Update 0.6

Hello everyone, another week another update. This week I wanted to mostly focus on bug fixes but ended up getting carried away with lots of micro balancing after the major changes to attributes last week. Like usual I'll ramble for a bit on my various thoughts and ideas regarding the state and immediate future of development but if you just want to see the change log scroll down!

ATTRIBUTE BALANCING:
I've decided to hold off on doing another major rebalance of attributes for a number of reasons. First I still haven't had a chance to personally test as much as I'd like and I want to give it a bit more time to actually let the previous round of changes 'sink in'. I also feel that as much as the Ability-Power creep is messing with the overall balance of the game, especially in the late game, the actual balance between the 3 attributes is in a fairly solid place. It seems crazy that STR and INT had to be x4 to even match up with DEX but it seems the general consensus, and my own feeling is that this is in fact true.

Though the overall balance is kind of wonky and its messing with combat a bit I feel like the attributes are actually in a pretty good state right now which is why I'd like to hold onto them for awhile and see if I can balance around this. I really like that every single attribute point feels extremely impactful, as impactful as the +1SP from DEX has always felt. Though it may be hard to balance around 20% AP, you certainly 'feel it every time you get this big of a boost to your abilities. I've always been in favor of these sort of 'woah' increases in power vs tiny increments that are lost in the general random noise. This weeks change to STR to +2ENC should help give STR a bit more of this feel as well since just a few points into STR will be the difference between pretty restrictive gear choices and the option to wear the games heavier armor sets.

I also feel that with this current update the attributes are probably as perfectly balanced, at least with respect to each other, as they ever have been. This is allowing all sorts of different builds to be totally viable. We can always argue about absolute optimal builds but I feel like we're in a place where there arn't really any unworkable builds. Every single point really feels like it makes an impact for every single class and with the lower relative talent requirements I think multi-classing has never been easier or more rewarding. This is something I'm really please with since I feel like this is a pretty core component of the game.

DEX > INT > STR:
As a side note to this, just some thoughts on future tweaks to the system. I'm quite happy to accept a game in which the rough formula of  DEX > INT > STR becomes stronger the more skilled a player is. It takes the most skill, planning, creativity etc. to take advantage of highly mobile characters and so I don't mind if DEX has an edge in the hands of experienced players. Likewise, targeting abilities, managing cool downs and mana etc. has a fairly high skill ceiling and so this to should be rewarded. For the most experienced players who don't get hit very often, the bonus HP from STR is simply never going to scale correctly with the potential of high mobility or more damage output. For players of lower skill (and I include myself in this category), the formula essentially reverses as we don't have to work nearly as hard to get immediate benefits. So though I'll continue to tweak the formulas here, I'm essentially accepting, even willing to lean into the idea that there is going to be a clear difference to attribute balance depending on skill level, and I think this is actually a good thing.

BALANCING EVERYTHING ELSE:
So since I feel, and it seems that the general consensus agrees, that the attributes are at least balanced with each other, the task then falls to balance the rest of the game around it. I've taken some initial stabs at that in this update, but this will be a major focus for the remainder of the month. In this crazy complex, multi variable, swamp of problems that all fall under the term 'balance' I want to hold the attributes constant for a bit and fiddle with some of the other knobs for awhile. I can identify a number of major areas that are problematic:

• POWER CREEP: There is still a general power creep in the later levels as its still possible to get quite high attribute point totals. With all attribute points being as strong as SP this simply negates a lot of the challenge at later levels. Its still totally possible to die due to mistakes but I find myself often being more prone to death simply due to blasting through everything, losing focus, and then dying to something stupid. The end game power of the player needs to be reduced.
• ABILITY 'OUTPUT': There is a problem with abilities becoming so strong that they tend to start one shotting enemies and a lot of the tactics just disappear. I say Ability Output rather then the specific stat Ability Power because I'm thinking that solutions to this are multi-variable and complex. Base ability stats could be adjusted, monster HP and defenses could be increased, CD's and MP could be played with. There are a variety of ways I'd like to try adjusting this before returning to the actual core attribute balance.
• INCIDENTAL ABILITIY POWER: This is a simpler, more localized problem. Mech and Random, amongst others have pointed out cases of this, and I've seen it myself where, without even trying, its possible to get like 40-60% ability power and break the game somewhat. I really like the idea of pure AP builds being these immobile glass cannons. I'm fine with them being OP in this narrow sense but there is definitely a problem when abilities seem to be going off the rails without even focusing on them.
• TOO MUCH PLAYER CONTROL: This seems odd to list as a problem but I find that the game does not require the player to adapt to the randomness of each dungeon run. The game throws enough resources and choices at the player that its always possible to adopt a fairly standard 'optimal' build for each class. I'd like to nudge the game in the direction of requiring the player to be a bit more adaptive with their builds, a bit more clever and creative with how they play each run. Currently you can 'choose' to build different characters but you never really have to. For a game in which much of the core challenge comes with dealing as best you can with the unexpected I consider this a problem.

