The Balance Update (v.0.9.0) has been moved from the Experimental Branch to the Live Branch and is now available for everyone!
Patch Notes
Given the size of the Patch Notes, we couldn't upload it here on Steam so it is available here on our website.
You can leave your feedback here on Steam, on our Forums or right below this post, but the best way to interact and chat with us about specific issues you're having is on our Discord, so feel free to join in!
About Balance
We've made quite a lot of changes and I believe that it is safe to say that most builds will require at least a bit of adjustments to work properly. And if despite your best effort, you can no longer make your build work and that you feel that it is was unfairly nerfed, then open a topic or join our Discord and politely discuss it.
Migrating a Save File from Experimental to Live
If you've been playing the Experimental Branch and would like to carry your progress over to the Live Branch, there is a small extra step that needs to be done:
Head over to C:/Users//AppData/Local/The_Slormancer and find the save_exp_0_9_1 file, copy it and rename it to save_1 (and erase the previous file).
When you launch The Slormancer, if Steam asks you to choose between the Local and the Cloud file, choose Local.
Profit!
This assumes that you are playing on the Save Slot 1. if not, simply change the numbers accordingly (e.g: Rename save_exp_0_9_2 -> save_2 etc...)
Have fun! Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #41
Hello everyone! Today is Chronicles' day!
The Balance Update
We've been talking about releasing The Balance Update from the Experimental Branch to the Live Branch for a while now, but this is happening on Tuesday, September 10th.
The Balance Update introduced a lot of changes (that you can read in the Patch Notes) and it is now ready to be played by everyone. Since its release on the Experimental Branch, we've made at least a couple of rounds of changes that can be found under the Changelog part.
Altough, we're pretty happy with the changes introduced in this update, especially all the changes regarding New Player Experience, we will continue working on changes and balance during the last months of development prior to the 1.0 Release, and probably long after that.
Price Chance
We've mentioned this once, in our previous Slormite Chronicles: The price of The Slormancer will be increased within the next week (around September 11) and will be changed from $14,99 to $19.99. Prices all around the world will be adjusted accordingly (with a 25% increase roughly).
Considering how the game has grown over the last few years and the amount of playtime that it offers, we feel like it is a fair adjustment. That being said, we intend to push more aggressive discounts during Sales once the game leaves Early Access, so you should always be able to pick it up at a more than reasonable price.
The Warlods Update
It is now time to talk about The Warlords Update.
We've been hard at work these past few weeks to finish the preproduction / brainstorm phase of development. Once the Balance Update hits the Live Branch, we will move on to production, and even if we have quite some work to do, we feel like got better at preproduction and anticipation so it should be a smooth ride (it never is, but hey).
As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, we have 120 new Legendary Effects ready to go. Including Legendary Effects for Slorm Reapers.
We've also been working on 20 new Cataclysms that will be available in Battlefield, The Great Forge and in The Warlords (more on that later). And as we will discuss below, Cataclysms will be an important part of The Warlord, so we will need to make sure that they all are fun and interesting to play around (looking at you Invulnerability shield).
We're also reworking and clarifying Boss Affixes. They will now have a tooltip available during a Boss Fight so that players have a clue of what's going on. We will also be adjusting some of their effects (looking at you, Regeneration Affix creating invulnerable Bosses).
The Warlords The Warlords is our fourth Endgame mode and will be unlocked once you reach the endgame and defeat Pasltrang. And altough, the Third Part of the Adam Nostrus' Trials will be linked to your progression there, it will be available much sooner for players to explore.
The Warlords is an endgame mode that has a progression system and various objectives to complete and bosses (The Warlords) to defeat.
We have numerous sketches of what the menu will look like but nothing final to be shown right now but here's a brief recap:
The goal of this game mode will be to travel to the Kingdom of Ohm Agad (codename "Netherworld") in order to defeat its legions directly on-site and stop its progression into the Kingdom of Adreart. Once there, players will have to defeat the usual enemies as well as their captains, the Warlords.
Progression will take place on a "conquest-type" map with various points to capture and Warlords to defeat. There will be a total of 45 points to conquer and 25 Warlords to defeat (subject to change).
Everything will have a set difficulty (Enemy Level and Wrath Level) so that you should be able to explore the first few areas relatively soon (around Wrath 4) but the latest Warlords will be Level 100 - Wrath 10 beasts.
To attempt to defeat a Warlord, players will need to possess keys and have activated Cataclysms in other areas of the map. Once the conditions are met, the player can access the Warlord. There, they will have to defeat enough enemies to trigger the Warlord and attempt to defeat him.
