Update 0.18

Hello everyone!

A fairly straight forward update this week. We're getting into the home stretch here so more and more I'm just moving vast swaths of my To-Do list into the 'do it during EA' pile. The main focus this week was on finishing up the talents for the magic using classes and just general clean up and balancing.

Right now, I'm not quite as happy with these final class changes as I was with the other 5 classes mostly due to the fact that, as it stands, the casters didn't really feel like they needed these extra talents. I wanted to hit Web-Release with an even number of talents per class though so this has basically achieved this. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The Web-Release should really be treated like a well polished prototype, a proof of concept really of some of the ideas I'm planning on exploring over the course of approximately 3 years of EA development. So the state of the classes and talents for Web-Release are just a first stab at what will likely be many iterations. As it stands, I'm not totally hating the current talent lists, but I'm also not totally loving them either so we're pretty much exactly where we should be for this sort of early prototype.

Giving most of the casters 'charged' 'super abilities' is not something I'm really sure about in the long run but its going to have to suffice for now. I'm not even totally sold yet on the entire idea of 'charged' abilities in general so that will have to be something to keep an eye on over the course of EA.

With all that being said here's the update notes:

CLASSES AND TALENTS:

• ENCHANTER:
  • Discord Duration: 4 => 5
    • I really want to make it easy to slap this on a lot of enemies specifically to take advantage of the damage bonus which is easier with a longer duration.
  • Magic-Mastery replaced by Staff-Attunement which increases staff damage.
    • Enchanters kit has the weird property that he benefits less from Magic-Mastery then most of the other casters.
    • Magic-Mastery will still exist in the game on tomes and in the library.
  • Domination Nerfs/Fixes:

    
    

    • Warlocks and slimes appear to have already been fixed in previous updates but will note here for completeness that dominated slimes can no longer be healed back to full health and warlocks will no longer summon permanent imps.
    • Over Heal:
      • These changes apply both to NPCs and the player but are mainly being added to keep over-heal on the player from getting out of hand. I'm intending to use the Over-Heal mechanic in many places eventually so working on this system is pretty important.
      • Capped at 2x Max-HP
      • After 10T will begin to degrade 1 HP per turn.
    • Totems:

      
      

      • Only summoned when in combat.
      • Poofs when combat ends so that the player cannot keep the effect from a totem summoned 3 fights ago and 3 rooms back.
      • Poof totems when changing levels (the effect was already not presisting)
    • Troll Necromancer will poof his summons after 20T like other summons i.e. not permanent.
• NECROMANCER:
  • Removed Infusion-of-Blood entirely
  • Moved Soul-Reap to Tier-2
• FIRE MAGE:
  • Removed Infusion-of-Fire
  • Added Fire-Storm
    • Charged ability that summons high damage Flaming Clouds in a targetable AoE and summons up to 4 Fire-Sprites
    • Basically the Fire-Mages 'ultimate' ability.
• ICE MAGE:
  • Ice-Lance: a short range, orthogonal only, extremely high damage 'bolt' spell.
  • Still need to add an animation for this.
  • I really like the idea of the Ice-Mage being the 'melee caster' and so with Cone-of-Cold, Ice-Lance and a short range Freeze ability he really has very limited ranged options. I won't do it for Web-Release but I'd like to try out a sort of flame thrower version of Freezing Cloud which would make it so that all of the Ice-Mages offensive abilities are short range, and originate from the caster.
• STORM MAGE:
  • Removed Infusion-of-Storms
  • Summon Tornado is the 20CD Tier-3 spell. The purpose of this spell is to act like a soft-stun in that it can be used to essentially root enemies in place without actually stunning them.
  • Lightning Storm is the charged 'ultimate' ability.
    • Stuns and damages any enemies in the storm each turn.
    • The storm itself is conductive so you can chain more shocks through it.
    • Since the stun is applied each turn you can knock additional enemies into it.

