For those who haven't been following the latest Slormite Chronicles, we're in the final stretch before release. We are currently preparing the last update of the Early Access phase, leading to the official launch.
This is the most crucial stage for The Slormancer, so we’re doing everything we can to ensure the best possible release and that as many players as possible are there for launch. This is one of the reasons why we had to postpone the opening of the Experimental Branch, which was originally planned for the end of February.
Experimental Branch
In the last Slormite Chronicles, we announced that the game's Experimental Branch would open around the end of February, allowing players to test the 1.0 version before its final release.
Unfortunately, we’ve decided to go back on that decision and postpone the opening of the Experimental Branch so that it is closer to the game's actual release date. The planned release date for The Slormancer hasn't changed, but the Experimental Branch will open a bit later to ensure that the game works perfectly for everyone.
We sincerely apologize for making an announcement and then changing course. We took the time to weigh the pros and cons of opening the Experimental Branch too early, and we believe that to maintain the momentum and hype we hope to build around the launch in the coming weeks, it would be much more effective not to start distributing the final version of the game via an Experimental Branch.
To go into more detail, the way Steam works—and how players decide whether a game is worth buying—is directly linked to the number of sales, the number of reviews, and the number of active players at any given time.
If players buy the game following the launch of the 1.0 version on the Experimental Branch, play it, and don’t return for the official release, we lose out on the snowball effect.
We also believe that opening an Experimental Branch to everyone isn’t necessary. Instead, a closed beta with a few dozen players, which will begin soon, should be sufficient.
I believe we made the right decision for the game, but not necessarily the best one for players eager to try this version. Once again, we’re sorry for this change—we should have thought everything through before announcing the Experimental Branch.
Work in Progress
The last Slormite Chronicles have been relatively difficult to write. We understand the anticipation for a release date that we still can’t share, as well as the desire for new information. Unfortunately, we've already revealed all the new features of the game in previous Slormite Chronicles.
Not much seems to be happening on the surface, but we’re still making progress toward the release!
We’re currently waiting for translations to be finalized. The translation teams have given us a deadline, and everything is in progress and should be ready soon.
On our end, we’re working on the game’s marketing. We’re revamping the Steam page, which will be updated soon. We want a more eye-catching banner, an updated trailer showcasing the new features, as well as the addition of GIFs and decorations to enhance the page overall. After all, it’s the game's main storefront.
We’ve neglected marketing throughout Early Access, so it’s time to make up for lost ground. The Steam page hasn’t been updated since the start of Early Access, despite the many things we’ve added to the game.
From a development standpoint, the game is ready—or at least, it will be once we’ve integrated the feedback from the beta—but the release itself isn’t quite there yet.
I’ll wrap up this section with two quotes that perfectly apply to game development:
"The first 90% of development accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% accounts for the other 90% of the development time."
"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."
The Warlords Update
We’ve already talked about these mechanics in previous Slormite Chronicles, but I’d like to share some additional teasers from my own playthrough.
The final gameplay loop takes place in The Netherworld. There are 45 Cataclysm Expeditions, where the goal is to close enough breaches to complete the Expedition.
The Cataclysms used are in their "Warlord" version and at their highest difficulty level, meaning players regularly need to add or adjust stats in our build to mitigate their effects.
Additionally, all Breaches in The Netherworld are in their Cataclysmic version, progressively adding new Cataclysms throughout the Expedition.
Once a Cataclysm is completed, it unlocks higher-difficulty Cataclysms. And once all necessary Cataclysms for facing a Warlord have been completed, it becomes possible to challenge them.
During the Expedition against Cinderolis The Fireborn, five Warlord Cataclysms will be active at all times: Fire Strike, Fire Rage, Floor is Lava, Endless Fire, and Equilibrium.
Once defeated, the player will be able to choose from three Legendary and/or Nether-rarity items.
