Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Indie, Arcade
Soulstone Survivors
Winterfall Update: New Weapons, Skills and Secrets!
Hey everyone!
I know some of you thought this day would never come, but it's finally here! I am glad to bring to you today Soulstone Survivors Winterfall Update! And with it the first batch of new content added to the game!
While this update clearly had a focus on new weapons and skills, the new content added also required multiple systems that have been built from the ground up to allow us to develop new content a lot faster! For everything we build for the game, we have modularity in mind, and with every new block we create we get new tools to develop and expand the game, hopefully in fun ways! While we have the flashy images above, this is far from the full list of changes for this version, which you can find below!
New content:
- Holiday Event: 22 Dec - 05 Jan Guaranteed to find Bumble's Lair for a limited time to unlock secret achievements! Lair will be harder to find after the event.
- 8 New craftable weapons: Paladin: Harbinger of Justice Chaoswalker: Artifact of Corruption Assassin: Curved Daggers Legionnaire: Jupiter's Reach Beastmaster: Nature's Fury Elementalist: Scepter of Frost Necromancer: Life Harvester Death Knight: Greatsword of Doom
- 19 new active skills: Paladin: Hammer of Justice, Penance Assassin: Twin Daggers, Smoke Bomb Death Knight: Unholy Aura, Reap Necromancer: Unholy Bolt, Ancient Curse Legionnaire: Jupiter's Spear, Summon Infantry Beastmaster: Wild Strike, Summon Swamp Boar Elementalist: Severe Cold, Freezing Blow Chaoswalker: Seeking Chaos, Aura of Chaos All characters: Secret1, Secret2, Secret3
Rune changes:
- Now you can also pick starting skills multiple times with Singular Focus; - Starting skills can now be selected by other characters with the use of a Mastery rune; - Fixed issue where Mastery runes sometimes would yield inconsistent results, often adding less than 6 skills to the pool; - Mastery runes will not add the same skill twice if you have two masteries that would apply for the same skill, it will always try to add unique skills if possible;
Skill changes:
- Added new Seasonal skill type; - Smoke Bomb is now an Assassin class skill, and Backstab is now a weapon skill; - Changed how skills that deal extra damage on critical strike work to be an actual multiplier on top of the damage, instead of additional Critical Damage Modifier, increasing their effectiveness considerably; - Increased the speed-up rate of Arcane Conjuration and Call Lightning skills so they don't accumulate as much; - Paralysis extra direct damage per stack increased from 0.5% to 1%; - Arcane Blade cooldown reduced from 10 to 8.5 seconds; - Arcane Rift cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds; - Arcane Disk damage increased from 450 to 480; - Arcane Disk cooldown reduced from 5.5 to 5.2 seconds; - Backstab damage increased from 150 to 300; - Backstab now also applies a 800 damage hemorrhage if you are behind the target; - Beacon of Light area increased by 40%; - Beacon of Light damage increased from 52 to 80; - Bladed Chakram damage increased from 50 to 120; - Bladed Chakram rot damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Bladed Chakram cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Blizzard damage increased from 625 to 875; - Bomb Barrage damage increased from 70 to 85; - Chain Lightning cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds; - Chain Lightning damage increased from 230 to 400; - Chain Lightning jumps increased from 5 to 7; - Chaos Bolt projectile moves slower and can fire more secondary bolts; - Chaos Bomb maximum damage increased from 700 to 1000; - Chaos Totem projectiles move slower and can fire more secondary bolts; - Combustion Burn damage increased from 60 to 70; - Death Claw maximum damage increased from 500 to 1000; - Demolish damage increased from 200 to 300; - Demolish wave damage increased from 50 to 100; - Fire Shield damage increased from 40 to 50; - Fire Shield burn damage increased from 100 to 120; - Firewall burn damage increased from 400 to 480; - Firewall cooldown reduced from 12 to 11 seconds; - Frostbolt cooldown reduced from 2 to 1 second; - Frostbolt damage reduced from 330 to 300; - Glacier damage increased from 650 to 900; - Glacier area increased by 30%; - Heroic Strike now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Holy Fire now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Ice Vortex now applies approximately 30% less stacks of Slow; - Intimidating Shout cooldown reduced from 20 to 18 seconds; - Intimidating Shout duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds; - Lightning Bolt cooldown reduced from 6 to 5 seconds; - Lightning Bolt damage increased from 310 to 700; - Lightning Bolt Dazed increased from 8% to 10%; - Poison Bomb damage increased from 40 to 100; - Poison Bomb poison damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Poison Bomb cooldown reduced from 5 to 4; - Scent of Blood cooldown increased from 30 to 34 seconds; - Shield Bash skill no longer stuns targets, which is the intended behaviour; - Shrapnel Bomb damage increased from 200 to 270; - Shrapnel Bomb sub-projectile damage increased from 30 to 45; - Smite cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Sniper Shot now properly multiplies damage by 5 on critical strikes; - Summon Battle Moose Horn attack damage reduced from 300 to 150; - Summon War Tiger bite attack no longer applies a Bleed for 300 damage, but still applies Wounds; - Summon War Tiger claw attack no longer applies Fragility, but still applies Bleed for 300 damage; - Summon War Tiger claw attack damage reduced from 150 to 80; - Templar's Verdict area increased by 30%; - Templar's Verdict now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Thrust damage increased from 60 to 90; - Thunder Clap area increased by 25%; - Thunder Clap cooldown reduced from 9 to 5 seconds; - Thunder Clap damage increased from 610 to 1100; - Thunder Strike cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds; - Thunder Strike damage increased from 500 to 1300; - Venomous Strike damage increased from 70 to 120; - Venomous Strike poison damage reduced from 250 to 220; - Weakening Grenade damage increased from 240 to 350; - Weakening Grenade cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Whirlwind damage increased from 110 to 140; - Whirlwind cooldown reduced from 1.5 to 1.4 seconds;
