Dec 14, 2020

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Myzzrym

Hey there folks!

Welcome to Solasta's Winter Update! With the addition of the new Monastery Questline, the Early Access should now reach 12h - 14h of total game time. We've also taken action regarding the most popular requests, such as adding more customization options and changing the lighting system which was deemed too punitive (we've reverted the rules back to the 5e tabletop ruleset). Hope you enjoy!

Also don't forget, we'll be doing a Community Stream tomorrow at 8 am PST / 11 am EST / 5 pm CET on Twitch!

New Content / Feature:

An entire new Questline is unlocked after Mardracht's tea party (which may or may not involve tea). Tactical Adventures does not condone violence against the elderly.
- Upon returning to the World Map, a new location should now become available.
Many new magic items have been added to the game, because magic is cool and you know it. And no we won't spoil which ones.
You can now hide during combat! Wooh for sneaky dastardly deeds, chivalry is for dumdums with negative intelligence modifier. That's not me, that's what the Rogue said.
- Hiding requires you to break line of sight with all enemies before doing so
- Creatures can see in a 180 degree arc in front of them, instantly revealing you if you step into their vision range (no Stealth Check)
- Otherwise, you will have to roll a Stealth Check under the following conditions: Ending your turn too close to an enemy (distance depends on many factors, such as your Stealth score and armor type), or taking an action such as attacking or casting a spell.
- Note that Hiding in Combat is a very contested rule on Tabletop, so we invite you to give us feedback if you think the current system can be improved.
Because hiding isn't enough, you can now also apply poison to your weapon. Hey, say what you want but a win's a win.
Several new spells have been added to the spell list. You ready? Pass without trace, See invisibility, Animal Friendship, Find traps, Calm emotions and Protection from poison. What do you mean that's lame? Oh sorry Larry, I forgot you only take spells that deal damage because that's all you care about. Well not every spell can be a fireball, Larry.
Two new homebrew cantrips have been added to combat darkness more effectively: Shine, which lights up an enemy like a candle from afar for a solid minute - and Sparkle, which is quite literally "I cast magic missile at the darkness" (okay, difference being you still need to target interactable objects such as wall sconces to light them up).
Many new Hair / Eyes / Skin Colors have been added to the Character Creator
Each Ancestry now has access to new additional faces in the Character Creator, on top of the old ones. NPCs also got a facelift in the process.
Several new monsters have been added to Solasta. You will encounter them in the new locations of the Winter Update, but you may also run into them during Random Encounters.
The Scavenger Faction is now up and running! Simply go to them whenever you drop by Caer Cyflen, and they'll send their best to go loot the areas you cleared (including random encounters). We will further develop the Scavengers in the future, but don't hesitate to ask for their services already and tell us what you think!

Major Changes:

