4 August

Meet Our Next Hero: The Lavamancer!

The Lavamancer comes out this month on PC & PS4! Meet the Lavamancer in his official trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WqDkQ0s-M
Learn more about him in this week's Dev Log:

We’re in the middle of a final push to get the Lavamancer wrapped up! Be sure and check out the hero video above for a fun look at his themes, abilities, and towers. Here’s a breakdown from me on the hero, designed by Dan Haddad with some images he snapped for me in one of our test map.

Resource – Molten Power
The Lavamancer uses a unique resource called Molten Power, which functions like mana for other characters except he resupplies this for himself through one of his towers, called a Fissure of Embermount. You can place up to three Fissures in the map, each generating a mana pick-up every twenty seconds. If you play it right and keep mental track, you’ll be max molten power non-stop and that means more fire!



Grab these burning meteors for more Molten Power!



These fissures burn the devil out of any enemies that come close. Where you place these is up to you depending on your aggressiveness during Combat Phase. If you put them behind a bunch of barricades, you’re missing out. His right click, Dash, allows you to zip across the battlefield like the flash and is super useful for getting in or out at a moment’s notice.



If you place your fissures in offensive spots, you can Erupt them (see Eruption later on), grab more molten power on the spot and Erupt again in an AOE fiery cataclysm. Use Dash to swoop out if you get swarmed, or swoop in the detonate. Think about how you place your Fissures of Embermount, as they are key to your resources.

Melee
The Lavamancer is our first from-scratch hero who no longer takes steps during his melee rotation. You’ll often hear us refer to this as root motion. This means you can move around independently of what melee strike he’s doing during a sequence, which is great for timing hits and gives you much better control over where you are. I know Dan and I were chatting about making the Lavamancer beastly for health, so he can actually throw down in Nightmare IV without being one-shotted. I know he’s tweaking that as I write this, so keep your eyes peeled on his final health numbers. When you pick up weapons for the Lavamancer, his arm morphs into an earth version, whether that’s a mace, sword, or his own special gauntlet drops.

Harden and Inflame
Another ability he has is Harden and Inflame. Think of these as stances or modes you toggle between. In this case, the Lavamancer controls his temperature by shifting between these two forms. When Hardened, he expels heat and cools into solid rock, reflecting projectiles and reducing damage taken. While in this form, Inflame reignites him with volcanic heat, buffing both movement speed and melee attack damage.



Eruption
His signature ability is Eruption, which emits a fiery shockwave of molten energy, burning the crap out of enemies and buffing the Defense Power and Defense Attack Speed of all nearby defenses. Eruption causes cool effects to your nearby defenses, too, so if you can run up and hit it near your own defenses, the effect is a hilarious molten plasma soup of fiery death.



Submerge and Emerge
Lately we’ve been giving heroes different ways to move. The Gun Witch has her broom, EV2 had Death from Above, and we recently gave the Monk his own flying cloud with an Incursion weapon. This time, and fitting perfectly with the theme or volcanoes, earth, and molten destruction, is Submerge and Emerge. When activated, the Lavamancer burrows underground, gaining super-fast increased movement speed and healing over time. Pressing jump, primary attack, or the ability again launches the Lavamancer with a devastating uppercut, breaching the surface of the Earth and damaging nearby enemies. This type of mobility is fun because not only are you completely hauling butt, you're underground so you don’t fly off ledges. Similar to the Gun Witch’s Vroom Broom, a healing ability can take up key real estate on your action bar. Having an ability with multiple functionality just adds to its usefulness.

Although Dash is awesome, the immunity from submerge makes you think about your movement in different ways!

Maw of the Earth Drake
The Lavamancer shapes the Maw of the Earth Drake out of solid rock, which fires a molten beam slowing enemies over time until they turn to stone. Enemies in stone form taunt their former allies into attacking them. When under the effects of Eruption, the Maw fires two beams and turns enemies to stone faster. Great way to slow a lane down as opposed to just killzones.

Oil Geyser
The Lavamancer creates an Oil Geyser that spews out hot oil, slowing, damaging, and applying the oiled effect to enemies. If you use Eruption near these, the Geyser spews out a pillar of molten magma, burning all nearby enemies for increased damage.



Volcano
His last defense is a massive volcano that rains burning meteors down on enemies exploding for massive damage. While under the effects of Eruption, the volcano spews out meteors at an accelerated rate with increased damage. Look for snaps of this in the video.

In summary, the Lavamancer would makeHendrix smile and Beavis have a brain aneurysm. So if you want to set the world on fire, grab him when he comes out this month!

