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!
Don’t miss out on updates!
Set a reminder to be notified when Save & Sound will go live!
The show will be streamed on the Save & Sound website. Check out all the games part of the event on saveandsound.io
200 000 Heroes of the Night!
Greetings Heroes!
As of today, we've reached the milestone of 200 000 sold units in a little bit over a year! Or more precisely, in one year and twenty four days.
It's surreal to think that 200,000 people actually saw our game and bought it! So, on behalf of the team at Ishtar Games, THANK YOU FOR YOUR INCREDIBLE SUPPORT!! We're working on some very cool stuff for the next updates, so we hope you'll like them!
We have the best players in the world <3
Fear of the Lake - Patch 0.97.2.1
Hello Heroes!
In today's update we are bringing you one new feature that will probably help you a lot during boss fights, and different types of Bug fix & Balancing. Read more below!
Summary:
New Feature: Night progression gauge during Boss Nights
Bug fix
Balancing
Waves
Perks
Harpy boss fight
Cetusia boss fight
Dryads boss fight
NEW FEATURE: Progression gauge during Boss Nights
Added a new version of the Night progression gauge during Boss Nights. We hope this will help you identify the progress you've made during the fight.
BUG FIX
Fix the zoom level for 2K or higher screen resolution: before the fix, the game was too zoomed in for high resolution. Now if you have a high resolution you will see more in the screen.
Fix all the sound stacking problems (for example it was happening when multiple ballista shot at the same time)
Fix a softlock when spamming the firing button with the catapult.
Fix the possibility to shoot multiple times with the catapult when spamming the firing button.
Fix of the Meta favors "More rerolls" and "Even more rerolls" not unlocking in the dark shop.
Fix of the Meta favor "Glenwald" unlocked too early in the campaign for new players or even players that updated their game recently.
Fix of self cast skills not working on boss units (this affected cetusia's fight).
Fix a softlock during the loading screen of a new run when right click is pressed during this screen.
BALANCING
WAVES
Added more Hunters in waves for Glenwald.
PERKS
Big Game Hunter's bonus damage: 15% of target's max Health ➝ 8% of target's max Health
HARPY BOSS FIGHT (Gildenberg)
Corrupted Harpy (assault form)
Attributes:
Health: 1080 ➝ 810
Move points: 6 ➝ 4
Skills:
Fury(melee attack), “Flying Assault” (maneuver attack) and “Dive Bomb” (spawn attack) all had their damages decreased.
Flying Assault's (maneuver attack) range has been increased but now has a cooldown before being usable again.
Alerion (small harpy)
Attributes:
Critical%: 0% ➝ 6%
Skills:
Lacerate's (melee attack) damages have been decreased.
CETUSIA BOSS FIGHT (Lakeburg)
General
The quantity of enemies in waves has been reduced.
Boss fight’s general structure has been altered to feel less repetitive.
Cetusia
Attributes:
Health: 3000 ➝ 3600
Armor: 150 → 400
Block: 60 ➝ 50
Resistance: 50% → 40%
Skills:
Cetusia now needs to Charge before using Head Smash (physical attack) and Hydro Catapult (long-range attack).
Fear of the Lake update is LIVE: New Bosses, Lakeburg Rework and more
Hello Heroes!
The highly anticipated Boss Update Fear of the Lake is now available! With this major update, we are adding two new scary boss to The Last Spell: Cetusia & the sisters Aello, Celaeno and Ocythoe. We wish you the best of luck for your upcoming fights against them!
The map of Lakeburg received a full rework and we also twisted, changed and improved several other aspects of the game. More details below!
Note: Tomorrow, we will be doing a livestream on The Last Spell for the update at 15:00 CEST on Twitch.
Summary:
Gildenberg Boss: Aello, Celaeno & Ocythoe
Lakeburg Boss: Cetusia
Lakeburg Rework
Obtaining Items
Other
New Features
Balancing
Bug fixes
GILDENBERG BOSS: AELLO, CELAENO & OCYTHOE
Bloodthirsty winged creatures emerge from the mountain. A new confrontation punctuates the last night of Gildenberg, as players must now face three ferocious harpies and their squadron of feathered minions.
Stand your ground when these massive monsters cry out from above to command the enemy army, and act swiftly when they descend to hunt down the poor Heroes fighting to protect the haven.
This boss fight has been designed not to be particularly more difficult than the former last night, but it provides a more unique challenge in terms of structure creating a change of pace for new players reaching the end of Gildenberg for the first time.
LAKEBURG BOSS: CETUSIA
From the depths of the lake, the monster of legends awakens to bring chaos to the shore. Of monumental size, Cetusia the Putrescent Wyrm uses the water to her advantage, using it as a shield and to cause destruction and tidal waves. This colossus will use both her skull to smash Heroes who dare to get too close and her tail to wipe them out.
However, while the Heroes are busy trying to defeat this tenacious watery terror, her offsprings might come out to join the horde and rush straight to the Mages.
