We came off holiday 2 days ago and really got stuck in with development, so here's a patch already!
"Rob aren't you supposed to be working on other things?" No I'm a free man I can do what I want.
With the long form streams coming in from Chinese and English streamers after the update, and some play testing of my own, I decided I really wanted to do a balance patch. If you've played at all last patch you'll know green EXP was totally out of whack. Similarly if you've played for any length of time, you'll know levels are kinda whack too! And likewise, crafting is rather... lackluster, even Quooz in the end game get outshined by their brothers.
Crafting Prefixes
Crafting now costs 50 Hunger by default. This can be reduced directly by having STR, ENG or SPD.
You can still technically craft without hunger, but you'll get a Flawed item.
Here is the VERY temporary prefix menu. It doesn't look great since, this is a short stopgap I've created in about half a day. I have much greater plans for crafting, but those will take months to complete.
Firstly, each prefix has a requirement, that being DEX and INT. So adding Masterwork requires that you have 100 DEX and 100 INT, if you want Strong as well, you'll need 125 DEX and INT.
Secondly, the hunger requirement is raised by the amount of INT/DEX required.
Thirdly, each prefix raises the cost of crafting by xTimes. So a Masterwork weapon requires x5 the amount of resources to make. A Masterwork Strong weapon requires x10.
I'm hoping these changes do two things, primarily allow crafting to be competitive with ground loot, but also secondarily giving players a use for their hundreds of materials they gather.
Naturally Quooz have received a slight change, they now by default make excellent weapons.
Quooz get the option to make Masterworks and Quoozmade instead.
Balance
Everyone's favourite word!
EXP
If you've played Dredgers before and made it past floor 1, you might know enemies get quickly out leveled by players. Players regularly end floor 1 at level 3-4, and regularly end floor 2 at level 6-8. And for reference, enemy levels generally match the current floor. This generally means the player has an incredibly easy time through the entire game until something finally catches you and decides your continued existence is a crime.
So, green exp from killing higher level enemies has been changed to killing enemies with double your level or higher. You also don't get green exp this way unless you actually need green exp. These changes are mostly due to the fact that, in the last version, if you simply breathed you started drowning in green exp.
And now for the big and quite game-warping change, if an enemy drops green exp, they will not drop blue exp. This drastically reduces the player level throughout the whole game. On average the player will still be at the same or higher level than enemies to start. But once late game comes the player should start falling behind as the floors surpass the players level. Falling off has been intended and in the game since the beginning, but due to how the game worked, this only started happening at around floor 100-200.
These Exp changes make the game actually difficult now which, while harsh for newer players, should be welcome for those of us who can almost play with our eyes half-closed and both hands amputated because of that blasted peddler.
Prefixes
Previously prefixes on items gave over the top increases, Masterwork gave 2x damage and 2x attack speed, which meant if you got a masterwork item, your damage simply went up to 400%.
Quality prefixes such as 'Masterwork' 'Excellent' 'Poor' "Shoddy' now all only affect damage instead of attack speed, the damage multiplier has also been lowered.
Integrity prefixes such as 'Durable' 'Strong' 'Weak' 'Brittle' now affect attack speed as well. The amount of attack speed you gain or lose from these has also been lowered in comparison to the attack speed Quality prefixes used to give.
Quoozmade prefix remains unchanged for now.
Quooz Merchant
Quooz merchants now sell things more randomly, and also sells crafting materials for affordable prices. Shocking, I know.
Their locations have also shifted and become a bit rarer, however they might sometimes be found in strange places.
QoL
Shortforms of prefixes can now be seen in shops and item tooltips.
Changelog:
As per usual, changelog is just a compilation of my #dev_logs on the discord, so it will not contain every single change unfortunately, but most of the major ones at least:
- Swapping to CN automatically turns on Mingliu font now.
- Dwarf has been lowered to 4 stats per level, as most races that get double benefit should have 3.
- Blood Lords now keep the bloodweaver learning that Blood Fallen have.
- Potions and Concentrates now automatically identify their counterparts.
- Smite now comes from God, so it counts as internal damage and doesn't apply player passives.
- Smite now hits 7 times, deals 50% CHM damage, and has a slightly longer cooldown.
- Fixed wands not regenerating energy if you were out of food, despite having wand expertise 2.
- Vile Knife no longer stacks on furniture.
- Blood Lords who use resurrection return to their previous race.
- You get EXP for hostile corpses you raise.
- Scroll of Imbue: Corpse no longer self imbues you.
- Modifier keys like alt+ctrl+shift will no longer unpause the game.
- Dwarves can sometimes spawn as necros.
- Bright objects like lava now are lit up in the darkness again.
- Health potions now scale on CON.
- Casting Tunic can now be crafted.
- Lasers in the labs now hit multiple times and deal damage based on the floor
- Domples no longer spawn on floor 2, due to the decreased levels making them quite easily able to oneshot.
Thanks for reading all the way through! Currently my plans are to add a boss battle before working some more on my next game before the update thereafter. There's even some clues hidden in this update as to it's race and class :D
Catch you all on the other side!