We’ve done a lot of internal playtesting for this update. And even after all these years of development, I’m still having as much fun—if not more—than before. I hope you have as much fun as we do when the 1.0 update is available.
That's about it for now! Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #46
Hello everyone!
Welcome to this month' Slormite Chronicles! As we get closer to the release, it gets harder to talk about new and exciting content because we've already covered what The Final Update (1.0) will be about in previous Slormite Chronicles (#41, #42, #43 and #44). The development of The Slormancer is almost over. We're making a few tweaks, adding a few assets here and there and that's about it. We've shifted toward marketing the game and catching as much attention as we can until the release.
We have a release window in mind but we won't be able to talk about it right now. So except from that, I'll try to be as transparent as possible with how things are going:
Playtesting The Final Update
With 120+ new Legendary Items, Nether Equipment, a new Endgame mode and new Cataclysms coming up, we have to make sure that The Final Update is as good and as bugfree as it can be. For this reason, we will be opening up The Experimental Branch by the end of February for everyone to try this update. Stay tuned!
Changes and Fixes
Let's start with the game itself. We've been making a small balance pass regarding the biggest complaints from the community that resulted in the following changes:
The Great Forge ! Being defeated in The Great Forge will now cause you to lose all multipliers and War Chests bonuses but you will get to loot your War Chest anyway.
This is a big change, but we can definitely agree that losing in The Great Forge can be really painful so we feel like it's for the best.
Achievements Some of the initial values on Achievements were too damn high! So we're adjusting those.
Elite Slayer Rank 5 has been reduced from 100 000 to 10 000.
Equipment Finder Rank 5 has been reduced from 100 000 to 2 500.
Achievements requiring you to complete X Floors in a specific Environment have been reduced at rank 5 from 1 000 to 250.
Potential Potential gets increasingly harder when an Item reaches high levels of Reinforcement to a point that it farming to get Potential is no longer a viable option. For this reason, players often bypass Potential by using currencies.
This is fine but we would like for the farming option to be much more viable. As much we've made a few adjustments to the Potential curve resulting in a reduction of about 85% for an Item with a Reinforcement Level of 15.
We've been making other changes and will probably make a few more before the release. These have been the changes we've been working on this month.
Advertising The Slormancer
This is something that we haven't been doing a lot during Early Access but that is necessary to spread the word. We've started publishing content on various platforms. If you wish to, you can follow us on:
We're also working on various materials to give our Steam Page a fresh look, such as an updated Trailer or a new Thumbnail Image.
Localization
We're currently working with a publisher to translate the game in various languages. We've stated this before, The Slormancer is pretty heavy when it comes to word count, so translations can get quite expensive so we have to carefully pick the languages we want.
Right now, we've been using the number of Wishlists we have in every language to determine the highest demands. The Slormancer will be availabe at launch in the following languages:
English
French
Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Japanese
German
Spanish
Russian
Depending on how the release goes and how our sales and wishlists evolve, we will try to progressively add new languages to The Slormancer. If you would like to help us translate the game in a language that is not in the list above, please contact us and we will try to work something together.
Console Release
On top of that, we're working to get The Slormancer on consoles (PS5, Switch and X-Box X for now). We're not looking for a simultaneaous release for PC and consoles, but it's on the way!
That's about it for now! Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #45
Happy New Year everyone!
Same as last year (and the year before that), this Chronicle will be a recap of the past year. We actually really wanted for 2024 to be the year of our release in 1.0 but as always, everything took more time than anticipated and we knew early on that we weren't going to make it.
If the Final Update wasn't leading to the 1.0 Release, we could have managed to sneak it in 2024 since it is mostly done, but preparing for our release requires much more than just being done with development, so we had to delay it.
A Year of Chronicles: 2024 Edition
Fun fact: You may not know this but we publish the Slormite Chronicles devlog every 6th of the month, which is the day The Slormancer was released (on April 6, 2021). Everytime we publish a Slormite Chronicles, the game gets one month older, and it is currently 3 years and 9 months old.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3991945238789013200 We started the year with The Slorm Reapers Update, introducing 68 new Slorm Reapers, and getting the number of available Slorm Reapers to our target of 120. This was definitely no easy task.
