We mentioned it before in 2021, and last month we finally announced the progression wipe for The Last Spell. Now, it is time to give you (almost) all the details! We hope this will help clarify some questions you may have.
Why are we doing a progression wipe?
For starters, the game has evolved a lot since the beginning of the Early Access and our vision has shifted from having only one map for the entire game to having 4 completely different maps.
The Last spell is a rogue-lite game and as pretty much every rogue-lite game, you acquire permanent upgrades that help you to progress in your runs. We call “meta progression” all those upgrades and the way they are dispatched during the campaign. To have a great rogue-lite game this meta progression needs to be carefully crafted and we have to consider the game in its whole.
With the early access, we are moving step by step. At each step, we added new meta upgrades and/or modified existing ones. The result of this is something currently clunky and inconsistent because as I mentioned earlier we needed to consider the whole game.
Since we are close to the end of the Early Access and we now have a clear view of the entire game, it’s time to fix our meta progression. To do so, we need to restart from scratch and we can’t technically keep your old save file because we are changing everything.
Another problem we want to address is the player's potency. With the current meta progression you earn a lot of permanent upgrades that empower your heroes. This creates some gates (upgrades that you need to have to progress) and it also completely annihilates the point to replay older maps since you have too many upgrades for the challenge.
Also, we are at a point where it’s difficult for us to create more challenging (and interesting) stuff because with the current system we are stacking up too many upgrades. Finally, this wipe is a great timing to include all the feedback you gave us about our meta progression and the Oraculum since the beginning. Those feedback helped us a lot so thank you!
So these are the reasons why we decided to implement a new system to solve this issue (more details in another section).
What’s going to be deleted?
Basically: everything. You will start again from scratch, with only three heroes, 20 mana each, one wooden sword, no pants and your wit. Good luck! Also you will all start in Swampfurt, the tutorial map we created and added a few months back.
You will all still be able to play on an older branch of The Last Spell to keep your save. Unfortunately by playing on this older branch, you will not be able to get the updates and the new content of the game.
What can we expect from the Meta Rework?
It’s time to reveal something that's been in our mind for several months, a totally new system called “Omens”.
Omens are bonuses for your run that you can equip before starting a run.
This system is our solution to our problem of having too many meta upgrades active at the same time, because each city will have a maximum Omens that you can equip. To sum up, you will be able to equip more Omens when playing in Glenwald than in Gildenberg.
With this system you will have to make strategic choices to compose the best combination of Omens that fits your gameplay style: we are excited to see what you will come up with!
New Omens will be unlockable in the Oraculum (both sides) all along the campaign. So you can have an idea of what's to come, here is a sneak peek of 3 Omens (names and effects are subject to changes):
Omen of Early Wealth: The Haven starts with 40 gold and 80 materials.
Omen of Talents: Heroes start with 1 Perk Point.
Omen of the Siege: Ranged defense buildings and traps gain +25% damage.
And as you can see, we’ve converted some bonuses from our old meta into Omens. You probably have a lot of questions about this too, but you will have to wait a little more to find out all the details about the Omens!
But… When?
In a few weeks! You know we love to have short gaps between our updates, and especially between our announcements. Since this Major Update will be a very important one, in addition to a devstream the following day, we will also carry out an AMA on Reddit. All of the information about these two events will be shared in the blogpost of the Meta Rework update.
Thank you for reading! Make sure to post your questions if you have some, we will gladly answer them.
We are sorry about these two softlocks you were getting since yesterday. Thank you for your reports, it helped us to quickly identify the issue! Both of them were due to the recent changes on the Warp gates: any time you were building one, you were getting one of these softlocks.
Fix:
Softlock while repairing buildings (production phase)
Softlock while getting the Night report
For the players softlocked during the Night report, you will need to redo the Night (your save will take you back to the beginning of the Night).
For the players softlocked during the production phase, you can carry on as usual.
Thank you for reading, and enjoy your fights!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3362518992755285765 Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and join our Discord!
Highway to Elderlicht: Changelog 98.1.13
Hello Heroes!
Two days ago, we released the Major Update Highway to Elderlicht and thanks to your feedback we have been able to provide fixes to some of the issues you've been experiencing.
Fix softlock upon Dryads spawning: no more softlocks for you on Glenwald.
Fix softlock hover during skill execution: you can now safely use a skill and hover/unhover other skills on your hero. Especially with multi-hits ability.
Fix softlock "1 enemy remaining in Elderlicht": an enemy could spawn on a lost tile in the water. Now it can't and everything is perfect.