Enemy changes:
Corrupted Paladin: - Templar's Verdict damage reduced from 25 to 20; - Templar's Verdict charge time increased from 1.2 to 2 seconds; - Holy Fire charge time increased from 1.2 to 2 seconds; - Holy Fire projectile spread reduced considerably; - Holy Fire projectile speed reduced considerably; - Holy Fire damage reduced from 15 to 8; Corrupted Death Knight: - Obliterate charge time increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds; - Shadow Spikes charge time increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds; Lords of the Void: - Added minimum cooldown to most Lord of the Void skills, so at very high levels they will still use all of their skills instead of always prioritising the same skill;
General changes and fixes:
- Attempt fix for issue where on certain MacOS machines the mouse can be invisible/bugged; - Created all game achievements on Steam, they should reflect on your account when you log into the game for the first time; - Further performance improvements that might assist in certain scenarios; - Fixed issue where certain skill such as Lightning Bolt could fire their projectiles into the ground, becoming considerably less effective; - Fixed issue where Doom and Cursed would not consider Exposed when calculating whether or not they have enough damage to execute the target; - Fixed issue where Vulnerable effect was consuming 75% of its charges, instead of 25% as intended; - Fixed an issue where Burn effects would deal 20% less damage than intended; - Fixed an issue where Synergy effects that from one negative effect could apply another, were not scaling with your stats or skill modifiers; - Removed invisibile objects from the Caves of Dhal Zhog which would cause strange pathing; - Fixed issue with skills such as Storm of Arrows where lower FPS would cause them to pile up too many projectiles, being less effective; - Fixed issue where with a controller it was possible to spend resources to craft the same item multiple times without any benefits; - Bosses are now virtually immune to pushback effects to reduce some strange behaviour that could happen in extreme scenarios; - Fixed issue where Arcane Blade would not count how many targets it hit; - Fixed issue where the Corrupted Spellblade Arcane Overload skill could flash the entire screen with its effect; - Fixed issue where the Corrupted Death Knight Poison Bomb would leave an invisible pool of poison in the ground if your special visibility was too low. It is no longer affected by this setting; - Hit special effects will play up until Endless cycle 2. Previously, they would not play in any Endless/Overlord level to improve performance; - Fixed an issue where if you Restarted a match by either the pause menu or end game screen from within an Endless level, you would restart in the current map, instead of the original map; - Fixed issue where Totems would not scale with Curse Intensity like other summon skills do; - Fixed Discord's "time alive" to count endless levels time as well; - Multiple tooltip and skill description fixes where values might not represent the actual skill values; - Multiple UI and visual fixes and improvements across the game; - New seasonal soundtrack and sound effects; - Tons of small bug fixes across all areas.
Developer notes
As always, we wanted to add a small section below talking about the ins and outs of the update, so lets just jump right in into a few topics!
Update delay
As you all know, this update took us about a week longer than we had anticipated, and I know we just came into Early Access, that we have all been burned with games that just got abandoned before being fully realised, so I completely understand how it feels to be on the player's side of the equation in these situations. I know these might be just words for you, but trust me when I say we are in it for the long haul, for the game, for the pride we have in what we are creating with your help, and for the pleasure it is that is developing this game.
Thanks to all your amazing support so far, the Early Access release has been incredible, reaching more people than we could have ever hoped for, and now more than ever, we feel we have a duty of making this game as good as it can be, but regardless of how things are going so far, we are still a tiny team, which allows us to move very quickly in some ways, but also makes it so the personal lives of each of us have a huge impact in how fast the team as a whole can work. This last month wasn't easy, and the personal challenges we faced ended up slowing development for a while, but thankfully that is now behind us.
Getting more help
With that said, we are starting to take the steps towards a more healthy future. We are currently looking for extra help, trying to grow our team a little bit and to fill the role of Unity C# developer and potentially the help of another artist so we can at the same time tackle bigger features (and oh boy are there some big features coming) AND continue adding content in the multiple areas of the game at the same time, such as more weapons, skills, runes, skill tree, etc. We have a ton of plans for the game, and by growing a little bit with a likeminded team I'm sure we will be able to do a lot more, so if you have some experience (specially coding) and genuinely love working with games, playing roguelites, talking design and getting your hands dirty, feel free to send us your your CV at jobs@gamesmithing.com !
Next steps for the game
In this status update we talk a bit about what we see as some of the main priorities we want to tackle on the game in the near future. As you can see from this update, we are tackling these bit by bit. You can expect new weapons and skills very frequently, as for us offering as many ways to play the game will always be one of the pillars of the game, but two of the big features we will start tackling soon are "Map Differentiation" and "Interesting ways to spend your resources". Both are large features with their own challenges and but we expect to take steps towards both of these in the first quarter of 2023. We recognize especially the latter as a major point of concern with players hoarding thousands of major soulstones, and we want to reinforce that it is very high in our priorities list.
