We've seen your messages: you were eagerly waiting for this Major Update and FINALLY it is here!
With this update comes the Meta Rework, the Omens but also the Wipe we announced and explained last month: we hope you will appreciate the new progression of the game! We are very interested in your feedback so feel free to share it here, on Discord or on your favourite platform.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1105670/announcements/detail/3282583269800175535 All of the content of this Major Update has been tested in Open Beta. This blogpost is mainly the same as the previous one for the Beta.
Killing a boss with a catapult will freeze/softlock your game. We are very sorry about this issue and we will fix it as soon as possible.
PROGRESSION WIPE
The progress of all the players have now been wiped. Your first new run will make you start on Swampfurt, the tutorial map which can be skipped if you open the Menu.
Beta players, your Save can carry through from Beta to Default: just change the branch on which you are playing and you will be good to go!
NEW MECHANIC: OMENS
Let’s introduce the Omens! Omens can be selected at the start of each run. Each Omen gives a specific bonus while selected, ranging from simple attribute bonuses to very unique effects. Omens are meant to replace some of the strong permanent upgrades that players used to get, coupled with brand new effects. This allow us to have better control over the intended power level and difficulty for each map, while also introducing strategic choices at the beginning of each run.
Here are some examples of Omens you will be able unlock:
To be entirely clear: Omens are not meant to erase all permanent upgrades. They still exist and we even added new ones, but Omens are a way for us to introduce more upgrades and more interesting effects, while keeping the balance of the game interesting.
Starting a run with omens
Before starting a run, you will be able to select Omens for this map. Obviously, you won’t be able to select all of your Omens for every run: each city has a set number of slots, and every Omen takes up one, two or three slots, depending on its strength. The harder the map is, the more Omens you will be able to use.
This means that the hardest maps also allow for the most interesting starting strategies and combos: will you focus your Omen choices on making your heroes stronger? On boosting your defenses? On setting up your economy? Or maybe a balance between all of these things?
Unlocking Omens
After completing the tutorial, players will only be able to choose between a few starting Omens with simple effects. However, additional Omens can be unlocked in the Oraculum. Currently, there are around 70 Omens to unlock.
A new Boundless Mode
We also took the opportunity to merge the old “Easy Mode” into the Omen system. Now renamed to Boundless Mode (because let’s be honest, the game never goes “Easy” on you), it can be activated in the Omen selection screen.
Activating Boundless Mode allows you to exceed the slot limit on Omens by however much you want, but also unlocks Boundless Mode-specific Omens which have the same effects as the old Easy Mode modifiers.
Use this new Boundless Mode to play the game at your own pace, or test some overpowered combos!
META PROGRESSION REWORK
Oraculum unlocks
All Oraculum unlocks have been redesigned: some have been removed, some have been added, and pretty much all existing ones have had their unlock conditions and prices changed. This is one of the main reasons why we had to wipe the saves, and the goal is to make the meta progression way smoother than before.
A lot of the important unlocks now come earlier than before, like the Inn building or some weapon unlocks. We also added new conditions in the Freude side of the Oraculum, in order to make the challenges a bit more varied.
Trophies
End of night trophies have been rebalanced and some new ones have been added. The most important addition is a “You won the night” trophy, that gives a hefty chunk of essence if you manage to beat a night.
Soul gains for lost nights
This feature has been requested for a long time now, but it is finally here: now you will also gain Tainted Essence for lost nights! However, even if the situation looks desperat, we encourage you to always try and win your Nights. Who knows, maybe you will get this juicy "Won the night" trophy after all...
Apocalypse Multipliers
Playing on Apocalypse mode will now grant you a boost on the number of Essence you get each night. The higher the Apocalypse, the higher the boost!
TEMPLE AND MANA WELL REWORK
While the Temple and the Mana Well had a use until now, we weren’t satisfied with their dynamic: building one often felt like a punishment more than an investment, compared to other buildings.
This is why we decided to rework both buildings a bit, in order to make these buildings relevant economy-wise. In addition to their health or mana restorating actions, the Temple and Mana Well are now able to grant permanent attribute increase to your heroes, which can be pretty strong!