As mentioned earlier, Cataclysms play a significant role in this game mode. In fact, each Cataclysm will have a new level of difficulty (Warlord Difficulty), and each Warlord will be tied to several Cataclysms that will remain active, at Warlord difficulty, throughout the run.
Moreover, the enemy compositions will always be perfectly synergized with the selected Cataclysms.
For example, a "Multiplication" Cataclysm that adds +1 Projectile to enemies will add +4 in Warlord difficulty, and all enemies in the run will be projectile-throwing enemies, benefiting from this effect.
Players will therefore need to strategize around the Cataclysms and potentially adjust certain parameters of their builds in order to successfully complete these runs.
Basically, everything is a placeholder BUT it can give a rought idea of what's going on.
And although we do not have enough time and resources to recreate multiple environments, we're trying to create "alternative - Netherworld-like" versions of the current Environments.
This is one of our numerous tests for The Graveyard.
Legendary Items Now since we're adding a lot of Legendary Effects, we're aware that it may become tedious to craft the proper Legendary Effect on an Item, and we would like to offer some form of target farming for Legendaries.
Besides defeating a Warlord, you will be able to fight them again (and again) to loot specific Legendary Effects. Every time you defeat a Warlord, all 25 Warlords will be randomly given 8 Legendary Effets that they will be able to loot.
Once you defeat a Warlord, you will get to choose between 3 Legendary Items with 3 of these effects (you will also be able to reroll each item once). So by the time you reach the endgame and are able to kill every Warlord in the game, you should be able to target farm specific Legendary Effects with relative ease.
"Nether Items" For seasoned players, we know that looting Legendary Effects is not the best option and that they'd rather have a Normal or Magic Item with top Pure Stats on which to craft the correct Legendary Effect.
So here's a twist! We're introducing a new type of Legendary Item (see the purple icon on the Warlord screen above) available only against Warlords.
The name is still subject to change but we call them "Nether Items". To loot a Nether Item, you will have to defeat a Warlord and hope for one (or more) of its 3 Legendary Items to be turned into a Nether Item (This chance will be tied to your Influence in that environment).
A Nether Item is:
An Item with an Item Level of at least 101, and up to 120. If looted at Level 101, it can be reforged using Slormandrites of True Potential up to Level 120.
An Item with all Stats already available (Epic Item, with a Legendary Effect, Slorm Reaper, Mastery and Trait stats)
An Item with a greater chance to roll Pure Stats.
An Item with 3 Grafts possibilities.
Graft Possibilities ?! Yes! A Nether Item can be grafted up to 3 Stats (it will replace a stat of your choosing of the same rarity). So first, you will be able to graft Pure Stats from other items directly to a Nether Item (destroying the other item in the process). It means that a Nether Item will be able to hold up to 6 Pure Stats, 3 from its original roll and 3 from the various Grafts.
On top of that, players will be able to graft stats that are not accessible to the Nether Item onto it, such as Grafting Critical Strike Chance from Bracers onto a Nether Helm.
On top-top of that, players will also be able to graft Legendary Effects that are not accessible to the Nether Item either, such as Grafting "Brightsteel Warden" from a Legendary Chest to a Nether Helm.
That's about it for now. We should have much more screenshots of all these mechanics and effects for our next Slormite Chronicles!
Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #40
Hello everyone! It's that day of the month!
The Balance Update
So, as you may have read in previous Slormite Chronicles, we've been monitoring The Balance Update (0.9), currently available on the Experimental Branch, that introduced a LOT of changes (Read the Patch Notes here). Since its release, we've made at least a couple of rounds of changes that can be found under the Changelog part.
We're pretty happy with how everything is turning out and are almost done with Balance changes (at least for this update, of course). This means that The Balance Update will soon hit the Live Branch and will be available to everyone.
I've said this before, but if you want to try the update of The Experimental Branch, it will copy your progress from the Live Branch and you will later be able to keep playing on that save as soon as the Balance Update hits the Live Branch, so you can try it out without losing your progress at any point.
The Final Update
The Final Update, as found in the Road Map, will include:
A new endgame mode: The Warlords.
The end of the Story.
Adam Nostrus' Trials Part III.
The Final Boss.
About 120 Legendary Effects (to get to 200).
A Level Cap increased to 100.
This Update should take us about 2 to 3 months, however this is the update that puts an end to Early Acces and that marks the release of The Slormancer in 1.0. This means that we will have quite a bunch of stuff to do before releasing this update, and the game.
This also includes translating The Slormancer in various languages but more importantly, this includes a big marketing campaign to be sure that we make as much noise as possible when we release the game. This as well, should take a couple of months.
