The Royal Wing has been added to the game and can be accessed through Battlefield Expeditions. This is NOT a new Act. It will come in a later update.
New Legendary Chest
A New Storage Stash has been added to the game and allows you to store up to 1 of each Legendary item that can be found in The Slormancer.
Changes:
Battlefield Expeditions: You can now choose between:
Battlefield Journey: Random and everchanging Environment. Boss Events.
Careful Examination: Chosen Fixed Environment. No Boss Events.
Super Elites
Super Elites have been removed from regular Battlefield Floors.
Super Elites have been reworked and are now Bosses during Battlefield Journey Expeditions.
Various:
"The Great Maze" mission has been changed and now have regular fights along the way.
The Jetlag Cataclysm has been renamed to "Invulnerability" to match its current effect.
The "Head of the Syndicate" mission no longer has the Jetlag Cataclysm.
Bugs:
The Mighty Knight:
Whirlwind should now work properly with Reaper of Vindictive Slam.
Voracious Swing should now work properly with the "To Each his own" Cataclysm and with the Obelisk of Revocation.
The Fierce Huntress:
The Force Transmission + Elemental Sorcerer loop should now be fixed.
Fountain of Malady now reads: "While Delighted, you can now Leech Life with Poison Damage and have an additional +3.5% Life Leech on Poison Damage." instead of "While Delighted, you have +3.5% Life Leech on Poison Damage."
Fountain of Malady should now work properly with the "To Each his own" Cataclysm and with the Obelisk of Revocation.
The Mischievous Mage:
Chrono-Burst should now properly deal its damage to the enemy that triggered it.
Chrono-Burst should now trigger properly with the new Leech mechanic.
Empowered Rift Nova should now work properly with Supreme Rift.
Legendaries:
Ancestral Champions' Present should no longer display Ancestral Gifts that are currently not available in Early Access.
Battlefield Mantle (The Mischievous Mage) should no longer trigger when inside Bryan's Seal of Protection.
Spectral Sight should now grant you the proper Pierce Chance.
Various:
Starting an Optional Misison to unlock a new Hero then immediately leaving the game should no longer your Material Tab and Shared Stash to disappear.
You should now properly lose the Stun status when leaving a Boss Room while being Stunned for cinematic purposes.
Elite Life Bars should no longer show negative values.
Slorm Temple Shrine animation should now be played at the correct speed.
NPC moving during cinematics should now walk at the correct speed.
Fixed a few typos.
Slorm Reapers:
Animations from Vindictive Slam's Holy Ground should now be played at the correct speed.
Enemies:
Suffering Soul's visual FX should now be consistant with FPS.
Controller:
Reaper Damage and Skill Damage should now properly display their Tooltip when hovering.
Talking to an NPC should no longer prevent you to then navigate the Slorm Reapers menu (and a couple of other buttons).
Changing Font Sizes with a Controller with Simplified Chinese displayed should no longer crash the game.
If you find a bug, please report it below or on our Discord. Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #24
Hello everyone!
The Royal Wing Update is almost ready, and it will be available next week! Today also marks the 2-year anniversary of The Slormancer's Early Access! Two years of Updates, Patches, and Chronicles!
The Royal Wing Update, Part I
We've been talking about upcoming content in our latest Chronicle, so I'll only briefly recap what has been said and move on: The Royal Wing Update, Part I comes with a new environment called "The Royal Wing" (duh) and 5 new enemies, tied to that environment.
Oh, and it will be availble on April 11th!
Now, we've been working on a couple of new exciting stuff that will be available with this update:
Battlefield Expedition Changes
As you can see in the screenshot above, we've added a couple of choices to Battlefield Expeditions.
We wanted to fix different issues we've been having with Battlefield Expeditions:
Playing in the same environment over and over gets boring, especially when you've been dealt with an environment you don't really like.
Battlefield Expeditions lack special events / changes of pace.
If you wish to play in a specific environment, you have to fish for the correct environment by entering/leaving Battlefield Expeditions until you get the one you want.
For the same reason, once we introduce the Influence feature tied to Environments, players will want to farm in specific environments, so this has to be doable.
Now, you will get to "Choose your Adventure":
You can either choose the Battlefield Journey which is the default option. "Random and Everchanging Environment. Boss Events." If you choose "Battlefield Journey", you will get to face a boss every few floors (with appropriate loot :o). We've been working on a nice staging, similar to the one we've made for Story Bosses: The entire floor is dedicated to the Boss fight, just you and him.
Once you've dealt with the boss, the Expedition will then continue on a different environment so it never gets boring.
Or you can choose the Careful Examination option. This alternative allows you to choose the Environment you want to venture in. However, you will face no bosses and the environment will, obviously, never change.