Fun fact 2: 6 or 7 years ago, a friend of us (the composer, actually) was playtesting an early version of the game, that had about 10 to 15 Slorm Reapers (in a very rough form), and he told us that Slorm Reapers were super fun to find, collect and upgrade and that we should have more. And for some reason, I said "Ok cool, let's go with 120" without giving it a second thought. Considering how big of a task creating a single one often, and how small our team is, it was slightly too much. No regrets though, it's actually one of the aspects of the game we're the most proud of.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4031353167277495724 Then, we introduced our 2024 Roadmap, leading to The Final Update. We anticipated 3 Updates to get to The Final Update, and it turned out to be accurate (still missing that last Update though).
The Slormite Chronicles #35 led to The Encyclopedia Update (0.8), introducing a few key elements: Achievements, a Codex and proper tutorials, and MASSIVE Performance enhancements.
During this Update, we've also prepared a few things that are still not available: Steam Cards, Profile Frames and Steam Achievements. Everything will be available for the 1.0 launch though.
Slormite Chronicles #36, #37 and #38 mostly talk about Balance since it was a very important focus of the year 2024. We actually started brainstorming around March and quickly started talking about upcoming changes in Slormite Chronicles. The feedback we got has helped us getting in the right direction tremendously.
We then published The Balance Update on The Experimental Branch to further polish it. I've said it then, and I'll say it again here: Going through Experimental was a great experience, it involves much less stress than going straight to the Live Branch.
Everything gets to be properly tested, and if something is not working properly, players can always go back to Live Branch so I'm never in a stressful emergency situation, having to quickly debug and patch something preventing most players to play.
Finally, the last 4 Slormite Chronicles of the year were about me talking about our work on The Final Update: creating a new endgame mode called The Warlords, Legendary Items, Nether Items, an epic Boss Fight, among other things. You should read them if you haven't.
Next month, we should be able to talk about our Roadmap for 2025 and beyond the release. There's unfortunately not much more to announce today since there are still a few blurry things to figure out.
That's about it for now! Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #44
Welcome to The Slormite Chronicles #44!
If you've missed the last Slormite Chronicles, here's a brief recap of where we're at: We're almost done with the development part of The Slormancer. Last month, we had the missing 120 Legendary Effects to deal with, along with the final boss fight. As of last week, we're done with Legendary Effects and we are about a week away from being done with the final fight.
So we're making solid progress.
Once we're done with this, we'll have a bunch of testing and debugging to do until everything feels good enough to go into 1.0. At the same time, we're working on verifying texts and get going on the various translations we want for The Slormancer, along with reworking the Chinese translation whose flaws are no longer in doubt.
"Ok kewl, release date wen ?"
Releasing The Slormancer and making sure that it catches as much attention as we think it deserves will be a real challenge, and it will require time and preparation. This is something that we cannot afford to rush.
On top of that, we're working with various partners to release the game on different platforms and in as many languages as we can, so we have to get a green light from everyone.
If everything goes our way, and given what needs to be done, we should be able to release the game around late-Q1 2025.
New Legendary Items
Back to what we've been working on: Legendary Effects! We've added 120 Effects to get to a total of 200.
We now have about 20 Legendary Effects for each slot so it should introduce more options to some of the weakest slots. And as you may have read in a previous Slormite Chronicles, the new Nether rarity will allow you to Graft Effects from a slot to another, so you can get that sweet Indomitable Mountain effect on Boots if you want to.
There is now at least one Legendary Effect for each Class Skill, Support Skill and Class Mechanic, so that's about 15 Legendary Items that are specific to a class. Then about 27 Legendary Effects for the Ancestral Legacy tree. And finally, we've added 12 Legendary Effects for Slorm Reapers.