This will be a crucial moment for The Slormancer so we will have to be very careful with how we handle the release and pick a good release window. We have a release date in mind but that's still too early to tell.
While preparing the release, we will also be moving The Final Update to a Closed Beta branch so that it can be thoroughly tested before going on the Live Branch.
Legendary Effects
We've already started working on The Final Update and now have a complete list of 120 new Legendary Items, that now need to be properly implemented into the game.
Unfortunately, they are currently in a huge sheets so I have nothing to screenshoot and share. Here's a quick teaser though: We've added Legendary Effects for each Class so that there is at least one Legendary Effect for each Mechanic / Skill and we've also added about 20 Legendary Effects regarding the Ancestral Legacy.
Now here's something new that we've had in mind for quite a while: We're adding a few Legendary Effects for Slorm Reapers. The idea is to boost some Slorm Reapers that need one or more extra effects to make them work.
Price Change
Now that The Slormancer is almost in its final form, we believe that it is no longer correctly priced and we will increase its price by about 25%, altough we're still not quite sure about the final price yet.
We've had our share of Negative Reviews, and we've had feedback on about every single aspect of the game, yet I don't think we've ever seen a Negative Review regarding the price, which is a great. And despite this increase, we would love to keep it this way.
This change will occur in September after our next Slormite Chronicles. This is only a first notification.
That being said, The Slormancer will be on sales as often as possible, including on its release week so if you haven't bought the game yet, do not feel rushed to buy it now.
That's about it for today! Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #39
Hello everyone!
As you may know, we've just published The Balance Update on the Experimental Branch of The Slormancer. It is the result of a couple of months of work on new player experience, balance and changes.
If you've missed the announcement, it's right here! And if you've missed the Patch Notes, it's right there!
Balancing Balance
Since we published the Patch Notes a few weeks ago, we've been monitoring feedback we got about it and already made a few changes and additions that can be found in the "Changelog" part of the Patch Notes. This includes a few suggestions from our Discord members such as:
Adding a few Quality of Life changes to The Blacksmith.
Adding new options for the Filter-o-Tron.
Adding more options for Raw / Skill Damage.
Now that the update is live, we're still monitoring feedback and plan to make changes and adjustments before releasing the Update on the Live Branch. So please, give it a try and let us know what you think about it.
If you want to jump in The Slormancer, I encourage you to do so on the Experimental Branch, it is now stable enough and introduces many changes to New Player Experience that we would love to get feedback on. And you will be able to keep your save once this Update goes from the Experimental Branch to the Live Branch.
Here's my 100% not biased opinion: I did a complete Playthrough from Level 1 to the end of Adam Nostrus' Trials right before publishing the Update, and everything felt really good, there is much less friction, everything tends to be unlocked at a much faster pace and it doesn't feel as grindy as it used to be.
And this is very important for us, as much as Endgame balance is. After all, most players tend to stop playing after completing the Story-part of any given game, or stop as soon as the game gets stale or repetitive, so we've made a lot of effort to smoothen the experience.
We may not be quite where we want to be regarding Endgame balance but I believe we got Early Game right, or at least, as right as it can be given the current state of the game and the time we have ahead of us.
On this, I'd like to add that we're at a point where the price for perfection is prohibitive. We're working with limited resources and we're not trying to build a competitive environment so as soon as most players feel that they can build whatever they set their mind to in a respectable timeframe, without feeling the need to build the current metabuild, then we will be happy.
We chose to build an ARPG because we love that genre but unlike most others in the market, we're not trying to build a Game As A Service that will last for a dozen of years. So if the game gets stale or if issues regarding balance or content start to arise after 200+ hours of gameplay, we believe that it is acceptable.
That being said, we will keep updating and balancing the game for a few years, just because we enjoy it.
What's next?
We will keep working on Balance for the next month, while brainstorming and finalizing the content for the Final Update but since we've just released new content, we currently have nothing new to share. Once we get endgame balance in a good enough state, we will move the Update to the Live Branch.
And then... After 3+ years of Early Access and about 15+ Updates... We will move onto The Final Update. It will introduce:
A new endgame mode: The Warlords.
The end of the Story.
Adam Nostrus' Trials Part III.
The Final Boss.
About 120 Legendary Effects (to get to 200).
A Level Cap increased to 100.
More on this Update in the next Slormite Chronicles. Meanwhile, please try out The Balance Update in the Experimental Branch!
That's about it! Cheers!
[Experimental Branch] The Balance Update (0.9) is now available
Hello everyone!
The Balance Update (v.0.9.0) is now available on the Experimental Branch!
