BFP #1 is here and raring to go! Patch 0.5.0 will go live on 11/07 at 07:30 UTC. Downtime is 2.5 hours from 05:00 UTC.
Patch 0.5.0
BFP #1
“We are extremely excited to finally bring you the very first of our planned updates which we have worked so hard on over the last few weeks. Every single team member, from game design, to art and programming, all the way to QA went absolutely full-throttle in order to bring you the kinds of new features you can get really excited about. Of course, this is just the beginning of our BFP series, and we plan on making each BFP live up to its name. For now, we hope you’ll have fun picking and choosing different abilities for your heroes, complementing them with brand new items and just all-round wreaking havoc across the Land of Rod.
A lot of exciting and new features await you in this patch. From new hero abilities to new items and crafting, we truly believe that the upcoming changes will completely change the way you play Pagan Online.
However, the unintended and unfortunate consequence of these changes is the wiping of player progress. Big systemic changes like these have both serious and sometimes hard to predict consequences on players’ save games. After testing, in order to avoid the individual mayhem that these changes would introduce (such as the permanent corruption of the save file), we’ve opted for the safe option for all players.
In our minds, with our current technical structures in place, this was the equivalent of a pretty big failure that, as explained previously, we wanted to avoid it by all means. Although we initially didn’t plan for overhauls so big that they may introduce such a huge wipe, both player feedback and our own lessons proved that changes like these were necessary.
That being said, we want to extend the biggest thank you we can to all of our community, both veteran and new, for staying with us on this journey. Below, you can find all the details on our newest features which will, hopefully, make you fall in love with Pagan Online all over again.
As compensation for the progress lost and in order for you to have a great week back playing the brand new Pagan Online, we are unlocking our three starter heroes for all of your accounts. You will also get a Hero Soul and 150 shards for each of our heroes (for a total of 1200 shards!). As a result, when you launch your game, you will NOT go through the Tutorial but you will join the Pantheon as Kingewitch. Play the very first quest of the campaign to unlock your Hero Forge and then you can find all your heroes there!
Have fun – we are just warming up.”
- The whole entire Pagan Online team
HEROES & THE ABILITY TREE
By popular demand, we are introducing the first version of the long-awaited hero build customization aka the Ability Tree. Our intention is to make a robust system for abilities that is long-term scalable. We pushed hard for this first version to make it into the 0.5.0 build and it needs to be said that this is not the final version by any means. We plan to work mainly on three things;
1) User Experience – this is only the first iteration with a basic user interface and some glitches to it. We plan to work more on clarity and overall polish such as visual effects.
2) Balance – a lot more numbers are introduced to the game. The balance is not perfect and will be something that we will work on constantly.
3) New Abilities – we will be adding new abilities in next patches to expand build options for all Heroes.
With that said, we are happy to let you try the ability tree and make some over the top OP builds.
Ability Tree System
All abilities for all heroes were reworked to fit into the new Ability Tree system
Earn a potency point with each level-up of a hero and use it to either unlock a new ability or to enhance an already unlocked ability
Every ability in the tree can be leveled up to level 3 with Potency points (near future plans include having gear that can level up abilities even further, up to Level 8)
Every ability has up to three different bonuses. Bonuses are either new properties that can be added onto the ability or they are bonuses to already existing ability parameters
Every ability has up to three Special Modifiers. These modifiers further alter the ability itself
Primary Attacks – these have special modifiers only
Secondary Attack (default key: RMB) and Defensive Ability (default key: LShift) cannot be upgraded or modified at this point
Passive Abilities – cannot be upgraded or modified currently (plans include having upgradable passives and even additional new passives)
Hero Balance and New Abilities Every hero gets two brand new abilities in this patch (with more coming in the next patches). Below are descriptions for basic abilities only (play and find out more about bonuses and modifiers).
Kingewitch
Flamestrike
An axe swing that unleashes a wave of fire, hitting all enemies in a line.
Judgment of Svarog
Summon the divine banner of Svarog from the skies which creates a divine area, inflicting low damage over time and granting protection for allies.
Anya
Altar of Gore
Impale single enemy on a blood spear and make a blood altar out of it. Enemy is stunned for the duration and receives continuous damage while all allies in the radius leech health.
