Mage Lords of Brams
Alpha 0.23 minor update
Added the favorite foods of Trolls and Dwarves to the food pickup pool: Ale and Cherries. You can guess who likes what.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug with Shrapmetal's Bed of Nails level 5 ability. I think. Due to the stupid way in which I coded critical strikes it's probably the most bug prone feature of the game so let me know if it still acts up. Wood Elves' Deciduous Marksmanship fires several arrows every time you land a critical so it's currently the best testing mechanism.
Off the top of my head the following weapons can trigger critical strikes: Blood Axe, Shrapmetal, Winged Spear, Lunar Bow, Seeking Storm and Lantern of Souls. Level 5 Hemokinesis automatically applies your critical damage bonus to all blood bullets but they don't trigger critical strikes or related abilities.
Alpha 0.22
Dwarves: The stout dwarves have very good health, blocking abilities and are the only race so far to receive an armor bonus. This comes at the expense of their speed and agility. They are slow, and they have a reduced chance to dodge. They also have a chance to throw up a protection effect for 2 seconds after being hit, beefing up their already considerable armor and block chance. Every aura pulse (5 seconds usually) they also throw several hammers in the direction of the mouse, knocking enemies back and dealing damage.
Trolls: Often mistaken for demons, trolls are actually just distant relatives of their most popular cousins, the orcs. Trolls have large health pools and immense health regeneration, healing wounds much faster than any other race in the game. When they are damaged while below 50% health, their health regeneration doubles and they receive empower and focus status effects, improving their damage, critical chance and critical damage. Trolls berserkers in particular should be much less frustrating to play with this race.
That's it for today, hopefully you enjoy these new additions bringing the base # of races to 8 and adding some much needed defense focused races to the roster.
Minor update Alpha 0.21
The Ancient Scroll's 4th attack has also been reduced in duration since it went quite a bit overboard. Also fixed some other minor glitches.
Update Alpha 0.20 October 31 2022
4 new classes and 4 new Armaments are now available:
Alchemist + Iron Alchemy
The Alchemist will periodically drop a vial of noxious gas that plagues any enemies that enter the gas cloud. They will also produce random potions instead of food items when enemies are killed. These potions include a much more powerful healing potion as well as a couple of others with beneficial effects. The Alchemist starts with the Iron Alchemy power. Iron Alchemy creates an alchemical seal on the ground. Enemies that step on this seal have iron and other reagents forcefully pulled out of their bodies and delivered to the user. Once enough material is gathered, the next cast will generate a protective effect. At level 5 the spell uses the materials to also create a massive iron golem for the user to pilot around and stomp enemies in. The golem damages and takes damage on impact until it is destroyed.
Defiler + Living Bomb
A fitting arrival for Halloween, the Defiler has become disfigured due to their dabbling in dangerous diseases and poxes. They rapidly inflict Plague on the nearest enemy and enemies with the Plague effect have a chance to be instantly killed every 5 seconds regardless of the plague effect's source. They start with the Living Bomb power. The power spawns floating jellies that home in on enemies and attach to them, dealing continuous damage. Once the enemy is killed or after a certain amount of time they explode, damaging all nearby enemies.
Archivist + Ancient Scroll
The Archivist is slow albeit surprisingly well armored. Armed with more than just the power of reading, they are also skilled in origami, creating paper blossoms with various effects. The artifact they wield is the Ancient Scroll, which produces a variety of paper attacks. Rather than increasing the power of the same attack, each new level of Ancient Scroll adds a new attack type. Discover what they are by playing the Archivist yourself (also they are listed on Ancient Scroll's levelup card).
Aeromancer + Seeking Storm
The absolute fastest class in the game. Zip around at breakneck speeds on your magic carpet as you blast your enemies with bolts of blue energy and your frustrated Sprite companion chases you around for occasional heals and boons. The Aeromancer starts with the Seeking Storm spell. Summon deadly storm clouds that divebomb your enemies with powerful lightning attacks.
Like with previous updates, all new armaments are also available in the levelup card pool, so you do not need to play the new classes to use them.