Fix number of wins on 0 to unlock Elderlicht: older runs from Glenwald Calling are now counted, allowing you to unlock Elderlicht in the Oraculum. Enjoy the new map!
Fix Back Protection perk: the perk is now triggered when you are close to the Jeweler, Alchemist and a few other obstacles in Elderlicht.
Fix Warp Gates that could not be destroyed: now, you can smash them to pieces and rebuild them somewhere else. As intended.
Fix "incorrect" input setting: one wrong input in the build with no localization has been removed.
Japanese localization has been updated
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3362518992755285765 Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and join our Discord!
Highway to Elderlicht
Hello Heroes!
Welcome to our new map, the one haunting your dreams and sending shivers down your spine every Night: Elderlicht!
A new map also means a new (big) boss. We won't be spoiling it to much in this blogpost, as we want you to live the Elderlicht experience fully... but you can already have a good look at this baddie in the official update artwork!
SUMMARY:
New map: Elderlicht
Unique feature: Soul Vessels
Unique starting setup
New boss
Damage Rework
Enemies
New Buildings
Goldmine & Scavenger Camp Rebalance
Panic Rework
QOL
Balancing
Bug Fixes
We will be live on Twitch tomorrow at 15:00 CEST to discuss the new map, reworks, balancing and other novelties of this update! See you there, we will eagerly wait for your questions in the chat!
Important reminder:
The next Major Update will be the Meta Rework (Schaden & Freude), and to do it properly we will need to wipe all the progress made by players in a few months (all runs & Meta progression). Since a lot of things will be changed, this will allow us to make the best possible rework.
We are sorry in advance about this inconvenience, and we will come back to you with more information in due time.
NEW MAP: ELDERLICHT
Defend the mages while they break the last seal inside the underground ruins of a fallen civilization. Will the pillars and rubble serve the heroes, or hide and protect the monsters coming out of the fog? Be careful, as the fallen city of Elderlicht has a few secrets in store…
This map is unlocked after beating Glenwald, and is an even greater challenge. It lasts for 14 Nights, which is longer than any other map in the game, and will probably let you enjoy a few Nights with your heroes at the peak of their power… if you make it there!
The layout of the map is more geometrical than other maps, with a lot of pillars blocking paths or line of sight. As for the waves coming each Night, they have been designed to be a tough but diverse challenge: the types of enemies, density of the horde, number of sides, length of the Night… All these parameters will greatly vary during the run, and two consecutive Nights will probably feel more different than in other maps. And to top it off, we are introducing a unique feature that makes the Nights of Elderlicht even more of a challenge.
UNIQUE FEATURE: SOUL VESSELS
Elderlicht is filled with Soul Vessels, a mysterious invention of Elderlicht’s past denizens. At Night, some of these will light up a flame and bring back the souls of ancient warriors to fight against you.
Due to their intangible nature, these Soulbound units are invincible, but they can still attack you. Be careful, as most of them have abilities whose strength is on par with that of your heroes! However, extinguishing the Soul Vessel that invoked them or taking care of all other enemies should get rid of them for the Night.
UNIQUE STARTING SETUP
Elderlicht is not a human city, and only recently have the survivors of the mist settled here and built a magic circle. Their camp is different from other towns: only a few ruins are present, but a Seer and a Scavenger camp have already been built. How will you use this to your advantage?
NEW BOSS
A new boss awaits you on the last Night of Elderlicht. What will you have to fight against this time? Be prepared, as a tough fight lies ahead of you.
Starting here, all of the features listed have already been the subject of blog posts during open betas. If you want more details on a given subject you can visit those blog posts: Damage Rework & New Buildings, and Economy & Panic Rework.
DAMAGE REWORK
Since early stages of the development, we wanted The Last Spell to be a “classless” game, where players could build very diverse characters, combining any type of weapon. However, until now, and with a few exceptions, combining weapons of different damage types has always been pretty inefficient.
With the following changes, we are trying to make hybrid weapon combinations more viable for characters, without nerfing the character’s overall power level throughout runs. Feel free to try out those kinds of builds, and tell us if they feel viable or not.
Primary vs Secondary Attributes
The gist of it is that the Physical, Magic and Ranged Damage attributes have been shifted to secondary attributes, while Damage, Resistance Reduction and Accuracy have become primary attributes.