Blood Spikes
Summon blood spikes from the ground to impale enemies, inflicting stun and low damage over time.
Istok
Rolling Mountain
Charge in a target direction, dealing massive damage and stunning the first target hit
Sacred Ground
Create a protective area on the ground that grants healing and damage resist bonuses to all allies.
Morokh
Limbo
Create a dome that traps enemies in another reality, greatly slowing time and reducing movement, attack and projectile speed. All characters outside the Limbo are unaffected by characters inside the Limbo. Characters can enter the Limbo at all times
Decay
Corrupt targeted ground causing damage and movement speed slow over time to all enemies.
Lukian
Lightning Wall / Fire Wall
Lightning Wall (LMB) – creates a wall of lightning that deals damage and stuns all enemies that pass through.
Flame Wall (RMB) - creates a wall of fire that deals damage and applies burn to all enemies that pass through.
Lightning Disciple / Fire Disciple
Lightning Disciple (LMB) – summon a lightning spirit that follows you and periodically attacks nearby enemies with lightning beams.
Fire Disciple (RMB) – summon a lightning spirit that follows you and periodically attacks nearby enemies with fireballs.
Valeria
Smoke Bomb
Throw a smoke bomb that deals low physical damage and blinds all enemies in radius
Chakram
Throw a chakram that travels at moderate speed in a zig-zag direction it is cast and damages enemies it goes through.
Dameer
Ring of Thorns
Summon a Ring of Thorns that deals damage and slow all enemies
Feral Souls
Summon a forest wolf spirit to fight for you.
Masha
Own the Stage
Create a zone on the ground, making yourself and all allies in it immune to Crowd Control. If you are standing in the zone at the end of the duration, an explosion is created that damages enemies
Tendon Slash
Crouch down, slicing enemies in a circle and making them more vulnerable for a short while. Vulnerable enemies receive more damage from all sources.
STATS & ITEMIZATION
We’ve revamped our stat system with the removal of some stats and the addition of brand new ones. These changes are meant to allow for different attributes to be viable within same character builds and to switch emphasis from building only damage to building more defensive stats.
Removal of Evasion & Chance to Dodge
The Evasion & Chance to Dodge stat has been removed from the game.
The reasoning behind this is that Evasion as a stat didn’t make enough sense in a game like Pagan Online – the dodging part of the gameplay was meant to come from using controls and real-time dodging, so having an evasion stat was not congruent with this intention.
Chance to Dodge will remain a part of certain heroes’ kit (such as Masha’s passive) and will probably reappear in the future on certain characters as a spell bonus or a spell modifier.
Critical Damage Bonus
Critical Spell Damage Bonus and Critical Attack Damage Bonus have been unified and all characters now benefit from the Critical Damage Bonus stat
Can be gained from boosting the Strength attribute or as a stand-alone roll on items and recipes.
There is a new defensive stat which mitigates the damage you take from critical hits. For example, if you have 50% of Critical Damage Reduction, you can expect that 50% of critical damage from enemies’ hits won’t affect you.
You will still be hit with the entirety of the base damage that the enemy deals, so only the critical part of their hits is mitigated
Critical Damage Reduction will appear on Charms with a base value of 5%
Critical Damage Reduction Bonus can be gained from boosting Dexterity as a stand-alone roll on items and recipes.
Astral Shield & Astral Shield Bonus
New defensive stat which appears on defensive items instead of Evasion
Works as a shield, which regenerates when heroes don’t take damage for a certain amount of time
Astral Shield Bonus can be gained from boosting Intelligence as a stand-alone roll on items and recipes.
Bonuses to Max Resists
Bonus to Cold, Sunfire, Poison or Lightning resist can be found as stats on Wards
These bonuses increase the resists over the set cap for each of the resists
Due to UI issues, these stats may appear as 0 on certain tier 1 items, although their value is actually 0.75% (the UI doesn’t show decimals correctly).
Item Changes
Base weapon value has been rebalanced – weapons of high tiers now do more damage than before
Base Wards, Charms and Tomes drop with either Armor Rating or Astral Shield, not both
Only base Charms have two stats by default – Astral Shield and Critical Damage Reduction
Legendary items have been rebalanced to reflect the changes in the stat system
Legendary rings and amulets have been added.