But what about X skill that is crap, or Y skill that is OP, or that crazy bug?
Even though this update just came out, we still have a looong list of tasks to take care of. This update brought quite a few balance changes bringing some underperforming skills more in line, but not all of them. We haven't had the time to sit and test all skills just yet on all the different builds they can be used in, so we are aware there are still some that are lagging behind, and some that are extremely strong right now. We are also aware of quite a few bugs and missing features like the crappy controller navigation for curses and achievements, but we have to pick our battles. Those will all come, in time, and hopefully with a bit more help we will also be able to tackle these more quickly in the near future, but keep your feedback coming, reporting the errors here or in our Discord https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT is always an immense help!
Next update when...?
As also mentioned before, we believe a cadence of monthly updates allows us to develop significant new content with quality, so we are planning the next update for the end of Jan/beginning of Feb. With the holidays coming it is time for everyone to be with their families and take a small break, recharge the batteries and come back for full power in the first week of Jan, but we are still around and we might sneak in a hotfix or two this next week. With that said, I ask you for a little patience if we are at times quiet, usually the quieter we are, the busier we are trying to catch up and making sure all is working well. We will try to do better next year with more transparency from our side, which is something we can do, another advantage of being so small, but it is just hard to juggle all the tasks, we hope you understand!
And with that particularly big wall of text behind us haha, I just want to say that we really, REALLY appreciate your support, we don't take the amazing community the game has for granted and without you there definitely would be no game, so thank you all once again!
If you have any questions, or run into any issues, do let us know and we will do our best to try and sort out the issues, and we hope you enjoy the update! Best wishes, - The dev team
Status Update: New content, balance and fixes
Hello everyone!
It's been now 8 days since our last update, which for us feels like a lot of time, so we thought it would be a good idea to take a moment and share a little bit about our future plans and the content we are working on for the next major update. We want to be as transparent with you as we can (while trying to not spoil too much the content that is coming =P), and while this is a bit of a wall of text haha I hope it brings some clarity into what is coming in the future.
Release schedule
First, while we like to do frequent and small updates to make sure that the experience is as smooth as possible, now that we are working on new content, it makes more sense to have a longer release schedule so we can work on more expressive features to make more of an impact in the game.
Our current plan is to release the next major update around the second week of December, and from that point on, release content updates monthly, which gives us enough time to work on cool stuff, make sure it all works well, and release quality content frequently. In between those major updates, we will continue making hotfixes, balance and smaller improvement patches whenever necessary.
General improvements in our radar
With the last patch, we addressed a lot of the most pressing issues with the game, including hundreds of bugs large and small, refactoring game modes, making sure the game is more resilient and that the initial Early Access experience was as smooth as we could make it. However, there are still quite a few quality of life and fixes pending for the next version.
We are still evaluating which fixes and improvements we will be able to get done in time, but very high in our priority list are some controller navigation improvements, accessibility options which include mouse-only control schemes and color-blind options, more UI improvements, and of course quite a few bugs reported by the community are in our radar as well. I don't think we will be able to finish all of these in time, but know that these are important issues to fix for us and they are definitely coming sooner rather than later.
Balance changes
For the beginning of Early Access, our focus was on making sure that all classes and play styles were fun to experiment with and were viable to play with. The game offers quite a few tools that make it so certain builds will always be superior or even broken depending a bit on your luck, however, we are well aware that certain classes and play styles have a hard time in the more challenging content in the game, such as high Curse levels.
For next update, we want to take a close look at skills and play styles that are struggling to keep up. We will never be able to make all builds of all characters with all runes be equally strong, but that is not the intention really. Some classes will always be more challenging in certain scenarios, and we believe that this variety is good for the game, given this is a single player experience (so far, who knows =P), however, we want as much variety as possible, and for that, we need to make sure that ALL skills can be viable one way or another. This will be a constant effort, and we will make sure to take it one step at a time with each update coming in the future.
New weapons and skills
Probably the part of the game that has received the least attention so far, are the weapons. We currently have a total of 20 weapons including the basic ones, but that is only a fraction of our goal. Our plan is to continuously add new weapons until each character has at least 5 weapons to choose from, and we are very far from that goal at the moment.
With that said, we are already working on a lot of new skills and weapons, and while I still won't reveal what those look like just now, rest assured you will get quite a few new ones with the next update!
Map differentiation
Another big shortcoming of the current version of the game for us is that all maps play pretty much the same. The resources offer some incentive to play on different maps, but, our goal is to have enough enemy diversity and different challenges per map that it actually feels different to play on different scenarios.
This is a big endeavour and will likely take multiple updates to get where we want it to be, as it will involve creating lots of new enemies, new skills for those enemies and making sure that they lead to interesting gameplay scenarios that actually feel different from each other (we don't want to just make green goblins in the Whispering Grove and blue goblins in the Frozen Wasteland), but it is something that is already in the works in the background. It will take some testing, but its a very high priority for us.
New challenges
In addition to the above, one of the areas we want to continue expanding the game for a long time still, is in creating new challenges. Those will come in multiple shapes and forms, with new bosses, new game modes, and quite a few... secret encounters to find along the way. I wont go into too much detail at this time, but what I will say is that we have one of those planned for the next update, and we are developing these in a way that will make future content easier and faster to develop as well.