The formatting of their value has been tweaked a bit too - Damage is now displayed as a modifier (default +0%) and Phys/Mag/Rang+ as multipliers (default 100%), and their min/max boundaries have been updated accordingly - but this is purely cosmetics/UX, their behavior remains unchanged: they still affect affect each other and the base damage multiplicatively.
From a systemic point of view, this almost exclusively affects where you can get them during level ups, and thus changes the character build dynamic since the various options in competition for your attention have changed.
These stats have also been rebalanced wherever they may appear: probability of appearing and values have been tweaked for level ups, equipment, traits and some perks. The entire list of changes is a bit too long, but as a rule of thumb, Damage appears more frequently and has higher values, while Physical/Magic/Ranged Damage appears less frequently and with lower values than before.
What this means is that, whilst still theoretically as strong as before to focus on a single damage type, it’s much less frequent to be able to specifically target one and rely on it as the main source of a hero’s potency ; meanwhile, it’s much easier to increase your overall damage, reducing a lot of the friction when switching damage type mid run - or even better, constantly during the battle! This hopefully will enable more variety in combat builds.
ENEMIES
Enemies’ Accuracy
The impact of Accuracy on enemies - mostly, using Accuracy Debuffs - has always been pretty underwhelming. Also, with Accuracy now being labeled a Primary Attribute, we wanted to improve upon that.
The first thing we did is really a detail, but at the same time is altering the perception of the whole Dodge mechanic in a subtle way that enables us to perform the rest: we re-labeled the little “Dodged!” pop-up over the units’ heads to “Missed!”.
Same thing, right?
Wrong! It allowed us to justify a brand new addition: attacks can now miss buildings!
In addition to that, enemies also have an Accuracy value, which scales over the duration of the run.
Enemies Damage Scaling
We’ve changed the way enemies scale their damage to improve debuffs dealt to enemies. For example a -33% Damage debuff will now actually reduce 33% of the enemy’s damage ( this sounds silly but it was not the case before). Enemies Skill Progression
Up until now, only damage could progress on enemies skills but we decided to extend this to buff and debuff attacks. This will increase the dangerous nature of some enemies (for example the guardian).
NEW BUILDINGS
We’ve added two new production building:
The Alchemist: Produces potions and scrolls, costs 100 gold.
The Jeweler: Produces trinkets, costs 100 gold. As you can guess, other production buildings won’t produce trinkets anymore.
GOLDMINE & SCAVENGER CAMP REBALANCE
A lot of players were frustrated by the dynamic of Goldmines: they felt mandatory if you wanted to have a good run, made the first Nights pretty hard and the last Nights very easy. This problem has been reinforced by recent changes to other buildings, making it possible to build and upgrade nearly all buildings in your Haven.
With the changes we’ve done, we want to make goldmines more cost effective at the start, while greatly reducing their maximum gold output. The start of a run should feel less “tight” economy wise, and the opposite will be true for the later portions of a run.
As Scavenger Camps follow the same model as Goldmines, they were also changed.
You can read all the changes in the Balancing part of this blogpost.
PANIC REWORK
The goal of this rework is to make panic less of a binary situation: up until now, you would get mostly S-Rank Night clears, until one difficult Night where suddenly a big part of the Haven is breached and you drop to a C/D-Rank. We want to make the Panic scale more meaningful and nuanced overall, with more situations where players can get intermediary rankings.
Panic Increase
Panic generated when an enemy hits a building now depends on how much the building was damaged by the attack, instead of just multiplying the underlying Panic value of the enemy as it used to be.
ANY building inside the Haven will generate panic when hit, including Defenses. Buildings have varying panic values, meaning that some buildings generate more panic when hit:
Walls, Barricades & Ruins generate a very low amount of panic. The more health a wall has, the less panic it will generate with each hit, since their total Panic value remains unchanged (and Walls have also been buffed a bit, cf. Changelog section further down).
Other Defenses generate a moderate amount of panic.
Structures (town buildings) generate a high amount of panic.
The Magic Circle generates a lot of panic, as it should!
This means that Havens open to the four winds and with a lot of structures will tend to generate more panic than Havens fortified with a lot of sturdy walls, or with a more compact design. Panic should feel more gradual than before, especially when properly defended.
Another noteworthy change is that from now on monsters within your Haven won’t generate any panic as long as they are stunned.
Rewards
S Rank now gives items with a slightly higher rarity than before..
A Rank now also gives an item! Albeit being of lower rarity (Common..Rare), this is not to be sniffed at.
All Gold and Material rewards have been rebalanced to fit the scale of the updated economy, which is expected to be less exponential.
