Getting close to the end of development and I’m pleased to say that everything is going according to schedule. The main theme of this update is a complete overhaul of the player races along with some final balancing and tuning.
I was a bit nervous going into this update as I had not touched races since they were very hastily added way back in alpha. Until now I’ve almost exclusively done all my playtesting with human and so this felt like less of a rework and more like starting completely from scratch. I’m happy to say that it went very smoothly and I’m quite pleased with the results, so much so that now I find myself wondering why I’d ever play human when there is so much more interesting complexity with the various race/class combinations. I think this should really add a nice additional layer of depth to the game.
Going forward the next update which should be done by the end of November will focus mainly on getting a bunch of achievements implemented and redesigning the character selection and records screens to reflect the choice of class/race. Also there are still some holes in content that I’d like to fill and a bunch more Yendor levels wouldn’t hurt either. Then its just lots of debugging and final balancing with a planned final release sometime in mid-late December in time for the Steam Winter Sale.
So with all that said, onto the update!
Player Races:
As mentioned above, this was the bulk of the update. The primary goal of races in my mind is to add a whole new layer of variation and depth to character development, to expand the scope and complexity of the game. The races are NOT balanced with each other by design, in fact they can probably be sorted into normal, hard and very hard difficulties.
Human should be the default choice for new players and should be the easiest race to play. All other races should be harder, or at least trickier to build and play characters with. I tried to avoid really obvious race/class synergies where certain races are just better at certain classes and worse at all others as I don’t think this really adds anything interesting to the game, though of course this can not be completely avoided.
So regardless of the race/class combination, all non-humans should be harder or trickier to play than their human counterparts. This took me awhile to fully wrap my head around and commit to fully but as an example an Ogre Warrior should actually be harder to win the game with than a Human Warrior. Now, in skilled hands, this Ogre Warrior is going to be an absolute monster of a tank that should feel stronger, or at least ‘tankier’ than the human but the key here is that it should take a bit more skill and game knowledge to actually get this to work.
I was kind of hesitant about doing unique race/class sprites for every combination as art can be pretty hit or miss for me as far as quality and time but I think they actually turned out quite nice and it encouraged me to clean up the human sprites as well which were getting a bit crusty looking. The next update will have an overhaul of the character selection screen and the game records/achievements to better integrate the more prominent role that races now play.
So here's the new changes to races and their various bonuses and penalties. Feedback here is definitely appreciated once we’ve all had some time to play through these. Again, the goal here is for the races to play very distinctly so feedback or suggestions on how to make them more distinct is most important.
Ogre:
Ogre is the classic lumbering tank race with the potential for a massive hit point total and the ability to wear the heaviest armor. Slow movement speed is a pretty big penalty, interestingly more so for melee focused characters.
- Large Size: +8HP, reduced knockback, only unstable in liquids.
- +2STR, -2INT
- Slow Movement (cannot move diagonally)
- No max encumbrance.
- +8HP per point of STR
The two-hand weapon + shield mechanic was removed for a number of reasons:
- Two handed weapons are not much stronger than they were before and this was a very overpowered ability.
- Two handers are quite rare and don’t drop every game so you had the situation where the roll of the dice was the difference between an overpowered ability and a completely useless ability.
- This is only really relevant to melee focused characters and tied the ogre far to closely with being a pure melee race than I wanted.
Troll:
The troll should be a frantic race to play where resting is not an option. Trolls should have to just barrel from one fight to another as quickly as possible in order to keep from starving to death. I think some additional traits may be appropriate here to further emphasis this sort of play style.
- Large Size: +8HP, reduced knockback, only unstable in liquids.
- 3 x HP regen
- 2 x Food consumption rate
- Vulnerable to fire.
Gnome:
The glass cannon race with huge offensive potential but incredibly fragile. I went through a few iterations here to try not to make the gnome just a better caster and worse at everything else. Don’t think I succeeded completely so suggestions here are appreciated.
- Small Size: -8HP, increased knockback, unstable even in grass.