This comes with a change: Super Elites that you could sometimes find in Battlefield Expeditions can no longer be found in a regular Expedition floor. We felt that they didn't have the set-up they deserved and were not noticeable enough to cause the change of pace we wanted them to cause.
So we've actually been working from what we had with these Super Elites and turned them into the Battlefield Journey Bosses mentioned above. The changes we've made should hopefully create more epic/memorable fights.
The Legendary Chest
This is step 1 of the "Loadouts & Smart Stashes" line from our Early Access Road Map. We're introducing a new Storage Chest where you will be able to store one of each Legendary item available in The Slormancer.
We really like collectible stuff so it felt like the most natural option for The Slormancer. And since we plan to have about 200 Legendary items for the 1.0 release, it was almost mandatory to add more storage options. And depending on how much it is needed, we will eventually increase the number of basic stashes later on.
Two years of Early Access
This is a particular milestone because we originally planned to get from Early Access to the 1.0 within two years. Well... We were wrong. Very very wrong.
For the purpose of the Steam Q&A about Early Access that you can read on our Steam Page, we had to give an estimate of how much time we expected our Early Access to last. In which we said "About 2 years".
I believe that we were expecting to have no issues whatsoever, no bugs or setbacks, and less sales (so less feedback to manage). Let's call it optimistic ignorance.
If you've been eagerly waiting for the 1.0 release of the game, then sorry for being optimistic ignorants. We'll do better.
As of right now, we will soon update the Q&A with an honest (yet desappointing) release date answer: We don't know. We have a release date in mind, but we don't trust our own prediction anymore. We would love to get to 1.0 before that date, but we've been reminded many times that developing a game takes time. So we will keep that date to ourselves. I think it's too optimistic anyway :).
On the bright side, we're making good and tangible progress and our to-do list never felt so small and manageable. We still have lots of things to work on, but we can see the end. It's far. But we can see it.
The goal always was to get the best possible game. We know that The Slormancer has the potential to be much more than it currently is. So we'll try our best not to waste it.
That's about it! Thanks for reading! See you on April 11 for the release of The Royal Wing Update!
The Tech Update (v.0.5.02)
Hello everyone!
As discussed in our latest Slormite Chronicles, I've been working on various aspects of how the Controller behaves, both in menus and in game. Both were causing some frustration and a rework was much needed.
This update introduces major changes to our controller support but I also took the chance to work on other technical and / or quality of life features so everyone has something to look for in this update. So here goes!
Controller Rework
Controller Aim Assist: Reworked the Auto-Aim system to be much more efficient. The Auto-Aim should now accurately follow the direction of the ground cursor. The Auto-Aim should no longer aim for enemies behind walls. As a result, switching between targets should be much MUCH easier.
When moving with the Left Stick, the system should aim for pretty much any relevant target nearby in front of you. When using the Right Stick, you will be able to more accurately pick a direction FROM the enemy currently being targetted. If you don't like that behavior, I've also added two other options for you to choose from:
"Aim Assist" Setting: Added an Aim Assist Setting with 3 options:
Auto Aim: (Default option) Use the Right Stick to navigate between targets.
Semi-Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. Your aim will adjust to a relevant target in the direction you're aiming.
Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. No Help.
Toggle "Aim Assist": Added a Bindable Option called "Toggle Aim Assist" that I encourage you to set to R3 (R3 used to be Toggle Enemy Life Bars by default): Toggle Aim Assist will switch from your chosen Aim Assist setting to "Free" and back to your previous choice when you press R3 again.
Visual Feedback
A Locked Target will now glow with a more distinct stroke and the back of its lifebar will change.
When a Target is locked, the ground cursor will change color.
User Interface: The Left stick can now be used to move a newly added cursor around menus and select any button or hover over any kind of tooltip. This should make the navigation much MUCH smoother.
I've also fixed a couple of weird behaviors:
Ancestral Tree Menu: Moving the Tree now takes stick sensitivity into account.
Ancestral Tree Menu: You can now properly refund Ancestral Legacy choices with a controller.
Inventory: Enabled Stick/Pad Navigation to Slorm Reapers, Thumbs and pretty much any button.
Inventory: You can now add/remove Traits 10 by 10 by holding RB.
Inventory: You should now be able to navigate through the Slorm Reapers menu without issues.
Inventory: You should now be able to properly close Reaper Runes / Ultimatums notifications with the A button.
The Great Forge: You can now hover over Challenges Effects and Rewards.
Expeditions: Now that everything is clickable, the default button to start Expeditions is now Y instead of A (used to click on things).
Bonus: Button Faces can now be customized between Xbox / PlayStation or Nintendo Switch.