Temple
Gold cost: 55 -> 70 Build limit: 1
New passive production effect: Permanently grants +8 Max Health to all current heroes.
Production rate: 1x per day
Changed all Actions. New list:
Action: Offering Base action Cost: 0 Workers Max uses: 1 Effect: Restore 40 Health to one hero.
Action: Heal Base action Cost: 1 Worker Max uses: 1 Effect: Restore 40 Health to all heroes.
Action: Blessing Available after upgrade Cost: 2 Workers Effect: Permanently grants +24 Max Health to one hero
All upgrades have also changed to match these new actions.
Mana well
Gold cost: 55 -> 35 Build limit: 2
New passive production effect: Permanently grants +1 Max Mana to all current heroes.
Production rate: 1x per day
Changed all actions. New list:
Action: Benediction Base action Cost: 0 Workers Max uses: 1 Effect: Restores 6 Mana to one hero.
Action: Restore Mana Base action Cost: 1 Worker Max uses: 1 Effect: Restore 10 Mana to all heroes.
Action: Blessing Available after upgrade Cost: 2 Workers Effect: Permanently grants +5 Max Mana to one hero
All upgrades have also changed to match these new actions.
NEW MECHANIC: CORPSES
We're introducing a new mechanic to spice up the combat and economy of the game: Corpses.
Corpses may appear at the end of each night, and can be scavenged during the day, just like ruins. Piles of Corpses can appear in multiple sizes: the bigger the pile, the greater the reward.
But how do you make them appear? Corpses and their bigger variants have higher chances of appearing when:
Enemies are killed close to the Haven
Many enemies are killed on the same tile
This means that some of the most dire situations may now lead to greater rewards...
Scavenging Corpses
Corpses can be scavenged with two different focuses: one gives you Gold, Materials and Tainted Essence, while the other gives you Items and even more Tainted Essence. These scavenge actions have a fixed cost of 1 Worker: this makes the bigger variants very interesting economy wise!
However, Corpses can also act as obstacles, so you may even decide to let them be and use them as defenses, although they will rot away with time. However, if they are a hindrance to your strategy, you can also choose to destroy them during the day.
SEER REWORK
Up until now, we only gave very limited information on incoming waves, which made it difficult for us to design interesting nights, especially early on, when players haven’t placed the Seer building yet. To let players make more strategic decisions and to make the overall enemy wave design more interesting, we decided to rework the Seer a bit.
Banners
Prior this change, you could use the “Guess Where” skill of the Seer to know the proportion of incoming waves. Now, this information will ALWAYS be given to you, even if you haven’t placed down the Seer yet. Additionally, banners now indicate a very vague quantity of enemies, instead of just a proportion: a single side with a 4-Skull banner will have more enemies than a single side with a 2-Skull banner.
Precise Arrows
Since its previous effect is now always given to the player, the “Guess Where” skill of the Seer is getting a new effect. When using the Guess Where skill, you will be able to see a very precise breakdown of where enemies will come from and in what proportions, thanks to arrows of varying sizes:
NIGHT SAVE
You asked for it and here it is! Now you can quit a night without the fear of restarting it from the beginning: your progress will be saved, and you will be able to resume from where you quit.
We’ve been wanting to implement this for quite some time, as we know that nights can become quite long. We hope that players with less time on their hands will enjoy this feature, allowing them to complete nights in multiple gaming sessions.
QOL UPDATE
We have developed a certain number of features which increase the global quality of life of the game!
Oraculum
The favors are now ordered in a more coherent manner, and this order should remain more consistent.
In addition to that, we’ve also added some tabs to allow for some filtering, which should help navigate the Oraculum and its countless favors.
Depending on its effect(s), a given favor can possibly be found in several tabs: we’d rather have duplicates but allow for a favor to be found easily when looking for it than the opposite. (e.g. a favor unlocking an Omen increasing Heroes’ attributes can be found in “Omens” as well as “Heroes”.)