ITEMS AND EQUIPMENT:
I've being toying for awhile with the idea that there are simply to many items in the game. Even without full clearing the dungeon, the player generally has more then enough stuff to tackle Yendor fairly quickly. I'd like to get to the point where full clearing gives 'just enough' items and equipment and anything less becomes increasingly challenging. I also believe that the item progression is pretty wonky. The player generally gets a pretty solid set of equipment by the mid game and then there are few real upgrades after that. The player can always 'choose' to switch things up, but never really feels compelled to adjust their build or strategy after this mid game point. Nothing beyond this point tends to drop that is a true upgrade that makes you say: 'wow that's just so good I'm going to have to adjust to take advantage of it. A lot of these same arguments could be applied to talents and abilities. The player tends to establish a pretty solid set of tools by mid game and then everything after feels like fluff. You can use it if you choose, but you don't really need to.

I'd like to push in the direction where, first, there is enough of a scarcity in items and equipment (resources in general) that the player never really feels like they have enough. This keeps the rewards feeling rewarding right up to the end game and also encourages the player to adapt their play to whatever scarce resources are at hand. Second I'd like the items and equipment (talents to) to be stronger in the later game so that there are clear upgrades to take advantage of, assuming the player is clever and skillful enough to take advantage of them. In conclusion expect a lot of attention to item balancing in the next few weeks.

GENERAL LATE GAME WORK:
I think in general the late game (Branch-II and Yendor) just need a lot of work in general. The monster sets for these zones need reworks, the level generation needs to be completely redone, the overall balance needs to be addressed. I feel like the game is actually working pretty solidly up until this point, and so again expect this to be an area of major focus in the coming weeks.

CHANGE LOG:
Alright with all that rambling out of the way onto the actual change log. Despite all that design rambling (thinking about which consumed a fair bit of time), in terms of actual implementation, most of the work this week was plain old boring bugs-and-crashes and optimization. This will continue to be a big focus but I think I'm finally starting to get ahead of it a bit so hopefully in the weeks to come I can focus more and more on the actual game.

BUGS AND CRASHES:

• Over-Heal will no longer reset when changing levels or when enemies follow you up or down stairs.
• Similarly the bonuses to range and melee damage that NPCs gain will not reset.
• Fixed the casket frames being wrong when vaults are rotated (I swear this still happens in a few places).
• Cannon Carts will now correctly follow tracks.
• Charge will now go through all shroom types if no other path is possible.
• You can now shoot beneficial mushrooms.
• Fire will now destroy beneficial mushrooms.
• Fixed stone frames in The-Core
• Fixed: knocking a lunging enemy back would cause it to perform its lunge the next turn despite the targeting UI disapearing.
• Fixed: weird thing where fire storming monsters, if killed by their own fire storm, were leaving the targeting UI stuff.
• Torches and flags will no longer spawn behind furnaces and other objects.
• Picking up a shroom the turn you would otherwise die from poison will no longer kill you. The turn now ends when the player actually completes his move. This led to a slew of bugs (anything to do with turn timing is a disgusting tangled mess of a swamp). Be on the lookout for oddities.
• Fixed several more hard crashes in level generation.
• Fixed some crazy oddities with how enemies were being spawned (I can even begin to explain this as I quickly erased it from my mind).
• Palm trees are no longer solid on the top. I'm still playing around with how I'd like the 'physics' of larger objects to work.
• Some minor issues with platform wall frames, Yendor gate placement, just various odd level generation stuff.
• BIG ONE: optimized some of the level generation code (thanks joojamoi!) which should result in much faster generation particularily in The-Dark-Temple.

GENERAL BALANCE:

• STR now grants +2ENC per point. I think in the future, end game heavy armor could become heavier but much stronger to reward STR specialization. Everyone else will simply find gearing easier with a single point or 2 of STR being enough to equip any light to medium armor (as it should be imo).
• Stairs should no longer spawn close to enemies.
• Removed unstable doors.
• There is now a min and max for healing shrooms. Personally I'm finding the max is still too high as I always seem to have lots leftover on every level. Feedback needed here.
• Changed the cost of attribute points at the shrine from 75GP to 100GP. Part of an overall attempt to make attribute points rarer or harder to obtain.

