Genre: Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure, Indie
Striving for Light
Pathfinder System Preview
Welcome wanderer. With the "Legacy" content update released just a few weeks ago Striving for Light has seen the biggest update until now and we are already working on the next massive content udpate.
So with this post we will reveil some of the new features and improvements coming to Striving for Light with the next Not-So-Far-Away-Content-Update. The next content udpate is named after the new introduced endgame system "Pathfinder".
In this post we will give a deeper insight in what you can expect from this new endgame system and how it actually works. Please note that all presented information is subject to change as we are in active development. Numbers and artworks are not final.
Overview
The pathfinder endgame system replaces the old rather static map progression system. You will now gain more control over which map you are visiting next. The pathfinder system guides your way through all the different maps you will visit. The pathfinder is a very dynamic and flexible system which expands endlessly the deeper you delve into the darkness. The further you delve the bigger the challenges grow which you have to overcome.
Maps
In the pathfinder you will find maps you can travel to. You can access to the pathfinder system by using a hotkey so you can in advance check what your next destinations will be. When you finished your current map by defeating the gatekeeper you will now find a pathfinder portal which lets you activate the next map.
Map Modifiers
The deeper you delve the more modifiers will be active on the maps you visit. These modifiers grant buffs to enemies or the environment but therefore also increase the rewards you will receive when playing on this map. You can in advance alter modifiers of future maps to see if its worth traveling towards this destination.
There is a variety of modifiers which can appear on each map. Here are a few examples for modifiers and their effects.
Rooted The modifier "Rooted" makes all enemies on the map immune to knockback effects. The mod will therefore grant a bonus to all received experience, increased drop chances.
Treacherous The modifier "Treacherous" increases enemy and trap damage and increases your experience and shard drop rate.
Armoured The modifier "Armored" increases enemy and boss health pools and increases your experience and heart drop chance.
Map Shards
There are plenty of ways you can change the modifiers on a map. With the pathfinder update we are adding a variety of different map shards to Striving for Light which can be collected from nearly everywhere in the game.
Shard of Augmentation Adds a new random modifier to the map.
Shard of Chaos Replaces all map modifiers by new random map modifiers. Amount of modifiers remains unchanged.
Shard of Enhancement Adds enhancement modificator to the map. Enhances all map modifiers by 30% and all reward modifiers by 20%.
Shard of Mitigation Adds mitigation modificator to the map. Weakens all map modifiers by -20% and all reward modifiers by -30%.
There is also a shard to change the current map into a new random map. These are just a few of the shards you will be able to collect and use on map nodes to alter the existing modifiers or add new modifiers. There is also the possbility that faded maps occur. On these maps you will not know what you will encounter but these maps grant you an additional experience bonus.
Endgame & Early Game
The pathfinder system is designed to bring variation into the endgame but also into the early game. Once you have collected some shards which can be used on the maps you can alter the early game to your liking. You can switch the first map to an other map to have more variety or you could even add modifiers directly to the first map which will increase the difficulty but also grant you additional experience setting you ahead of others if you manage to prevail.
With the pathfinder update we are upgrading our enemy scaling system so that enemy health pools scale with the map you are currently playing. So you could start your run with the forest map or the swamps if you want to.
The frenzy experience bonus will be reworked since the experience bonus turned out to be the dominating mechanic to gain insane bonuses and trivialising game difficulty in the endgame. The frenzy bonus will get harder and harder to maintain the higher your bonus rises.
The resource regeneration system will be overhauled to remove the current cap of 1 resource per frame and make regeneration frame rate independent.
Enemy AoE effects receive a visual overhaul making borders much clearer to see.
All older map environments will be visually reworked.
These are just a few of the further improvements coming to the pathfinder content update. So stay tuned for the upcoming update annoucement.
Let us know your thoughts about the new pathfinder system and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light.
Update 0.6.0.4 brings an improved map generation algorithm, further projectile performance improvements, reworked freeze conditions and even more tweaks and improvements to Striving for Light.
Improved Projectile Performance
A while back we added an alternative visual effect system for player projectiles which had graphic intense effects like the light or darkness projectiles. This system switched to a simpler visual effect once a spawner exceeded a specific projectile spawn threshold. However this system was only for the main projectiles created by your main attacks. We now extended this system to cover all created projectiles which should drastically improve performance for builds playing with darkness, light and ice projectiles.
Also the darkness projectiles have received an improved alternate visual effect:
Improved Map Generation Algorithm
Special world objects and events now don't spawn next to traps and other obstacles which will make them better accessible in endgame maps. So a phoenix egg or merchant between multiple traps should now be a thing of the past.
Freeze Condition Rework
The Freeze condition has been reworked so that enemies now get interrupted from their current attacks. Enemies now have different freeze resistance cooldowns. Normal enemies can be freezed and interrupted every 5 seconds, whereas bosses can be freezed only every 10 seconds and gatekeepers every 15 seconds. We also fixed some bugs related to the freeze condition where enemy AoE attacks end up invisible while still dealing damage.