CRAFTING & RECIPES
Additionally, crafting is going to be less of an obligatory factor in the upcoming update, with the removal of Craftsman Levels and the decreased rate of recipe drops. However, players who do enjoy crafting will be able to play around with different recipes and their stats.
Crafting level has been removed
Recipes now come with a set of guaranteed and random stats
Guaranteed stats of recipes are no longer randomly rolled, but specifically designed for each recipe
The type of guaranteed stat doesn’t change while reforging – only their values change
Random stats can be gained or changed whenever you reforge crafted items
Dropped items can’t be reforged anymore
Stat values don’t increase with rarity – only the number of guaranteed stats does
Stat values change with base item tier and power level – the more powerful the base item, the more powerful the stats
Recipes now drop much less frequently – together with the removal of the crafting level, this change is meant to move away the focus of itemization from crafting to drops
Recipes don’t have a tier or power level anymore – this means that you can use the same recipe on any item you like, regardless of its power level.
GAME BALANCE
Overhauling crafting and itemization, as well as adding brand new skills, deemed rebalancing enemies and drops necessary. Apart from these changes, we’ve added some quality of life improvements – those of which players have been asking for for a while (hint: just don’t move too fast). As always these balance changes are an iterative process, and may be tweaked in the future.
Base movement speed for heroes and enemies has been increased, so dodging enemies’ abilities is easier, even when attacking
Items of non-base rarities are more prominent now
Gold drops has been significantly nerfed over all tiers and enemy power levels
Corresponding systems have also been rebalanced (item and recipe sell value, craft and reforge price, Hunts reroll price)
All enemies and bosses have been rebalanced
Custom attributes which deal elemental damage now only benefit from weapon damage and corresponding elemental damage (e.g. lightning strikes on Divine Executioner deal more damage the more lightning damage your character has, but doesn’t benefit off of physical or poison damage).
STORY: ACT VI
As promised, the new act is finally here! Our narrative designers worked hard to bring you the new chapter of Land of Rod in its most polished state possible. We sincerely hope you’ll enjoy the lore-galore as much as we do (and that you don’t get seasick).
Act 6 has been added to the game
The story continues as heroes search for the missing Gods, fighting a brand new boss at the end of Act VI.
UI & QoL IMPROVEMENTS
Our UI artists and programmers were very focused on the functionality of the Ability Tree adidtion, however, they still managed to sneak in a couple of quality of life improvements when it comes to UI.
Reforge screen has been visually improved
Esc in Pantheon now opens the Options menu
Items, when right clicked, now go to the current Stash page, not the page with an available slot
With every Legacy rank increase a new screen will be shown in Pantheon – Legacy Rank Up
Player Profile panel has been visually updated.
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DEVLOG #6: Big F** Patch alert!
You’ve seen the roadmap and you’ve been getting hyped, so it’s time to tell you all about Big F**king Patch #1 – which is coming next week!
Along with a new act of the campaign, wherein you’ll take a break from your land-lubbing ways to search the depths of the Land of Rod, the biggest changes to the game are to the loot and character progression systems. These are some pretty huge changes so let’s go into a bit more detail.
New loot and crafting system
We want your shiny new weapons and items to be a labor of love instead of a chore, so we’re rebalancing drops and changing the way you craft. Firstly, the weapons and items you loot have been finetuned to have relevant stats and be useful immediately upon pick up if you choose to equip them. Gold and material drop chances will change and rewards for missions won’t just be materials any more, but new consumables as well. The drop chance for legendary items and recipes will also be decreased, but their stats will be improved to make up for it.
As for crafting, it will be better streamlined and a more satisfying process overall. Item stats will no longer come from the materials you use, but the recipes themselves. All recipes will have several guaranteed stats that your crafted item is sure to get, and these stats will stick with your items no matter how much you reforge. Recipes will also have random stats that have a chance of being transferred to your crafted item, and these will change upon reforge.
This new system means that recipes may require materials of different rarities to be crafted. For instance, if you desperately need that badass epic item, you’ll have to get a hold of the epic materials you need and depending on the recipe, you may need some rare materials as well.
New character progression system
We don’t need to talk about how amazing our current skill tree is… So, let’s just dive into what the new one will look like. Each time you level up, you’ll gain a skill point. Leveling up won’t be the only way to gain skill points though, because you’ll be able to earn some (up to a specific cap) by unlocking and completing special missions.
