Slaves of Magic
Demo 1.4.1 hotfix
Just a small hotfix to correct the problem with zooming with the mouse wheel on the campaign map. It will no longer zoom out as soon as the player stops zooming in.
New gameplay trailer and 1.4.0 demo patch note
I'm happy to announce that we have released our new gameplay trailer, check it out:
And that's not all! We have finally released the final content patch for the demo as well (1.4.0) so this is the best time to try it out (or retry! ;) ) and give us your feedback to shape the full version of the game.
1.4.0 patch notes:
New features:
- Units using two-handed hammers can break through walls for extra movement points. The amount of movement point needed depends on the level of the hammer.
- New standard combat mission where the player will need to steal the supply of the enemy army. There will be 5 of them on the combat map, and their location will be revealed after teleporting in, if not found by scrying. The player can simply teleport them home when they are adjacent to them, but only 1 can be teleported away per turn.
- Added adamantine armor and weapons that are researchable and buyable for the resistance.
- Reworked spider web and added a buyable throwing net to the utility slot for the resistance. Now, the netted unit cannot use most of its actions besides escape using its melee attack. Adjacent friendly units can help as well.
- Added healing potions, plus units can share their potions with adjacent units.
- Added a new universal skill called potion master. It increases the amount of potions the unit can bring with them to 3 (from the default 1).
- Hold ground protector skill has been reworked into shield expert skill.
- Added new passive rewards for completing the chosen resistance goals in the campaign map (different rewards for the different goals). For example, if the resistance completes the 30 smiths goal, the second utility slot will unlock for the troops.
- Reworked sprites for dark elf light armor.
- Reworked sprites for cloth armor.
- Reworked sprites for Redeemed.
- Added a new UI option that doubles the thickness of the character outlines.
- Added option to turn off v-sync and to set an FPS limit.
- Restarting is no longer necessary to correctly apply the language setting.
Balance changes:
- Simplified gaining XP. Previously, it was calculated using the number of units in the party, modified by the individual units level compared to the defeated enemies level. Now every unit will need an increased amount of XP to reach the next level, and enemies all provide a hand-set amount of XP regardless of the level difference between them and the player units.
- The XP simplification gave higher control of the possible XP curve, so I made the first level up easier than the rest.
- The second utility slot for units can be used as well from the start.
- Etherdust research has been added as a prerequisite for Alchemy research (potions) and the time and dust requirement has been adjusted.
- Masterwork weapons reduce the critical threshold by 10 (up from 5).
- Reinforced shields increase the shield health by 10 (up from 5).
- Swapped the dwarf soldier reorganized formation skill with shield expert.
- Spider web attack now has a cooldown of 3 (up from 2).
- The priest's guiding light ability now does 6 damage, still guarantees hit but can be blocked by shields.
- Thanks to the increased power level of the resistance, reverted the change to the army level that does the final mission back to 5 (up from 3).
Bugfixes:
- It's no longer possible to swap places with units that are unmovable (because of being webbed for example).
- The previous movement path will no longer be shown after a blue move.
- Fixed that it was theoretically possible to research etherglow analysis before finishing the gather 2 etherglow goal.
- Fixed a crash trying to load a save where the resistance goal has not been chosen.
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when a unit is next to someone with the attack of opportunity skill.
- In the party select screen, it is no longer possible to click on units or go back to the campaign map after pushing the start mission button, but before the map has been loaded. In addition, for users that didn't finish loading while the teleport animation was ongoing, added a loading text to make it clear that it was loading the map.
- Fixed open door action being duplicated when pushed away or rotated away from the door.
- Fixed that certain profile pictures could not be clicked on on the combat map on lower resolutions.
Devlog #27 Preparation for the final major demo patch
I wanted to give you a sneak peek at the upcoming last major 1.4 patch for the demo!
New equipments
The tier 2 equipments are coming in this patch, so finally, there will be many things to spend your etherglow on, and to keep your scholars busy! Take a look at a few examples:
In addition, health potions and throwing nets are added as new utility items! Throwing nets are a one-use guarantee way to distract enemies as they need to spend actions to get out of it, helping the player out of tough situations. Alternative usage is locking down kiting enemies!
New combat mission
There will be a new generic combat mission introduced in this new patch as well called steal supply! In this mission, you will need to gather multiple chests that are randomly placed on the battlefield. The chest's location is only revealed after teleporting in, so additional scrying charges are very useful in this mission!