Various Additions
Font Sizes: Added new Font Sizes called "Biggerer" and "Biggest" which are bigger than the "Bigger" font size.
Search Bars: Added a Search Function to Skills, Attributes and Slorm Reapers. The Search Bar in the Ancestral Legacy menu has been moved to the top right out of consistency.
Mouse / Keyboard You can now bind Side Mouse Buttons (up to 2).
FPS
Added a "Target FPS" setting with 4 options: 30, 60 (default), 120 and Uncapped.
This was heavily requested, so here goes. I haven't been able to test those options on proper hardware, so please let me know if everything is working properly. When playing above 60 FPS, you may notice elements going slower or faster than usual. If you do, please let met know.
UltraWide Support
Added 21:9 support to The Slormancer. The following resolutions are now available:
2560 x 1080
3440 x 1440
Same as FPS, I haven't been able to test those options on proper hardware, so please let me know if everything is working properly. You may find some UI elements in the wrong places, or unable to click on some buttons.
Zoom
Added a Zoom setting that allows you to zoom in by 25% and zoom out by 25% (via mouse wheel or via the Settings Menu). It should feel better for people unconfortable with our current level of zoom without breaking the experience.
Bug Fixes
And here are a couple of bug fixes that I've managed to squeeze in before today.
Act 4: - Minimap sizes should fit better. - Arnaldow, The Scarecrow, should no longer stop targetting you when you move too far. - Chaining missions should no longer cause an inappropriate "Time Played" to be displayed on the Victory screen.
Various: - Influence should now be properly displayed on the Victory screen (there was a small difference due to Influence Gain stats). - Victory Screen should now properly display Flasks and Books destroyed in The Mage Academy (major bug!). - When using Bryan's Portal, "Next Floor" should be displayed, instead of "Next Mission", when applicable. - The number of possible Reforges displayed at the Blacksmith for Masteries, Reaper Affinity and Attributes should now be the correct values.
Crashes: - Fixed a Crash when clicking on Flawless Defense occuring in Chinese.
That's about it! Let us know what you think.
Slormite Chronicles #23
Hello everyone!
Controller Update, When?
In our previous Slormite Chronicles, we've said that the Controller Update was expected to be done in February. I later posted a comment regarding the delay that most of you probably missed: I had personal things that came up so we had to delay the release a bit. But we can now announce that The Controller Update will go live on March 7.
Things also got out of control as I felt the need to add more and more features to this update! :D So the "Controller Update" became a larger beast, now known as "The Technical Update".
What's in it?
I don't want this to turn into a patch notes (that we will publish on March 7 as well) but I'm glad you ask!
Controller Rework
Controller Aim Assist: I've reworked the Auto-Aim system to be much more accurate and efficient. I've also added an Aim Assist Setting with different control schemes:
Auto Aim: (Default option) Use the Right Stick to navigate between targets.
Semi-Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. Your aim will adjust to a relevant target in the direction you're aiming.
Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. No Help.
On top of that, we've added a new bindable option called "Toggle Aim Assist" that is used to quickly switch between your default Aim Assist option and the "Free" control scheme.
We've been working on visual feedback aswell.
User Interface: Navigating through menus with a controller used to be really painful. But fear not! Things got much MUCH smoother as you can now use the Left stick to move freely inside menus.
And as mentioned in our previous Chronicle, you will be able to change button faces and choose between Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo Switch.
Wait! There's More!
We've also been working on various Quality of Life features and technical stuff that should improve the overall experience.
I've added new Font Sizes called "Biggerer" and "Biggest", bigger than the "Bigger" font size.
You can now bind Side Mouse Buttons (up to 2).
I've added Search Bars (similar to the one in the Ancestral Legacy menu) to Skills, Attributes and Slorm Reapers.
The Slormancer now supports UltraWide and the 2560 x 1080 and 3440 x 1440 resolutions are now available.
The Slormancer now supports 120+ FPS and a "Target FPS" setting has been added by 4 options: 30, 60 (default), 120 and Uncapped.
Last but not least, I've added a Zoom setting allowing you to Zoom Out by up to 25%. It should feel better for people unconfortable with our current level of zoom without breaking the experience.
Everything listed above will be available with the "Technical Update" on March 7.
The Royal Update Part.I
While working on the technical aspect of the game, we've also made progress on The Royal Update that will add a New Environment and 5 New Enemies to The Slormancer.
New Enemies
Here's a preview of our upcoming enemies!
From left to right:
The Loot Thief
The Decaying Domestic
The Spectrum of Justice
The Ominous Jester
The Undead Paladin
New Environment: The Royal Wing
It is actually the very first environment we've built for the game. It has been through a lot and is now ready to come to The Slormancer.
Bonus Pic!