As stated earlier, we tried to base our updated economy on getting an A-rank, as well as decreasing the resources penalty of ranking lower.
QoL
As always we read all your feedback and it helps us to see what we can do to make the game more comfortable to play.
Oraculum
You can now access the oraculum from the worldmap so that you don’t need to start a new run to buy or reclaim some favors.
Heroes Portrait
We added information and changed the general layout of the little infopanel when hovering a hero and also on the portrait in the top right corner of your screen !
Optimization
Again with this update we’ve done a ton of optimization. The game should run more smoothly on idle. Don’t hesitate to tell us if you notice a change in your fps count or not !
Affixes balancing (the additional bonuses you get on uncommon+ equipment):
Values, in relation to each other but also level ups (which are meant to be more important).
Drop rates, according to the current state of the game and the current damage rework.
Drop incompatibilities: some affixes can’t drop on some pieces of gear. This is still true, but since the game has changed a lot, some updated intentions have been reasserted (e.g. it was not possible to get +Propagation Bounces on a melee/ranged weapon, which was a bit sad for the 2H Hammer or Hand Crossbow builds… don’t ask!).
Some weapons’ skill have now a progression on their skill effects:
Berserker Rage from the Two-handed Axe
Watchout from the Longbow
Suppressive Fire from the Rifle
Wind Walk from the Magic Scepter
Shocking Touch from the Magic Scepter
Pillar of Light from the Power Staff
Acid Spray from the Druidic Staff
The maximum base damage of all weapons has been increased à bit.
Perks
Versatility: Removed from the game following the Damage rework.
Critical is now equal to 0% for all enemies and therefore is not shown in their HUD anymore.
Rescaled enemy quantities on Glenwald (less enemies in early Nights, slightly more enemies on later Nights, and slightly less enemies on boss Night, which should make it a bit easier overall).
Bosses
HARPIES
General changes
Overall pacing of the Night has been improved: Harpies after the first one will appear earlier than before.
Boss minions (Alerion) now spawn in smaller amounts but more frequently.
Boss wave will spawn less high tier units than before.
Harpy
Health: 810 => 630
Armor: 60 => 100
Base attack now deals less damage.
“Enraging Scream” (zone buff) now only buffs Move Points for 1 turn and buffs Damage for 2 turns. Additionally, targets’ Resistance will now also be debuffed for 2 turns upon application. It also no longer dispels targets’ Negative Alterations upon application and only self-dispel debuffs on the caster (it could previously also dispel poison).
Alerion
Health: 270 => 210.
CETUSIA
General changes
Overall pacing of the Night has been improved.
Invincibility phases have been removed from the fight.
Each phase now features one of the three versions of Cetusia, making the fight less repetitive.
Boss wave is now tougher.
Cetusia
Health: 3600 => 6000
Armor: 400 => 300
Block: 50 => 30
Dodge: 0 => 10
Resistance: 40 => 30
While not armored, Cetusia can use Putrid Water (poison attack) once again (it was changed in the previous boss balancing patch) after gaining a Charged status.
Cetusia’s tail
Health: 1800 => 2000
Armor: 400 => 300
Block: 50 => 30
Resistance: 40 => 30
Cetusia’s tail can no longer use Charged attacks.
Cetusia’s tail’s base attack no longer requires a Charged status.
Cetusia (armored)
Health: Invincible => 6000
Armor: 0 => 1200
Cetusia dives back into the water when you defeat her armored version.
Cetusia’s tail (armored)
Note: During a previous balancing patch, this version of Cetusia’s tail had been removed from the fight, but has now been brought back.
Health: Invincible => 2000
Armor: 0 => 1200
Cetusia (enraged)
Health: 3600 => 6000
The enraged version of Cetusia can now use an enhanced version of Putrid Water.
Wyrmling Egg
Armor: 0 => 600
Resistance: 80 => 60
Wyrmling
Health: 400 => 600
Armor: 0 => 300
Dodge: 40 => 30
Resistance: 20 => 30
Move Points: 8 => 7
DRYADS
General changes
Overall pacing of the Night has been improved.
Total number of Dryads: 15 => 12
Putrefied Dryad
Health: 1300 => 1800
Bug Fixes
Fixed a soflock when using the escape key during a dialogue in the oraculum.
Fixed a softlock on the screen “Finishing initializing”.
Ballistas can’t shoot invincible enemies anymore.
Fixed the lifetime stat “Nemesis” in the character sheet.
Fixed the undo button which could be used after using theskill “Hammer Strike”.