Interesting ways to spend your resources
While new weapons and characters will require materials and soulstones to be crafted, those are finite and we don't want them to feel grindy or to take too long to unlock. We have other features planned such as expanding the skill tree, giving more meaning to prestige levels and so on, so there is still a lot coming that will consume resources, however, we are currently planning another major feature that should offer nearly endless ways to spend resources, in exchange for cool bonuses and variations to your gameplay and classes.
This is a major feature that will not come with the next update which is still in the drawing board, and it is a challenging feature to design because we want it to feel rewarding and impactful, but not mandatory and grindy, which is a hard balance to strike. However, we thought it was important to communicate that we recognise this as yet another big shortcoming with the current version of the game, and it will definitely be addressed in the updates to come.
Future content and goals
Our number one goal with Soulstone Survivors, is to make sure that there were hundreds, thousands of ways you could play the game and have fun with. We feel like we currently have a really good start, but there are still many more features coming that will expand your choices and overall power level in different ways moving forward.
Our next goal, is to offer enough variety of challenges, and activities to do in the game, to give you incentives to explore all of those ways to play the game. We believe we have a good basis right now, but there is still A LOT we can do in this sense, with enemy variety, unlockable challenges and so on.
And our third and final goal with every feature we think for the game, is to create content that feels well connected with the rest of the game, and that offers very high replay value. Once again I think we are going in the right direction, and this is a pillar for all of the features that are still to come.
Conclusion
With this announcement, we wanted to shed some light into our vision for the game moving forward. As mentioned many times before, we see the Early Access as just the beginning of this journey, and with all of the above, we hope it shows you a little glimpse of the ideas we have in mind. Even when all of the above is implemented, there are still loads of different types of content we can explore in the game, and we have no intention of slowing down.
We continue hard at work on our side, we continue reading feedback everywhere we can, we really appreciate all of the amazing ideas that you guys have shared with us and I'm sure many of them will find their way into the game at some point in time, and we are also looking into different ways we can interact with the community.
Thank you very much for the amazing support, and we hope to have you along with us for the journey!
Best wishes, - The dev team
Update v0.9.028e: Steam Achievements and general fixes!
Hi everyone!
We have just released minor update v0.9.028e, which above everything else, comes to fix the Steam Achievements! With this update, most of your existing in-game achievements will be automatically replicated onto Steam when you start the game, however, there is one thing to note: at this time, we are limited to creating only 100 Steam Achievements, therefore, not all achievements exist on Steam yet!
This is a Steam limitation to avoid shady games creating tons of fake achievements just to boost profiles up. We expect that as the days and weeks go by, we will be allowed to create more achievements and will continue expanding this list untill all of the existing (and future!) achievements exist both in-game and on Steam!
This patch also brings some other fixes to annoying problems, as you can see in the full list of changes below!
Full change list for version v0.9.028e:
General changes:
- Steam Achievements working as intended, existing achievements and stats will be uploaded to Steam on the first time you load the game; - Fixed the visibility of attacks of all enemy Void Hunters, which are now mostly unaffected by visual effect opacity setting; - Fixed an issue where the enemy Paladin would not attack you with all of his skills; - Fixed an issue with multiple enemy Void Hunter skills, which were possibly firing skills in the wrong direction; - Increased the size of the area indicator for a few more boss skills which were slightly undersized; - Made the Void Presence attack not be affected by effect opacity settings; - Made it so the elite Troll shockwave skill is affected only partially by effect opacity; - Small change so that achievement percentages avoid being rounded up from 99.9999% to 100% in very specific cases; - Added Area tag to Arcane Power to be inline with other buffs; - Changed totem skills and ballista to no longer have Duration power ups, but instead have Damage power ups, which are more beneficial given the recently introduced summon limit; - To access Overlord Mode (the red portal) you now need to finish the match in less then 13 minutes, up from 12 (which was the intended value); - Added code to prevent a few seemingly harmless exceptions in the game; - Minor UI adjustments that could cause problems in a few languages;
We hope that this patch will be welcome by those of you that love a little achievement hunting, and as mentioned above, rest assured that as soon as we are allowed to, we will create the remaining achievements on Steam.
I also want to add that updates are not going to be just fixes and improvements! We are working in the background on new content that will be landing very very soon! We still have a little bit more to do, but we continue working day and night to create new stuff! We really appreciate the patience, and we hope that at least for now, these past updates have made the game experience smoother and more enjoyable for everyone!
And as always, we would like to thank you all very much for all the help, support, testing and feedback! It is incredible to be able to count on this amazing community be it on Steam forums, Twitter, Discord... it really does make all the difference in the world!
We hope you enjoy this little update, Best wishes, - The dev team
Update v0.9.028c: Major Performance Improvements, Endless and Overlord modes!
Hello everyone!
We have just yesterday completed a week of Early Access, and today we are coming to our third, and this time MAJOR update! Patch v0.9.028c brings with it tons of fixes all around the game, but most importantly, it is all about performance and Endless mode which is now split into two, Endless and Overlord modes!
Before talking in more detail about those, let's jump right into the list of changes for this patch, and as always we will talk a bit more about what is going on in the game down below!