As I've said, the Royal Wing was the very first environment we've built for The Slormancer. Behold its first iteration. You can also enjoy the very first designs for The Mighty Knight and Skeleton Soldiers. Back then, we were super proud of the result. :o
That's about it for now! Have a nice day everyone and see you tomorrow for the update!
Slormite Chronicles #22
Hello everyone!
It's Chronicle time!
The Luxuriant Update Part II: Feedback
The Luxuriant Update Part II has been out for a week now. So it is time to take a look at the feedback we've got. Basically, we've mostly had positive reactions while negative points that were addressed were almost only about two specific things:
The Great Labyrinth Mission is basically too long, boring and uninteresting. We tried something different, it didn't work. But it is pretty simple to take care of so we plan to address this an upcoming Update.
The Story as a whole, is repetitive and missions get boring fast. This is a much more complex point, and we tend to agree that the Story/Missions part of the game is not one of The Slormancer's strengths. We also believe that reworking each and every mission won't fix this. So we're still looking for solutions.
What's next?
We've allocated 50% of the resources of the company (being one artist) to start working on our next content update: The Royal Update Part I. It will include 5 new enemies and a new environment, so quite a bit of assets to draw.
While the entire tech department (being me) is currently working on a Quality of Life / Controller / Technical update.
And since HyonD, being the fancy artist that he is, doesn't want to share his precious designs (even to me), I'll talk about what I'm doing instead.
Reworking Controller Support
Jokes aside, we've had a lot more feedback regarding our controller support lately. It is most likely due to the Steam Deck being more and more popular.
To be honest, the very first iteration of our controller support was not meant to be final, and we aimed for something "good enough" without having the Steam Deck in mind or even thinking about how popular playing on a PC with a controller actually is.
Right now, I'm working on the "True Final Omega Version", not the "Final 001 Version" if you know what I mean, addressing every issue that players have encountered.
The goal here is to get the "Optimal" status for the Steam Deck, instead of the "Playable" that we currently have. On top of that, we've always wanted to get The Slormancer on consoles, so I'm working with that in mind. And ideally, a Switch release could be done without any further adjustments that the ones I'm currently making. So it has to be close to perfect.
Here are the points I'm focusing on:
Better Menu Navigation: I'm adding a cursor (similar to games like God of War or Assassin's Creed) to easily navigate. And it is much much smoother.
Better Auto-Aim / Aim System: I'm reworking the Auto-Aim to actually work (...) and to be a lot less intrusive when players want to manually aim for their targets.
Bigger Font Size: Pretty self-explanatory. This is mostly for Steam Deck users, but if your setup is to play on a TV with a controller, then you should like this one aswell.
Fixing Various Issues: Such as not being able to select Slorm Reapers, or get Challenges Tooltips inside the forge etc...
More Keybinds options: By allowing every button to be remapped.
Button Faces: Since I'm planning (way ahead) a console port, I've added different controller styles so you will be able to choose the one you want to use (from X-Box, PS & Nintendo Switch / Steam Deck).
A cursor, bigger font size and a PlayStation design.
Some points are mostly technical stuff, that are probably hard to understand on paper but very easy to feel ingame. So I'll be looking for more feedback once the update is live. As of right now, if you're a Steam Deck / Controller user and feel like I'm missing something that should be addressed, please let me know.
I'm also adding a couple more options on the way for Mouse + Keyboard users, such as the ability to bind side mouse buttons. I'll be looking to add some more if I have enough time.
I should be done with the "Controller Update" by the end of February.
And to reiterate, given the nature of our next content update, working on this will not delay the addition of new content.
That's about it for now! Have a nice day everyone!
The Luxuriant Update, Part II is now available!
Hello everyone!
The Luxuriant Update Part II is now avaliable!
We said January, and we delivered, so yay! The Patch Notes below looks a lot like Slormite Chronicles #20 since it was a preview of what we were working on. Let's get to it!
New Mission
8 new missions have been added to the game, followed by a glorious boss fight!
In the Luxuriant Gardens, we tried to build a few missions around the maze and the possibilities that it offers without, hopefully, creating tedious missions.
We also introduced a few riddles and small brainteasers throughouth the act.
We are also adding a new Quality of Life -sort of- mechanic: When you complete a mission, you will now be able to move on to the next mission without having to come back to the village everytime.
Once you clear Act IV, you will get your usual Ancestral Stone from Adam Nostrus which leads me to our next part.
New Ancestral Legacy Tier
This new Ancestral Stone will give you access to 32 new Ancestral Skills.