Closing thoughts
So that's it for today's devlog! There will be a lot of other subtler changes that will arrive in the next patch, but these are the major new features. After the patch, we can consider the demo feature complete, and that means we are one step closer to the full release! This will be a great time to try out the demo, and if you have any questions feel free to join our Discord.
Demo 1.3.9 patch
This is another small patch that's about UI changes and some bugfixes.
Balance changes:
- The first combat mission of the game will be a distraction, meaning the goal will be to kill every enemy.
UI changes:
- Added a new option to the up-right corner of the screen in combat to toggle wall transparency. This is helpful at certain edge cases when the player wants to see what is the transparent wall exactly.
- Reworked the unit portrait frame at the bottom-left side of the screen and added the stamina and health bar as well.
- Added a new reminder to the conditions when a unit lost action points to make it clearer to the player that it happened.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed skill selection at level up letting players choose +1 school than the character limit.
- Fixed skill selection at level up not letting players choose Universal skills if they have reached their school limit. Universal skills should always be choosable after the first level up.
- Fixed charge skill attack through walls, and not pushing enemies when successfully hit.
- Fixed enemy campaign AI underestimating a successful player threat level.
- Fixed a bug that a unit does not get pushed if the attacker had a wall behind it.
Demo 1.3.8 hotfix
This is just a quick hotfix for the starting gold amount. It was incorrectly set to 200 gold in the previous patch, which is being reversed to 600 gold.
Demo 1.3.7 patch
This is going to be a small patch that changes the balance and fixes some bugs.
Balance changes:
- Increased enemy density (meaning generally fewer squads, but those squads have more units in them), plus increased the average amount of them by 1. Previously, the enemies were spawning in a lot of small groups (even as small as 2! at lower intel levers) because they were quick in converging at the player. However, after the AI change, they are not as aggressive, and dealing with isolated teams was a bit too easy.
- Added a new army that starts at size 1. The reason for this is twofold. The first one is this provides the player with another easy target in the beginning, providing more valid targets per month. The other one is that this sixth army can be upgraded in size by the invaders with supplies, giving another way for them to spend it.
- Reduced the cost of new bases. The second base costs 400, and every new one after that only cost +200 more. The reason for this is that bases provide a lot less than when their cost was initially set.
- Added a new main goal for the player right after choosing their headquarters which instructs the player to build a room in their base. The reason for this change is that a lot of new players can easily miss the base-building aspect, and this objective will make sure that they are aware of it.
- Added more stamina for the VIP in escort missions, but increased the distance it has to travel. The reason for this change is that previously, the VIP needed multiple rest to reach the goal and it was simply not fun. After the change, the player will only need to plan for 1 rest, or some other way to restore the VIP stamina to reach it's destination.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a soft lock that happened sometimes when generating VIP escort missions.
- Fixed missing description for the end game screen for gained etherglow.
- Fixed showing the wrong amount of gained etherglow when the player received the timed bonus.
- Fixed the set direction after turning setting was always resetting after every mission.
- Fixed walls and trees not being transparent when the VIP escape tile was behind them.
Demo 1.3.6 hotfix
The 1.3.6 demo hotfix has just been released, which fixed a crash that occurred when changing armor or utility equipment for units when playing using Proton on Linux.
Demo 1.3.5 patch
In preparation for our participation in the Endless Replayability Steam Fest, I'm happy to announce the release of the 1.3.5 patch to the demo!
This patch is mostly about quality-of-life features and balance changes according to the feedback we have received so far, with the highlight being voiced end-of-month scene.
UI changes:
- Reworked the end-of-month screen. Now the player will read the report in front of the council while they provide him/her with their opinion about the progress(with voice-acting!).
- Reworked the mission end screen to be more informative. It now includes the amount of enemies killed, damage caused, and the XP earned for every participating unit. Plus the amount of etherglow earned by completing this mission.
- On the combat map, the bottom bar disappears if there are no units selected
- The character description on the combat map is now bound to the screen, it cannot go outside of it.
- You can open the character description when right-clicking on the unit's profile picture as well, not just when on the unit. This is especially useful to the player while teleporting in, as the unit is not yet on the map at that time.
- On the base builder screen, in the building description, the player can see the actual number of smith/scholar/soldier/gold amount the building will provide.