ITEMS:

• Goblin Battle Staff has has its 8HP changed to 3MP
  • There is a real lack of MP items in the game and a real excess of HP items. While HP items are generally good for everyone I want to make this first staff a real 'caster item'.
  • The healing effect will remain which keeps it still a very generally useful item for pretty much all builds during the early game.

MONSTERS:

• Arrow Storm Duration: 5 => 4 (I don't like them standing still for so long)
• Dherosa-the-Demonologist => Danarr The Warlock (to match the name change on the base monster type)
  • Eventually in EA I want to do an undersea water themed zone with pirates so the DanARRRRRRR name is reserved for the pirate boss there :P
• Danarr-the-Warlock: Orb-of-Fire => Curse-of-Torment to make him a stronger version of the basic Warlock.
• Totem-of-Healing HP/Turn 50% => 20% as a base
  • Froglok remains 10% as the first introduction.
  • Eventually a Yendor level Shaman can have a higher % for his totems.
• Slow Charging enemies will take damage when colliding with walls (like lunge)
• Froglok warriors and archers have reduced jump distance 5 => 3 (first introduction to the ability).
• Reverted the changes to the Polar-Worm based on Dragon of Celts correct analysis.
• Instead of taking 3T out of LoS for a curse to fade it now takes a single turn. I think this makes the mechanic much clearer (just break LoS), and opens up the possibility of increasingly more deadly curses.

USER INTERFACE:

• Melee and Range abilities will now show their damage at the top of the screen where other abilities display damage.
• Mousing over the EXP bar will show if your going to get a Talent or Attribute point next level.
• Added a tutorial hint the first time the player gets low on HP explaining mushrooms and the [M] key.
• Added a more readable graphic for Ice-Shield on enemies
• Added healing mushroom counts per level on the Goto menu.
  • As a side note, the Goto menu is one of those things that eventually needs a complete overhaul to show much more information and the dungeon layout more graphically.
• Added descriptions for many of the previously unlisted enemy abilities (stuff they do when they are hit for example).

BUGS AND CRASHES:

• Fixed: Getting knocked back through traps would sometimes not actually hit some of the traps.
• Armor of Repulsion will now correctly go on 'cooldown' when used.
• Removed the old Shield-Wall from tomes and librarian.
• Fixed: getting tongue or whip pulled through blink shrooms was crashing the game.
• Fixed: sprinting through a bear trap was soft-locking the game.
• Fixed: burst-of-wind through a blink shroom was soft locking the game.
• Fixed: Any projectile hitting a blink shroom was crashing the game.
• Fixed: killing something with disengage/lunge would oftentimes trigger the 'nearby danger' message when immediately trying to explore.
• Adding/removing weapons with the wield menu will now correctly add/remove the associated abilities.
• A lunging enemy that hits a blink shroom or a lunging enemy that is blinked by his ally will now cancel his lunge.
• The players lunge will no longer work when adjacent.

That's it for now. These last few weeks of updates will likely be a bit messy and unfocused as I try to tick off as many high priority items from my To-Do list as possible. I've got a ton of art related stuff queued up that really needs to be tackled (a lot of new abilities are missing icons), so will probably start next week with that. Other then that I think most of the core game is now about as good as its going to get given the time remaining so its really just a matter of polishing, fixing up bugs, cleaning up loose ends and adding as much additional level gen content as possible.

UPDATE 0.18.1:

• Fixed Yendors NaN HP
• Moved Summon Tornado to Tier-3
• Fixed the crash when monsters go over cursed floors
• Fixed the crash when Giant Leeches try to heal themselves 
• Working on smoothing out the cursor movement a bit
  • Still not quite there yet but I think its quite noticeably improved.
  • This could end up as an options menu toggle if some people dislike it.
• Shock: 18DMG => 16DMG 
  • This thing needs a bit of work.
• Burst of Wind: 10DMG => 8DMG
• Scroll of Fear Duration: 6 => 5
• Totem of Beasts num summons 12 => 8