Here are a few examples of the new Skills you will have access to:
[table noborder="1"] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Spark Machine: Aura - While this Aura is toggled on, you constantly create Electric Sparks dealing [15% Elemental Damage] to random enemies nearby.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Wavering Glow: When they disappear, Shield Globes you did not pick up now grant you a shield equal to 25% of their shield value.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Inextinguishable Light: Active Skill - For the next 6 seconds, your Life cannot be reduced below 1. [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Melting Ice: Your Ancestral Strikes reset the Cooldown of your Ancestral Legacy Active Skills.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]More Fire: Burn can now stack up to 7 times.[/td] [/tr] [/table]
Increased Level Cap
And finally, the Level Cap has been increased to 70.
Bonus
Quick Quality of Life for The Slorm Temple: Goldus and Materials are now automatically drawn to you when you clear a Room.
Bugs fixed
Slorm Reapers:
Pure Reaper of Temple Keeper is no longer adding its % Pure Slorm bonus twice.
Reaper of Necromancy: Squires should now properly benefit from your stats.
The Fierce Huntress:
Arrow Shot should now be cast properly when using Prime Totems.
The Mischievous Mage:
Switching to a Tier 5 Upgrade after casting Orb of the Temporal Master should no longer crash the game.
The Slorm Temple:
Pure Slorm Reward is now calculated when the Temple Shrine rises up, not when you pick up Pure Slorm.
Various:
You should no longer be able to knock Obelisks back inside The Great Forge.
You should no longer be stuck on Result Screen with a Tutorial Tooltip being shown.
That's about it for today. We didn't have the time to add everything that we wanted in that update (such as reworking the controller or balancing various things) but we believe these can be done in a later update.
And as always, please report any bug that you may find. Have fun!
Slormite Chronicles #21
Happy New Year everyone!
For this Chronicle, we wanted to do a recap of the year 2022 for The Slormancer and take a moment to appreciate what's been done and how things have changed.
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 21 months old. \o/
A Year of Chronicles
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3142949576403601336 Slormite Chronicles #9 (January 2022) For our first Slormite Chronicles of the year, we had quite a bit of an announcement to make. The Slormancer sold 100 000 units which was definitely unexpected for the two of us. So again, thanks a lot to everyone that made it possible.
We also briefly mentioned the work we were doing on the 19 upcoming Slorm Reapers by revealing the now notorious "Pure Reaper of the Temple Keeper".
This Chronicle led to the first Update of 2022: The Mage Academy Update Part 1 on January 31, adding:
Slormite Chronicles #10, #11 and #12 (February, March & April 2022) During this timeframe, we were mostly working on Part II of The Mage Academy Update which included Act III of the Story, an increased Level Cap, 30 new Ancestral Skills but also 5 new Cataclysms and 2 new Exaltations.
At this point, we were also reworking Act I by reducing the number of mandatory missions, adding Exalted Breaches, and adding diversity to the enemy pool. We also increased the number of Slorm Reaper drops during the Story while increasing the pathing of the early game in various ways.
These 3 Slormite Chronicles led to The Mage Academy Update Part 2 being released on April 18, adding:
Act 3 and a new Boss
A rework of Act 1
30 New Ancestral Skills
7 New Cataclyms & 2 New Exalted Breaches
Chaos Breaches
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3218395575733114513 Slormite Chronicles #13 (May 2022) This is where we started brainstorming an upcoming endgame mode called The Great Forge, while doing so, I felt like adding a couple of highly requested Quality of Life features to the Ancestral Legacy Tree: a search bar and a zoom function.
This led to a small Quality of Life Update released on May 16, adding:
Slormite Chronicles #14, #15, #16, #17 (June to September 2022) From June to September, we've worked on The Great Forge and all the elements had to fit in such a mode. This was the HEAVY work of this year and we didn't anticipate for it to take us that long. We also really wanted to create something interesting and unique out of a basic "waves" mode, which led to what's currently in the game. And although The Great Forge has its flaws (we're working on those), it seems like players are having fun. To build this mode, we've had about 1 month of Brainstorm only which led to dozens of (extremely complex) ideas that we eventually rejected. Then a month working on the Reaper Runes, which were the "Progression system" tied to The Great Forge itself followed by a couple of months to build The Great Forge itself.
All of this came down to The Great Forge Update that was released on September 27, adding:
A New Endgame Mode: The Great Forge
A Challenges System
The War Chest Mechanic & 32 Unique War Chest Effects
A New Boss
A New Environment
The Addition of Obelisks
28 Reaper Runes:
7 Runes of Activation
14 Runes of Effect
7 Runes of Enhancement
New Currency: The Reapersmith Spirits
New Mechanic: Slorm Reaper Affinity
The Slorm Reaper Forge
A New Slorm Reaper: Fate-Crusher
4 New Cataclysms
a New Balance to Slorm Reapers Base Damage
Reworks on The Mighty Knight:
Ascension
Crest Shield
Whirlwind
So this was definitely a HUGE update. With a little hindsight, 4 months to build all of this seems pretty good. It just didn't feel this way while working on it. :)
Because of how big The Great Forge Update was and how very little progress it represented, the release was bittersweet and not so satisfying. We were proud of the content that we released but the cost felt too high. Basically, these 4 month represented roughly about 5% of the Road Map.