The Balance Update adds a few new mechanics, balance, reworks and changes regarding New Player Experience and Endgame content so, as mentioned mentioned in previous Slormite Chronicles, we are releasing this Update on the Experimental Branch first.
Given the amount of changes, and despite our best effort to balance it, this update hasn't been playtested enough for it to be released on the Live Branch so we plan to monitor player's feedback and quickly adjust while the game is in the Experimental Branch until we (and you) are satisfied with the game.
You may leave your feedback here on Steam, on our Forums or right below this post, but the best way to interact and chat with us about specific issues you're having is on our Discord, so feel free to join in!
As for GoG users, unfortunately we do not plan on releasing an Experimental version there so you will have to wait a bit until The Balance Update goes live on both platforms.
About Balance
We've made quite a lot of changes and I believe that it is safe to say that most builds will require at least a bit of adjustments to work properly. And if despite your best effort, you can no longer make your build work and that you feel that it is was unfairly nerfed, then open a topic or join our Discord and politely discuss it. The very goal of going to the Experimental Branch first is to keep adjusting and balancing after all.
How to play
To get access to the Experimental Branch, right click on The Slormancer, then: Properties -> Betas -> Beta Participation -> Experimental - Testing Branch.
Once you start The Slormancer, it will make a copy of your save so your progress will carry over to the Experimental Branch. A few changes on The Balance Update (0.9) are not compatible with the current 0.8.5 version of The Slormancer, so if you want to go back to the Live Branch, your progress from the Experimental Branch will NOT carry back to the Live Branch.
That being said, once The Balance Update moves from the Experimental Branch to the Live Branch, your save from the Experimental Branch will be elligible to be carried over.
Have fun! Cheers!
The Balance Update
Hello everyone!
Behold! The Patch Notes for The Balance Update (0.9) is here!
The Balance Update (0.9) itself is not out yet and will be available in a couple of weeks, once we're done with our internal testing and once we're happy with the Patch Notes below.
This is the first version and we'll be happy to read your feedback on it. You can either react below this post or on our Discord.
The Patch Notes is too big to be posted here on Steam so it is hosted on our website.
As you may know, we've been working on a (THE) Balance Update for the past few months. We're a few days away from being done with it and we will be able to start testing all of our changes and reveal the Patch Notes for the 0.9 Update.
We've made A LOT of changes (more on that below) and it is safe to say that we won't be able to cover everything in our testings, this is why we will first reveal the Patch Notes and talk about the changes with the community, and see if we've missed something. We will then release the Update before the end of June in the Experimental Branch of Early Access. It will be available to everyone that wants to access but the game will most likely be quite unstable.
Once we (and you) are happy with the changes, we will move the Update to the public Early Access branch.
But first thing first, the Patch Notes: It should be available around Tuesday next week. It should give us just enough time to proof-read everything and make sure we haven't missed something.
About the Patch Notes
The Patch Notes is about 21 000 character-long. It is about 4-times the size of our largest Slormite Chronicles. And since Steam has a character limit set to 8 000, we've had to host it somewhere else. We will still post the announcement here on Steam and you will be able to react here as well.
It has about 700 Entries about new mechanics, and balance changes.
81 entries for The Mighty Knight.
102 entries for The Fierce Huntress.
121 entries for The Mischievous Mage.
66 entries for the Ancestral Legacy.
23 entries for Attributes.
34 Legendary Effects changed.
38 (out of 72) Slorm Reapers changed.
It has its own Navigation menu, that looks like this:
Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction
Auto-Attacks
Equipment Stats
Legendary Drops
Storage
NPC Unlocks
Slorm and Refunds
Blacksmith Costs
Wrath X Plus
The Slorm Temple
The Great Forge
Affinity and Reaper Runes
Ancestral Might
Masteries
Conversions / Synergies
Various Changes
Slorm Reapers
The Mighty Knight
The Fierce Huntress
The Mischievous Mage
Ancestral Legacy
Attributes
Ultimatums
Reaper Runes
Legendary Effects
If you haven't, I suggest you read our previous Slormite Chronicles #36 and #37 in which we talk about some of the Balance changes that are coming. Here are a few more, that I believe we didn't mention:
In the Legendary Drops Category:
The Chance to drop Legendary Equipment on Battlefield Bosses has been increased by 100%.
Breaches from Battlefield Expeditions now have a chance to drop Legendary Items.
In the Blacksmith Costs Category:
Locking a Stat:
Now costs from 3 → 1 Slormeline of the relevant Rarity.
Unlocking a Stat:
Now costs from 9 → 1 Slormeline of the relevant Rarity.
Now costs a fixed amount of 500 Goldus (instead of 47 787 on a Level 80. Epic Stat).