Victory panel and Defeat panel
Now when you finish a night, the first thing to appear on the panel is the animation of your number of souls gained with all the trophies acquired during the night. You can also skip the animation to present your heroes on the panel and go to the profile page by clicking on your heroes.
Item categories
Some categories were implemented in game to classify protections so you can search and make some differentiation between heavy armors and light ones.
Enemies life gauge
We changed the way big enemy health bars are displayed: you should now be able to clearly see how much health remain on a boss or an Elite.
SOUND DESIGN REWORK
For this update, we introduce the first steps of our rework for the sound design, which will continue with the upcoming updates.
Introduction scene
All the sound design of the introduction has been reworked so go enjoy it! You can watch it directly when you are on the main menu.
BALANCING
Shared production building limit
Production buildings now share a building limit of 5, meaning you can build a maximum of 5 production buildings but whichever ones you want. For example, you can place down 3 Bowyers and 2 Trinket makers in your haven.
Elderlicht Soul Vessels
The Soul Vessels in Elderlicht will now become ignited after 2 turns: on the first turn of a night, they will warn the player that something is coming, and on the second turn of the night a Soulbound unit will spawn.
Traits
All traits have been reworked & rebalanced to be more focused: on average, they will affect less different attributes, but give stronger bonuses.
Wounds
Some time ago, we modified the wound system to make wounds unique for each enemy, because we wanted to allow for more tactical possibilities around this mechanic. However, they became too unique, making them bothersome to play around.
Wounds are now more harmonized: notably, enemies will all lose Move Points when wounded, but in proportion to their total Move Points.
A similar logic has also been applied to the Heroes.
Enemy attributes
The defensive attributes of all enemies have been rebalanced to make them more focused. As an example, compared to before, less enemies will gain Block or Dodge over the course of the run, but enemies that gain some will gain more noticeable amounts.
We also wanted to reinforce the difference in strength between the different Tiers of enemies: common enemies will globally stay as weak as before but stronger enemies will become even stronger, meaning they can be more impactful without the need of spawning them in quantities as high as before.
Enemy waves
Since the power level of the player has greatly changed with this update, enemy quantities in all cities have been rebalanced.
Other
Additional and precise balancing involving stats can be read in our older changelogs for the Beta, with the changelog 0.99.0.15 and the last update we did on the Beta branch:
New changelog for the Open Beta, you can see all the changes below. As always, thank you for your reports!
QOL OF THE ORACULUM
The favors are now ordered in a more coherent manner, and this order should remain more consistent.
In addition to that, we’ve also added some tabs to allow for some filtering, which should help navigate the Oraculum and its countless favors.
Depending on its effect(s), a given favor can possibly be found in several tabs: we’d rather have duplicates but allow for a favor to be found easily when looking for it than the opposite. (e.g. a favor unlocking an Omen increasing Heroes’ attributes can be found in “Omens” as well as “Heroes”.)
BUG FIX
Fixed a bug on the drop rates of level up attributes (too many rare attributes were picked)
Fixed a softlock when saving during the boss night
Fixed a softlock caused by the "Omen of Mercenary Training" and "Omen of Restraint”
Fixed Spiky Counter Perk not displayed in HUD
Fixed the meta upgrades More Rare Level Up 1,2 and 3 displayed at the same time instead of one after another.