This left us a bit burnt out, so we decided to focus on basic and easy stuff for a while, and release smaller yet impactful updates at a faster pace.
This is why we posted a new Road Map during Slormite Chronicles #18.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3427829445185536662 Slormite Chronicles #19 (November 2022) In this Slormite Chronicles, we talked about the Luxuriant Update Part I that was coming up.
This led to The Luxuriant Update Part I being released on November 14, adding:
5 New Enemies
A New Environment: The Luxurious Gardens
5 New Cataclysms
"Super" Elites & Elite Affixes
Reworking Life & Mana Leech
Reworking the pool of Epic Stats
Adding Alternate Slormeline Recipes
This took us 6 weeks to get done, which is much more satisfying for us. And this is a pace we'd like to keep up.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3601220554059111339 Slormite Chronicles #20 (December 2022) This is our latest Slormite Chronicles, in which we talked about our progress on The Luxuriant Update Part II and the various reworks we'd like to get done.
Which is where we are right now.
What's next for 2023
Right now our goal is to get The Luxuriant Update Part II done before the end of January.
And as we mentioned it in the last Chronicle, it will introduce Act IV, 32 new Ancestral Skills and a new Level Cap (to 70) but "that's about it". Shortly after, we'd like to make an Update focused on various reworks: Controller, Armor & Resistances, Reaper Runes, etc...
As for the rest of year, the goal will be to finish a few sections of the game such as the Story, Environments and Enemies so if we look at the Road Map, this would mean completing:
The Luxuriant Update II
The Royal Update Part I
The Royal Update Part II
Enemies & Environments
(The Warlords Update on top of that would be extra nice)
I'd say this is the core plan, and depending on our mood and the needs of The Slormancer, we will work on other aspects of the game in-between core Updates.
We're feeling good about the future of The Slormancer. We just need to keep working, add content, fix stuff and we'll eventually see the end of it. But it may take more time than anticipated.
That's about it for now! And again, Happy New Year!
Cheers!
Slormite Chronicles #20
Hello everyone! It's Chronicle Time!
If you've been following The Slormancer, you know that our last update was "The Luxuriant Update Part I" so naturally, our next update will be "The Luxuriant Update Part II".
As mentioned on the Road Map, "The Luxuriant Update Part II" will include:
A New Act: New Missions and a new Boss fight.
A New Ancestral Legacy Tree Tier.
An Increased Level Cap.
Act IV
Act IV is in progress. 8 new missions are being added to the game, followed by a glorious boss fight!
When we create new missions, our goal is to build something that cannot be found in regular procedurally generated Expeditions, so we try to toy with the possibilites of the environment. So you can expect gardens filled of fountains or ponds or anything we could think of.
In the Luxuriant Gardess, we tried to build a few missions around the maze and the possibilities that it offers without, hopefully, creating tedious missions.
We are adding a new Quality of Life -sort of- mechanic: When you complete a mission, you will now be able to move on to the next mission without having to come back to the village everytime.
Unless an event has to trigger in the village to forward the story, in which case, this won't be an option. We will add this mechanic for Act IV missions for now, and add it to previous acts at some point as well.
Once you clear Act IV, you will get your usual Ancestral Stone from Adam Nostrus which leads me to our next part.
New Ancestral Legacy Tier
This new Ancestral Stone will give you access to 32 new Ancestral Skills.
Here are a few examples of the new Skills you will have access to:
[table noborder="1"] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Spark Machine: Aura - While this Aura is toggled on, you constantly create Electric Sparks dealing [15% Elemental Damage] to random enemies nearby.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Wavering Glow: When they disappear, Shield Globes you did not pick up now grant you a shield equal to 25% of their shield value.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Inextinguishable Light: Active Skill - For the next 6 seconds, your Life cannot be reduced below 1. [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Melting Ice: Your Ancestral Strikes reset the Cooldown of your Ancestral Legacy Active Skills.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th][/th] [th]More Fire: Burn can now stack up to 7 times. (For some reason, this appears in bold / not properly aligned. I've tried to fix it for the past 10 minutes, and I've quadruple checked my markup so I'm pretty sure it comes from Steam, so yeah... It is how it is...)[/th] [/tr] [/table]
Increased Level Cap
And finally, the Level Cap will go up to 70. After that, there will be another increase going up to Level 80 during The Royal Update Part II and a final increase to Level 100 for The Final Update and the end of Early Access.