Epic Stat : Cost has been reduced by about 65% (from 9 557 → 3 186 on a Level 80 Epic Stat).
Epic Score : Cost has been reduced by about 65% (from 4 876 → 1 625 on a Level 80 Epic Stat).
Enough with teasers. The entire Patch Notes is coming next week.
What's next?
Translating The Slormancer Once the Balance Update is live and well, we will have a couple more things to work on to get to the final 1.0 Release. The first one will be to work on translating The Slormancer.
With dialogues, Skills, Slorm Reapers and quite a lot of other things, The Slormancer is currently about 60 000 words long which is getting quite substantial, and we will not be able to afford translating the game to every language. We will most likely get a professional translation for the largest languages and go for a mix of community / AI translation for the smaller ones. No matter what we choose to do, it is now on top of our to-do list.
The Warlords Update We will simultaneously start working on the very last content update called The Warlords Update which will include the end of the Story, a new Endgame mode, the last part of the Trials and quite a few more Legendary Items.
So everything is coming along. The Balance Update took us a bit more than anticipated but we believe it's for the best. It is actually much bigger than we expected but also much more thorough than what we originally shot for, which is good.
This is a pretty short Chronicles as I've put everything I had to say in the Patch Notes. The rest of the reading is coming soon.
So that's about it! Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #37
Hello everyone!
Since the past couple of months, we've been working on a pretty large Balance Update. We've made some great progress but there are still quite a bit of things that we want to change. If you haven't, I suggest you read our previous Slormite Chronicles as I'm going to expand on some of the points that were discussed there.
With this update, our goal is to balance Combat but also Player's Experience to better fit our vision for the game, to modernize some of the mechanics and to work on the most criticized aspects of The Slormancer.
The Patch Notes is getting larger and larger everyday and is substantially bigger than anticipated. We won't be able to cover every entry in our Slormite Chronicles but I'll try to talk about some of the most important points that were not mentioned in our previous one.
Slorm Reapers
Slorm Reaper Mastery Regarding new player's experience, one of the most important issues that we've had to deal with is that getting a Slorm Reaper during leveling is often very underwhelming because of the damage difference between the one you have equipped and the one you just got. It just sets you back to equip it no matter how exciting its new effect is.
The easy solution would be to drop Slorm Reapers at a relevant Level like dropping a Level 25 Slorm Reaper when you are at Level 25 and although we've considered this option, this is something that doesn't feel right. We feel like Slorm Reapers would lose some meaning in the process, and a bit of their identity.
We believe that a Slorm Reaper should always start at Level 1. So here's what we did: We've added a Slorm Reaper Mastery system in The Slormancer that levels up to Level 100 as you level up Slorm Reapers. Slorm Reaper Mastery increases the Reaper Damage of your Slorm Reaper as if it was at the level of your Slorm Reaper Mastery.
Basically, if you equip a Level 1 Slorm Reaper, with a Slorm Reaper Mastery of 75, your newly equipped Slorm Reaper will have its Reaper Damage set to its Level 75 value.
In the following example, my Sword of the Unkillable Berzerker is at Level 1, yet it already deals substantial Damage because my Slorm Reaper Mastery is at Level 100 so I will be able to equip it and level it up on the fly. As I level up, its effect scaling on Reaper Level will increase but most Slorm Reapers have enough non-scaling effects to be immediately viable with the addition of Slorm Reaper Mastery.
I believe that it will be fairly easy and natural and players won't even have to notice its existence.
The Slorm Reaper Mastery will level up about 20% slower than a Slorm Reaper so by the time you reach Level 15 with your first Slorm Reaper, your Slorm Reaper Mastery will be about Level 12.
Now, leveling up Slorm Reapers only level their effects scaling on Reaper Level, but it also does something new, which brings me to my next point.
Primordial Slorm Reapers Primordial Slorm Reapers will no longer be found whenever you reach 42 000 Victims. This process was a bit too tedious and the path of least resistance to reach it was definitely not the most fun.
We've decided to make Primordial Slorm Reapers more accessible because they are a core part of the experience we want to offer with The Slormancer. With this update, reaching Level 100 with a Slorm Reaper will immediately unlock its Primordial Form.
It feels like a much more natural goal to reach that doesn't require the player to chain the notorious "Temppopotamus' Bastion Runs".
Slorm Reapers and Primordial Slorm Reapers Another VERY important change we're making to Slorm Reapers is that their Primordial Form is no longer considered as a new weapon. It is now considered as the other face as the same weapon.
What this means is that a Slorm Reaper and its Primordial Form now share their Experience. So as soon as you unlock a Primordial Slorm Reaper, it will be at Level 100 (by default) and all its previous Evolutions will be immediately unlocked aswell.