Fixed the Adamantium Sword using the image of the Mythril Sword
Fixed Corpses not being jumpable
Fixed some Soul Vessel not being jumpable
Fixed some Soul Vessel blocking sight
Fixed the Archer enemy displaying the wrong skill in their HUD
Fixed Vestige Walls, Corpses and some Soul Vessels not activating Back Protection
Mist censers cannot spawn on Corpses anymore
Corpses can no longer spawn on Warp Gate
The experience is now correctly saved with the saving of the night
Fixed night report assets for elites enemies
Omen of lone scavenger can no longer be reset by reloading the game
Fixed the Apocalypse level 4 not changing the prices at all
Omen of scavenging is now correctly increasing gold and material when scavenging a ruin
Fixed the catapult reloads
Fixed the Omens interface for screens with 2k resolution
Fixed Adamantium Great Axe and Mystic Elven Boots attributes
Fixed unintended high amount of enemies on Lakeburg nights 9 & 10
Fixed unintended high amount of strong enemies on Elderlicht night 6
Fixed Corpses not displaying the good amount of item rewards
Fixed enemies tooltip displayed in the fog
BALANCING
Enemies
Enemy Waves & Difficulty
Changed Elite enemy spawning nights in Lakeburg
Adjusted number of strong enemies in Gildenberg nights 5 to 7 (smoother progression)
Reduced number of strong enemies in Glenwald and Elderlicht early nights
Reduced amount of “Bulky” enemies in Lakeburg
Adjusted Elderlicht night 11 enemy quantities (now more on par with other nights)
Corrupted Harpy (boss unit)
Health: 2160 -> 1680
Archer
Decreased overall Armor
Hunter
Removed Armor
Increased overall Health
Increased overall Dodge
Ripper
Removed Armor
Increased overall Health
Accursed
Removed Armor
Increased overall Health
Bulky
Decreased overall Block
Increased overall Health
Twisted
Removed Armor
Decreased overall Dodge
Increased overall Health
Elite enemies
Some Elites’ Health and Armor have been tweaked
Regeneration Affix: 30% -> 20% Max Health
Corpses
Global
Tweaked Spawn % chance values: corpses (any size) should appear slightly more often on average
Corpses (smallest pile)
Health: 25 -> 50
Scavenge (Resources focus) has been replaced by 2 new actions
NEW: Scavenge (Gold focus)
Cost: 1 worker
+18 Gold
+10 Tainted Essence
NEW: Scavenge (Materials focus)
Cost: 1 worker
+32 Materials
+10 Tainted Essence
Pile of Corpses (medium pile)
Health: 40 -> 125
Scavenge (Resources focus)
Materials gain: +38 -> +36
Scavenge (Item focus)
Tainted Essence gain: +50 -> +25
Mountain of Corpses (largest pile)
Health: 50 -> 250
Scavenge (Resource focus)
Gold gain: +48 -> +40
Materials gain: +91 -> +72
Scavenge (Item focus)
Tainted Essence gain: +100 -> +50
Elite Carrion (elite pile)
Health: 25 -> 125
“Scavenge (Resources focus)” and “Scavenge (Item focus)” have been merged and rebalanced into a single action
NEW: Scavenge
Cost: 1 worker
+1 EPIC Item
+20 Gold
+36 Materials
+100 Tainted Essence
Buildings
Temple
Health: 150 -> 270
Removed the "Blessing" upgrade: “Blessing” action is now unlocked from the start
“Blessing+” upgrade cost: 100 -> 80 Gold
Mana Well
Health: 100 -> 90
Restore Mana mana restoration: 10 -> 8
Restore+ upgrade restored mana increase: 10 to 15 -> 8 to 12
Removed the Gift upgrade: Gift action is now unlocked from the start
Gift worker cost: 2 -> 1
Gift max mana bonus: 5 -> 3
Gift+ upgrade cost: 100 -> 50 Gold
Gift+ upgrade max mana bonus increase: 5 to 8 -> 3 to 5
Ballista
Health: 40 -> 75
Damage: 70-100 -> 120-140
Mounted Ballista
Health: 50 -> 115
Damage: 90-120 -> 140-170
Catapult
Health: 50 -> 115
Damage: 50-130 -> 90-170
Traps
Stun Trap damage: 10-25 -> 20-30
Slow Trap damage: 25-50 -> 40-60
Damage Trap damage: 35-100 -> 80-130
Other Health tweaks
House: 100 ->165
Gold Mine: 100 ->165
Scavengers Camp: 100 ->165
Shop: 150 ->270
Armor Maker: 150 ->225
Blacksmith: 150 -> 225
Bowyer: 150 -> 225
Magic Shop: 150 -> 225
Jeweler: 150 -> 225
Alchemist: 150 -> 225
Inn: 150 -> 270
Seer: 150 -> 225
Watchtower: 60 -> 100
Meta progression
Global
Some light-side unlocks have been tweaked to become visible (before completion) at a slower rate (only applies if these unlocks are not already visible)
Early permanent upgrades’ Tainted Essence prices were increased slightly
Weapon unlocks
There will be more weapons to purchase more quickly on your first Gildenberg run when you manage to beat half of the nights on your first try
Perk balancing
Spiky Counter
Base value: 20 -> 30
Bully
Damage malus: -20% -> -30%
Critical Master
Base Critical Power bonus: +20% -> +25%
Bonus for each 5 crits: +10% -> +5%
Big Game Hunter
Minimum Health threshold: 300 -> 600
% of Health added as bonus damage: 6% -> 3%
Note: This perk will be subject to deeper balancing changes in a later patch
Here is the first changelog for this Open Beta. Again, thank you so much for your feedback and support, feel free to join us on Discord so we can react quicker to your reports!