Further improvements
Improved the visual effects of the meteor skills. The falling meteor is now smaller and has a reworked fade in effect to make it less distracting.
Added SFX for emerald staff when summoning spiders.
Reworked darkness projectile alternative visuals.
Decreased SFX volume of meteor skills
Fixed a bug with corrupted light map boss where it ended up not performing an attack.
Fixed a bug with freeze conditions, which turned enemy AoE attacks invisible while they still remained active and were able to deal damage.
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
Update 0.6.0.3 brings some performance improvements to the rendering system and an improved responsiveness for the energy and endurance UI.
Performance Improvements
The rendering system was improved to exclude all non visible elements on the map from draw checks. This should lead to a noticeable performance improvement, especially when there are a lot of projectiles which also move off screen and also when having huge maps with a lot of enemies and objects.
Improved responsiveness of energy & endurance UI
The energy and endurance UI is now more responsive. While the animation worked out great in the early game chaining a lot of these animation times together on endgame builds ended up in a very unresponsive UI which made it hard to tell how resources are used and how fast the regeneration is, especially if the regeneration speed is higher than the animation speed.
Old UI:
New UI:
Further improvements
The burning ground effect has been tweaked for improved performance
Added the keybinding for opening the skill gem menu which is the key "G" on default. This key can also be changed in the key bindings menu.
[Gatekeeper] Fixed a missplaced collider on the stone smasher projectiles
[Gatekeeper] Fixed too low projectile range of iron frost
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
WIth Update 0.6.0.2 contains improvements to the trade UI to better display what was selected for purchase. Last but not least the most critical current crash related to the skill gem event should be fixed now.
Shard of Conjunction Connection Preview
The shard of conjunction now gives a preview in which area the shard will connect nodes.
Improved merchant trade UI
Its now much more clear which items have been selected for purchase and which not. Also the controller support for the trade UI has been improved as well for proper highlighting which item you are currently viewing and which one has been selected.
The crash when receiving a skill gem reward from the darkness challenge map event sould finally been fixed now.
Fixed a bug which caused you to be locked out of the endboss arena.
There were plenty of hotfixes during the last 2 days to fix arising issues and optimising the experience with the legacy content update. The hotfixes have been merged in these patch notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3369274392194090582
If you have encountered issues during the last days make sure to check the the patch notes and if your issue is not listed and is still occuring please let us know.
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
Update 0.6.0.0c brings a variety of improvements & bugfixes to the Legacy content update based on various feedback.
Added new skill tree icons for basic endurance and energy skill nodes. All basic skill nodes now have a unique icon to make them easier readable when taking color blindness into account.
Some skill tree icons how have improved contrast to make them better readable on smaller scale.
The librarian and smith dialogs are now updated directly after talking to the npcs and not only after switching scenes. Before you had to talk to each npc and return to town to trigger the unlock dialog, you can now do this direcly when talking to them for the first time.
You can now re-interact with the Tree of Light and Leaderboard Stone after closing the pop up windows without needing to re-trigger the interaction button.
The play online tutorial now also displays the information which season is the current one
Added the possibility to only sacrifice one light to the Tree of Light.
Fixed a typo in the play public notification in the main menu.
Fixes a bug which caused bursting companions to not die on enemy contact.
Fixed scaling issue of play online tutorial UI in main menu.
Fixed piercing projectiles not actually piercing.
Fixed a crash when entering the hidden superboss area on mountains map.
Fixed a bug which caused projectile range to not be permanently increased by skills.
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
The Legacy content update is our largest update for Striving for Light to date. The update features an extensive new meta progression system, 6 new challenging gatekeepers all with their own unique weapon drops, a map progression system along 3 new maps to explore filled with new enemies & bosses to hunt down. We are introducing new "Meteor" skills, some improvements to the controller support and requested chinese language support.
With the Legacy content update the EA-Season 2 will start.
Legacy Progression System
You can now visit the Tree of Light to sacrifice light to gain permanent power ups which carry over between all future runs. The Tree of Light can also be found on certain maps.
The special thing about the new progression system is that you can dynamically change the Tree of Light on each run to match your current build or to compensate missing stats.
Map progression system
Each time you have defeated the endboss-gatekeeper you will unlock a new map which opens a new pathway on your next playtrough.
New Maps
3 new maps have been added. Each map comes with 2 new unique enemies and 2 new map bosses.
Mountains
Cave
Swamps
New Gatekeepers
All dungeon levels now have a unique gatekeeper. In total 6 new gatekeeper bosses have been added. Each gatekeeper comes with a unique possible weapon drop.
New Gatekeepers Weapons
New Skills
Meteor Blow Your melee attacks have a 30% chance to cast a meteor to a random area in your surroundings. Dealing 2 damage and applying a knockback to enemies. Meteor size scales with your AoE size.
Meteor Cast Your range attacks have a 50% chance to cast a meteor to a random area in your surroundings. Dealing 2 damage and applying a knockback to enemies. Meteor size scales with your AoE size.
