What's New Games

V0.5.2.B - Clean up patch with some balancing and bugfixes for utility skills

July 7, 2022

Hey gladiators, this is just a small clean-up patch after yesterday's big V0.5.2.A patch with some balancing and bugfixing. This afternoon I will start on rebalancing a bunch of the existing arena champions and begin work on adding in new champions and arena areas.

Cheers, Oli

V0.5.2.B Patch notes

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Fixed bug where certain offensive utility skills like This Is Brandor, Shove and Grapple had a very low hit chance
• Reduced Smash Hit damage bonus to 6% per point
• Increased damage of Mighty Smash and Parasitic Bite
• Increased Bubble Up health regeneration to 70%
• Impervious now heals 40% over 4 turns

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Fixed a bug where Combat Ready did not increase initiative roll
• Fixed a bug where you gained spirit and bonuses when attacking Impervious golems
• Fixed a bug where the Human Spirit only removed one negative status effect and not all
• Reduced essence cost for first part of whirlwind to improve its usefulness
• Fixed a bug where enemies drinking utility potions ( agility/strength/charisma etc) received no positive effect

V0.5.2 : All new talents for every major talent tree!

July 6, 2022

Hey gladiators!

This week's big patch focuses mainly on fleshing out the four major talent trees ( adventure and robotics are still to come later in Early Access ) with 16 new talents, 4 for each tree.

In addition, I have gone through and done some skill balancing based on your feedback both here on the Steam Forums and also on the official Discord. Thank you so much for all your input so far!

Finally, there's a bunch of fixes to some of the issues introduced from the 0.5.1 patch ( mainly to do with ranged/melee skill distances.

Next week I will be re-working many of the arena champions so they use these new talents and also re-balancing them, as well as adding some new arena champions and arenas at last!

I hope these new talents add an extra layer of strategy to your gladiators' hallowed careers!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

V 0.5.2.A ( July 6, 2022 ) Patch notes

----NEW FEATURES ---
• Added four new talents for the four major talent trees (Arcane / Warfare / Theatrics / Survival ) for a total of 16 new talents for characters to choose from

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Reduced Limb from Limb's hit chance from 60% to 33% ( was too OP )
• Increased cooldown on Gale / Command and Teleport spells to 8
• Essence Shield now lasts for 6 turns unless destroyed first ( was too OP )
• Gale and Command skills now have a 60% hit chance
• Aria of Respite now has a 9 turn cooldown and restores 40% essence.
• Phalanx now increases your defence by 8
• Increased the damage done by Whirlwind
• Reduced the essence cost of all abilities
• Halved the essence cost of the Lethargy spell
• Beast of Burden skill now increases your health by 5% per point.
• Great Entertainer renamed to Showman

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Fixed a bug where enemy gladiators could use certain melee skills while at ranged distance
• Added fatigued animations for standing when essence is below 25%
• Fixed a bug where you could certain skills at range (Ghost Strike/Charge etc)
• Fixed a bug where enemy gladiators favoured jumping backwards over jumping forwards
• Changed the enemy AI's definition of low essence and health from 20% to 40% (affects how they fight)

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------
• Fixed a bug where loading certain saved games would assign your gladiator a random species skill
• Leaving the battle caravan and returning to the road now adds 3 hours to the time.

v0.5.1.C - Knight, Wizard and Warrior class skills buffed!

July 4, 2022

Today's patch fixes a glitch with the Ghost Strike skill and also balances out a few other stats and mechanics, including making some class skills more powerful!

Enjoy, Oli

V 0.5.1.C ( July 4, 2022)
---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Fixed a bug where Ghost Strike did not include extra strength damage bonuses
• Lowered the base hit chance of all ranged bow attacks by 15%.
• Special class skills Warrior Strike and Honoured Salute now bypass armour.
• Knightly Resolve now also boosts your Defence by 10 for 4 turns.
• Magical Veins now increases total essence by 30%
• Agility / Charisma / Int and Vitality now increase hit chances by 0.75 per point ( down from 1)
• Arcane blast now scales with intellect to do more damage.

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Fixed a bug where battle buttons would sometimes be off screen after Ghost Strike
• (Possible) fix for a bug where once you bought a higher level melee weapon than you owned, you could not swap weapons in battle
• Human AI now uses its special skill more judiciously

Hotfix patch V0.5.1.B - Fixes Eldor Hathian special skill crashes + more

July 1, 2022

Hey gladiators, apologies - in the last big build there was a crash that would happen when you fought Eldor Hathian gladiators who were using the wrong species skill ( would cause the game to glitch out and crash to desktop).

I've also fixed the bug where previously saved gladiators did not receive their special skill. Thanks as always for your patience!