First, important message for ongoing runs: if you have built a Seer with all the upgrades, your run will be unplayable with this update and you might have to start over. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
BUG FIXES
Fixed a Softlock happening when a ballista was destroyed by the player or an enemy
Fixed the catapult staying visually when destroyed
Fixed heroes stuck on corpses. When a corpse is spawning on a tile occupied by a hero, the later is moved to an adjacent tile
Fixed a world map cities selection issue
Fixed Mana Well skill Restore Mana+ affecting only one target
Fixed Offhand Wand and Offhand Hammer being wrongly locked behind variation unlocks. They are now available from the start
Fixed Omen of Death Denial being wrongly priced
BALANCING
Seer Repel skill now costs 2 workers when the fog is at its closest position, 4 workers when it is at its furthest position and 3 workers in other cases
Seer Guess Who action has been removed : buying the upgrade now grants enemy list and quantities passively
Seer Guess Who first upgrade cost : 25 -> 60 gold
Seer Guess Who second upgrade has been removed
Seer Guess Again worker cost : 2 -> 1
Seer Guess Again max uses per night : 1 -> 2
Added a "Very Big" version to the Seer Guess Where arrows
Level Up values for Phys+, Mag+ and Rang+ : 4/6/7 -> 5/7/8
Phys+, Mag+, Rang+, Isolation & Opportunism will appear more often in level ups
Increased the values of Phys+, Mag+ and Rang+ attributes in items and traits
Tweaked the generation parameters of traits : good/bad trait repartition should be a bit more balanced between starting heroes
Added icon variations for bad traits
Slight tweaks to enemy numbers in Gildenberg and Glenwald
Last month we made an announcement concerning a progression wipe happening alongside our next Major Update.
Since the Meta Rework is changing (almost) everything for the player's progression in the game, we decided to launch an Open Beta so we can gather your feedback and properly adjust the changes we made. Your comments, posts and strategies are all very helpful to us.
SUMMARY:
Progression Wipe
New Mechanic: Omens
Meta progression Rework
Temple and Mana Well Rework
New Mechanic: Corpses
Seer Rework
Night Save
QoL Update
Sound Design Rework
Balancing
PROGRESSION WIPE
As we explained in our previous post, this update will wipe the progress of Beta players. It will be effective to all players once the Major Update is officially out. You can read this article to have the answers for the most frequent questions:
Let’s introduce the Omens! Omens can be selected at the start of each run. Each Omen gives a specific bonus while selected, ranging from simple attribute bonuses to very unique effects. Omens are meant to replace some of the strong permanent upgrades that players used to get, coupled with brand new effects. This allow us to have better control over the intended power level and difficulty for each map, while also introducing strategic choices at the beginning of each run.
Here are some examples of Omens you will be able unlock:
To be entirely clear: Omens are not meant to erase all permanent upgrades. They still exist and we even added new ones, but Omens are a way for us to introduce more upgrades and more interesting effects, while keeping the balance of the game interesting.
Starting a run with omens
Before starting a run, you will be able to select Omens for this map. Obviously, you won’t be able to select all of your Omens for every run: each city has a set number of slots, and every Omen takes up one, two or three slots, depending on its strength. The harder the map is, the more Omens you will be able to use.