Fixed a softlock when Spiky Counter killed enemies with caster effect skills (for examples: Hunter, Harpy).
Fixed the health number display that was remaining for no reason on enemies sometimes.
Fixed some enemies having the poison/panic feedback displayed right after leaving the fog.
Fixed the isolation bonus in damage calculation not being displayed (but still applied).
Undoing a move while hovering the “Jump Over” skill lead to some UI problems.
Fixed some weird camera movements when using the perk Human Ballista to kill the Harpy.
Fixed softlocks happening in the Oraculum with screen resolution ratio different than 16:9.
Fixed the “Potion Throw” perk that was not increasing the range of potions (how unfortunate…).
Fixed a softlock happening when only one crawler was left on the map without any possible path to the Magic Circle for him to choose.
The “Fatality” skill cannot be used on invincible units anymore.
Fixed the “Legendary assassin” perk that was not displaying the right amount of enemies to kill to trigger the perk.
Thank you for reading! We will look at your comments and feedback with great interest, especially when you will misspell Elderlicht.
Yesterday, we published a new important update on the Open Beta with loads of new information and rework. Shortly after, we released a small update for the Open Beta to fix a few issues: unfortunately we made a mistake and this update wasn’t released on the Open Beta branch, but on the Main branch.
When we found out about this issue (thank you players for warning us), we were able to create a new branch with the latest stable version of Fear of the Lake. Thus, all players were able to pursue their ongoing run from the Main branch.
So first off, we are absolutely sorry about this issue and we hope it didn’t affect too many players and their runs.
Second, since this update was not supposed to be available on the Main branch, it contains untested changes only aimed at the Open Beta (where we learn what works and what doesn’t). We have therefore decided to revert this update to the former (and stable) version of Fear of the Lake.
Finally, if you started a new run on this unplanned update (e.g. after 17:00 CEST), this run may end up broken after the revert. If you want to complete it, you can still switch to the Open Beta branch which contains the exact version you started your run with. You can navigate through the branches by going on: Library => The Last Spell => Manage => Properties => Betas => Select the appropriate branch.
Thank you for reading, we will be looking closely at your comments to ensure everything is working smoothly with this revert.
Open Beta - Economy & Panic rework
Hello Heroes!
Welcome to our new important update for the Open Beta, in which the main focus is to fix the frustrations linked to the economy of the game.
The last Beta patch sparked a lot of discussion on the game’s economy and helped us get better information on how players perceived it. We were already aware of the problems with goldmines for example, but not that production buildings were frowned upon.
However, a lot of things in the game cannot be balanced in a vacuum, especially gold sources. Thus, we had to tweak a lot of aspects of the game, and even rework the way panic is generated. For this reason, this update is bigger than what we usually do in the beta branch.
We hope the following changes redirect the dynamics of the game in a more pleasant direction than before economy wise.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3222896627771752948 However, keep in mind that a lot of the changes are also meant to pave the way for the next big updates, especially the Meta Rework coming later this year, so some of them will make more sense when the time comes.
Summary:
Goldmine & Scavenger Camp rebalance
Panic rework
Changelog
GOLDMINE & SCAVENGER CAMP REBALANCE
A lot of players were frustrated by the dynamic of Goldmines: they felt mandatory if you wanted to have a good run, made the first nights pretty hard and the last nights very easy. This problem has been reinforced by recent changes to other buildings, making it possible to build and upgrade nearly all buildings in your Haven.
With the following changes, we want to make goldmines more cost effective at the start, while greatly reducing their maximum gold output. The start of a run should feel less “tight” economy wise, and the opposite will be true for the later portions of a run.
As Scavenger Camps follow the same model as Goldmines, they were also changed.
Scavenge++ Costs 40 gold Uses per production 1 => 2
PANIC REWORK
The goal of this rework is to make panic less of a binary situation: up until now, you would get mostly S-Rank night clears, until one difficult night where suddenly a big part of the Haven is breached and you drop to a C/D-Rank. We want to make the Panic scale to be more meaningful and nuanced overall, with more situations where players can get intermediary rankings.
You may feel more pressured (ok, maybe not during the first nights…), but it is actually slightly easier to have better rewards than before - we tried to base our updated economy on getting an A-rank, as well as decreasing a bit the penalty of ranking lower.
On a side note, this comes together with the economic rework for a reason: hopefully, with the Gold Mines being less “resource hungry” and the potential dread of a lesser Panic rank, it might be more relevant in some cases to build a Scavenger Camp.