After some careful thinking, we believe that there is absolutely no good justification to force the player to Level a Slorm Reaper that he already leveled back up to Level 100, even though it is slightly different. The Primordial Form should feel like one of the greatest rewards the game has to offer, not like a downgrade or a punishment.
As for the Slorm Reaper Affinity, instead of reducing the Victim Cap required to get a Primordial Slorm Reaper, it will now reduce the Level required down to Level 70.
With all those changes, we've decided to increase by about 100% the Experience required to reach Level 100 with a Slorm Reaper. And given the shape of our experience curve, getting a Slorm Reaper to Level 100 today will result in a Level 80 with our upcoming update.
That being said, even though we are changing the experience curve, the Level of your Slorm Reapers will not be lowered by this change and will be adjusted to remain the same. So if you want to get all those sweets Slorm Reapers to Level 100 before the change, now is a good time to do so. :)
Skill Masteries
Skill Mastery is one of our most old-school mechanics I believe. The initial idea was to offer some form of "light reroll". Since the game doesn't offer / encourage class rerolls, we felt that Class Skills could offer that "start from scratch with a different build" feeling that you get when starting a new character on another ARPG. Clearly, this was not properly implemented because I believe no one ever got that feeling from our Mastery system.
We've made a few minor changes during Early Access but it was never enough to fix how tedious it was to gain Mastery. It always ended up in being a chore, or being afk-farmed. Hopefully, the following changes will create a better experience: Masteries will now be based on Kills instead of Casts and all equipped Skill will now gain the same amount of Mastery (so you no longer need to cast Skills you don’t want to cast in a given situation just for the sake of gaining Mastery) and the time to reach Mastery 10 (the last tier of Class Skills) has been reduced.
On top of that, Wrath Levels will now grant Mastery Gains similar to Experience (up to 150%).
And finally, whenever you unlock a new Class Skill, say, Orb of the Arcane Master, at Level 24, some of its Upgrades will already be immediately available so that the Skill is immediately relevant to you. In the case of Orb of the Arcane Master, since it is the last Skill unlocked by the Mischievous Mage, it will already have its first 2 Tiers of Upgrades unlocked, thus needing to reach Mastery 7 to have all of its Upgrades available instead of Mastery 10 for say, Arcane Missile, that is unlocked at Level 1.
Skills and Refunds
We really want The Slormancer to offer easy options to change builds and while our goal was for players to max out all of its Skills and Upgrades so that he could later easily switch his build around, we had to acknowledge that it was not user friendly for new players, and it did not encourage trying out the various unlocked Upgrades at all. And although there is a Refund option allowing to your respec while leveling, it comes with a 10% Cost in Slorm.
So we decided to fully embrace what we wanted and give much easier options for everyone, especially for new players. With this Update, you will now be able to Rank Up or Rank Down an Upgrade directly from the menu with no additional Cost (and get back 100% of your Slorm when Ranking Down). The Refund from Ormos and Oleros will also have no cost and grant you 100% of your Slorm aswell.
This will not make much of a difference if you want to Max out everything, but it should drastically open up your options while leveling, and encourage experimentation because it no longer comes with a cost.
And as you may have noticed, we've made a few changes to the UI. You can now directly click on your Skill bar to equip a Skill.
Wrath Levels
When we first designed Wrath Levels and decided to grant +20 000% Max Life to enemies, it was not intended to be reached. It was an absurdly high value that gave a really hard goal for seasoned players. This was based on some internal testings we've made before the release in Early Access.
What's weird with the current state of Wrath 10 is that it feels too high for us a developers, yet it feels easy (and almost too low) for players. And since it is the Wrath Level that offers the most rewards, it is also the one that everyone aims for.
We would like to slowly change this. First, with this Balance pass, and if we manage to properly remove all the broken or exploitable mechanics, we should get to a healthy state, where Wrath 10 is no longer easily achievable.
With this Update, we will introduce something new for seasoned players called "Wrath X Plus", which will allow players to increase the difficulty even more.
On Battlefield Expeditions only (for now), you will be able to increase the Wrath X Plus difficulty, up to 100. Each level will increase the Wrath 10 Multipliers by 20%. However, the rewards will remain the same. This is just a way to measure how far a build can go, but no longer something that is required to farm in an optimal way.
Hopefully, this is a fun new option for experienced players but ultimately, it will help us adjust the various Wrath Levels from 0 to 10 and the overall experience of the game.
"Wrath X Plus" will allow us to eventually reduce the Wrath 10 multipliers without frustrating players that were already crushing this content, as they will have a harder content to look for.