- +2INT, -2STR,
- +2HP per point of STR
- +10% Ability-Power per point of INT
- Gains additional talent points on levels: 4, 8, 12, 16
Fairy:
Elves were kind of boring in my mind so they got replaced by fairies which are the DEX version of the gnomes glass cannon. The enchantment mechanic is actually very strong imo and works well regardless of class.
- Small Size: -8HP, increased knockback, unstable even in grass.
- +2DEX, -2STR,
- Flying
- +2HP per point of STR
- +5% Evasion per point of DEX
- Enchant an item on all odd levels (must be used immediately, cannot be saved)
Mummy:
Mummies were actually one of the few races I was quite happy with. They are very, very hard imo, the inability to use potions is just a massive penalty which the lack of food does little to balance against. I was playing around with also making them slow moving like the ogre but this was just way to much. The unique talent requirement system is at least some advantage that also makes a big difference as to how you spend your attribute points.
- Does not require food but cannot use potions.
- Poison + Gas Resistance
- Vulnerable to Fire
- Uses experience levels to satisfy talent requirements instead of attributes. The levels were chosen to match the pace that a character dumping all points into their primary attribute would unlock a talent. Of course the advantage here is that you can put your attribute points wherever you want and have all talents unlocked as you level up.
Gargoyle:
I was also reasonably happy with the gargoyles existing implementation. The change here is simply that only HP regen is disabled. The issue here is that gargoyle casters were just way harder. If MP doesn’t regen then really neither should cooldowns or speed points which would of course be ridiculous. I actually think the gargoyle might be to strong now, since I’d like him to be one of the ‘hard’ races, so feedback and suggestions here are appreciated.
- Does not naturally regenerate HP.
- Fully healed when descending to a new dungeon level.
- Flying
- +2 Protection, +20% Shock Resistance, +20% Toxic Resistance.
Vampire:
This should definitely be a hard race to play, though it can vary quite a bit based on what dungeon branches generate. He probably needs a few more interesting traits to fully flesh him out but I’d like to get some feedback on the initial main mechanic first. For the record I did manage to win a game going through the Iron-Forge with no blood but it was pretty insanely difficult.
- Does not naturally regenerate HP.
- Heals when stepping on blood.
Talents:
- Passive talents Fortitude, Mental-Clarity and Weapon-Mastery now provide bonuses equivalent to +2/+6 attributes rather than +3/+6. The second rank is harder to qualify for so should give the larger bonus. Also the smaller bonus feels fine in the early game when stats are low and the larger bonus feels better later in the game as stat totals grow.
- Shield Wall is now a passive talent that grants Shield-Block 20%, 30% when at low HP: <40%, 50%. I wasn’t happy with these super strong, super long cooldown abilities which I feel occupy an uneasy middle ground between normal abilities that are used every fight and consumables which are basically fight winners. I found I’d either forget to use them or else they were overpowered when I remembered to use them consistently, it was just kind of messy. I’m also fine with the two melee classes having more passive talents i.e. a more straightforward playstyle.
- Berserk similarly now grants +20%, +30% melee damage when at low HP: <40%, <50%. I wonder if both of these talents would feel more interesting if their bonus scaled the lower the players HP drops.
- Shield-Of-Ice is now a passive talent which provides a constantly regenerating shield of hit points (same basic idea as before). This was just annoying to have to recast constantly so what I did was just make it assume the player was constantly recasting it on cooldown. This ended up actually being far to strong so it got toned back a bit. I feel like the previous implementation was an example of a somewhat common design problem where some mechanic is overpowered as long as the player is willing to constantly do some mindless, repetitive busy work, obviously I’m not a fan of this.
- Infusion of Storm and Infusion of Fire now correctly raise Ability-Power not Magic-Power. The description stated this to be the case but the actual stats were wrong.
- Mana restored by infusions is now scaled by Ability-Power (before the status effect bonus is applied). So you get more mana with higher Ability-Power.
- Sleep Bomb has had its AoE range knocked back so that it is single target at Rank-I and cross target at Rank-II. Sleep bomb as has been noted by many players was just absurdly OP since it can easily be used to completely shutdown entire groups of enemies or even bosses on cooldown.