Panic Increase
Panic generated when an enemy hits a building now depends on how much the building was damaged by the attack, instead of just multiplying the underlying Panic value of the enemy as it used to be.
ANY building inside the Haven will generate panic when hit, including Defenses. Buildings have varying panic values, meaning that some buildings generate more panic when hit:
Walls, Barricades & Ruins generate a very low amount of panic. The more health a wall has, the less panic it will generate with each hit, since their total Panic value remains unchanged (and Walls have also been buffed a bit, cf. Changelog section further down).
Other Defenses generate a moderate amount of panic.
Structures (town buildings) generate a high amount of panic.
The Magic Circle generates a lot of panic, as it should!
This means that Havens open to the four winds and with a lot of structures will tend to generate more panic than Havens fortified with a lot of sturdy walls, or with a more compact design. Panic should feel more gradual than before, especially when properly defended.
Another noteworthy change is that from now on monsters within your Haven won’t generate any panic as long as they are stunned.
As usual all of this can and will probably be tweaked over time.
Rewards
S Rank now gives items with a slightly higher rarity than before..
A Rank now also gives an item! Albeit being of lower rarity (Common..Rare), this is not to be sniffed at.
All Gold and Material rewards have been rebalanced to fit the scale of the updated economy, which is expected to be less exponential.
As stated earlier, we tried to base our updated economy on getting an A-rank, as well as decreasing the resources penalty of ranking lower.
CHANGELOG
Houses
Limit on buildable Houses: 5 => 4 Base price: 40 => 30 Gold. House Expansion price: 30 => 40 Gold. House Expansion+ price: 80 => 70 Gold.
Overall pacing of the night has been improved: Harpies after the first one will appear earlier than before.
Boss minions (Alerion) now spawn in smaller amounts but more frequently.
Boss wave will spawn less high tier units than before.
Harpy
Health: 810 => 630
Armor: 60 => 100
Base attack now deals less damage.
“Enraging Scream” (zone buff) now only buffs Move Points for 1 turn and buffs Damage for 2 turns. Additionally, targets’ Resistance will now also be debuffed for 2 turns upon application. It also no longer dispels targets’ Negative Alterations upon application and only self-dispel debuffs on the caster (it could previously also dispel poison).
Alerion
Health: 270 => 210.
CETUSIA
General changes
Overall pacing of the night has been improved.
Invincibility phases have been removed from the fight.
Each phase now features one of the three versions of Cetusia, making the fight less repetitive.
Boss wave is now tougher.
Cetusia
Health: 3600 => 6000
Armor: 400 => 300
Block: 50 => 30
Dodge: 0 => 10
Resistance: 40 => 30
While not armored, Cetusia can use Putrid Water (poison attack) once again (it was changed in the previous boss balancing patch) after gaining a Charged status.
Cetusia’s tail
Health: 1800 => 2000
Armor: 400 => 300
Block: 50 => 30
Resistance: 40 => 30
Cetusia’s tail can no longer use Charged attacks.
Cetusia’s tail’s base attack no longer requires a Charged status.
Cetusia (armored)
Health: Invincible => 6000
Armor: 0 => 1200
Cetusia dives back into the water when you defeat her armored version.
Cetusia’s tail (armored)
Note: During a previous balancing patch, this version of Cetusia’s tail had been removed from the fight, but has now been brought back.
Health: Invincible => 2000
Armor: 0 => 1200
Cetusia (enraged)
Health: 3600 => 6000
The enraged version of Cetusia can now use an enhanced version of Putrid Water.
Wyrmling Egg
Armor: 0 => 600
Resistance: 80 => 60
Wyrmling
Health: 400 => 600
Armor: 0 => 300
Dodge: 40 => 30
Resistance: 20 => 30
Move Points: 8 => 7
DRYADS
General changes
Overall pacing of the night has been improved.
Total number of Dryads: 15 => 12
Putrefied Dryad
Health: 1300 => 1800
Attributes
Decreased top end of Res. Reduction: Level-up: 7/12/15 => 7/10/12 Affix: 5/9/12 => 5/8/10 Also decreased top end of Res. Reduction on items granting it natively.
Decreased top end of Accuracy: Level-up: 7/12/15 => 7/10/12 Affix: 5/9/12 => 5/8/10
It's finally summer here, and although some days are a little hot, we're happy to say we're moving forward with the next Major Update!
And today: time for a new OPEN BETA!