Various Reworks on the way
We are also working on various reworks. These may or may not make it to the next Update depending on how much time we have left, but they are on top of our to-do list:
Controller Rework: We want to improve the overall experience in gameplay by allowing players to have control over the auto-targetting system and improve the feeling as much as possible. We also want to almost entirely rework how menus are being handled with a controller. We don't want to make a separate interface for controller users but I have quite a bit of room for improvement. And probably switch to cursor-based menus.
Armor / Elemental Resistance / Evasion: We want to rework the system so that these stats become a bit more central to most builds and try to make them as useful as Life, or even more depending on your playstyle. Basically we want them to be stronger. :) Armor and Elemental Resistance Penetration should be impacted by the changes we intend to make as well and will most likely become much more useful stats.
Balance: We are currently looking at balancing game-breaking effects and effects that allow you to completely bypass the intended difficulty, and these should be adressed in the next Update.
I believe this is the shortest Slormite Chronicles to this day. Our previous update is 3 weeks old, and since we are currently focusing on short and frequent updates, there's nothing super big or fancy coming up that we can share.
That's about it. Have a nice day everyone!
Hotfix 0.4.91b
Hello everyone!
Don't mind me, I'm just fixing a few things I broke in yesterday's update.
Bugs:
Super Elite Enemies should no longer appear without a proper name (Colossus and Necromancer)
Unstable Imps AoE's should now properly follow them when being pulled.
The Alternate Recipe of Slormelines should no longer mess with the Craft of Slormandrites.
The List of Epic Rolls should no longer be offsetted while reforging an Epic Item.
Primordial Aiondee should now properly work again.
Bryan's "In The Circle" protection should now properly disappear.
Performance:
Fixed a memory leak causing the FPS to slow down in The Great Forge (eventually leading to crashes).
That's about it!
The Luxuriant Update, Part I is now available!
Hello everyone!
The Luxuriant Update Part I is now avaliable!
To be clear (before anyone asks): This Update does introduce a new Environment: "The Luxuriant Gardens", but does not introduce a new Act or new Missions.
Now onto the Patch Notes:
New Enemies
5 new foes will strengthen the armies of The Slormancer:
The Pudding Hermit.
The Zombie Peasant.
The Shepherd.
The Unstable Imp.
The Plague Doctor.
New Environment
A new environment: The Luxuriant Gardens will be available in Battlefield Expeditions.
Superior Elites
Superior Elites have been added into the game. These Elites will have a chance to spawn in Battlefield Expeditions. They have a superior Life pool and come with up to 4 Elite Affixes.
20 Elite Affixes have been added.
New Cataclysms
5 new Cataclysms have been added into the game:
Fire Strike: Granting Fire Damage to attacks and a Chance to Burn.
Ice Strike: Granting Ice Damage to attacks and a Chance to Chill.
Lightning Strike: Granting Lightning Damage to attacks and a Chance to Shock.
Light Strike: Granting Light Damage to attacks and a Chance to apply Daze, Broken Armor, Broken Elemental Resistance or Slow.
Shadow Strike: Granting Shadow Damage to attacks and a Chance to apply Shadow Confusion.
Cataclysm Changes
Assimilation: The wording of "Assimilation" has been changed to "Enemies receive X% Decreased Damage for each yard between you and them." (instead of the "damage's source").
Assimilation: Regardless of the distance, enemies affect by "Assimilation" will now always receive at least 10% of the Damage dealt.
Reincarnation: In Battlefield Expeditions, enemies now have 25% Chance to be revived (instead of 100%).
Shadow Curse: After receiving Shadow Curse Damage, you become immune to Shadow Curses for 1 seconds.
Replicant: Enemies now have 30% Chance to summon a copy of themselves (instead of 100%).
Jetlag: Has been reworked and now reads: Every second, enemies have 10% Chance to become Invulnerable for 0.5 to 2 seconds.
Explosive: Enemies now explode after 3 seconds, instead of 1.5 seconds. And the explosion now deals damage based on Base Max Life instead of actual Max Life. We talked about a 5 second delay in The Slormite Chronicles but changed it back to something a little more challenging after further testing.
Life / Mana Leech Reworks
Life & Mana are now Leeched over a 5 second duration.
Life & Mana stored over time cannot exceed your missing Life. The excess is not stored.
There is also a Leech cap of 1% of your Max Life per second per Leech instance (except for Primordial Aiondee) but no instance limit.
Craft Reworks
Life/Mana On Hit/Kill
Life Regeneration roll (on a Level 60 Epic Item) has been increased from 11-23 to 23-46.