- Enemies will also now wake up once the sleep effect has worn off. Not sure if these changes go to far. The rogue is definitely a ‘trickier’ class to play, I find this sort of balancing the most difficult. More testing and feedback required here.
- Confusion has also had the same AoE reductions for similar reasons. A single 6MP cast of confusion could just destroy a room full of enemies while the player sits back, chilling, taking 0 damage. Duration was slightly increased as a bit of compensation.
- Dominate has had to be nerfed quite a bit since it was easily the single most overpowered ability in the game, which completely overshadowed the rest of the enchanters kit and pretty much made any other ability irrelevant. I think one of the biggest things I had overlooked is that dominate is essentially an unresistable, instant kill spell that only cost 6MP with the added bonus of giving an ally stronger than necromancer skeletons. The army of allies is less concerning to me than this ‘unresistable instant kill’.
- So dominate will now no longer work on bosses (it already had a bunch of random restrictions) since it previously let you ‘kill’ a boss with a single 6MP cast of a spell and it will now have a 10,6 cooldown so you can’t just win a fight by standing there turning the entire enemy team to your side. Dominate should have to be used in synergy with Confusion and Discord rather than completely replacing them.
- Burst-of-Flame damage at Rank-II was scaled back a bit from 36DMG to 32DMG but now only destroys the bursted object 50% of the time. Using Burst-Of-Flame on objects is one of the more interesting ‘skillful’ mechanics in the game so I’d like to emphasis that aspect of the ability rather than make it just mindless spammy damage. With sufficient Ability-Power it still hits absurdly high damage numbers (the highest in the game I believe).
- Enchant items can no longer be unlearned with Potions of Amnesia. This was just silly.
- Discord has had its damage reduced but its duration increased. Chain casting discord was just a bit too strong for my liking. It still works very well, but it is now preferable to pair it with a better damage spell. I’m always in favor of ability synergies vs anything where you just spam repeatedly to win.
- Talents with short cooldowns now got 10,6 instead of 10,5. A small change but the 5CD just felt slightly to short imo.
Player Balance:
- Previously the player was gaining +1HP per level which was pretty insignificant, bit odd since he didn’t gain any equivalent MP or SP, and always had me scratching my head a bit when trying to figure out how my total HP was calculated. So instead starting HP is now simply +8HP with no gains per level. This has the nice effect of making the player a bit stronger in the first half of the game (makes the game a bit easier for newer players), while the slight loss of HP at higher levels is pretty irrelevant (a single point of strength nearly makes up for it).
- These changes were factored into the difference is size between races so small races actually have the same starting HP as before, medium races get the +8HP and large races get +16HP. Just a small way to further differentiate them.
- Boots, Gloves, Helms, and Rings now have a max enchantment of +2 instead of +3. There have been a number of pretty substantial buffs to the way enchantments effect stats over the last few updates. Attributes are now much stronger so enchantments are worth more here. There are a lot more items with multiple stats which are doubly effect (sometimes triple effected). Finally there are just a lot more sources of enchantment in the game now. So with all this in mind this slight restriction seemed appropriate.
Merchant and Friendly NPCs:
- Increased the cost of enchantment scrolls from 40GP => 50GP. As mentioned above, enchantments are now incredibly powerful. I often find that buying enchantment scrolls was a far better investment than actually buying better items.
- Reduced the price of shields to bring them more in line with the previously reduced armor prices. Like the armor, the price reductions are pretty substantial in many cases.
- Added a new friendly enchanter NPC who sells enchantment scrolls for 75GP. Each game will spawn either The Enchanter, The Talent Trainer, or an extra Merchant somewhere in the second half fo the dungeon.
Monsters:
- Corrosive slimes are now lava immune (they often spawn near lava or in lava levels).
- Corrosive slimes no longer have a damage shield (their corrosion is bad enough).
- Torment has had its range reduced from 4.5 => 3.0. This is easily the most deadly enemy ability in the game with no real resistance or defense possible so I want to make it avoidable via positioning.