Full change list for version v0.9.028c:
Main changes:
- Endless Mode is now split into two separate game modes, both of which have been extensively reworked in their functionality: -- Endless Mode: Level up quickly and fight across multiple scenarios with increasing difficulty with every cycle. Enemies will become tougher and more resistant and you can go on for as long as you manage! -- Overlord Mode: Face an increasing number of powerful Lords of the Void, which require less and less enemies per cycle until you are facing Lords all day long! Difficulty increases with every cycle, and so does the number of bosses. - Achievements that required Endless Cycles are now split between both modes. If you completed the achievements previously, they will still be completed (this may cause a small glitch with the switched achievement rewards); - Major performance improvements in all areas of the game, especially in very high intensity scenarios; - Overhead combat text has been changed to be incremental, so multiple hits on the same target will refresh and increase the number instead of generating a new text. You can switch between the previous and new styles in the General Settings, however, the previous style will lead to performance issues in high-intensity scenarios; - If Special effect visibility slider is all the way down, some visual effects will not be used at all which should improve performance considerably in certain scenarios;
General changes and fixes:
- Multiple fixes related to the error where you would not be able to pick any skill when levelling up. This is a rare issue and we have made multiple changes that should prevent it entirely, but let us know if you still see this error; - Implemented some changes to the saving system to try and make the system more resistant to corrupted files; - Added visual improvements to the Runes screen so it is easier to locate/remember where runes are placed; - Fixed issue where the Curse Intensity tooltip could stay on screen indefinitely; - Fixed issue where the currently selected rune would persist as selected even when you switched characters; - Fixed multiple minor localization issues; - Fixed minor visual issues on ultra-wide monitors; - Fixed issue where Prestige Stars would show incorrectly from level 100 to 110 (and other higher levels); - In any endless mode, certain visual effects will not play to help with performance; - When a target takes damage and is immune to damage, a Immune label will appear; - Objective notifications now will only show the latest notification, instead of building an endless queue; - Fixed an issue where FPS limit was resetting to the screen refresh rate with every start-up; - FPS limit slider is now capped at 120% of your monitor refresh rate; - Fixed issue where enemies would eventually have blue health bars if you had enough summons; - Removed "invisible pillars" in the Dungeon of Despair; - Fixed multiple "invisible exceptions" that would consume performance; - Fixed Overlord Mode tooltip displaying "5% extra bosses" instead of "5" extra bosses; - Fixed Curse Intensity tooltip showing big decimal numbers;
Enemy changes:
- Extended the damage area indicator of a few boss skills to better reflect the range of their skills; - Fixed issue where the Paladin Void Hunter (enemy) would not be targetable by minions; - Snake's poison bomb is no longer affected by Opacity settings; - Reduced health of Pillars of Despair by 30%; - Increased the cooldown of the Pillars of Despair skills by 100%; - Removed Stun effects from the attacks of all enemies; - Fixed an issue where enemies that should be immune to pushback were not immune; - Endless cycles now also reduce the effectiveness of Absorption shields (Arcane Shield); - Small spider attacks are now not affected by Effect Opacity options; - Fixed issue where the Void Presence would receive negative effects;
Skills and Runes changes:
- Fixed issue where the skill Disengage would not appear for the Sentinel's second bow; - Changed the tag from Spread Shot from Blast to Projectile; - Pending skill points during a match will now be kept if you go through an endless portal; - Fixed an issue where Call Lightning was applying Disoriented instead of Dazed; - Chromatic Bolt now fires in the direction you are aiming, as stated in the tooltip; - Holy Fire now has the Frontal tag; - Exorcism tooltip will now show 0.5 correctly instead of rounding up to 1; - Fixed issue where certain skills such as Mine Field and Explosive trap may not remove the objects from the world when the skill is removed; - Totems and Ballistas now have a proper summon quantity limit, but have had their damage increased; - Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas were not dealing the intended damage when they caused a critical strike; - Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas would block the movement of your minions; - Fixed issue where Totems and Ballistas would not apply on-hit effects; - Fixed issue where Purity rune would use the incorrect value to determine how many effects are in the target, yielding inconsistent results; - Fixed issue where Bladestorm and Flurry would not be used if there were no enemies nearby; - Fixed an issue where Shadow Nova would apply Exposed, which was not intended; - Shadow Step now grants 0.5 seconds of immunity after a teleport; - Surefooted rune now reduces the damage you take by 15% to replace the Stun immunity bonus;
Now, with that huge list out of the way, to mention a little about the differences between Endless and Overlord modes, while they share a lot of similarities, Endless is more relaxed and allows for more free experimentation and scaling, while Overlord mode is intended as a more challenging mode so you can test your skills to see how far you will go. Both modes are different from the current implementation of Endless and have tons of tweaks in multiple areas, so we recommend you give them both a try and see what you think.
To talk a little bit about performance, the changes in this update should be noticeable all around the game and involve major refactoring and changes in all major areas of the game. There are still a few places where we can squeeze in some more performance, but those will come in the following weeks.
And speaking of the next steps, as expected, this first week was focused on fixes, improvements and adjustments, and not on new content. There is one major bug that is getting addressed next which is the link with Steam Achievements, which is not currently working. We expect to have a new patch shortly addressing that, and in the background, we have already started work on some new content that we expect will be coming to the game very soon as well which we hope you will enjoy!