With your skill points, you can modify and improve your current abilities, or unlock completely new ones. This means you’ll be able to theory craft a bit more, explore different builds for different purposes (bring on the co-op wombo combos!), and of course chase up different items to go with said builds.
The core skills – the primary attacks and movement/defense abilities (LMB, RMB, and LShift) – will remain as staples determined by their heroes, so you can augment them but they can’t be replaced with something else. The other abilities will have different variants you can choose from and ways to further customize them even after that.
The beginning of the end of the beginning
This is the first step in our overhaul on the way to a new and improved Pagan Online, and what an overhaul it is. These changes are massive, and you will essentially be playing a whole different game when this update is delivered. So significant are the changes, both in player experience and from a technical standpoint, that a database wipe is unavoidable.
We tried our very best to avoid a reset because we didn’t want it either, but this is the only way we can turn Pagan Online into the game you want. To lay it all out for you, a progress wipe will mean this:
Your legacy and character levels will be reset
Your inventory will be empty
Your currencies (gold, hero souls, hero shards) will be gone
Your campaign and side mission progress will be reset.
We know you have invested good time and effort into playing and we’re not taking that lightly. You have been instrumental to the development of Pagan Online and we love you for it. The least we can do is compensate you, naturally, for your time after the progress wipe.
Once you have downloaded BFP #1, the following things will be waiting for you:
One (1) Hero Soul
150 Hero Shards for each hero.
We wanted to deliver this news to you in person (on the internet), so please check out the latest devlog.
https://youtu.be/tICIyN6AGcU
Big F**king Patch #1 comes next week! Watch this space and please do feel free to reach out if you have any questions on Discord or Reddit.
DEVLOG #5: To release and beyond!
Spoiler alert: after our big roadmap reveal, Uros is back to announce our new devlog format, coming to you weekly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACbAn4rI-Rs
From Early Access to Release
Spoiler alert: By the end of summer
So, we spoiled you already but we couldn’t be MORE excited to share with you the fantastic news that we’re gearing up to leave Early Access! Now that the news is out there, we can take a deep breath and dive into the juicy details of what amazing things are to come and when. Gather round...
We’ve been listening to your feedback since November 2018 when we embarked on this journey together during our closed tests, the Trials. We’re now at a point where we know what the release version of Pagan Online should look like, as well as how long it will take for us to get there.
Our intention from the very beginning was to co-develop this game with you, our players. To do so, we’ve read everything you’ve written, whether it be on Steam, our community channels, social media, or from our focus groups and surveys. We have based our game design decisions on this feedback analysis.
The patches we’ve released so far have addressed some of the issues raised by you all. For example, things that could bring to mind Free to Play mechanics, such as card packs, are gone. Also, heroes are now easier to unlock than ever, and we’re still not done improving that logic. These were small steps because we needed time to accumulate enough feedback to make big decisions.
Now, being two months into Early Access, we believe that we know how Pagan Online should change in order to best transition from Early Access to release. Today we want to share the scope of upcoming changes, our commitment, and the timeframe.
Based on what we’ve learned so far, most of you love the combat mechanics, the heroes, the original story, and the visual style. We’ve always stated that one of our biggest goals is to put the ‘action’ back into ARPG. We are on track with that goal and we love that you share our passion for what we like to call “sessions of satisfying destruction”.
On the other hand, we see that the ‘RPG’ part has suffered from a lack of focus and needs more attention from our side. At the moment, feedback tells us the two most unsatisfying areas are, in short, loot and character progression.
What we’re trying to say is we see what changes need to be made before Pagan Online can fly the Early Access nest, and here are our plans:
Loot and Itemization
• New legendary items system We’re adding more meat to Legendaries in the form of Legendary powers, massive abilities that will change the tide of battle, and the ability to upgrade Legendary weapons
• New drop balancing We want all drops to be meaningful, combining the current drop balance to make dropped usable straight away, and adding new drops and consumables
• New crafting system A massive rebalance of the crafting system means recipes will have a bigger impact on crafting. Making drops more meaningful pushed us to give recipes extra value, which means they will be more rare than before.