This boss replaces the Dryads fight (which have been moved to Glenwald), and takes advantage of the reworked Lakeburg’s level design.
LAKEBURG REWORK
Lakeburg has been redesigned to feature a bigger lake and a more pronounced topography: Repel the hordes in the abandoned docks on one side, a small river crossed by a bridge on the other, and behind ancient city walls to the south.
OBTAINING ITEMS
Even though random drops are a big part of roguelites, it can sometimes be frustrating to never get the weapon or piece of equipment you are looking for. With a lot of the following changes, we want to make it a bit easier for players to obtain what they want, without removing the random aspect that can make every run feel different from the previous one.
Shop Rework
The shop now levels up automatically. We also added sorting and filters:
Production buildings
Item production buildings now share their level upgrade, meaning you level them up all at once.
We changed the other upgrades and their prices accordingly, to see the full details check the dedicated section in “Balancing” later on this document.
Production reward reroll
You can now unlock “Reward Rerolls” in the Oraculum, allowing you to reroll Night Rewards or Production Rewards up to 3 times a day.
OTHER
Mist Censer and Thin Mist Rework
We changed the behavior of mist censers to make them more interesting to deal with.
Construction menu overhaul
You can now repair multiple buildings at the same time thanks to the new construction menu.
NEW FEATURES
Maps
Added a new boss in Gildenberg (replacing the final boss).
Reworked Lakeburg’s level design.
Reworked Lakeburg’s wave design.
Added a new boss in Lakeburg.
Moved the Dryad boss fight from Lakeburg to Glenwald and reworked the fight.
Shop
Added a sorting and filtering system in the shop interface.
Removed the Level upgrades from the shop. Instead, the level of offered items in the shop now increases automatically over the course of the run.
The number of offered items in the shop will now increase as the player unlocks new equipment over the course of the campaign. This will make it less frustrating to unlock weapons you dislike, as they do not dilute the item pool as much as before.
Production Building
These changes affect the Armor Maker, Blacksmith, Bowyer and Magic Shop.
Added a new type of building upgrade: Shared Upgrades. Item level upgrades are now shared between production buildings. To see the full details check the dedicated section in “Balancing” later on this document.
Items
Changed the way item drops are rolled. Some meta upgrades should not affect item drop chances as much as before (for example, players with respectively 2 and 7 different short swords unlocked will have the same chances of dropping a short sword, which was not the case before).
Night rewards now scale for the entirety of the run (stopped scaling after night 4 until now).
UI
Reworked the construction panel to easily switch between the different sections.
Repairing now has a dedicated section in the construction menu.
New repairing options to make repairing multiple buildings faster: Repair identical buildings, Repair structures, Repair defenses, Repair barricades and Repair walls.
Added new shortcut buttons in the bottom left panel: Inn, Shop and Construction Mode.
Mist censers & Thin Mist
Changed the way thin mist works: enemies under the effect of thin mist are untargetable, but can still be hit and damaged by AoE attacks, propagations, poison, etc…
Mist Censers (added by Apocalypse 3) are now destroyed at the end of every night, and new ones respawn at the start of every day in different locations.
Mist Censers now have scaling health pools (from 150 to 600 HP over the course of a run). They are now easier to kill at all stages of the game, but especially early on.
The number of Mist Censers now increases over the course of a run.
Reward Reroll
Added a feature to reroll the offered items for a single production reward, a limited amount of times a day. The feature can be unlocked in the Oraculum to get 1 reroll per day, and further unlocks can increase the number of rerolls to 3 per day.
Optimization
We’ve updated our game engine during this month and you should expect some performance increase thanks to that. But we still have a lot to do in optimization before the end of the early access.
BALANCING
Gildenberg
The mist is now a bit further away from the city.
Enemies on night 5 are now less spread out.
Slightly reduced the number of enemies on nights 4, 5 and 6.
Glenwald
Glenwald now has better night rewards (more gold and materials, slightly stronger items).
Level up
Available stat choices after rerolls from 5/3/1 to 5/3/2 (you will keep getting 2 choices if you keep rerolling after that).
Armor Level up values increased from 15/25/32 to 24/32/40.
Inn
Inn price reduced from 180 to 110 gold.
Inn first upgrade price reduced from 260 to 180 gold.
Inn second upgrade price reduced from 280 to 260 gold.
Increased the price of heroes in the Inn, especially at higher levels.
The price of heroes in the Inn does not take into account your current number of heroes anymore.
Mage cost reduced from 100 to 60 gold.
Reroll cost increased from 30 to 50 gold.
Changed the probability of a mage being available in the Inn: it will on average take less days for one to appear, but there will be days where they aren't available, even if you have not bought one.
At higher levels, the Inn won’t show very low level heroes anymore.
Shop
Weapons and armor are cheaper than before at lower levels and cost a bit more than before at higher levels.
Production building
These changes affect the Armor Maker, Blacksmith, Bowyer and Magic Shop.