For now, no changes are coming regarding Wrath 0 to 10. We will add "Wrath X Plus" then carefully observe.
Bonus Point: Storage
Since it has been heaviliy requested, we've added a few additional Storage Stashes. And regarding Storage, your Storage Chest and Legendary Chest will now automatically spawn next to you in The Great Forge when completing a run.
Class Skills
Classes were the very first layer of customization that was added to The Slormancer, probably 6 years ago. And it does feel old and clunky compared to our latest additions. This is what we are currently working on and this is taking longer than anticipated because we really feel like there are a lot of things that needs to be worked on.
I'm not talking about balance, but "basic playability" I think would be appropriate term. Some Skills are barely playable. They are either too slow, or way too uncomfortable to use. As for Upgrades, it often feels like there is one clear option and no meaningful choice to be made.
That's why we're doing our best to get everything to a"playable" state.
Balance Patch: Release Plan
For the Balance Update, instead of uploading the Update once it is ready, we will instead do a couple of intermediate steps prior to the release:
Uploading the Patch Notes: We will start by uploading the Patch Notes once it is ready so that we can discuss it with the community and make sure that we're not breaking something up or missing out on something else, at least on paper.
Experimental Branch: Exceptionally, we will upload the Balance Update on the Experimental Branch for at least a couple of weeks, to be sure that everything is properly working and that, again, we're not actually breaking something up or actually missing out on something else.
Actual Release: Once the Update has been validated by the community and properly tested, it will move on to the Live branch.
That's about it! There's no release date for now but we'll get there eventually (can I be more vague, I'm not sure...)
Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #36
Hello Everyone!
Since the Encyclopedia Update that introduced the Codex, Achievements and Performance Updates, we've been working on the 0.9 Update, called the "Balance Update".
This update will introduce a LOT of fixes, changes, and balance to The Slormancer to get it ready for the last content Updates and for the 1.0 release. We're getting close!
This Balance Update is pretty much a community update since it involves making changes to all the points raised by the community over the last three years that we felt were relevant. That's a lot of things to rework and sort out but balance has been neglected for most of our Early Access so it is now time to address it.
One giant trap at this stage of development would be to try to rework too many points and/or too deeply. This is something we did before early access and it took us nearly a year. Therefore, we need to sort out what needs to be reworked and what, despite being imperfect, is part of the charm of the game. After all, we have a game that feels solid in many aspects but can seem a bit rough around the edges in others.
Below, I'll list all the changes that you can expect from the Balance Update. They are divided in two major categories: Balancing the Experience and Balancing Combat.
Balancing the Experience
The Slormancer can be a tedious game. This is something that we've had to ackowledge to move forward. Most mechanics and features come with a downside that can heavily harm the fun that was initially intended. Here are a couple of examples, but if you've played the game, I'm sure that you've experienced the feeling:
Whenever a players loots a Slorm Reaper (say, its first, around Level 10), he should be nothing but super excited to discover and equip its new weapon however, it is unplayable because of the level difference with its current Slorm Reaper.
Whenever a player finally unlocks its first Primordial Slorm Reaper, after sweating on that 40k+ victims, he should be thrilled, yet it is unusable for at least another couple of hours or so of grind to get it back to a relevant level.
Whenever a player unlock its first NPCs, he should be super excited to find out about all the fancy features that the game is made of, but no, he first has to pay a substantial amount of Goldus to unlock these features.
I could go on about other mechanics that work in a similar way where we ended up turning an experience that should be full of fun into something tedious and ultimately, disappointing.
We've always wanted for The Slormancer to be a game where you can easily create and experience new builds on the fly, yet somehow it sometimes feels like the game is actively preventing you to.
I'm not going to go into details about how we're about to change what has been detailed above just because everything is still subject to change but these issues will no longer exist. We're moving back and forth with our solutions because although some of the issues may seem easy to resolve, or have been resolved in a certain way by other games, the solution has to fit the greater picture, and that includes all of our upcoming changes.
We're also going to remove or change mechanics that can be bypassed by cheesing the game. You can expect a complete rework of Masteries that will no longer require you to afk-farm and / or mind-numbingly afk-cast Skills to get Mastery points. Same goes for the Temppopotamus' Bastion runs to get those Primordial Slorm Reapers, though it is important to mention that we are not going to prevent these runs, but simply change the prerequisite to get a Primordial Slorm Reaper to something more fun and natural.
Basically, we know that we have really exciting features but we now need to get rid of the unnecessary tediousness that breaks the fun for some players.
Generally speaking, the time to access to horizontal features such as new Slorm Reapers, new Legendary Items, new Class Upgrades and Passives, will be reduced and the content easier to access.