Despite the huge evolution that has already been performed since the EA release, we still felt like some parts of the combat were not fulfilling their role quite as intended, subsequently hindering the achievement of our vision for The Last Spell - be it in its current state or when planning some new content/features.
This beta has a strong focus towards shifting/tweaking some underlying elements of the combat system, trying to improve it without distorting its primitive essence (because there’s already a lot that works well!).
But since we like you a lot, and in an attempt to demonstrate that a successful rework can actually help us add content, we’re also happy to throw in 2 new production buildings made possible by the recent “Items production rework”!
Damage Rework
Since early stages of the development, we wanted The Last Spell to be a “classless” game, where players could build very diverse characters, combining any type of weapon. However, until now, and with a few exceptions, combining weapons of different damage types has always been pretty inefficient.
With the following changes, we are trying to make hybrid weapon combinations more viable for characters, without nerfing the character’s overall power level throughout runs. Feel free to try out those kinds of builds, and tell us if they feel viable or not.
Primary vs Secondary Attributes
The gist of it is that the Physical, Magic and Ranged Damage attributes have been shifted to secondary attributes, while Damage, Resistance Reduction and Accuracy have become primary attributes. The formatting of their value has been tweaked a bit too - Damage is now displayed as a modifier (default +0%) and Phys/Mag/Rang+ as multipliers (default 100%), and their min/max boundaries have been updated accordingly - but this is purely cosmetics/UX, their behavior remains unchanged: they still affect affect each other and the base damage multiplicatively.
From a systemic point of view, this almost exclusively affects where you can get them during level ups, and thus changes the character build dynamic since the various options in competition for your attention have changed.
These stats have also been rebalanced wherever they may appear: probability of appearing and values have been tweaked for level ups, equipment, traits and some perks. The entire list of changes is a bit too long, but as a rule of thumb, Damage appears more frequently and has higher values, while Physical/Magic/Ranged Damage appears less frequently and with lower values than before.
What this means is that, whilst still theoretically as strong as before to focus on a single damage type, it’s much less frequent to be able to specifically target one and rely on it as the main source of a hero’s potency ; meanwhile, it’s much easier to increase your overall damage, reducing a lot of the friction when switching damage type mid run - or even better, constantly during the battle! This hopefully will enable more variety in combat builds.
Gear Affixes Balancing
Additionally, we’ve rebalanced many aspects of the affixes (the additional bonuses you get on uncommon+ equipment), which we hadn’t done globally for a loooooong time - most likely the EA release - and weren’t fitting the current balance and design intentions.
Values, in relation to each other but also level ups (which are meant to be more important).
Drop rates, according to the current state of the game and the current damage rework.
Drop incompatibilities: some affixes can’t drop on some pieces of gear. This is still true, but since the game has changed a lot, some updated intentions have been reasserted (e.g. it was not possible to get +Propagation Bounces on a melee/ranged weapon, which was a bit sad for the 2H Hammer or Hand Crossbow builds… don’t ask!).
Weapons Base Damage
The maximum base damage of all weapons has been increased a bit. This has been done to:
Better fit the new Damage & Phys/Mag/Rang Damage scale.
Reduce the reliance on those attributes upon generation, regarding the early stages of the run (before one has a chance to build their Hero).
Increase the impact of the Reliability attribute.
Enemies Damage Scaling
We also fixed something that had been bugging us for some time: behind the scenes, enemies were using the Damage attribute to become stronger as the run went on. Since attributes are additive in The Last Spell, this effectively made Damage buffs or debuffs way weaker than they seemed to be: with a -33% Damage debuff, you were reducing enemy damage from 100% => 67% at Night 1 (expected result), but then it could be something like 250% => 222% at night 12, which is very underwhelming to say the least. This will not be the case anymore, and Damage buffs/debuffs on enemies should always reduce damage by the expected value - unless they have some buffs, but this is intended (and visible to the player)!
Enemies’ Accuracy
The impact of Accuracy on enemies - mostly, using Accuracy Debuffs - has always been pretty underwhelming. Also, with Accuracy now being labeled a Primary Attribute, we wanted to improve upon that.
The first thing we did is really a detail, but at the same time is altering the perception of the whole Dodge mechanic in a subtle way that enables us to perform the rest: we re-labeled the little “Dodged!” pop-up over the units’ heads to “Missed!”. Same thing, right?
Wrong! It allowed us to justify a brand new addition: attacks can now miss buildings!
This way, lowering the enemies’ Accuracy becomes much more interesting, as a defensive mechanism. All buildings have 0 Dodge, but when an enemy has <0% Accuracy, they can still occasionally miss their attacks. This effectively increases the attractiveness of Accuracy Debuffs.