And with all of that said, I just wanted to once again thank you all for the amazing support so far! We have been working day and night to make sure that the game is as good as it can be, and a lot of the fixes in this update come from reports from the community! So thank you for helping us improve the game and for all the feedback so far! As mentioned before, this is just the beginning, we literally just completed the first week of Early Access, and there is still A LOT to come, both in terms of improvements AND new content!
Best wishes, - The dev team
Update v0.9.027h: Major Endless Mode rework and multiple fixes!
Hello everyone!
We have just completed our second full day of Early Access and to celebrate we bring to you our second patch, version v0.9.027h! The focus for this version has been on reviewing and reworking the Endless Mode. I will talk a little bit more about it at the end of this post but first, here is the full list of changes for this version:
Full change list for version v0.9.027h:
General changes:
- Endless Mode rework: -- Entirely changed the scaling progression. You will level up slower, and enemies will have considerably less health, but be more dangerous; -- Extra Lords of the Void will join the battle, which will pose a much bigger challenge than before; -- Enemies are now more and more resistant to slowing effects, so you will have to stay alert; -- Reduced quantity of enemies needed per objective, but more time for you to fight the Lords; -- Overall we expect the new design to be more challenging, shorter, and a million times more performant; - Adjusted Achievements to reflect the change in difficulty of Endless Mode, requiring less Cycles for the same rewards; - Added slider in Graphics settings to control the FPS limit of the game; - Changed Player Area indicators (blue circles) to be a lot less intrusive, but still help you identify where your skills are landing; - Fixed issue where arrows pointing to towers or any other object would point in the wrong direction in certain cases; - Fixed an issue where the Blacksmith was very generous and would not verify for achievement completion before crafting weapons; - Fixed issue with Legionnaire and the Dogs becoming invisible in the menu; - Fixed an issue where Totem skills were not adjusting their tooltips according to Buff Duration power-ups; - Fixed issue where enemies would walk around destroyed objects in The Dungeon of Despair; - Fixed (fore real this time) the visibility of Demolish not being affected by Effect opacity setting; - Fixed issue where Piercing Shout would not appear as a skill for the Barbarian; - Fixed error with certain projectiles when you replace the skill, causing an error; - Fixed an issue where if you replaced Ice Vortex with another skill at certain point in time, its visual effect would stay forever; - Fixed an issue where locked character names would show up in the Blacksmith; - Small performance optimisations;
Balance changes:
- Aelfraed will now use Bladestorm from further away from you, and move slightly faster; - Reduced damage of Call Lightning from 120 to 80; - Reduced initial damage of Chromatic Bolt from 70 to 50; - Reduced damage of Ricochet Shot from 150 to 100; - Reduced damage of Storm of Arrows from 300 to 200; - Reduced damage of Chaos Golem from about 400 to about 250; - Holy Fire now fires 3 light waves in the direction you are aiming, instead of one;
About Endless Mode:
When you have a chance to try this new update, you will notice that it is very different from before, and I wanted to touch on what is our thought process for these changes.
First, the performance issues. The game certainly started getting extremely slow at higher Endless Cycle levels, but unfortunately there are no optimisations in the world that would fix the problem. The problem is that with you being able to reach extremely high levels, 200, 400, 600... you scale your powers SO SO much, that you are firing hundreds if not thousands of skills and projectiles every second, that are as large as the map itself. In practice, this means millions of calculations for physics effects hits damage and everything else every second. There ARE optimisations to do in the game and we will get to them very soon, however, nothing we could do would make this level of craziness scale correctly, it is just too much.
Second, while at first it is very cool to scale absurdly like before, seeing your skills covering the whole planet and all that haha, it leads to a stale gameplay loop. In the previous iteration it was very easy to become immortal, to hit the entire planet with every skill and then you are left watching as the numbers pop-up as in an idle game. It definitely has its charm (if it ran at a decent FPS), but it gets old really fast. Our intention for endless is that you eventually die from a very challenging scenario where YOU are pushed to the max together with your build, and not just your computer while you go have dinner and wait for the level to be over. We believe that with these changes and a more challenging gameplay, we are getting there.
Third, we don't like Endless being extremely long matches. Since the challenge was basically non-existant, you could push endless until your computer exploded, which is not great. We want endless to finish in any amount of time between 20 and 40 minutes. It can go longer than that, but now that is an actual show of skill, not of patience. At times, if your build is not very good, we expect you will have a very hard time defeating the Lords of the Void and may end earlier than that, but that is ok, you can always try a new setup, new skills, new runes, and see how that works out for you.
Finally, we are always open to change. We still want to make more adjustments to Endless mode and will continue working on it and all other features of the game, and hearing your opinion is critical for us. So please, do share what you think! Remember this is still Day 2 of Early Access haha (officially 3 I could say), so the road is just beginning, and we will continue working as hard as we ever have to make sure that the game continues getting better and better.
Whats next:
Having said all that, the work is far from done! We got a lot of other fixes to make and the next big one are the Steam Achievements not syncing. This is an error on our side and will require an update, but we are working on it, alongside many other smaller fixes that will be coming shortly.
I wanted to thank you all very much for your support so far once again, we are blown away by the response to the game so far and I really, really hope we can make it as cool as possible for everyone! We will continue listening, continue working, and we still have A LOT to add to the game! This week we are focusing on these release issues but soon, very soon!
