We finally have official release date for Early Access: October 14th!
There is so much work to be done till then, but we’re giving it all we have. It’s been almost 1 year since the release of Demo-Prologue and game has grown a lot. Especially because of your suggestions and valuable feedback that made the game so much better!
We are planing to keep working full time on the game during Early Access and add all new features we want and lots of new content. But don’t worry, Early Access will already be fully playable and fun experience that will just keep growing ːsteamhappyː
Join our Discord Community, follow up progress closely and chat with us to help us make the game into something all of us will enjoy!
What is new in version 0.649?
If you prefer video version of the update we have it on youtube, together with some in gameplay examples:
Items
Around 100 new items
There are now about 100 items in the game. You’ll start with raggy and cheap items and as you grow you’ll be able to afford more and more powerful items.
Universal Items For Synergetic Strategies
This is the new type of items called Universal Items. They do not have a level because they are based on percentages and are useful throughout the whole game.
Here is one example:
Spiked Chestplate
This item returns percentage of damage dealt to gladiator. (We had something similar but we moved it to Universal item type now)
Most of currently implemented Universal Items are focused on Synergy. Like:
Arrowhead of Frost
Item that make gladiator's projectiles deals 30% higher damage to frozen enemies. So you can combine this with Cryomancers freeze ability for maximum efficiency.
Each Universal item has Basic, Rare and Epic version. Each less frequent in shop, more expensive but stronger.
Eventually we plan to make a crafting system where you can combine 3 lower tier Universal items to craft one higher tier item.
Consumable Item Slots
Finally we have a solution for consumable items that will make them useful. Now gladiators have one slot for consumable item so you can still have powerfully equipped gladiator and make them even stronger with consumable.
They are also now a bit cheaper and a bit stronger than before.
Item Shop
In item shop you can find Regular, Consumable and Universal items. Till now shop used to provide tier of items that are the same as last championship arena you defeated. Now from time to time, there is a chance to get an more advanced item from tier above. As well as Universal items that also appear less frequently.
Item Panel
Now with left click you can open Item Panel containing all information about item as well as buy/sell buttons.
Gladiator Total Rebalancing And AI Improvements
Rebalancing
First off, we were made aware of a big issue by community that levels are giving gladiators way too much power. So even if you have a gladiator that is being countered by enemy gladiator. If your gladiator is just a few levels higher they will not have issue defeating their counter. For this reason we decreased the amount of points each new level brings. Levels are still very important, but this allows game to be more strategic rather than promoting the brute force gameplay.
To follow up this rebalance, items stats are also reduced.
Gladiator Stats
Second huge issue we had was that most gladiators had one stat that was most important and choosing to level up that stat would be the only viable option for some of them.
For example Archer would get damage, dodge, and attack speed all from agility. Making most of her other stats pretty superfluous.
So we took a step back and rebalanced the whole game.
- Now choosing between strength and agility would mean choosing between speed and damage.
- Intelligence is used for damage and other effects for spell-casters, but they still need other stats to decrease their cooldown or execution speed.
- Stamina used to be fairly useless for melee fighters as they could still attack without enough stamina but only dealing 20% less damage. Plus many gladiators had terrible stamina balancing. They would use very little and you did not need to put any thought into it.
Now you’ll sometimes see gladiators just standing and waiting for their stamina to recover before they can swing another attack. In near future we are considering adding “Tired” animation so it’s clearer why they are just waiting.
But this system is now pushing you to watch battle carefully and notice if some of your gladiators are losing their effectiveness and need more stamina points or items to stay active during battles.
Stamina
Gladiators will also stop using defensive abilities if their stamina is lesser than 25%. Otherwise battle takes forever as they waste all their stamina on defending themselves instead of on attacking and finishing up the opponent.
Also gladiators used to use 25% of the stamina of total damage that was prevented. Now they use only 10%. To put it more simply, defensive actions cost less stamina and are more useful.
Speed of Battle
Once gladiator reach certain levels their cooldowns and executions speeds would get extremely fast. Making battle really hard to follow. Now they tend to take longer to attack making it easier to see what is happening. But we always encourage you to slow down the time and take a close look at the battle to understand what is happening and improve your strategy.
Normal Speed:
Slowed Down:
Movement speed
This stat was pretty much broken. After gladiators would get level 4-5 they would already have maximum movement speed. Now their speed is gradually increasing and if your gladiator needs to move fast across the arena it is worthwhile putting points into it or getting movement speed items.
More Strategy
Overall strategy of choosing points for each gladiators is now very important. You can even build different kinds of gladiators based on it. Do you want super tanky Knight? Give him lots of health and strength. Do you want him to be fast and deal high damage, so he can rush into back line enemies and take them down? Give him agility and movement speed points.
You’ll find even more interesting variations in different gladiators but we’ll let you explore that. Just be sure to check gladiator ability stats and how they are calculated to understand what each does:
Gladiator AI Improvements
Archer (and other ranged gladiators)
Her projectile would sometimes go through the targeted enemy if the enemy get very near and enters her minimum range for shooting. Now this is fixed. If she targets the enemy in front of her, her arrow will hit the enemy.