Life on Hit / Mana on Hit rolls (on a Level 60 Epic Item) have been increased from 2-4 to 11-23.
Life on Kill / Mana on Kill rolls (on a Level 60 Epic Item) have been increased from 15-30 to 30-61.
Alternate Slormeline Recipes We've added alternate Recipes for Magic, Rare, Epic and Legendary Slormelines: Slormelines can now be crafted using 10 Slormelines of the previous tier.
Epic Stats
Epic Stats are now chosen from a pool of 38 Stats instead of 78.
These Stats differ depending on the current Equipment you're trying to craft.
Slorm Reaper Changes
Primordial Reaper of Vindictive Slam: Holy Ground can no longer stack above each other. If an Holy Ground area was supposed to stack on top of another, it refreshes the duration of the other instead and increases its damage.
This change was done to drastically reduce the noise onscreen and improve performance.
The Great Forge
Obelisk of Transmutation now reads: "While Obelisk of Transmutation is active, everytime an enemy dies, it restores Life equal to its Max Life to another random enemy." instead of "to all other enemies within a 5 yard radius."
The Slorm Temple
The Temple Keeper and his Traps should be slower overall on Floor 100 and Floor 150.
The Bridge from The Slorm Temple should rise faster.
The size of each floor has been reduced by about 30 to 40%.
Pure Slorm rewards for each floor remain about the same, so Pure Slorm should be 30 to 40% faster to acquire.
The value of random Pure Slorm drops have been multiplied by 6 and now properly scale with the Floor Level.
The Pure Slorm rewards of Floor 50, 100 and 150 are now properly displayed.
The Pure Slorm rewards from Floor 50, 100 and 150 have been reduced by 40%.
Bugs Fixed
The Mighty Knight: - Critical Retribution should now properly increase Critical Strike Chance. - Porcupine should now properly increase Critical Strike Chance. - Effects affecting your "next Skill" such as Exposed Armor will now properly end when Whirlwind ends.
The Fierce Huntress: - Fairy Dust should now properly avoid Shadow Seal Damage from the Shadow Curse Cataclysm. - Wandering Arrow should now trigger properly after changing rooms.
Slorm Reapers: - Reaper of the Untouchable: Untouchable Dash should no longer allow you to move outside the map. - Reaper of Retaliating Foresight should no longer trigger on friendlies. - Primordial Reaper of the Trainee should now properly scale with Affinity. - Fixed a crash with Reaper of Alpha and Omega. - Reaper of Necromancy / Reaper of the Temple Keeper: Summons will now spawn properly after changing rooms.
Legendaries: - Young Phoenix Feather should now properly work with Primordial Aiondee.
Runes: - Thornbite Rune should now display the proper Shield value. We are aware that some runes are currently overpowered. We were short on time to fix them in this Update but a fix is coming.
Various: - Storing then retrieving Spirits in your Stash should no longer cause them to stack in the Fragments slots. - Player's Area of Effects are now slightly more discrete and create less noise on screen. - Great Forge Challenges should no longer appear blurry. - Codex Menu should no longer move out of window. - Fixed a couple of crashes.
Synergy Loops: - Added a global system to help prevent Loops.
- Armor of Illusion (Armor -> Evasion) + Indomitable Mountain (Evasion -> Armor): Armor of Illusion doesn't benefit from Armor gained with Indomitable Mountain.
- Evasive Magic (Evasion -> Max Mana) + Elemental Lock (Mana Lock (so Max Mana) -> Elemental Damage) + Primordial Reaper of the Untouchable One (Elemental Damage -> Evasion): Evasive Magic doesn't benefit from Evasion gained with the SYNERGY of Primordial Reaper of the Untouchable One IF Elemental Lock is equipped.
- Toughness 15 (Armor -> Elemental Resistance) + Elemental Sorcerer (Elemental Resistance -> Elemental Damage) + Primordial Reaper of the Untouchable One (Elemental Damage -> Evasion) + Indomitable Mountain (Evasion -> Armor): Toughness 15 doesn't benefit from Armor gained with Indomitable Mountain IF Elemental Sorcerer and Primordial Untouchable One are equipped
- Good Crop (Deals Damage based on Reaper Damage + Increase Raw Damage based on Damage dealt) + Savagery 60 (Raw Damage -> Reaper Damage basically) Savagery 60 doesn't benefit from Raw Damage gained through Good Crop.
Performance: - Improved performance when Area of Effects are hitting lots of enemies at once. - Improved performance when lots of Goldus coins are being displayed on screen. - Also improved performance everywhere else. :o
As always, if you find a bug, post it on our Steam Forums or on Discord. Cheers!
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