Molten Citadel went out on all platforms on Tuesday morning, and we’ve been singing Disco Inferno continuously since then and assuming everything is perfect. Jk though… There are a couple of known issues we’re looking at right now (health bars being messed up on PS4 and some Skill Spheres not working) and we might be issuing a patch next Tuesday (but probably not since we’re in stabilization for the next milestone). Also, we’ve gotten a chance to take a peek at the passive re-roll issue on PS4 from when we accidentally rebalanced the game so expect something in the coming weeks there (if only a re-roll).

Live Team side, we’ve been working on a couple things. First, we’ve added in additional logging to client-event server communication so we can get better info on where connection issues are coming from. Second, our Playverse guru whipped up a tool that allows him to peer into time on all servers simultaneously so we can make sure that it’s not out of whack. Third, we did a deep dive into our Steam transactions code to try to improve the overall stability of the system and ferret out a couple of bizarre reports we received. Also, the new guy is looking at Tornados not working randomly, but we’re having trouble getting any sort of reliable information from that, so if you have any ideas of why Tornadoes occasionally just fail to knock up enemies, let us know.

Here's a pic of the current state of the Wild West level!



Now that we're done with the Wild West level, we're moving on to the Crumbled Bulwark, the "winner" of the Influence Vote! We're going to do a visual pass in the level so it looks more interesting. We also want to add new features like new gameplay areas for just the players.

Lastly but not less important, you might meet with a certain creature in this dark level...

Demon Lord is out and tossing boulders at everyone now. So that means, onward and upward to the next Incursion. Crumbled Bulwark was the “troll winner” of the Influence Vote, so that means it's time to make an exciting Incursion for that location. Any ideas on incursions you guys want to see on Crumbled Bulwark, be sure to leave those down in the comments.

As for the map itself, we are making 1 or 2 adjustments to the level to create some extra space for the player. We want to make sure the gameplay for these maps remains faithful to DD1, but also want to give players new things to explore!

Testing and bug finding with the Lavamancer is a go. Speaking of go, been playing Pokemon Go recently and found this rare Dugtrio.

Ain’t he the cutest?

2 August

The Demon Lord Has Emerged!

• New Map: Molten Citadel
  
  • Thanks to your previous Influence vote, our next map is the Molten Citadel! Molten Citadel is a remake of DD1’s Magus Quarters. A fiery lava moat surrounds this explorable castle. Also, skeletons. Medium-sized map. One core.
• New Incursion: Demon’s Lair
  
  • Turn up the heat with the new Molten Citadel map and a superheated Incursion featuring Lava Guardians and the fierce Demon Lord. HE’S ON FIRE! Can you keep your cool?
• New Abyss Lord Weapon: Scorched Tome of Molten Brimstone
  
  • You play with fire, you’re gonna get... The Scorched Tome of Molten Brimstone. Burninate foes with the power of earth and flame, then finish ‘em off with great balls of magma.
• iPWR 750 Medallion on the Demon's Lair Incursion!
  
• New Incursion Enemy: Lava Guardian
  
  • The hot n’ heavy Lava Guardian enters the Demon’s Lair Incursion with attacks that are sure to get you hot and bothered.
• New Squire Costume: Guardian of the Molten Citadel
  
  • Think DD2 is hawt? Help keep cool, new stuff coming and wear your support by splurging on the Squire’s Guardian of the Molten Citadel variant! It comes with 27 accessories and 127° C of style.
• Changing Terminology
  
  • We’re changing “Challenges” back to “Incursions” (because too many things in our game are called Challenges) and “Defense” back to “Campaign” (because in a few updates, this will feel more like a traditional Campaign). Deal with it (but seriously, we hope that’s the last time).
• Additional Changes
  
  • Fixed a bug where some defenses weren’t attacking dummies in the Tavern. Sky Guards still don’t work, but maybe one day.
    
  • Added “Wave” and “Phase” to the Game Browser.

• Skeletal Ramster targeting yaw increased from 10 to 17.
  
  • Skeletal Ramster should now be able to hit everything within its area of attack.

• Fixed several server crash bugs. Fixing crashes and weird loading issues (like the falling through tavern bug) are our top technical priority!
  
• Fixed an issue where some Nightmare IV maps had their recommended iPWR set too high.
  
• Fixed the Squire’s Slamming Block to only apply on successful blocks.
  
• Fixed some legacy pets having unexpectedly high stats.
  
• Fixed some legacy gear having base stats that were in the stratosphere.
  
• Fixed some spelling issues on the Forest Poachers Incursion. We ams gud spellarz.
  
• Fixed an issue on Liferoot Forest where people could get out of the level with the Glaive of the Storms.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Cooldown Reduction Sphere occasionally causing abilities without cooldowns to suddenly have them.