Cheers, Oli

V 0.5.1.B ( July 2, 2022)
---- FIXES AND CHANGES --------
• Fixed a bug where Eldor Hathians using a species special power would crash the game
• Fixed a bug where loaded gladiators did not receive their species special power
• Fixed a bug where golems armour could be broken while impervious using Sundered Armour
• Fixed a bug where the training dummy could be driven into the ground
• Misc typo fixes

V0.5.1.A : Unique Species Skills Arrive!

July 1, 2022

Greetings, gladiators!

In this week's big update - unique new skills for each species in the game! From the Yeren's "limb from limb" skill ( fancy tearing the arms off your enemy) to the Golem's "Rock of Ages" ( total imperviousness from all damage for several turns) , these new skills will add new depth and strategy to the game.

There are a few other bugfixes and balances in the game, so be sure to check them out below and let me know your thoughts here in the Steam forums!

Next week, I'll be working on some extra talents for each of the 4 talent trees, then rebalancing the current arena champions ( and yes, adding in a few new ones very soon too!)

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

V 0.5.1.A ( July 1, 2022)

----NEW FEATURES ---

All character species now have a custom special skill which can be used once per battle! This skill can be found on the main radial wheel during battle.

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---

Changed Sagan Blob's immunity from Lightning to Fire
All species' terrain defence penalties are increased from 5% to 10%
Significantly increased item damage for all enchanted weapons
Improved the armour value of all enchanted armours
Renamed Priest's Holy Heal as Cure Wounds
The "massive" species trait now grants +20% max health instead of +10%.
Lowered the scaling rate of stat rewards from adventures by 50%. (EG if you gained +4 stat from an adventure , it will now be +4)
Slowed down XP rate at higher gladiator levels. (More XP needed to level up.)

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --

Fixed a bug where some elemental spells ignored armour
Added new celebration animations
Added some time delays after certain attacks
Added some special weather limitations for elemental based skills:
Fire Skills - Cannot use in Extreme Cold weather
Frost Skills - Cannot use in Extreme Heat weather
Poison Skills - Cannot use while raining
Lightning Skills - Cannot use while underground

---- SHOP FIXES CHANGES------

Fixed a bug where champion helmets sold for 1 gold

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------

Moved weather layer in front of gladiators on the fight selector screen ( rain/fog etc was appearing behind them previously)
Fixed a bug where the Monolith of Voltarius had a holographic appearance instead of shimmering metal

V 0.5.0.E - Some useability option improvements (resizable window, instant text)

June 23, 2022

Hey gladiators, here are the notes from today's patch just improving some various aspects of the game's UI. You can now scale the game's window ( not in fullscreen mode, of course) with a setting. In addition, you can make all dialogue appear instantly and select a high vis 'white' cursor if you choose.

Toggle these options from the settings panel.

A few other balance and bugfixes in here too - I've been working on new species skills but they won't be available for a week or so.

V 0.5.0.E ( June 23, 2022)

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Changed Sagan Blob's immunity from Lightning to Fire
• All species' terrain defence penalties are increased from 5% to 10%
• Significantly increased item damage for all enchanted weapons
• Slightly changed all armour values

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Fixed a bug where some elemental spells ignored armour

---- SHOP FIXES CHANGES------
• Fixed a bug where champion helmets sold for 1 gold

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------
• Changed layout of settings panel ( 4 panels down to 3 )
• Added an "Instant Dialogue" option to the Gameplay settings
• Added a "Hi Vis" cursor option to Graphics settings for people who have trouble seeing the default cursor
• Added a "Scalable Window" option for players who want to resize their game window ( windowed mode only

V 0.5.0.D - Added an "Exit to Title" button to the settings button & more

June 22, 2022

Just a small patch today to add in the much requested 'Exit to Title' button ( found on the Settings Panel), as well as the usual balance/bugfixes. This 'exit to title' may have some weird consequences on repeat plays - I have tried to clear all game data from memory but you may find odd behaviour when loading your next gladiator. We shall keep an eye on this!

Oli

V 0.5.0.D

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Attack now boosts all hit chances by 1.5 instead of 1 per level ( rounded number )
• Restored base attack chances of Power/Medium/Quick to 30/50/70 respectively
• Reduced maximum value of shield armour (and cost) by 25%.
• Increased Robust Constitution's regen rate from 10% to 20%
• Increased Second Wind's resurrection chance from 5% to 10%
• Increased the amount of health returned on Iron Will or Second Wind proccing to 50%.

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Reduced knockback power from hits
• Fixed a bug where enemy's strength vs your defence was being used for knockbacks instead of vice versa
• Fixed a bug where elemental damage was doing critical hits and bypassing armour ( only physical/sonic damage can do critical hits)
• Added Second Wind and Iron Will to battle (talents were not yet implemented properly)

---- SHOP FIXES CHANGES------
• Fixed a bug where some shop items would appear as 1 gold.
• Fixed a bug where steeds rarely appeared to buy at very high character levels

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------
• EXPERIMENTAL - Added an "Exit to Title" button on the Settings Panel. This may cause weird issues when loading your next gladiator, let's keep an eye on this one to see what happens.
• Fixed a bug where duplicate champions appeared in the simulcrum panel
Changed shopkeeper stocking algorithms (This will cause a slightly longer loading time but hopefully prevents crashing on older machines)

Patch v0.5.0.C - New armour sets + breaking armour fully absorbs damage now!