- Black Mambas and Crypt Crawlers had pretty pathetic poison damage compared to where in the dungeon they appear. I found poison to be very dangerous early game with centipedes and scorpions but barely even noticeable in the late game. So this was boosted a fair bit to maintain that ‘avoid poisonous enemies in melee’ mechanic.
- Yendor final form has HP reduced from 500HP => 400HP. I found that by the time you’ve cleared his guards, broken the goblet shield and taken control of the goblet the extra HP just make the fight drag on unnecessarily.
Dungeon and Levels:
- Don’t double up teleport and pit traps on levels (at most 1 per level).
- Don’t generate pit traps above boss levels in the branches. Generally it was just dropping you into the little entrance alcove anyways.
- Don’t place traps blocking doors.
- Several levels in The-Vaults-of-Yendor were toned down a little bit in terms of number of enemies.
- As with most updates, a bunch of vaults added to various zones, wherever I noticed something lacking.
- Items:
- Ring of Evasion: 20% => 10%. Considering that the player only gets +3% evasion per DEX and that the Evasive talent only grants 10% evasion this was just far to strong compared to what are supposed to be comparable rings with HP, MP, melee damage etc.
- Totem of Beasts was significantly buffed to summoned 12 stronger wolves. This might even need to be buffed further as it should be pretty close to a ‘click to win the fight’ item, considering the relative strength of other items that can drop off bosses at this depth.
- Archery goggles were toned down from +4DMG => +3DMG. With the new changes to item damage bonus (exceeding damage caps). This item was just absurd.
User Interface:
- Edges of the screen will now turn red when low HP to give a bit of a warning. I swear this was already a thing once upon a time. It must have fallen down that same blackhole that's consumed so many other things I swear were already implemented/fixed.
- Changed the default unsafe move/attack toggle to Z instead of CTRL. There's some kind of conflict with using CTRL as a toggle since apparently Macs use this as the right click toggle (I thought it was CMD?). Anyways the underlying framework I’m using was giving some odd behavior here so rather than tinker some more with the framework we'll just use Z going forward. Its not like this is a very common button anyways.
- This all came up because… fire pots will now give the ‘unsafe target’ warning message when attempting to attack them and Z must now be held to proceed. No more clicking in the fog and insta dying to a fire pot!
- The option to ‘Play Again’ on the death screen with the same race/class combination.
Bugs and Crashes:
- Poison clouds from enemies shooting bolts of… poison clouds at you were triggering the ‘dangerous terrain’ message for enemies immune to… poison clouds.
- Arcane arrows no longer trigger spike traps.
- Shield of Ice was not saving and reloading correctly (had its HP reset to 1 every time).
- Slow characters could not interact with the merchant on diagonals.
- There were some specific angles where an enemy would fire a bolt at the player near corners and the bolt would be blocked by the wall.
- Going up and down with a ranged enemy at max range would have them just mirror your movement and never move closer. They will now always prefer to move in a little closer than their max range.
- Enemies were wandering into poison gas (from vents) and agroing the player from across the level.
- When an enemy tramples the player and kills itself due to the players damage shield, they were leaving a ‘ghost’ on the tile which blocked movement. This has definitely been a thing for a long time.
- Constriction was lasting for 50T. I remember doing this for testing purposes not sure if this was left in after one of the last hotfixes or if I did this literally while doing this update. Anyways fixed now back to 5T.
- Strafe attack will not attack sleeping enemies.
- Scroll-of-Teleportation on the Yendor boss level will not take you into a different room.
- It was possible for an unenchanted buckler to spawn on The-Upper-Dungeon level 1 when playing as the warrior.
Well that about does it for this update. As always, the next week should have a number of hot-fixes to clean up whatever mess I may have made and then its on to what should be the final major update of the project. Thanks as always for everyone's support and feedback!
Hot-Fixes:
Hot-Fix 1.40.1
- Fixed some enemy pathfinding where slow enemies would take non-optimal paths when chasing the player down (and only down for some reason).
- Traps, items and gold will now never spawn behind pillars, cross beams and other objects that might hide or obscure them.
- Can now use burst of flame on the furnaces in kitchens.