ITEM BALANCE:

• Shield of Power, Health and Mana ENC 4 => 5 to bring them in line with other shields of the same tier.
• Axe damage increased to match other weapons
• Blink Wand charges 3 =>2 since this is possibly one of the strongest items in the game.
• Ring of Speed 2SP => 1SP
• Ring of Health 12HP => 10HP
• Ring of Mana 4MP => 2MP. All these changes are in line with the equivalent attributes and also I'm hoping to make the tier-1 rings 'weaker' in order to make the upgrades in the later game 'stronger'. As a side note, there is a serious lack of MP items in the later game that would help mages specialize in MP as opposed to raw AP.
• All items granting AP were cut in half (this seems to have helped a fair bit with that incidental AP problem and also does a bit to reduce end game power creep).
• Flash Freeze duration doesn't scale with AP (a flat 4T).
• All summon items have a shorter duration: 10T instead of 20T. I was finding that single charges of these items was almost always overkill for encounters.
• Items that have the CD modifier (I think its just the one?) now Floor the value instead of Ceil. So 20% on 6CD will be 5CD instead of 4CD.
• Potion of Attributes Cost 60GP => 75GP (attribute points are just worth more).
• Scroll of Enchantment Cost 50GP => 60GP (attribute points are worth more, intending to buff late game gear more, enchantment scrolls are just always powerful since they flat out add power without using up a slot).
• Veil of the Swamp 1INT => 10%AP. I don't think any items in the early game should have an attribute point on them. This still makes it significantly better then the basic 'Hat' while still allowing for later upgrades.

ABILITY BALANCE:
Took an initial stab at balancing the Ice-Mage. Just a few runs while adjusting numbers of the fly. In particular:

• Freezing Cloud: reduced the duration from 5 => 4 at Rank-1 with duration 5 at Rank-2.
• Freezing Cloud range reduced from 6 => 5
• Freezing Cloud damage does not improve with Rank-2 (I think avoiding increased damage w/ rank-2 is a good strategy since AP already scales so much). As a side note, I'm still intending to implement as system of multiple 'upgrades' per talent instead of a flat Rank-2. So unique per talent but stuff like changes to range, duration, cool down, etc. would be common.
• Shield-of-Ice was generally nerfed but also had the hidden time to regen a single HP point raised from 4 => 5. Its still very strong imo.
• Cone of Cold knockback 2 => 1. I'd like to make the Storm-Mage the king of knock back type spells, making Burst-of-Wind more versatile and probably adding an additional wind type talent. Cone of Cold therefore doesn't need to have such an amazing knock back as a tier-1 talent.

MONSTER BALANCE:

• Crocodiles are now fast swimmers (I have the code for this now, so looking for places to use it).
• Black Mambas are fast swimmers (this could be a theme for the sewers).
• Penguin snow ball cooldown 0 => 1. Not really sure why these guys were such death machines.
• Wolf Lunge damage increased quite a bit since all dodgable attacks should be pretty high damage.

USER INTERFACE:

• Added a bunch of item and ability descriptions courtesy of Rethlit. Thanks man! This whole area still needs a lot of work.
• Mushrooms now show the actual HP/MP/SP gain on mouse over.

ITEM DROP BALANCING:
Sub-heading: balancing late game power creep by removing some items / resources.

• Removed Orc/Dark level 5 so that the zone is 5 levels long like others. There was no real reason for it to be longer and I felt that it A) drags out the game a bit longer then needed. B) adds 2 extra items to the player. The structure of the dungeon and its size is going to change a lot once we're in Early Access but for Web-Release I think having all 4 mid/late game zones be 4 levels + boss works fine.
• Reduced the frequency of non-guaranteed reward vaults (stuff like crystal chests, potion rooms etc). Again just removing some items from the game.
• Zone Level 1 and 2 of Orc/Dark, Branch-1 and Branch-2 will now only drop 1 item instead of 2.
• Overall the number of items, particularly in the late game has thus been reduced by at least 8. Again to note, I'd like a full clear to give the player 'just enough' items and anything less should be comparatively challenging.

NEW GENERATOR:
I forgot to even mention the new generators last week (I think it was Orc and Dark-Temple). But I'm continuing to add these things alongside all the other work I'm doing since by Web-Release I'd ideally like all the generation in the game to be either replaced or heavily reworked. This week I added a new generator for The-Crypt that includes a bunch of the new tiles and objects for that zone. Haven't gotten the code working for the 'Cursed Floors' yet, will likely get that in a mini update tommorow.