Reworked Town Visuals
Chinese Language Support
Added chinese (simplified) language support.
Controller Support
Added virtual keyboard for gamepad to allow text input without needing to switch back to the keyboard.
Endgame maps now have diverse background parallax effects like the themed maps in the early game
When starting the game the save file from your last run will be loaded automatically. So no need to switch to online mode on each game start anymore.
The ladders in the hidden super boss arena now also need a confirmation to leave the arena similar to the ladders to enter the arena
New and improved player minimap icon
Improved performance for the huge skill trees and projectiles
Language selection does now use translated language names instead of only abbreviations
Enemies now all have the same base HP for endgame scaling (enemies had their standard base HP which was used for endgame scaling)
Adjusted gatekeeper exp and hp to allign them with new added gatekeepers
Fixed a bug which caused the online mode tutorial window to pop up everytime
Fixed lost focus on main menu when navigating with keyboard or gamepad
Fixed copying save state into new online league save file
Fixed missplaced light occluder of tutorial spider boss
Fixed layer issue for the gatekeeper ancient tree
Fixed an issue which did not update the tutorials according to the current input type for gamepads
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
The release of the upcoming major content update Legacy (Version 0.6) is just around the corner. To celebrate the release we have come up with an event for streamers and their communities.
Streamers and their Communities will compete for the top ranks on the leaderboard!
Event Start and Duration Event starts with the Release of the Legacy content update and lasts for 1 week. 7. - 14. August starting and ending at 7pm CEST
React to the annoucement Post with ⚔️ and you will then receive a @Streamer Challenge Competitor discord role.
Choose a tag for your community (i.e. -StreamTag-TwitchName)
How it works - Streamers compete against other streamers in the public online leaderboard with the help of their communities - Each streamer chooses a community tag after which all players of the community name themselves (e.g. -StreamTag-TwitchName). - Streamers should stream the full progress (to exclude cheating). - The streamer with the highest rank at the end of the week wins - Streamers receive a +1% EXP bonus at the end for each player (at least Lv. 12) from their community in the leaderboard (capped at +50%). - Everyone can participate in the leaderboard with the free demo, so there is no requirement to buy the game.
Pricepool For the prizes we will provide several Steam vouchers (total value 100€), which will be distributed to the best 3 streamers. 1. Place: 50€ (5x10€) 2. Place: 30€ (3x10€) 3. Place: 20€ (2x10€) The streamers are then free to decide how they want to distribute these vouchers to their community. Important: At least 10 streamers must participate that we will launch the event.
More information on the Legacy content update will follow soon. See you at the event!
Development Forecast
We are sharing a forecast for the massive upcoming update 0.6 and the further game development.
With update 0.5.3.3 we are kicking off the early access public league season 1. This update brings a variety of highly requested improvements, balancing changes and bugfixes.
The well tested online mode is now getting increased visibility by a dedicated tutorial window introducing players to the online functionalities. How long would you wish a league season should be until the next one starts?
Public League Season 1 has started. Enter the new season from the main menu.
Added captured hearts for various gatekeeper boss fights.
[Skill] Charge: Charge now scales the size of summoned pets like the spider companions from the emerald staff.
Added a tutorial window in the main menu to introduce players to the online mode.
Added a new setting in the options menu which lets you automatically pause the game when the game window loses focus (This seemed to cause some OBS capturing issues before, let us know if those issues still occur)
Added [Stackable] tag to ability skill tooltips to display stackability
Fixed cut off numbers in stats window for regeneration stats
The darkness skill gem event reward window now has a 1 second delay until a reward can be chosen to prevent accidental picks
Increased enemy Hp scaling to compensate for gained exp frenzy bonus
Frenzy mode exp bonus does now scale slower the higher it gets
Fixed crash when picking up two weapons at once
Fixed crash when using emerald stuff to summon spider companions with charge range attack modifier active
Fixed not refreshed tooltips when using shard of change on a skill node multiple times
Fixed gatekeeper portal in endless maps switching to normal portal in certain cases
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
With update 0.5.3.2 we are adding a bunch of highly requested QoL improvements to Striving for Light. The update brings, a new game camera zoom function, mouse button support for key rebinds, improved dodge and player hit feedback.
Added in game zoom function. You can now use the mouse wheel to zoom the game camera in and out. Its also possible to rebind thes zooming keys in the key rebind menu.
Added tutorial for using skill shards. When you first collect a shard you will see a tutorial window in the skilltree explaining where to access them and how to use them.
Improved dodge acceleration to make the dodge overall feel more responsive
Improved dodge VFX to make the dodge more responsive
You can now rebind keys to mouse buttons
Increased player hit VFX size for improved player hit feedback
Increased base player movement speed to 320 (was 300)
Fixed inconsitent spawn and animation interruption of Bleeding Swirl and Bleeding Blade skills
Thanks for everyone providing helpful feedback, which is what drives the development forward! You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light!