Character progression and customization
• New skill tree (that’s actually a tree, or even a group of constellations) Customize and elevate your style of play by improving, modifying, or unlocking completely new abilities. The core of ARPG is here! Finally, every Lukian can have a different playstyle
• New stats system Stats are about to get a whole lot more meaningful via stats changes, removals, and additions so your choices become more important than ever
• Schools of Magic Equip gear of the same mythical origin to boost your stats and your kit, and gain some cool new looks in the process
• Test heroes before unlocking You want to be able to test every hero before you invest in them, so now you can try before you buy! In both the tutorial and every time you acquire a Hero Soul, you will be able to test each hero.
Endgame content
• When you rip through the story campaign, you will be introduced to the end-game content mechanics- a new system comprised of expeditions, hunts and threats that will allow you to focus on acquiring epic and legendary recipes, upgrading legendary weapons to fabled weapons and ways to cap your skill points for the new skill tree. Increase your might and put your skill to test in three difficulty levels.
Story
A complete story with o Eight acts in total
o New zones and maps
o Three new bosses.
Battle experience
• Two new playable characters Reinforcements are coming! It’s about time some fresh meat enters the fray to join the existing team of demon-crushing heroes. Both new heroes will have something new to bring to the table
• New Missions and Assassinations New missions and assassinations will deliver fun ways to enjoy the new zones that accompany the new acts of the story campaign. You’ll find new mobs with new skills, new elite enemies with heaps of loot all in new and beautiful zones hand crafted for the continuation of the narrative in Pagan Online
• Full controller support We know that this kind of game lends itself well to controllers and we’re pleased to be able to give you all an alternative way to play, if keyboard and mouse isn’t your thing
• Click to move controls The click to move control scheme is being added upon overwhelmingly popular demand and tweaked a bit to suit our game playstyle better. Still, the game is designed with WASD and Twin Stick in mind. We can't wait for people to prove it is click-to-win, even though internally we call it click-to-die. ;)
There are of course more things for us to handle (technical stability, UI improvements, etc.) that are for sure on the roadmap, but today we want to go into mostly gameplay changes. Speaking of which, we’ve picked our three favorites to cover in a bit more detail.
Two new playable characters
“We’re expanding the hero family with two new unorthodox additions, both with distinctive gameplay mechanics that are guaranteed to freshen up the skull-crushing experience. Each hero will cost one Hero Soul, have their own intricate skill trees, as well as cosmetics and personality.
The max Legacy rank will also increase, and with it so will the amount of legendary loot available at the highest ranks – so get collecting!” – Uros AKA dzudzubajac, Creative Director
New skill tree
“Players will gain a skill point each time they level up, which they will be able to spend to improve their existing abilities or unlock completely new ones! Each ability can be leveled up, modified with bonuses or completely changed with special modifiers that are used to create signature builds. To increase your power further and to be truly overpowered, chase the gear that grants bonus levels to specific skills.” – Emil AKA Easymode, Lead Game Designer
New legendary items system
“All Legendary items will come with a Legendary power, a power that can change the tide of battle when used.
Not to mention, Legendary weapons will be able to be upgraded even further to become Fabled weapons, by overcoming some of the most demanding battles in the game. One random upgrade is bestowed upon the weapon and you can re-run the battle to try your luck at obtaining a different upgrade. These upgrades will give heroes the extra edge.” – Tamara AKA Tanaram, Game Designer
We know this is all really exciting but don’t worry, we’re going to be sharing more information about the changes to come in the weeks leading up to each patch...
When?
All of these changes will be delivered by the end of summer via three BFPs (big f**king patches), the last of which will also push us from Early Access into the big bad world of Full Release. The roadmap shows the order in which the changes will come. They are pretty huge changes though, so some items may very well jump from one BFP to another but rest assured that all of them will be delivered by the end of summer one way or the other and WILL be present in the release version of the game.
We still want to hear your feedback, so please let us know what you think! Stay tuned for more info, you lovely humans.
Join our community and never miss a thing: we’re always up for a chat on Discord, drop by regularly with AMAs on Reddit, and keep a watchful eye on Steam.
Patch 0.4.2
Greetings, Pagans!
