#633 Off-by-one in Multi-Hit's description (or missing the word "additional")
#634 Merging Broken Sticky no longer gives the useless Skill option
#636 Text for Slime Mold Mage and Ready Bonesaw now correctly reflects Growth.
Level 6 is cooler.
Beta Update: UI Improvements & A Needed Nerf
Hey folks!
Continuing from last week, I'm updating the beta with a few follow ups from the merge changes. I'm really grateful for the feedback I received in the Discord, especially so quickly. I've already addressed some of the bugs on Monday, and now I'm bringing in some gameplay/UI changes.
Fleshsmith Changes
Fleshsmith's "Experimentation" perfecting does not grant a spell or power-up choice the way normal perfecting does. This character has had a higher win rate than the other necros for some time now, and the adjustments to improving/perfecting just exacerbated it. I think this nerf still preserves the fun of Fleshsmith, but just reigns in the raw power.
As a peace offering, there is now a confirm step for Fleshsmith's experimentation confirm, as there has been desire for this in the Discord. If folks *really* like this experience, I could see it being a UI option for all merges, not just for Fleshsmith.
Skipping Spells
With the increase in spell acquisition, you sometimes run into a situation where you really don't want to replace an existing spell with the choices you've been given, and this feels like a bit of a disappointment. Well now you have the option of skipping a spell choice for two skulls. It's a modest consolation, but it can't be too grand a reward or else it might become the dominant strategy in place of learning a spell.
UI improvements
Some of you out there are genuine Bone Collectors and were amassing tons of skulls. The UI has been adjust to look less silly.
Additionally, I've made some slight improvements to UI for controller support. Let me know about your experience playing on steamdeck either in the discord or in the steam discussion forums!
Beta Update: Bugfixes
Some small fixes from the beta tests over the weekend.
#629 Eerie Remembrance summons copies for you instead of the ghost in the throne fight
#628 you can get the same spell offered twice in the same selection
-Deserialization of rosters (MinionUpgradeLevel Attribute) caused Coliseum mode rosters to default to hardcoded rosters.
-#630 Combining minions without a double-able or on-summon ability can offer two copies of the same reward.
-#631 Multi-Hit just appends 'I's on increase, rather than converting to roman numerals, and so is vulnerable to graphical overflow.
Beta Update: Merge Changes, Level 6, and more!
Happy new year folks!
With technical efforts like localization and controller support satisified for the the moment, I'm excited to bring new gameplay improvements to Throne of Bone.
Initial Minion Choice
Turn 1 now features a shop choice of 3 minions, the leftmost guaranteed to be the necromancer's "starter minion". This hopefully provides a bit of choice and variety to the beginning of each run.
Minion Merging Changes
Improving or perfecting a minion no longer provides a choice of 3 random merge power-ups, but instead rewards a choice of:
Strength (doubling this minion’s base stats)
Skill (doubling the effectiveness of this minion’s abilities), or Resummon (retrigger this minion’s “On Summon” ability) for Ferals with “On Summon” abilities.
A random power-up from the standard pool.
Strength and Skill stack additively with the previously obtained Strengths and Skills, so you can potentially get the long coveted “Quad Ability” if you’ve chosen Skill each time in a perfected minion’s “merge tree”.
That said, improving a minion no longer automatically doubles the base stats, and Perfecting a minion no longer automatically doubles the effectiveness of abilities. With Skill and Strength, you now get to make the choices of how you want your merged minions to evolve. Or maybe those lowly minions are just a means to hone your necromantic skills, because...
Perfecting a minion rewards a spell choice
Instead of a choice of 3 random higher level minions, perfecting a minion now grants a choice of spells one level higher than the minion! This reward has proved to be considerably more fun than just getting a higher level minion, as there's more variety in the spells available. “But what about level 5 minions?" you ask…? "How can I get a spell one level higher”...
Necromancers can now reach Level 6
Level 6 spells are available as reward when you perfect a level 5 minion. Level 6 can be reached through XP gains, but without sufficient combats to get that much XP naturally, you'll need to pick up extra XP through Rests and Wisps.