This means that the hardest maps also allow for the most interesting starting strategies and combos: will you focus your Omen choices on making your heroes stronger? On boosting your defenses? On setting up your economy? Or maybe a balance between all of these things?
Unlocking Omens
After completing the tutorial, players will only be able to choose between a few starting Omens with simple effects. However, additional Omens can be unlocked in the Oraculum. Currently, there are around 70 Omens to unlock.
A new Boundless Mode
We also took the opportunity to merge the old “Easy Mode” into the Omen system. Now renamed to Boundless Mode (because let’s be honest, the game never goes “Easy” on you), it can be activated in the Omen selection screen.
Activating Boundless Mode allows you to exceed the slot limit on Omens by however much you want, but also unlocks Boundless Mode-specific Omens which have the same effects as the old Easy Mode modifiers.
Use this new Boundless Mode to play the game at your own pace, or test some overpowered combos!
META PROGRESSION REWORK
Oraculum unlocks
All Oraculum unlocks have been redesigned: some have been removed, some have been added, and pretty much all existing ones have had their unlock conditions and prices changed. This is one of the main reasons why we had to wipe the saves, and the goal is to make the meta progression way smoother than before.
A lot of the important unlocks now come earlier than before, like the Inn building or some weapon unlocks. We also added new conditions in the Freude side of the Oraculum, in order to make the challenges a bit more varied.
Trophies
End of night trophies have been rebalanced and some new ones have been added. The most important addition is a “You won the night” trophy, that gives a hefty chunk of essence if you manage to beat a night.
Soul gains for lost nights
This feature has been requested for a long time now, but it is finally here: now you will also gain Tainted Essence for lost nights! However, even if the situation looks desperat, we encourage you to always try and win your Nights. Who knows, maybe you will get this juicy "Won the night" trophy after all...
Apocalypse Multipliers
Playing on Apocalypse mode will now grant you a boost on the number of Essence you get each night. The higher the Apocalypse, the higher the boost!
TEMPLE AND MANA WELL REWORK
While the Temple and the Mana Well had a use until now, we weren’t satisfied with their dynamic: building one often felt like a punishment more than an investment, compared to other buildings.
This is why we decided to rework both buildings a bit, in order to make these buildings relevant economy-wise. In addition to their health or mana restorating actions, the Temple and Mana Well are now able to grant permanent attribute increase to your heroes, which can be pretty strong!
Temple
Gold cost: 55 -> 70 Build limit: 1
New passive production effect: Permanently grants +8 Max Health to all current heroes.
Production rate: 1x per day
Changed all Actions. New list:
Action: Offering Base action Cost: 0 Workers Max uses: 1 Effect: Restore 40 Health to one hero.
Action: Heal Base action Cost: 1 Worker Max uses: 1 Effect: Restore 40 Health to all heroes.
Action: Blessing Available after upgrade Cost: 2 Workers Effect: Permanently grants +24 Max Health to one hero
All upgrades have also changed to match these new actions.
Mana well
Gold cost: 55 -> 35 Build limit: 2
New passive production effect: Permanently grants +1 Max Mana to all current heroes.
Production rate: 1x per day
Changed all actions. New list:
Action: Benediction Base action Cost: 0 Workers Max uses: 1 Effect: Restores 6Mana to one hero.
Action: Restore Mana Base action Cost: 1 Worker Max uses: 1 Effect: Restore 10 Mana to all heroes.
Action: Blessing Available after upgrade Cost: 2 Workers Effect: Permanently grants +5 Max Mana to one hero
All upgrades have also changed to match these new actions.
NEW MECHANIC: CORPSES
We're introducing a new mechanic to spice up the combat and economy of the game: Corpses.
Corpses may appear at the end of each night, and can be scavenged during the day, just like ruins. Piles of Corpses can appear in multiple sizes: the bigger the pile, the greater the reward.
But how do you make them appear? Corpses and their bigger variants have higher chances of appearing when:
Enemies are killed close to the Haven
Many enemies are killed on the same tile
This means that some of the most dire situations may now lead to greater rewards...