Without further ado, here are some teasers! (Right-Click to enlarge, otherwise it's unreadable sorry)
Ohm Agad, The Slormancer
I can't share a lot right now. But let's just say that he too is waiting for the final release.
That's about it for today! Merry Christmas everyone and see you in 2025!
Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #43
Welcome to The Slormite Chronicles #43!
Since our last Slormite Chronicles, we've been working on the remaining features that we want to have in The Slormancer for the 1.0 release. Here's our monthly recap of our current progress with The Warlords Update (The 1.0 Update!).
What's Done
The Warlords endgame mode is now complete and playable from start to finish. We've added about 20 new Cataclysms to The Slormancer, 25 Warlords Bosses for the player to challenge and a fancy new map to navigate the mode.
Since the last Slormite Chronicles, we've added unique skins to each Warlord. And even though, each Warlord is based on an enemy that's already in the game, we wanted to add that unique "filled with raw slorm strength" look to each of them.
We've also been working on Environments and tried to offer a different experience than the regular Battlefield Expeditions. The goal is to create a "Nether / Parallel Universe" kind of feeling, and it looks like this:
The Menu has also been finalized and we've added various info and tooltips regarding Loot during Warlords Expeditions.
About Warlords Drops: As mentioned in a previous Slormite Chronicles, you will be able to target-farm specific Legendary Items by defeating the corresponding Warlord. With 200 Legendary Items in The Slormancer, and 25 Warlords, each Warlord will be attributed 8 Legendary Items that it will be elligible to drop once you defeat him.
The attribution changes everytime you defeat a Warlord, so you will have to fight a different Warlord if you didn't get the Legendary Item that you wanted.
Once you defeat a Warlord, you will get to open a Chest with a Choice:
On the screenshot above, you can see that the player has a choice between 3 different Legendary Items that were elligible to loot on this Warlord. The player will also be able to reroll each slot (once) for a copious amount of Slorm (that we will adjust if necessary).
This means that once a player has cleared The Netherworld and is able to defeat every Warlord, it should be relatively easy to target-farm specific Legendary Effects.
Now onto Nether Equipment! As you may have noticed on the screenshot above, there is a new Equipment Rarity called Nether, that we've talked about in a previous Slormite Chronicles.
Nether Equipment can only be found when defeating a Primordial Warlord (A Level 100, Wrath 10 Warlord). On the screenshot above, the Chance to get a Nether Equipment is displayed and is currently about 25% and is be increased by your Influence in the current Environment.
Nether Equipment can be increased up to Level 120 and can be Grafted Stats and Legendary Effects from other Equipments. This means that you will be able to add Stats and Legendary Effects that were not available in this slot.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I have a Nether Amulet with a Legendary Cloak Effect.
You will be able to Graft up to 3 Stats and / or Legendary Effects to a Nether Item, and all of this will be available with Friedrich, the Blacksmith, as usual.
Miscellaneous (yet important) stuff We've added our final Achievements regarding The Warlords Expeditions before the 1.0, we've also added all the missing tutorials and wrote the final dialogues leading to an epic conclusion! We've also added Part III of the Trials and unlocked the remaining Slorm Reapers and these are preeetty strong.
The 1.0 is getting closer and closer!
What's Missing
We're now only missing exactly two elements to get to the end of development:
The Final Boss Fight agains Ohm Agad, that I will continue working on as soon as I post this Chronicle.
The 120 Legendary Effects that are missing to get to 200. It is not so dauting as it seems because, we already have everything layed out and planned, I have the texts, names and tooltips ready, so we're just talking about coding the Effects.
So we're definitely getting closer than ever to our 1.0 release. Now, I've mentioned before and I'll say it again: once we get to the end of development, we won't be immediately releasing The Slormancer out of Early Access. We will work on translating the game, playtesting it, refining it, along with trying to catch as much attention as we can before the release.
So we're almost done, but not quite there yet.