Shared production upgrades (Replaces previous level upgrades. These upgrades affect ALL of your production building.):
Item Level +: All production buildings give level 1 and 2 items, costs 70
Item Level ++: All production buildings give level 2 and 3 items, costs 120
Item Level +++: All production buildings give level 3 and 4 items, costs 300
Item Level ++++: All production buildings give level 4 and 5 items, costs 560
Passive production upgrades (Replaces previous passive production upgrades):
Base action: Spend 2 workers to gain 10 production units (Max 1 use per day)
Upgrade 1: Spend 1 worker to gain 10 production units, costs 50
Upgrade 2: Max uses per day from 1 to 2, costs 80
Upgrade 3: Max uses per day from 2 to 3, costs 100
Armor maker, Blacksmith, Bowyer and Magic Shop prices reduced from 70 to 60 gold.
Non-upgraded production buildings give lower level items (max item level you can obtain remains unchanged, as there is an additional item level upgrade).
Item production buildings no longer give a free production yield upon construction.
Misc
Magic Circle health per mage increased from 50 to 100 (effectively doubling the Magic Circle's health at all stages of the game).
House upgrade "House Expansion +" cost increased from 60 to 80 gold.
Increased block on shields at early levels.
Increased block values on the Fortify skill (found on some armors).
BUG FIXES
Fix of an exploit enabling the player to have infinite gold thanks to the shop.
Fix a softlock caused by the BOOM! perk when killing an ally or when killing a Boomer.
Fix enemies stuck in the fog in Glenwald causing some nights to never end.
Heroes generated in the inn had too many experience points (the experience gain attribute was taken into account).
Fix custom hero name not refreshing after leaving the customization panel.
Fix the perk "Potion Throw".
Fix ballista upgrades not working as expected when reloading a game.
Fix damage estimation on surrounding skill effects.
Fix a softlock during the end of the night caused by the hero generation of the inn.
Fix sometimes not being able to move a hero after casting a skill (only happening with the “single click caster effect” option activated)
Thank you for reading! As always, your support and your feedback are much appreciated. See you in the comments and on Discord!
The Last Spell is 1 year old!
Greetings Heroes!
The Last Spell is now one year old! One year filled with Nights, monsters and heroes fighting to survive. One year of updates and players' feedback allowing us to improve the game.
One year, one candle. Off to many more!
To celebrate this first year of The Last Spell, we are sharing with you some insights about the production of the game, from 2018 to 2022. Have a good read!
FIRST IDEA FOR THE LAST STAND SPELL
In 2018, The Last Spell was just an idea our Creative Director gave to Jacques, the Art Director:
"I'm working on something, an asymetric tactical with a handful of heroes battling against a horde of monsters."
And this became the first concept art of the game, then called The Last Stand.
FIRST TESTS & CLOSED BETAS
Summer 2020 saw The Last Spell being tested by players for the first time with the Steam Festival, Gamescom, Closed Beta and the Prologue.
We conducted a second Closed Beta in May 2021, and THANK THE GODDESS we did it because together we found a few nasty things! Players, we owe you one.
STATS & NUMBERS
The Last Spell launched on June 3rd, 2021 and our biggest incredible optimistic objective was 20 000 sales in a week.
We did 60 000.
Fun facts: More than 20% of our users played 40h+. This number goes down to 4% when we look at... those who played 100h+. Which-is-quite-a-lot.
The average time played on The Last Spell is 26h 15min. So just enough time to get beaten to death by Gildenberg at least 10 times.
LAKEBURG: MAP & REWORK
Lakeburg was the very first map we created. We wanted something both simple and adaptable as we didn't know if it would be the only map of the game or not.
Now that we have a broader vision for TLS, we thought it was time to give this map a unique look and gamestyle!
THE MONSTERS OF THE LAST SPELL
When we create new monsters, our priority is to make them easily recognizable and "readable" from the battlefield and their different sides (front/back). What can this monster do? Is it a giant threat? Which behaviour can I expect?
Each monster must look terrifying or unsettling. Too many limbs, blood, bones, excrescence, spikes... And sometimes, they get it all. Monsters also follow a certain colour scheme: the redder an enemy is, the more dangerous it is.
Inspiration for our monsters comes from multiple types of medium: video games, comic books, movies, tv shows...
Here are some examples:
Ripper: Necromorph in Dead Space
Boomer:Left 4 Dead
Hunter:Van Helsing
THANK YOU
It's been 1 year, since we launched The Last Spell in Early Access. One year that players helped us shape its future.
To all of you defending the last bastion of humanity, thank you. We couldn't have done it without you.
May your Nights be short.
Love from Ishtar Games
Beta Branch: Changelog 0.97.1.2
BUG FIXES
Fix memory leak (yes the same as the one we already fixed).
Fix of the boomers causing some softlocks.
Fix of the "remaning enemy" count that was wrong sometimes.
Fix a lot of UI bug preventing the player to click on some buttons or displaying wrong tooltips.