Tracking down lots of issues can prove to be a difficult task, but with the support of all of you we are back with an update to some of the features which will improve your experience. You can expect small changes regarding the QoL in the party HUD, more balanced boss fights, and to have your rewards from slaying monsters and finishing missions in your inventory at the end of it.
The complete list of all the changes can be seen below. Gear up, as this patch has plenty of fixes that will help you become a threat that all of the Shroud will learn to fear.
Jovana Dubaić, QA team
Hero Power Balance
Fixed a bug where: • Critical damage was not applying
• Anya’s Spinning Slash (RMB) was not reflecting projectiles
• Dameer’s Berserk during Kablar boss fight was permanent
• Vavvan was hitting too fast
• Abomination of Chernobog jumped on Kingewitch and floated above the ground or got stuck in the ground
• Morokh passive was not stacking.
Tweaked: • Vavvan’s stat calculation.
What awaits in the Pantheon
Fixed a bug where: • It was possible to suggest campaign boss fight maps while in the party
• It wasn’t possible to exit party on Pantheon HUD widget
• Friends disappeared on refresh.
Crafting and Pantheon Improvements
Fixed a bug where: • Hover of material cards displayed a different number than the one in the crafted item
• Hover description of Blueprint lacked tier line and diamond
• Item stats didn’t match crafting bench stats
• Incorrect amount of materials was spent on crafting
• Placeholder text was in hover of material cards in the crafting machine
• Wrong stats were displayed on Morokh’s weapon “Memento Mori”
• There was an issue with Valeria’s base weapon.
Tweaked: • Stats for legendary wards.
Added: • Tier mark to Blueprints and Recipe hovers.
NPCs
Fixed a bug where: • In Igman 5 (Siege Survival campaign), soldier was not interactable at the end of the run
• Ballistas were not slowing Kablar
• Usud got stuck in the dome phase
• Multipliers for HP and damage of the enemies were too high on higher difficulties.
Battling in the Arena
Fixed a bug where: • Barrier didn’t spawn at the beginning of the encounter in Desperate Measures - Patrol (Vladar Burial Grounds)
• Enemy was not responding (Mladen the Half-Elbow)
• Defense at Igman didn’t end
• Players were not receiving credit for completing master difficulty missions to unlock Power Overwhelming (Valeria) assassinations
• There was an incomplete encounter barrier - Entropy Ruins.
Improved Options
Fixed a bug where: • It was possible to bind the same mouse click on two different spells
• There was an issue with key binding widget on changing focus.
Audio
Fixed a bug where: • Voiceover was different from text.
Localization
Fixed: • Korean font is improved.
Hotfix notice! Patch 0.4.1. is coming in hot
We promised you a hotfix soon, and here it is!
0.4.1. PATCH NOTES
<*> Fixed game crash on item hover
<*> Fixed endless message "Waiting for server to respond" when buying a potion
Once again, thank you for your patience and cheers!
DEVLOG #4: Hero Souls
Game designer Tamaran takes us through the changes in Patch 0.4.0, including the balancing of heroes and enemies, and the brand new way to unlock heroes in whichever order you want: hero souls.
Jump in for some insights into what the team is working on right now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egfQiPzpYAw
Welcome, SEA and ANZ players!
We are ecstatic to finally launch Early Access of Pagan Online on Steam and Wargaming.net for South-East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand!
This means Pagan Online Early Access is now effectively available worldwide, except for Japan, China and South Korea (which are in the pipeline, don't worry!).
“With Pagan Online, we are pushing the action RPG genre forward by blending classics with a fresh look on certain aspects,” said Jacob Beucler, Product Director at Wargaming. “We see Early Access as an opportunity to co-develop Pagan Online with players, and we are happy to have players from South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand with us on this journey.”
We are so very excited that you get to play Pagan Online during Early Access, an extremely important time for us and for the game. Player feedback is crucial to us and we are looking forward to hearing your thoughts – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now that you're able to play, you'll be able to get Archmage Woodward, the Early Access exclusive pet which gives you a 7% gold bonus! Make it rain.
We're excited to welcome you into the fold. Join our friendly community and get stuck in! You can find us over on Discord, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter!
Patch 0.4.0: Introducing Hero Souls!
We will be introducing Patch 0.4.0 on June 13 2019 at 06:30 UTC.