Balancing Combat
There's a lot of things to say about Combat but I'll try to keep it short and on point.
Reworks
There are a few major reworks that are coming up that will impact all classes and how the game is played:
Attack Speed: We're going to rename the current Attack Speed stat to what it is: Cooldown Reduction. Then we're going to add a proper Attack Speed stat to the game that will be used to reduce the animation time of the Skills you cast.
This Attack Speed stat will be found on Equipment and on the various layers of the game.
Cooldown Reduction: Currently, Cooldown Reduction (the current Attack Speed) is a necessary stat for every build because it is a quick and efficient way to increase your overall DPS and to add comfort and ease of use.
We are first going to drastically reduce the need for Cooldown Reduction by reducing the Cooldown of most Class Skills (more on that below).
But we are also going to reduce the Cooldown Reduction that can be found in the various layers of the game. And most importantly reduce its presence on Equipment. With the proper Equipment, you can reach +66% Cooldown Reduction (Attack Speed) on a single stat roll which is too damn high!
Class Skills and Ancestral Legacy Skills: As I've mentioned above, we will greatly reduce the Cooldown Time of most Class Skills so that they are much more comfortable to use without the need to reduce their Cooldown.
This will also lead in more contrasted Cooldowns as we, with a proper Attack Speed, currently either have 0.1 second Cooldown Time on Primary / Secondary Skills and 1 second Cooldown Time on greater Ancestral Skills that have a 60-second base Cooldown Time.
Skill / Elemental Damage Ratios: Currently, The Slormancer doesn't encourage damage hybridation even though this was the intended behavior. You either build Elemental Damage through conversions and / or by playing the Mage or you simply don't. The Mighty Knight lacks the proper options to use Elemental Damage whereas The Mischievous Mage is strongly encouraged to build around it because both the Ancestral Legacy and his Class Kit benefit from it.
The first thing that we need to change to encourage hybridation is to grant Elemental Damage to everyone, through leveling, but also through the Ancestral Legacy Tree.
We are introducing a new mechanic to the Ancestral Legacy: You will now gain Elemental Damage for every Upgrade you've purchased on the Ancestral Legacy Tree, whether it is equipped or not. This both acts as a way to grant Elemental Damage to everyone but also as a Slorm Sink that is, even though limited, quite large.
As for The Mischievous Mage, the Skill / Elemental Damage ratios will be changed for something more similar to the other classes. He will keep Elemental Damage ratios on Skills because we like the asymmetry that it creates. They will simply be reduced so that, as expected, Skills deal Skill Damage and Elemental Effects deal Elemental Damage.
Conversions: A longstanding issue we've had is how we manage the numbers coming from synergies / conversions. An issue called "double dipping", because a Flat Value gained from a Synergy is added to the stat before Percent Increases and Multipliers. So if you keep converting that value, say from Evasion to Armor to Mana to Life, then that value is inheriting the Percent Increases and Multipliers of every conversion that it goes through. By building it properly, you can quickly reach gigantic numbers that were not intended.
We're basically going to remove the double dipping. With the 0.9 Update, conversions will now be added on top of the final value. So instead of having ((Added Flat + Conversion) * Percent * Multiplier) for each stat, it will become (Added Flat * Percent * Multiplier) + Conversion.
This feels like the healthier option even though we might lose some of the fun there is in finding these chains.
Balance
Besides the larger reworks, we are also adjusting and fine tuning every layer that's available in The Slormancer. As I've mentioned above, it would be a trap to rework every Skill, Reaper or Legendary that is in the game so we are prioritizing the things that need to be changed and / or deeply reworked and the things that only need a bit of fine tuning.
But we are going through everything. And everything includes:
Equipment and Stat Rolls
Attributes
Class Skills, Upgrades, Specialisations and Mechanics
Slorm Reapers
Ancestral Legacy
Legendary Effects
Ultimatums
Reaper Runes
Elite Affixes & Cataclysms
The Great Forge Rewards
Given the cheer amount of changes that is coming up, I'm writing the Patch Notes as I go, and boy, it is going to be a long one.
That's about it for today! We're making good progress but it is not yet possible to give a release date for the 0.9 Update.
Stay tuned. Cheers!
Hotfix 0.8.0j
Hello! Don’t mind me, I’m just fixing a few minor bugs.
This issue with the various Passives and Upgrades stacking up everytime you come back to the Village or Load your Save has been resolved.
The following Achievements should now work properly:
Ancient Slorm Siphoner
Legendary Object Collection
Legion, Reaper of Unity should now target properly and display the correct sprites.