Area Changes
The Area 3 (Throne Room) board now stays 2x3 (same as Area 2 Castle), rather than jumping up to 2x4. This gives combat a different flow, and allows players to focus more on improving and perfecting minions. The jump to 2x4 now happens in Area 4 (The Siege). I expect to do some rebalancing based on this change, but I am curious how folks feel about the new flow.
Bug Fixes
Bug fixes:
Twisted App fails to deal magic damage if it dies to the attack.
I have Darkstar Pendant, granting my frontline Defender. Obsidian Gatekeeper is not giving my frontline that don't have Defender naturally or gained it from improvement +5/+5.
The number on Blood Well is showing as twice as much as it should be. Ex: I have a level 5 in my storage, the number on Blood Well is 10. I change the level 5 out so that my highest level is 4, and the number shows as 8. The health given to my minions are correct and not doubled.
Can't Repro:
#626 - bug knight class isn't working with Command Tower, i have a soul sapper knight in my storage and my relevant units are knights, however my piece keeper and Mycellia is auto attacking.
I was unable to repro this. It's worth noting that minions will auto attack if they only have one eligible target (like if there is only one unprotected enemy and they do not have sneaky).
Throne of Bone on the Steam Deck
Throne of Bone now supports play on the Steam Deck!
Input
You can now control your undead legions with D-pad/Joysticks + buttons. There's also some quality of life features like the selector frame snapping to the spell inventory when you pick up a newly learned spell! Additionally Xbox glyphs appear on screen to communicate how to do perform actions, including some conveniences like Y to Recycle when you pick up a minion.
Display
Throne of Bone now comfortably displays in 1280x800 (16:10), without any awkward cropping. The margins between zones line the battlefield and bench have been adjusted from the standard 16:9 target. As for text legibility, from my own testing I can read all the cards, comfortably, but let me know in the comments if you'd like to see some text size controls in the options menu when playing on the steamdeck!
Seamlessness
Thanks to Steam cloud, your saves and run progress can carry over onto your steamdeck, if you're a dual device user. Additionally, I've been monitoring performance of the game, and have made some improvements to the game's load times for steamdeck. I still have another round of perf work to do before ToB's exit from Early Access, but in the mean time I think the game's doing well on the deck's hardware.
Upcoming
Now that controller support, localization, and steam deck work has been completed, I can emerge from my solo dev dungeon, and return to providing gameplay updates and improvements! 2025 will be a good year for necromancy!
Controller Support and Localization into main
Hey folks,
Controller support is now live on the main branch. As it's still early access, I am interested in suggestions from folks about how the UX for controller can be improved.
Additionally, the first batch of localization is now in the main branch!
Steamdeck updates
With the controller support in, ToB is closer to having an ideal steamdeck experience. There's still a few more things to get in, but I am hoping to have those completed early next week!
Beta Update: Controller Support!
Hey folks,
This week brings controller support to the Beta branch! The game is now completely playable using D-pad and buttons!
That said, I am interested in getting feedback from controller-first players about what UX improvements you'd like to see. Maybe you feel there's a faster paradigm for rearranging stuff using the controller, maybe the 'X button to inspect' paradigm isn't as nice as the mouse-over inspect, etc. Let me know in the comments or on Discord. I'm aiming to take this from the beta to the main branch by end of this week!
Additionally, I am still eager to hear any feedback on the newly supported languages (French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.)
Beta Patch: Localization!
Hey folks,
The first batch of localization is available for feedback/testing on the beta branch! Check it out if you want to give feedback on one of the following languages:
Brazilian Portuguese
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
To aid in this process, the collection is temporarily fully unlocked on the Beta branch. Do note that some of the lore entries are not available (not even in English!) as they are still in the process of being written!
Beta Update: Bug Fixes
Rolling out some bug fixes to beta before integrating some of the performance improvements to main branch:
- Deadwood summoning ooze on full board causes exception. - Fleshsmith merging minions has various issues. - Exception with loading some end of run Rival Rosters
Could not Repro: - Fungal Garden does not seem to work with Knights!