Scavenging Corpses
Corpses can be scavenged with two different focuses: one gives you Gold, Materials and Tainted Essence, while the other gives you Items and even more Tainted Essence. These scavenge actions have a fixed cost of 1 Worker: this makes the bigger variants very interesting economy wise!
However, Corpses can also act as obstacles, so you may even decide to let them be and use them as defenses, although they will rot away with time. However, if they are a hindrance to your strategy, you can also choose to destroy them during the day.
SEER REWORK
Up until now, we only gave very limited information on incoming waves, which made it difficult for us to design interesting nights, especially early on, when players haven’t placed the Seer building yet. To let players make more strategic decisions and to make the overall enemy wave design more interesting, we decided to rework the Seer a bit.
Banners
Prior this change, you could use the “Guess Where” skill of the Seer to know the proportion of incoming waves. Now, this information will ALWAYS be given to you, even if you haven’t placed down the Seer yet. Additionally, banners now indicate a very vague quantity of enemies, instead of just a proportion: a single side with a 4-Skull banner will have more enemies than a single side with a 2-Skull banner.
Precise Arrows
Since its previous effect is now always given to the player, the “Guess Where” skill of the Seer is getting a new effect. When using the Guess Where skill, you will be able to see a very precise breakdown of where enemies will come from and in what proportions, thanks to arrows of varying sizes:
NIGHT SAVE
You asked for it and here it is! Now you can quit a night without the fear of restarting it from the beginning: your progress will be saved, and you will be able to resume from where you quit.
We’ve been wanting to implement this for quite some time, as we know that nights can become quite long. We hope that players with less time on their hands will enjoy this feature, allowing them to complete nights in multiple gaming sessions.
QOL UPDATE
We have developed a certain number of features which increase the global quality of life of the game!
Victory panel and Defeat panel
Now when you finish a night, the first thing to appear on the panel is the animation of your number of souls gained with all the trophies acquired during the night. You can also skip the animation to present your heroes on the panel and go to the profile page by clicking on your heroes.
Item categories
Some categories were implemented in game to classify protections so you can search and make some differentiation between heavy armors and light ones.
Enemies life gauge
We changed the way big enemy health bars are displayed: you should now be able to clearly see how much health remain on a boss or an Elite.
SOUND DESIGN REWORK
For this update, we introduce the first steps of our rework for the sound design, which will continue with the upcoming updates.
Introduction scene
All the sound design of the introduction has been reworked so go enjoy it! You can watch it directly when you are on the main menu.
BALANCING
Shared production building limit
Production buildings now share a building limit of 5, meaning you can build a maximum of 5 production buildings but whichever ones you want. For example, you can place down 3 Bowyers and 2 Trinket makers in your haven.
Elderlicht Soul Vessels
The Soul Vessels in Elderlicht will now become ignited after 2 turns: on the first turn of a night, they will warn the player that something is coming, and on the second turn of the night a Soulbound unit will spawn.
Traits
All traits have been reworked & rebalanced to be more focused: on average, they will affect less different attributes, but give stronger bonuses.
Wounds
Some time ago, we modified the wound system to make wounds unique for each enemy, because we wanted to allow for more tactical possibilities around this mechanic. However, they became too unique, making them bothersome to play around.
Wounds are now more harmonized: notably, enemies will all lose Move Points when wounded, but in proportion to their total Move Points.
A similar logic has also been applied to the Heroes.
Enemy attributes
The defensive attributes of all enemies have been rebalanced to make them more focused. As an example, compared to before, less enemies will gain Block or Dodge over the course of the run, but enemies that gain some will gain more noticeable amounts.
We also wanted to reinforce the difference in strength between the different Tiers of enemies: common enemies will globally stay as weak as before but stronger enemies will become even stronger, meaning they can be more impactful without the need of spawning them in quantities as high as before.
Enemy waves
Since the power level of the player has greatly changed with this update, enemy quantities in all cities have been rebalanced.
Thank you for reading! We will look at your comments and feedback with extreme interest.
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.