Thank you all for the attention, Best wishes, - The dev team
Update v0.9.027g: Multiple fixes for common issues!
Hi everyone!
Before anything else, I would just like to say a HUGE thank you, to all of you that are supporting our work one way or another, grabbing a copy of course but with feedback, bug reports, and in general just being awesome human beings! I cannot believe how lucky we are to have such a welcoming and supportive community behind the game! I really do hope that the game brings you a lot of fun for a very long time, we hope you are enjoying the new content and rest assured that it is still just the beginning, after all, this is day ONE of Early Access!
The path is long, but to take it with you will be an honor! Today we bring the first-ever Early Access update, it is not the most exciting for most of you haha, but will be very helpful to some of you that are facing some of the problems we just fixed! Without further ado:
Full change list for version v0.9.027g:
General changes:
- Fixed issue where certain players are not able to unlock the Barbarian character; - Fixed an issue where certain players would start the game with the Effect visibility slider all the way to 0; - Fixed issue where the Cursor on Linux would go invisible after you started a match, and then went to any menu such as pause or level up; - Fixed an issue where having lots of power-ups would go in front of the Options menu during gameplay; - Fixed issue where characters can equip other character weapons; - Increased the size of the Damage number in the ending screen to assist with the very small numbers; - Fixed issue where Achievements that yield Runic Power were displaying the wrong information; - Fixed Bloodlust cooldown calculation not working as intended, now Bloodlust properly no longer affects its own cooldown (or the cooldown of multiple instances of Bloodlust); - Fixed issue where the Demolish skill would not be affected by the Effect Opacity setting; - Fixed issue where Summon Ballista, when having its duration increased, would not show the increase in the tooltip;
We wanted to get this patch out as soon as possible to make sure that players are not affected by some of the critical problems that have been fixed, but will continue working on further updates over the next few days to address other critical issues, the two main ones being Steam Achievements and Endless Mode.
Steam Achievements
We are currently working into addressing the issue that is preventing the sync between Steam and the game, but it is our mistake. This is our highest priority right now and we expect to have it fixed very very soon. At any rate, all the progress you have, WILL carry over, so you are not wasting any progression right now.
Endless Mode
We know that when you go too deep into Endless Cycles, the game starts to slow down. This happens most of the time because of the CPU, which is having to make millions (literally) of physical collisions every frame to detect and push enemies around while calculating hundreds of thousands of negative effects being added every second. We still have a few big optimisation paths to work on which we will do over the course of Early Access, but I believe we were too generous in the Endless implementation.
To have as open a development as we can, here are our thoughts for an endless rework in the next couple of days:
- Today, when you go into a new endless cycle, we reset your experience but keep your levels. This means you level up very very quickly, and while cool, this is the root of all evil. We will likely reduce this quite a bit, which will make it harder to level up. You will still continue getting stronger, but at a more manageable rate;
- Due to the excessive scaling you get from the excessive levels, enemies end up with excessive amounts of health. We HATE how tanky enemies get now, when the only challenge is your patience. Endless is meant as a different experience to the Curses, which are quite demanding in their own ways, but we don't want them to be excessively long, and especially excessively tanky. You should feel like the challenge is scaling, and not the health bars.
- To build more interesting challenges, we are considering adding Random Curses with every endless level you progress into. This way, we can introduce challenges other than just scaling enemies, and making every tier of Endless different from the previous one. We will test how this feels to play, but we believe will make endless more interesting to play.
With those changes, what we expect will happen is a considerable reduction in the CPU load from the currently extreme levels of scaling, you will still be very strong (but more limited than now), and challenge level will be more varied with different curses every Endless cycle.
We will test those changes, and will likely make them public through the Alpha branch very soon as well, so if you'd like to give us more feedback and let us know what you think, the best place to to reach us out fast is to join our Discord! (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT)
At any rate, I would like to thank you all once again for the amazing support, and the patience to deal with the pesky bugs you are finding, and to read this wall of text! haha
Best wishes, - The dev team
Early Access is out NOW!
Hey everyone!
The day is finally here, and Early Access is now available!! You can finally try out all the new characters, skills, curses, achievements, endless... and create those game-breaking builds we love to see! We've prepared an Early Access release trailer to mark the occasion!
If you tried the Demo, or the Prologue, or you are completely new to the game and decide to give it a go, we truly hope you will have a good time with all the changes and new content available! You can find the Early Access in the link below:
We would like to thank you all once again for all the support, the game would definitely not be the same without the amazing community we have here on Steam and on Discord! All the feedback, support messages and even criticism all helped to shape the game so far, and rest assured: the Early Access is just the beginning!
And with all that said... we will see you in the void, Void Hunter!
Best wishes, - The dev team
Pre-Release Event: Steam Key Giveaway, Speedrunning and Update v0.8.025a
Hi everyone!
As we are getting closer and closer to the beginning of Early Access on November 7th, we wanted to do a little something in preparation for all that is coming. And with that in mind, we decided to run a small Pre-Release event where you have a chance of getting a Steam Key for Soulstone Survivors for free, in addition to a few other prizes!