In addition to that, enemies also have an Accuracy value, which scales over the duration of the run. Most enemies start with negative Accuracy, which effectively gives more leeway to players in the beginning of the run: Heroes need less Dodge to have a chance at evading attacks, as well as buildings having a small chance of being missed as well.
It also allows us to increase the disparity between enemies: basic Tier1 enemies will never rise over 0% Accuracy so it’s only beneficial to the player, but on the other hand a few, stronger, enemies will have a positive Accuracy meaning that it will actually be harder to Dodge their attacks.
Skill Progression
While some skill effects are naturally effective at all stages of the game, others tend to be either too strong early on or too feeble in the late game, and the correct balance is nearly impossible to find for some buffs or debuffs.
Up until now, only skills inflicting poison and skills granted by Body Armor had higher values with higher level gear, but we decided to extend this to a few select weapon and enemy skills as well, mainly for buffs and debuffs on attributes like Block or Armor.
New Buildings
We have added two new productions building :
The Alchemist : Produces potions and scrolls, costs 100 gold.
The Jeweler : Produces trinkets, costs 100 gold. As you can guess, other production buildings won’t produce trinkets anymore.
The Alchemist was something very popular in your feedback and it was in our backlog for a long time. But we've waited for our rework of building upgrades to add new buildings, since the economy of the game was a bit too tight a few patches ago.
Other
Hero Portrait + Infopanel QoLs
The little infopanel displayed when hovering over a hero had to be updated to match the attribute switch. We took this opportunity to give it a small makeover and add a neat little feature: the currently selected weapons of the Hero are now displayed as well!
Additionally, we’ve added the mana gauge under the portrait of your Heroes in the top right corner, as well as displaying the actual corresponding values when hovering a given portrait.
Enemies Crit
Enemies now have 0% chance of inflicting a Critical hit. We heard your feedback that it wasn’t that fun, and since it wasn’t a prevalent mechanic on enemies anyways, we scrapped it.
Oraculum
You can now access the oraculum from the worldmap so that you don’t need to start a new run to buy or reclaim some favors.
Production Buildings
With the recent changes to production buildings, players that invest a lot in mines and production buildings often have too much gold in the last nights of a run. We still want the economy to be fairly permissive, but it seemed a bit easy to place down all production buildings, so they now cost a bit more.
Armor Maker: price from 60 to 80 gold Blacksmith: price from 60 to 90 gold Bowyer: price from 60 to 90 gold Magic Shop: price from 60 to 90 gold
Perks
Tier 4 Perk “Versatility” has been removed. Tier 2 Perk “Flexibility” has been moved to Tier 4 and rebalanced according to its new position and the damage rework. Added a new Tier 2 Perk, “Crippling Punch”.
Bodybuilder and Head On have been slightly tweaked to better fit the new values of damage attributes.
Optimization
Again with this open beta we’ve done a lot of optimization. The game should run more smoothly on idle. Don’t hesitate to tell us if you notice a change in your fps count or not.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a softlock when Spiky Counter killed enemies with caster effect skills (for examples : Hunter, Harpy).
Fixed the health number display that was remaining for no reason on enemies sometimes.
Fixed some enemies having the poison/panic feedback displayed right after leaving the fog.
Fixed the isolation bonus in damage calculation not being displayed (but still applied).
Undoing a move while hovering the “Jump Over” skill lead to some UI problems.
Fixed some weird camera movements when using the perk Human Ballista to kill the Harpy
Please let us know if you manage to make some hybrid builds work (and what they are), and if it feels more viable than before to go for a specific mechanic-oriented build. As usual, we'll be very happy to hear about what how you feel after experiencing those changes.
So, don't hesitate to try all of this in the Beta Branch of the game and join our Discord server to give us all your feedback!
Save & Sound - A celebration of music in games!
Get ready!
Join us July 14 - 18 right here on Steam for one of the largest digital expos about audio and music in games. Featuring concerts, deep-dives, and mashups from 70+ developers from around the world, prepare your eyes & ears for a unique event!
Starting at 10am PDT / 7pm CEST, a 4-day live show from July 14 to 17 will stream showcasing all the wonderful content made just for Save & Sound.
We sat down with the brilliant Rémi "The Algorithm" Gallego to talk about the Soundtrack he created for the game!
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The show will be streamed on the Save & Sound website. Check out all the games part of the event on saveandsound.io