- Non-ranged weapons were showing Max-Dex message when the player had a high dexterity (was not actually effecting their damage caps, just an interface issue).
- Fixed a crash when mouse over on an enchanted Charm-of-Draining (should not actually be enchantable in the first place).
Hot-Fix 1.40.2
- When you use > to fast travel to a side dungeon and change your mind, then use > to fast travel to the main dungeon stairs it crashes. This ONLY occurred when the large ornate zone entrances were used rather than the simple stairs. Fixed by stopping travel to the initial destination immediately.
- Don't multi-move, rest, or start exploring when enemies are agroed but out of sight. Previously when running around a corner out of LoS your moves would go from single stepping to multi-stepping without warning.
- Dark Elf Assassins poison damage 24DMG => 40DMG. This is part of a continued effort to keep poison melee enemies dangerous deeper into the dungeon.
- Closed a tile to monster spawning in Dark-Temple:6 that would trap the NPC between wall, pit and a fire cauldron.
- Enemies put to sleep with sleep bomb will now crit hit again just like normal sleeping enemies. Apparently the check for crit hit was on 'not-agroed', and previously sleep bomb caused enemies to lose agro. This broke with the recent changes where they remember you when they wake up i.e. they remain agroed.
- Flaming clouds from Lavosa will now extend to the players poison cloud
- Vampire boot description now updated to reflect changes
- Transferring a mod to a wand will now set its charges to max just as if you enchanted it (wasn't this a thing at some point?)
- Shield-Wall and Berserk had the wrong HP thresholds and were not activating at the hp % indicated in the description
- The 2nd and 3rd hotkeys for unsafe move were not working. Now fixed.
- Charging and activating a teleport trap should not stop charge. Made sure to test this in the case where the spawned monster is in your path, apparently charge is smart enough to connect with the new enemy.
- Fixed a level generation crash in The-Dark-Temple after something like 5000+ automatic regens of the level :P
Hot-Fix 1.40.3
- Fixed enemies blocking auto-explore 1 turn after dying to certain sources of damage.
- Fixed enemies dying on traps persisting on the mini-map for 1 turn.
- Level-up will now remove Berserk and Shield-Wall when it heals you to full.
- Parry, dodge and block will no longer work against trampling enemies.
- Fixed auto-explore being blocked on the first game turn after dying and restarting the game.
Hot-Fix 1.40.4
BUGS-AND-CRASHES:
- Fixed: Auto explore was not halting when spotting an enemy unless he was agroed.
- Stationary enemies will not block explore, rest and multi-move when not in LoS.
- Fixed: Transference tables were able to bypass the max enchantment bonus.
- Fixed: Slow explore was not working after zoning unless you took a single step.
- Fixed: Fire shrooms (possibly other traps), were blocking 1 tile wide bridges.
- Mushroom Kings summoned minions will eventually poof rather than chase you across the level forever.
- Merchants and other friendly NPCs will no longer spawn behind pillars, spans and other obscuring objects.
- Same with traps such as spike traps.
USER-INTERFACE:
- All abilities now show their range.
- Throwing weapons now show their range.
- Using * (dot) characters wherever information is displayed as lists. I find this makes it read cleaner.
- Using a better -> (arrow) character when showing stat differences.
BALANCE:
- A few abilities had 0.5 fractional ranges which only shows up in like 5 out of 100 places range is used so I decided to just adjust up or down to whole numbers. Bear-Trap, Confusion, Discord and Dominate all went from 5.5 => 6.0. Fire-Ball went from 5.5 => 5.0 since Fire-Ball is pretty OP as is and will likely need some further balancing in the future.
- Magic-Power has been replaced by Ability-Power on all items. The only remaining source of it is from the enchanters starting talent and I'm considering either changing this to Ability-Power as well or just coming up with something different therefore completely removing Magic-Power from the game.
- Death-Aura now gives +3 Life-Tap at Rank-II.
- Staff of Power and Staff of Energy have had price reduced to be the same as other weapons in their tier like long bow and long sword.
MISC:
- Added the option to wish for charms.