- Added a new profile overlay for units that have been teleported out of the battlefield, and reworked the dead unit overlay.
New features:
- The game now saves the team the player set before starting the mission, so there is no need to set the team again after reloading.
Balance changes:
- Swapped the position of Forceful style skill with Endurance training skill on the warrior class. This gives every character an easier chance to increase their stamina if they dip into the warrior class.
- Because of the previous change, the knights that previously had Forceful style skill has been replaced with the self-defense training general skill.
- Swapped the position of Surgical precision skill with the improviser skill in the Assassin class. Same reason as in the warrior, this gives easier access for every character to increase their initiative if they dip into the assassin class.
- Swapped the position of the Move order skill with the Motivate skill in the Strategist class. The move order was a bit too strong for being a tier 1 skill that is freely accessible to everyone.
- Increased the stamina cost from 1 to 2 for the basic bow attack and the crossbow reload.
- Crossbows can't be reloaded while adjacent to a melee character (but can still use point black shot at melee range if already reloaded!)
Bugfixes:
- On the campaign map, it was not possible to close the ESC menu with a right click, this has been fixed.
- Fixed subtitles that sometimes were aligned wrongly compared to their black background.
- Fixed level-up animation playing before the teleport animation after missions.
- Fixed some typos in descriptions.
Demo 1.3.4 patch
Our first bigger patch after the 1.3.0 demo release is here with a lot of tweaks and bug fixes! Plus a big out-of-combat AI behavior change.
Major AI behavior change:
The AI was too aggressively rushing to the player's spawn point and as such it was easy to kill them all (especially with ranged weapons) inside the time limit for the bonus. While I don't want to completely invalidate this tactic, the time-limit bonus should only be archivable with proactiveness and risk-taking.
To reach this goal, the AI squads now have 4 internal states. Hold/Patrol/Slow-Advance/Active. Hold means they just stay put. Patrol means they will randomly patrol the map with their walking speed. Slow-Advance walks towards the player's last known location again with walking speed. Active is the old behavior which is to rush to the last known location of the player. Pods will become active as soon as they see a player unit or they take damage. In addition, at the start of every round, they have a chance to escalate their status. The chance itself increases with the round number.
In practice, this means that they will be less aggressive at the beginning of the combat so the player will need to actively seek them out if they want to finish the mission inside the time limit for the bonus. But their aggressiveness increases with time so that it doesn't devolve into trying to find the last pod for 10 turns.
In addition, the randomness means that their behavior will be a lot more unpredictable. For example, you could be rather certain that a building was empty even without checking previously because the AI would have stormed out from it the first chance it got. Now, a pod can stay put for several rounds there, before going out surprising the player.
Balance changes:
- The available character builds were very restricted in the beginning by every class skill requiring a base in their region. Now, the first 2 skills of every class are available from the start.
- Reduced the crossbow damage by 1 across the board.
- Increased the bow and crossbow equipment cost by 1. Massing range units should be less cost-efficient than melee units.
- Shields have been a bit too easy to break so increased shields max health to 15.
- Shields now have a +20 bonus block chance against ranged attacks, making them a more effective counter against ranged units.
- Removed the hammer-making from the Barbarian region and it has been given to the Strategist region so that they have access to a melee weapon as well.
- Changed the starting lineup of the Strategist region giving them a melee unit.
- Units leveled up a bit too fast, so the gained XP rate has been tweaked.
Ui changes:
- Skill chooser ui has been completely reworked to show the available skills in a better organized way, and to give the player a hint of all the available skills.
- Added a level-up animation to returning troops.
- Fixed various missing and typos in descriptions.
- In combat when you select an exhausted unit (only has 1 stamina) you will be notified with a sound effect.
- Added borderless fullscreen option.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed killing a redeemed(resurrected) priest counts for the assassinate mission when the priests are the target.
- Fixed showing the headquarters bonus of a region when it was not chosen as such.
- Fixed incorrect scaling when rendering at fullscreen on certain resolutions (like 4k).
- Fixed damaged armor condition shown token number was incorrect.
- Fixed a crash when opening the researched tab when nothing has been researched yet.
Demo 1.3.3 hotfix
The previous 1.3.2 hotfix was incorrectly applied and created a crash when changing weapons. This has been corrected in this new 1.3.3 hotfix.