Expect another minor patch this week to update some descriptions (and grant the Archivist his other paper blossom).
As I mentioned in the last update, the Achievements issue should now be fixed, which means the next update will bring the Genie market and the Trinket system. This is the last system I need to add to the game and I look forward to finishing it. Because of its size it might not get done by next Sunday although I will try my best to finish it by then.
Slight delay for next patch
On better news, some of you may have noticed I have fixed the achievements issue which means no porting to a new engine. This game is now considerably more likely to be finished by the end of the year (still hoping for a release before Christmas, although it's gonna be tight). It def means substantial updates every week now.
Alpha 0.12
Alpha 0.11
Update Alpha 0.10 October 23 2022
4 new classes have been added:
-Geomancer: Prance around in your GOLEM Warsuit shredding enemies with the rapid firing Shrapmetal as your Pet Rock merrily crushes your enemies.
-Impaler: Savor the brutal impaling of your enemies (who all seem to be vampires in disguise) as you bombard them with Blood Bullets via Hemokinesis. Your faithful (and very hungry) sword will relentlessly pursue them and may evolve into something truly bloodthirsty.
-Cultist: Be on the run as the former Cultist. Meddling with forces beyond its understanding, the Cultist was left with a disfiguring extradimensional infection. Summon a powerful Eldritch Horror to pummel your foes as your infection spreads to the corpses of the dead and the eyes of something beyond this reality pursue you without end.
-Demagogue: Graduate with honors from the School of Demagoguery. Spread discord among your enemies through Discordant Waves and curse those who dare strike you or fall prey to your cockroaches.
-The new spell (Shrapmetal) and the first 3 powers introduced (Discordant Waves, Eldritch Horror and Hemokinesis) are now also in the levelup card pool so you can pick them up with any class. Unlike Weapons, Artifacts and Spells, Powers will not show an in-game graphic, because they are innate to the user and not channeled through any item. This is totally not an excuse to not have to make hovering sprites for them.
-All other existing classes now have two abilities each. What they do exactly, you can check out in the Steam guide I posted earlier.
-Added status effects for the player. Previously only Cauterize and Mistform were in the game. The new status effects are all positive and generally boost one or two stats:
Empower: Boost damage
Focus: Boost crit chance/damage
Protection: Boost Block and Armor
Restoration: Slowly restores health
Mistform: Boost dodge and movement speed. Also actually turns your sprite into stalking humanoid smoke. Vampires and former cultists trying to hide from the gaze of malevolent extradimensional entities rejoice!
Changes:
-I've modified the way the Burn effect works since it was lackluster to start with and just got worse as enemy hitpoints went into the thousands. Now all attacks that inflict Burn will add to its total charges and the more charges an enemy has, the more damage they take. Like all stat effects, charges are lost 4 times/second and the effect is lost when they reach 0.
-Enemy spawning has also been changed to be relative to camera rather than player. Enemies won't spawn in mid air if you are near the edge of a level now.
-Enemy spawning in the Estate has also been changed. Enemies will now come only from the left and the right. Using the same circle spawn pattern as the sewers resulted in very unfulfilling gameplay as summons would walk off screen and duke it out with enemies without you even seeing it.
Bug fixes:
-Fixed some graphic glitches that afflicted some race/class combinations. Unfortunately the fix has changed the way character speed is calculated and fractions are no longer allowed. Changing speed is easier than rewriting the way I do character movement so expect a change to the Pathfinding skill as well.
-Technically not a bug but I've reduced the amount of time gibs stick around and fixed a potential memory leak issue with the first Estate boss. Let me know if you run into any unusual slowdowns on either of the levels and the in-game time this happened around.
Alpha 0.00 Early Access Release
Please post any bugs you find in the Steam bug report forum, as that is currently the only way to report them.
I will post a forum announcement with future plans, including a rudimentary roadmap later tonight.
Meanwhile enjoy being, err, the toilet bowl cleaner of the titular Mage Lords. At least until later stages are released.