Servers will be down between 05:00 and 06:30 UTC while we deploy the patch.
Greetings Pagans,
It’s been two weeks, so it’s patch time! With this patch we’re introducing a change that we know new players especially will love – a way to unlock heroes in a way that ISN’T predefined. This patch also has plenty of fixes, balancing, and a bunch of new enemy affixes.
The pain is coming! We are still hard at work with many great features like the ability tree rework, more content and missions, items, and gameplay loops. Watch this space for more updates on our progress.
Emil aka Easymode, Lead Game Designer
HEROES
As always, we monitor heroes and make changes where needed. While we are currently happy with the amount of time it takes the average player to unlock all heroes, we recognize that making them gated in such a linear fashion is pretty frustrating, so we are doing something about that. Enter... Hero Souls.
Hero Souls
• Instead of having a specific Hero Shard price for each hero, each hero now costs only one (1) Hero Soul
• Hero Souls are not restricted to any one hero
• Hero Souls are obtained the first time an assassination is completed; there are seven hero souls in the game so at the moment, any assassinations past that will not grant hero souls
• Hero Shards are still dropped and used to unlock cosmetics.
Hero Balance
Valeria • Passive: Critical hit chance amount decreased from 25% to 5%.
Dameer While his bear companion is getting a general damage nerf, we discovered some glitches that make Vavvan benefit from Dameer’s gear a little bit too much, which is something we will be looking at for the next patch.
• Vavvan’s attack damage decreased by 50%.
DIFFICULTY
General difficulty was amped up in a big way in the last patch and we are continuing to monitor how it behaves. For now, we have some further tweaks to it.
• Armor and Resistance penalties are now calculated before applying stats and stat caps
• Defense Missions: shrine health rebalanced (increased) across difficulties
• Higher difficulties now also bring penalties to “Chance to Dodge” in the same manner as penalties to damage reductions.
ITEMIZATION & STATS
We implemented some new types of stats for gear, and you can expect more expansions of the stats system in the near future.
• Fixed some Legendary Items having stat values of 0
• Rebalanced some of Morokh’s legendary items to grant intelligence-based stats instead of strength
• Dameer’s legendary weapon “Wrath of the Wild”: attack speed lowered
• Blueprints now correctly show that weapon needed is of Legacy Rank 7 and not 8.
The following stats have been added to the stat pool:
• Attack Speed Bonus
• Movement Speed Bonus
• Increased Cold Damage Max Resistance
• Increased Sunfire Damage Max Resistance
• Increased Poison Damage Max Resistance
• Increased Lightning Damage Max Resistance
ENEMIES
Player challenge is something that we are constantly working on. For this update we decided to add new enemy affixes for elite enemies. The goal is to expand the affix pool before we introduce additional procedural content where they can be randomly generated.
New Enemy Affixes
• Shielded: Enemy is temporary invulnerable to all damage
• Range Shield: Enemy is completely invulnerable when you are outside the indicated range.
• Thorns: Enemy periodically deflects part of the damage inflicted to it
• Bloodthirst Aura: All enemies affected by this aura leech health when they hit you
• Armor Break Aura: Lowers physical damage reduction of all heroes affected
• Cold Vulnerability Aura: Lowers cold resistance of all heroes affected
• Poison Vulnerability Aura: Lowers poison resistance of all heroes affected
• Lightning Vulnerability Aura: Lowers Lightning resistance of all heroes affected
• Sunfire Vulnerability Aura: Lowers Sunfire resistance of all heroes affected.
GENERAL, UI, & QOL IMPROVEMENTS
Battlegate • Hunt: objective texts fixed to reflect the exact amount of actions needed to finish a hunt
• Battlegate: added Hero Shard info preview for each Assassination mission node
• Party Screen: friends are now sorted
• Party Screen: icons are larger.
Crafting • New and improved screen for reforging
• Implemented inventory marker for inserted materials.
Battle HUD Improvements
Added options for showing damage numbers:
• None: damage numbers not displayed
• Detailed: all separate damage numbers are displayed
• Aggregated: sum of all damage numbers displayed as a single number
Vendor • Removed quick-sell options for gear (Ctrl+click)
• It is possible to mark all items for selling by right-clicking and then selling them with a “sell” button at the vendor.