June 21, 2022

Hey Gladiators!

Apologies to those who downloaded the game today - for a few hours there, there was a gamebreaking bug where enemy gladiators could not be killed at all. I was working on a new damage absorbing bit of code and it bugged out badly, sorry for that!!! The new system is in response to people saying the high level mage spells just rip through armour and can one shot you. I want to make it just a little fairer, so I made it so that when a hit breaks your armour, that armour absorbs the remainder of the damage.

See the patch notes for a little example. Let me know what you think of this change and if it seems fairer. Also a few other balancing things, bugfixes and two new graphical armour sets, the Templar and Gradius armours!

V 0.5.0.C ( June 21, 2022)

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Defence now gives you 1.5 points per stat point, down from 2 ( rounded to nearest number). So 3 points in Defence will get you +5% to defence.
• Fixed a bug where melee base hit chance was considerably lower in previous patch

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Any damage you do that breaks armour, that armour now absorbs all damage. So if you do a lightning spell that does 200 damage, but your armour is 100, your armour will be broken but no further damage will be done that attack, other than status effect damage like the extra lightning damage per round. ( This prevents OP powers one-shotting enemies with armour ).
• Fixed a bug where Whirlwind could still hit from far far away

---- SHOP FIXES CHANGES------
• Added Templar and Gradius armour set images. Any time you see a red question mark where your armour should be, that is not a bug, the armour is just missing images. There's roughly 8-9 more armour sets to come over the next 2-3 months.

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------
• Gave Bruce the Useless an official title.
• Fixed a bug where player's high level magic items cost went down in value on reload.
• Removed overworld zoom in on intro scene ( performance issues on older machines )

V 0.5.0.B Superior Potions now work properly (plus Vitality improves hit chance!

June 20, 2022

Just a small follow-up from yesterday's big v0.5.0 patch here with a few bugfixes and balance tweaks - mainly fixing up Superior Potions. Vitality improving hit chance is still an experiment, I want to see how people like this. Seeing as Int/Cha and Agility all improve Magic/Sonic and Ranged hit chance, I thought it fair to have another stat that boosted melee hit chance, and here it is.

Cheers, Oli

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Vitality now boosts your Melee Attack Hit Chance (experimental)
• Base hit chance for quick/normal/power attacks reduced by 10

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --
• Superior Stat Potions (Attack / Int / Cha etc ) now work as they should ( had no effect prior to this patch )
• Stat Potion Effects now boost stats by 8 ( normal ) and 16 ( superior ) last for 5 turns only ( was too OP )

---- SHOP FIXES CHANGES------
• Doubled the cost of all non healing/essence potions (eg attack/stamina etc)

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------
• Fixed a bug where the scrollbars did not scroll properly
• Fixed a bug where the Simulcrum champions showed the name of the current town you were at

Holographic Simulcrums arrive to fight in V0.5.0.A

June 19, 2022

Gladiators, welcome to patch 0.5! I've bumped the game version up a whole percentage point as this build is now using Godot 3.5 and should improve performance and reduce crashes for some users, especially those on Windows 11. (Fingers crossed).

The other major addition to this patch is the introduction of the Simulcrum battles , available now at the training dummy. Once you have defeated a regional or grand champion, you can test your luck against a holographic replica of them at the Training Dummy to try out different tactics and so on. You won't gain XP a second time from fighting them, but you also won't die - and you'll gain valuable experience against fighting the heavy hitters of the game.

There are a few other additions, balance changes and so on new to this build, but as always, this game is very much a work in progress so be prepared for some weirdness in balancing - some builds and tactics will be more powerful now, some less so. That's the nature of the game until we launch in full late this year.

I hope you enjoy this patch and as always, thanks so much for your great feedback and reviews on the game!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

V 0.5.0.A ( June 19 2022 , includes changes rolled from 0.4.10.A)

---- NOTEABLE NEW FEATURES ----

The Simulcrum Panel is now available at the Training Dummy! This panel allows you to do battle against holographic simulations of arena champions you have defeated in the past. You will gain no XP for defeating these champions, but they will allow you to improve your battle tactics and practice strategies without suffering the penalty of losing a battle.
Updated game engine to Godot 3.5. This should hopefully fix some of the crashing issues on Win 11 due to large font problems. Should also improve performance on some machines.
Added a loading screen to certain sections of the game where new gladiators spawn - most commonly when the player visits the campfire, the overworld or enters a town. This will help prevent crashing.