Update 0.10

Hello everyone! A pretty big update this week as I continue to work on the dungeon side of things. Unfortunately as I mentioned in Discord, I've managed to break the index finger of my right hand which has made typing tedious and slow. So this update will have to be brief. The injury is pretty minor so should be mostly healed in the next week or two.  

Good news is I can still click! So I've spent an unusual amount of time on mapping this week as well as testing for balance on the new maps. Focus for this week was reworking The Arcane Tower, its monsters, generators and vaults. Due to many iterations of testing, much balancing was also done.

ARCANE TOWER MONSTERS:

• Warlock (renamed demonologist)
  • Life Tap Projectile
  • Hell Portal: Summoned  near himself to encourage the player to advance. It will continue summoning imps until destroyed.
  • Curse Of Torment: 10%DMG (based on max HP) for 10T. Can be canceled by going out of LoS.
• Spectral-Summoner
  • Magic Missiles
  • Summon Spectral Minions: an assortment of blades, bows, shields and hands (that grab you!)
  • Summon Spectral Phantom: stronger each time it is summoned.
• Orb of Force
  • Force Whip (1 tile pull)
  • Wall of Force
  • Force Shield: cast on an ally to make them invulnerable to incoming damage for 3T (or until caster killed).
• Golems:
  • Shadow Forged Golem: Shadow Step 
  • Force Forged Golem: Wall of Force
  • Haste Forged Golem: Fast + Lunge
• Elementals:
  • Elemental attack Cooldown: 0 => 1
  • Elementals all now have ability Elemental Overload which functions like Arrow Storm (giving their attack 0CD)
  • Reduced tornado effect radius
  • Ice Elemental uses an expanding freezing cloud attack instead of ice bomb (less chance of slaughtering his friends)
  • Homing Fire Orbs now only explode on the target. Again these were mostly just killing allies by accident.
    
• Added a percent chance to imp blink so they don't all blink at same time on cooldown

GLYPHS:

This is something I'll likely add to even before getting to EA since lots of variations with easy implementation are pretty obvious. Graphics are placeholders until my finger heals.

• Blade Glyph: Summons a blade  when stepped on. Player is going to want to avoid running enemies over these.
• Force Glyph: cycles on and off generally blocking corridors or paths.

PLAYER BALANCE:

• Strength: 10HP => 8HP
  • HP is actually quite strong since it directly effects the amount of HP recovered with shrooms, potions, level ups etc. 
  • 10HP/STR just felt to strong. Focusing STR led to massive HP levels and even for other characters it was way to easy to get HP to comfortable or even more than comfortable levels with little investment.
• Fortitude: 10,30HP => 8,24HP (as per above)
• Charge can no longer be used when Slow. Helps make Slow a consistent counter to maneuverability. I think Jump likely needs this treatment as well. Barbarian will be fine as he's still one of the stronger classes.
  
• Sleep Bomb Range 7 => 6
  • Sleep bomb is already a very powerful ability. It doesn't need to also be one of the longest ranged abilities in the game.
  • Actually due to its targeting pattern in probably was the longest range ability.
• Sleep Bomb Duration :10,8 => 10,10 
  • Again, sleep bomb is very powerful and the upgrade to the AoE at Rank-2 is massive enough to not also need a short cooldown.
  • This also stops all but the most absurdly focused Ability Power builds from achieving 'sleep lock'.
• Bear Trap Damage: 10,15 => 5,10 
  • The immobilize and unstable for 5T is strong enough without needing to deal a bunch of damage at the same time.
• The Rogue will likely see an additional talent or two before Web-Release that should give him a bit of a boost back. I don't really think Rogue is overpowered as a class but I think some of his core talents really need to be kept in check.
• Dominate: Range 6 => 3
  • I've though of various ways to keep dominate in check and many of you have made suggestions along the same lines. I like this change because it specifically stops Dominate from functioning as a 'kill spell' that can immediately, at the start of the fight, remove the highest value enemy from the game.
  • I still need to get around to the list of 'broken' dominate targets.
• Flaming Battle Sphere has had its hit points cut in half.
  • I really don't want this thing to function at all like a tank so it needs to stay very fragile. Careful placement should be rewarded.
  • In testing I still used it quite effectively as a tank...
• Made Shock 20-15T Cooldown (for now)
  • Haven't gotten to looking at storm mage yet but figured I could throw this at him to at least keep him somewhat playable.

MONSTER BALANCE:

• Reduced the top end (Level 12+) enemy HP. 
  • This was previously raised in the era of high Ability Power and based on testing in the late game its been lowered back to around where it was.
    
• There is now a 50% chance that enemies will shout immediately upon gaining agro. To prevent easy, repeatable single pulls. The agro range was decreased a bit from RFIII and there are so many more movement abilities that made this pretty effortless.
• The Totem of Healing cast by the Frog Shaman in the swamp will now only heal 10%HP per turn rather than 50%HP.
  
  • This is the first introduction of this mechanic so it should be pretty 'soft'.
  • The player also often doesn't have the tools to get deep into the backline and deal with it at this early stage.
• The stationary Totem of Discord has had its ranged reduced.

ITEM BALANCE:

• Adjusted a few item prices, mostly making attribute gear cost more to reflect the greater power compared to RFIII.
• Removed DEX on Boots of Sprinting.
  • I'd like to get the items with abilities to be mostly good for their abilities sake and not an easy extra attribute point.
• Enchantment will no longer boost Thought Theft/Mana Drain stat.
• Thought Theft has been added to Robe-of-Flowing-Mana

LEVEL GENERATION:

Got a ton of work done in this area. Was already planning to focus on filling out the dungeon with the new style maps, vaults and generation but it turns out this is also really easy to do with my finger in a brace.

• Doubled the number of vaults used in some of the Upper Dungeon generators.
• Roughly doubled the number of monster vaults in the Upper Dungeon.
• Reworked the monster vaults for The Swamp
• Added a completely new generator for The Swamp
• Added a completely new generator for The Arcane Tower
• Completely reworked the basic Portal-Rooms generator in The Arcane Tower with totally new vaults.
• Completely reworked the monster vaults for The Arcane Tower

BUGS AND CRASHES:

• Slimes will now split to 50%HP rather than 75%HP (not sure why this was set like this)
• Slimes will now correctly split their EXP (they were losing about half)

Next week will be doing a similar makeover of The Iron Forge and then after that Vault of Yendor. The hope is to get the bulk of the level content for Web Release either added or reworked by the end of this month.