unhealthy?) obsession of mine, so creating a world that contains all the books ever written was a natural starting point. The idea of books as new worlds isn't novel (heh, get it?) by any means, still something about books being literal portals to new worlds was fascinating to me if a little bit of wishful thinking. So, the Atheneum was created from the very start—a solid foundation we could start with and build on top of for a long time. If any world can be written, there’s a wide variety of ground to cover!
But if anything can be created by writing, then every problem is instantly solved by just writing the solution, and that makes for pretty boring storytelling. So the first rule that informed everything else became: “once something is written, it cannot be unwritten.” No undos, no take backs. Once it’s written with Ink and Kwill, it’s bound to the world just like a Binder is bound to their Kwill. Everyone makes their own decisions and has to live with the consequences, no matter what. And that, more or less, became the crux of every character’s backstory.
Since everyone can create what they want, it felt natural that all characters would view their problems as trivial or, at least, easily solvable. In many ways, they’re all just small gods that can make anything out of nothing, so why wouldn’t they think their problems are insignificant? Even if the world tells them they can’t undo anything, they can find a ‘creative workaround,’ right? Well, it’s just that kind of latent hubristic attitude that leads to the mess they’re in now. All the characters that inhabit the world of Inkbound are dealing with the fallout of their own choices, more specifically, the fallout of the choices they made to try and undo the consequences of their previous choices because even small gods make mistakes.
This left the most important part—the player, you! You play as one of the Needless: a silent construct made by the Binders of the Atheneum to solve their problems for them. How’s that going for ya? You might not be able to speak or make any ‘real’ choices for yourself, but you can bind with a Kwill of your own and that’s a rare thing in these times. Here’s hoping things start looking up for you soon, Needless.
Building out the Lore
Writing lore can be a slippery slope. There can be, and very often is, too much of it and it’s usually so irrelevant to the story that it becomes like some middle-school history fact that you don’t ever want or need to remember. You have to be smart about where to include lore, when it’s relevant, and when it furthers the story or scene you’re trying to write.
All that said…
I love writing lore, I have written way too much of it, and most of it is very irrelevant. Most of it is information that is so plain that it won’t likely ever become relevant (i.e. the Atheneum is built on top of a mile-high stone sewage complex) or it’s so mundane that it doesn’t even dignify being so (i.e. Atheneum currency is made of quarter-inch cubes of graphite tied with different colored strings to denote amount), but it’s still necessary to make a believable world full of all the mundane details that fill it up.
But just because it’s irrelevant to the immediate story doesn’t mean it’s not critically important for answering questions about that world for everyone else who is building and creating within it. The more mundane details there are, the more believable and cohesive the world, and the easier it will be to answer random questions that come up about the world (e.g. I have to dig a hole in the Atheneum 300 ft. deep, what’s going to be under there? Stone.)
For me, the lore-writing process is about constantly channeling my inner toddler: ask “why” all the way down until you’re explaining the building blocks of the universe.
Binders can create anything. Why? Because using Ink and a Kwill they can create new matter. Why? Because Each of those three pieces is a sliver of creation. Why? Because [SPOILERS]. Why?... You get the idea.
Season 2
At the end of last Season, we saw the Gatekeeper send you on a quest for some mysterious artifact, the Opal Slab, in the hopes that it would help the broken Atheneum. Shocker, it didn’t. Instead, you found a new book, one the Gardener was hiding and one the Gatekeeper really doesn’t want you to open.
Well, surprise! You opened the book, and all hell broke loose. It turns out this new book is a new world with a spaceship called the DARVe (cool!) that was sealed to imprison the monsters inside (not cool!), and, now that you’ve opened it, they’ve broken free and need to be placed back where they came from before the book gets out of hand and takes over the Atheneum entirely (really not cool!).
This new Season also introduces a new character named the Captive. He’s a pretty quiet guy when you meet him, but if you give him a hand (heh), he’ll start to warm up to you.
Inkbound has been a deeply personal story for me to write. Every character in the game is a reflection of myself in one way or another—my doubts, my fears, my insecurities—but it’s also been a very cathartic story to write, allowing me to work through some of these issues and explore how I might react in these situations (even if they are highly improbable situations). I don’t say this as any claim that this writing is good (it often isn’t!) or even that I know what I’m doing (I don’t!), but that if any small thing about this story speaks to you, then know it comes from a place of immense care from me and I’m glad I was able to connect with you in some small way.
So, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking around, and thanks for playing Inkbound! We’re all extremely proud of what we’ve built and are excited to continue sharing this world with you.
Movement 2.0
Hello all!
Andrew, aka. Avarem, here. I’m the Creative Director here at Shiny Shoe and one of the designers working on Inkbound.
I’m excited today to talk a bit about some changes to one of our core game systems: Movement.
As you all know Inkbound is currently in Early Access and part of the reason is that we’ve created an entirely new combat system which we know is going to take some iteration to get right. Well, Movement is one of those areas where we knew it was ‘good enough,’ but also there were things about it we wanted to improve.
The main considerations on our mind when coming up with changes to the Movement System were:
Even though you could spend Will to move, it often was a ‘trap’ and the optimal way to play was to never spend Will and instead inch forward using the free movement with each ability.
We felt like multiple rings with multiple costs were hard to intuitively understand and were on the lookout for something more streamlined.
We wanted to try to discover a way to make movement more of a resource to be managed.
The clear result of these considerations was to go back to basics and use a system of ‘movement points’. We had tried this early on in the project and discarded it for a variety of reasons, but as the project has evolved we felt the idea could make a comeback. We implemented a very hacked version in a day and let our beta testers try it out. They said they liked it! It opened up the ability for those advanced players who only used free movement to line up their attacks earlier in the turn, and it added a new dimension of resource management to avoiding AE attacks and optimizing follow-up attacks. The final challenge was going to be communicating it.
The initial step was easy, we simply shrank the ring after every player action. However, we immediately got the very reasonable feedback that it was hard to tell how much you’d have left. You could eyeball it, but would you have enough to retreat to safety? So we implemented a second dynamic ring while the player moved and added a few parameters to let it become more opaque as the player moved further from the origin. This allowed it to generally show up when it mattered most, and otherwise be invisible while the player pondered their initial moves.
Inkbound screenshot by Cami illustrating outer circle, much movement you have total, and inner circle, how much movement you will have left after you use a binding.
Once we knew we liked these changes we added additional ways to the game, since of course what is an Inkbound system if you can’t break it a bit.
And that’s the new movement system we’ll be bringing to you in the Starship of Terrors! I hope you’re looking forward to trying it out, and we look forward to your thoughts!