That's about it for today! Cheers everyone!
Slormite Chronicles #42
Hello everyone! Welcome to The Slormite Chronicles #42!
Since the last Slormite Chronicles, we've published The Balance Update on the Live Branch and it got a great reception considering the huge amount of changes that's been made.
Taking the time to polish the Balance Update on the Experimental Branch for a couple of months to fix and balance a bunch of things that we've missed or overlooked was definitely the way to go, and a much smoother release experience for us. And this is something that we will want to reproduce.
And as mentioned, we've also increased the price from $14.99 to $19.99. That being said, as soon as we reach the end of Early Access, we will move on to bigger sales than our usual 20%. So if you're waiting for a good opportunity to get into The Slormancer, just wait a little longer.
The Final Update and leaving Early Access
I've seen a couple of questions regarding our next update, so I'll try to clarify it here: The Warlords Update will be our Final Early Access Update and will actually be released as part of our 1.0 Release. This means that everything that is currently waiting on our Road Map will be added for this Update. This includes:
The Final Boss
A Level Cap increased to 100
Part III of Adam Nostrus' Trials
The Warlords Endgame Mode
The Influence System
A total of 200 Legendary Items
And of course, quite a bit of bug fixes and balance changes. And on top of that, a proper translation for about 8-10 additional languages along with completing the ones that are already in the game.
The downside is that we will also prepare our release with quite a bit of marketing so it will take some time to get everything done, but now that we're so close to the end, we really don't want to mess things up!
The Warlords
As mentioned in our latest Slormite Chronicles, we've been working on The Warlords, our final endgame mode. We want it to be a mode with a great sense of progression, instead of the usual "Difficulty Climb" that we've offered.
So the first thing we had to craft was a nice and fancy menu to display said progression. In The Warlords mode, the player will actually move on to The Slormancer's realm and defeat its armies and Warlords right there. It's currently called "The Netherworld" as I've yet to find a funky word with "Slorm" in it for this place.
The Menu currently looks like this (as always, everything is subject to change):
Since we went for a map / conquest kind-of design, you will be able to open it in a larger window:
There currently are 45 Cataclysm Runs and 25 Warlords Runs.
You will only have to defeat Cataclysm Runs once to unlock said Cataclysm in its highest Difficulty setting (called "Warlord" difficulty). And to challenge a Warlord, you will have to unlock its Cataclysms to try and defeat him.
Every Run has a set Enemy Level and Wrath Difficulty, yet we want it to be accessible right after the end of the story so the difficulty will start quite slow and increase gradually. Once you've defeated the entire Netherworld, you will get access to The Primordial Netherworld.
In The Primordial Netherworld, everything is set on the highest difficulty (Enemy Level 100, Wrath 10), but this is where the loot table of The Warlords get really interesting.
About the loot tables: Warlords have a set loot table (displayed on the Warlords menu) that is randomized everytime the player completes a Warlord run, so you will never have to defeat the same Warlord 10 times in a row if you're looking for a particular item.
When defeating a Warlord, you will get to choose between 3 Legendary Items from its loot table. But if you've defeated a Primordial Warlord, you will have a chance to get Nether Items instead (more on that in our previous Slormite Chronicles).
New Cataclysms
To get to 45 Cataclysm Runs, we've had to add 15 new Cataclysms to The Slormancer. They've been implemented and offer quite a fresh experience. As mentioned before, we've also been reworking the most unfun Cataclysms of the game.
For instance, Invulnerability now grants a great amount Shield every few seconds, instead of complete Invulnerability, so players have a chance to actively destroy it.
Here are a few screenshots of the new ones: Endless Fire casts a neverending Fireball that is constantly following you.
Seals of Blindness reduce your Line of Sight when you walk over one.
Shadow Clones let enemies cast one or more attacks once they die.
That's about it for today! Cheers everyone and see you in the next one!
The Balance Update is now available!
Hello everyone!
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!