Before fixing this:
After fixing this:
Unless the enemy enters her minimum range and she decided to target an enemy that is further away. In that case, arrow would go thought the enemy near her, and will go towards the far away enemy. We need this too, because if she is engaged in melee fight with an enemy, she still needs to be able to shoot far away enemies with arrows as well.
Brigand
Brigand used to shoot her spear first and only after that, throw her net that would stop the enemy. This was because at the moment the battle starts she could not tell what the enemy team is about to do. Now this is fixed, and if she is being attacked by melee unit she will make sure to stop the unit with her net first.
Despite being a bandit, she can be very generous too. If her ally ranged gladiator is attacked/chased by melee gladiator she will help her out by throwing a net on that enemy to keep her ally safe.
Hunter
Our first dwarf in the game got a little smarter as well. He will no longer put traps unless he’s being chased by a melee gladiators. Traps are also bigger so they have higher chance for enemy to fall into them.
There was a bug where trap would not stop enemy movement. Now it’s fixed.
He can still sometimes stupidly mess up and move in opposite direction of his trap. But we’ll work more on that.
Synergy Buffs
- Priestess now has ability to cast Blessed buff. Again visible on gladiator. It increases Primary Stat of friendly gladiator like Invigorator does but less efficient. But it is one of the few synergetic buffs, so in shop you’ll be able to find items that make her heal stronger if she has casted this buff on an ally.
- Cryomancer has Frozen buff (he used to have something similar but now items can recognize this and use it for synergetic effects).
- Pyromancer now has Burning buff instead of knockdown. You can see gladiators burning while the buff is active.
Other Buffs
Movement Preventing Resistance
“After being stopped from moving 2 times, unit is unable to be stopped from moving during next 12 seconds.”
This is necessary so you can’t perpetually keep somebody in place (especially boss) with Cryomancer and other Movement Preventing gladiators.
Minor Improvements or Polishes
- In Ring of Death - Blind Fight, there were situation where you'd get to put 5 gladiators for fight. And since you just started the game you might only have 3 or 4. Now this is fixed and until you finish first championship you will never get Blind Fight with this many gladiators to place.
- Gladiator health bars color are now same as gladiator team color. So ally and enemy gladiators are more easily distinguished during chaotic battles.
- When you click on bank you can see “Coming Soon” screen for Loan mechanic. It was unclear what that empty space was and why it was called a Bank when you could only trade resources there.
- In Bank when you roll over button to buy/sell resources it’s clear what left and right click do:
- In Ring of Death - Blind Fight. When you roll over Lock Team button you will see this explanation:
“After Locking your team, you can still reposition gladiators and give them items from inventory. But you can no longer access other gladiators.”
- When you click on Gladiators button “Sell”, now there is pop up screen asking you if you are sure.
- Rolling over Ability Stats like Execution Speed or Cooldown show how the stat is calculated (even though the numbers are fairly small).
- Rolling over wages icon in Timeline will show the total amount of wages that you need to pay this month.
- Various other polishes that will make game feel smoother and more intuitive.
Bug Fixes
- Graveyard Championship bug where epic and rare coupon fights have same difficulty is fixed.
- Several Level Editor bugs are fixed.
- Gladiators on discount used to show full price when their panel is open. Now it’s fixed.
- Gladiator building upgrades were about to increase the XP rate of that gladiator. And this feature was not working at all. Now it’s fixed. It can be even combined with quirk that let’s gladiator gain more XP.
- Selling equipped item directly from gladiator then pressing Undo Button would cause bug.
Also if you sell just an item. And then move it’s position the Undo Sell Button for item would stop working. Now fixed.
- And many other various small bug are fixed.
What is Next?
Wow! This was the longest update post we ever made ːsteamhappyːːsteamthumbsupː
So I’ll try to wrap this up quickly.
Here is what we are planing to work on next:
Fatigue/Rest Time
We want to implement fatigue feature for gladiators and test out this design that would push you towards making bigger teams and using more strategy, rather than levelling up only a few powerful gladiators and pushing through game with raw force.
We also want to remove cooldown on Ring of Death. But then we'd use gladiator fatigue to limit you from repeatedly playing it and at the same time this would push you towards using different gladiators as well, while your A-Team is resting.
Priority Points
We want to play around with gladiator priority system. Idea is that we let you tell each gladiator who to focus before the battle starts. Allowing for more strategic gameplay.
(Game will be playable without this too. But for harder challenges having extra tactics could be what some players are looking for)
More
More content, improved enemy formations, polishing and bug fixing.
Thank you!
As we said. Release Date for Early Access is set to October 14th! Less than 3 months from now! Be sure to WISHLIST THE GAME to get notified.
Join us on our Discord Community as we’re doing final changes and adding features before the release. Let’s talk about the game!
Talking with you guys is what affected more than half of the changes and new contend that you’ll see once Early Access is out! So huge thanks for helping us make the game so much better!
Cheers! ːsteamhappyː