Together with this update v0.8.025a for the Prologue version which we will get into in a second, we set up a small Speedrunning tournament over in our Discord, where the fastest players will be eligible to earn the following prizes:
6x Soulstone Survivors Steam Keys;
$30 Steam Gift card courtesy of @VyvLiveGaming on Twitch;
Unique Discord roles to show how awesome you are;
If speedrunning is not your thing, not to worry! All participants will have a chance of getting a Steam Key regardless of their score! If you want to learn more, the first step downloading the Prologue, which you can find here:
Now, together with this event, we also released update v0.8.025a into the Prologue! This is a small update that focuses on fixing a few things while improving some skills that were in need of some love!
Full change list for version v0.8.025a:
General changes:
- Community Event: Steam Key Giveaway and Speedrun Tournament, join our Discord to learn more! - Fixed an issue where Tracking attacks (such as Alexi's Poison Volley or the Elite Snake Poison Spit) would have unreliable speeds. In general, you should feel those attacks slightly faster than before if you are far away from the target; - Fixed an issue where bosses would cast their skills without looking at you; - Fixed an issue where certain projectiles would remain forever in the game; - Fixed issue where the Effect Opacity option was not affecting ground effects such as cracks and whatnot; - Poison and Bleed now deal damage every second. Total damage and duration are still the same; - Increased the damage of Smite from 450 to 630; - Reduced the cooldown of Smite from 10 to 8 seconds; - Increased the damage of Templars Verdict from 280 to 480; - Increased the damage of Poison Bolt from 130 to 150 per bolt; - Reduced the damage from Skeletal Archers from 240 to 200 per projectile; - Increased the health of Skeletal Archers from 60 to 90; - Increased the health of Skeletal Mages from 80 to 120;
We are super excited about all that is coming to the game in less than two weeks now, and we can't wait to know what you will all think of the new classes, skills and challenges you will find in the Early Access version, but until then, we hope you will have fun with the Prologue, and if you run into any issues, please do let us know!
Best wishes, - The dev team
Update v0.8.024c: Prestige, Multiple Saves, Performance and more
Hi everyone!
It's been a while since our last update, but rest assured that our silence is just because we are working extremely focused on ensuring that the Early Access will have a ton of content! Today we have made available version v0.8.024c, which brings with itself a lot of internal improvements for Early Access, including significant performance improvements, resolution fixes, the Prestige system which for now is very basic but is getting expanded very soon, multiple save files... and we have worked on SO much more in these last few weeks that we can't wait to share with you!
But, without further ado, here is what you can expect in this update:
Full change list for version v0.8.024c:
General changes:
- End of Demo: We are taking the demo offline for good on October 24th, if you'd like to keep playing until the Early Access release on November 7th, please download the Prologue, your progress will be kept! - The Spellbreaker, Arcane Weaver and Sentinel are no longer available for play; - New feature: Prestige system, your characters will now earn prestige from every match and will level up permanently across matches. For now, there is no bonus for levelling up a character, but future plans will allow you to use those levels for good! - New feature: Multiple save files, now you can create multiple saves with different progression levels, or delete your saves if you so choose. Just please remember, deleting a save cannot be undone! - Major performance improvements that should make the game a lot smoother; - Remade Damage Numbers and Health Bars from the ground up to improve the performance of these systems; - Remade the system to spawn enemies, which now should offer a more constant flow of enemies while ensuring performance does not suffer major spikes; - Fixed multiple issues related to different resolutions which should offer a smoother experience, for example, on the Steam Deck; - Power Ups that enhance skills "by tag" will highlight the skills they will be empowering; - Enemies now become greyish when they die to help differentiate between alive and dead enemies; - Tons of new sound effects all across the game; - Fixed issue where certain tooltips could go outside of the screen; - Multiple visual tweaks all across the game; - Added Frontal tag to Frozen Warhammer;
Now, as mentioned above, this is but a fraction of everything new we have added to the game these last few weeks, and we are now in the final touches before the Early Access starts! There is still a lot of work to be done, and even though there is a LOT of new things to try, the Early Access is just the beginning =)
Please do let us know if you run into any issues with this latest version, we may be a bit quieter than usual, but we are here, we are listening, and we are working hard to make sure Soulstone Survivors will be the best it can be!
Thank you all for trying the game out and for all the support so far, and I hope it will all be worth the wait! Best wishes, - The dev team
Let's Play: Soulstone Survivors
Hi everyone!
Soulstone Survivors has a demo available for a limited time only with the Steam Next Fest, where you can try up to 6 characters for free! After the festival the demo is going offline, so now is the time to give the game a go if you haven't already!
And to celebrate the festival which is booming, we will be running a Community Steam courtesy of @moorhuhnschlaechter and @VyvLiveGaming (find them on Twitch, they are awesome!), two Soulstone Survivors pro players and speed runners who will be playing the demo from the start, playing with a few of the characters, trying some skills, sharing some very good tips on how to play the game and even showing a little speed run action!
We will be in chat to talk about the game and answer any questions you may have starting October 8th at 1pm BST / 5am PST, so grab a coffee, get comfortable and ask away! =) You can also jump straight into the game which is available now!
We hope you will enjoy the game, have a good time, and we are always here for whatever you need!
We'd also like to thank our amazing community for the support, having you all on the forums, on our discord, everywhere, is jus amazing! And a special thanks once again to @VyvLiveGaming and @moorhuhnschlaechter for helping us with the stream, you guys are awesome!!