The inventory & loot systems have received a lot of requested upgrades:
- You can now double click to loot / equip items
- The party will now share their wealth, instead of hoarding each coins individually like little gremlins. Shopping just became much easier.
- We added a second quiver so you can easily switch between regular arrows and magical arrows.
- You will now receive a warning when equipping a combination of weapons you can't dual wield, such as Rapier + Dagger. As a reminder, you need two light weapons to be able to dual wield properly (Rapier isn't light).
- Looting bodies will now open a small window instead of the entire inventory
- Looting bodies (after battle) will now automatically loot a sizeable area around the body. You may still need to loot some bodies separately if one died particularly far from the fight (for instance if it was perched on a tower).
- You can now open a shop directly after having talked to the merchant NPC at least once. Simply click on the shop tent instead of the NPC.
- The shop interface has been revamped to display more items at once, and base scrolling speed has been increased.
The lighting system has been reverted back to Tabletop rules:
- Dim light will no longer give disadvantage on attack rolls, only on perception checks (so you better keep that torch out unless you love running into traps).
- This means Darkvision will properly allow you to attack into darkness with no disadvantage, since the character will view darkness as dim light. Note that Darkvision still has a maximum range (most often 60', meaning 12 cells) - so beyond that range good old disadvantage will still be here rubbing its hands with its crappy RNG.
- Soraks will now receive the "Children of Darkness" buff while in dim light and darkness which enhances their fighting prowess, as they are creatures of the dark. Fighting Soraks? Get some light out or be prepared for a whole lot of pain.
- Note that unlike on tabletop, you will still be able to target creatures that are heavily obscured. Technically speaking you shouldn't be able to click on enemies in the darkness, but we found that it made the game very frustrating as the player could see the monsters even though the character wouldn't be able to see them, so they were unable to interact with them. And that made any non-darkvision ancestries even weaker compared to before - you wouldn't even attack with disadvantage, you would just not attack at all.
The combat console has received several improvements:
- You can now hover any attack, damage, saving throw, ability check roll to see the details of the dice roll
- You can now hover creature names to see the monster card (with your current level of knowledge of the monster)
The combat UI has also received several improvements:
- Using Dash will no longer immediately consume your action, and will instead show you the updated movement range. Moving inside the first area will only consume your movement, while moving outside that range will use your action to dash.
- Other actions such as Dodge or Disengage will now ask you for confirmation, as well as reminding you what the action does. No more terrible misclick!
The Food System is now a little less hardcore for parties without Rangers:
- The general shop in Caer Cyflen will now offer up to 50 rations instead of 10.
- The system will now properly prioritize food you find on the road, so you should consume less rations during your travels overall.
- World Map travel also allows you to automatically cast Goodberries / Create Food and Water before camping to avoid consuming your rations.

Tweaks / Improvements

Some NPCs in Caer Cyflen now wear faction tabards. I heard it's a fashion thing, adventurers like you wouldn't get it.
You will now be able to buy the Manacalon Rosary in the general shop in Caer Cyflen.
Exit Areas have been made much more visible. No more wandering around looking at the ground to find the exit!
You will now be able to click directly on the hit dice in the Short Rest panel, and the dice will properly roll on the bottom of the screen.
Long rest fire icons now flicker. I know, I know, it doesn't sound like much but it's super cool, swear on me mum
Added animations to Hanging Cages crashing down (Caer Lem - Goblin Hideout)
The ground should now look a little less monotone outside Bone Keep
Added VFX to some spells that were missing them (such as Magic Weapon)
Made some improvements to the blueprint (M)
Scrolls of the same spell will now stack properly
Added visual feedback above a character when a condition (such as paralysis) is removed.
Added a visible "Enemy Movement" banner during enemy turn, as monsters who were playing without being visible sometimes led players to believe their game was stuck.

Bugfixes / Others

You will now receive a pop-up during Loading Screens if you're running into an infinite loading screen bug. Well hopefully you won't ever run into that issue, but at least you won't be sitting there wondering if it's ever going to finish loading or not.
The "Alt" Key that highlights interactable objects will now properly work in combat as well
The bug which was causing looting to take several seconds instead of being instant should now be fixed
The ladder which was unusable in Tower of Magic is now... well, usable again. Go get that chest, folks.
... And plenty of other bugfixes here and there, too many to detail!

Known Issues

Here are a few bugs that we didn't quite catch in time to get them fixed for this update - and that we'll likely be hammering down in the upcoming hotfixes later this week.

[Blocker] In front of the Abjuration Tower, there is a small puzzle that only activates by night. Attempting to interact with it during the day passed the quest update telling you to come back by night will break the puzzle and block any further progress - meaning you'll need to load a save from before you interacted with the puzzle.
In a certain Bone Keep room, killing the ghost in a single round will make the game take around 10 seconds to end the combat. That's the time it takes for the DM to stop weeping at you killing their monster so fast.
Some skeletons in Dark Castle have been tagged as allies by mistakes. If you can't beat them, join them I guess? Anyway, don't worry the fight will still end once you off all the opponents - no need to try and kill your newfound friendly skellies via Fireball or other AoE spells.
The Ready Cantrip ability will cast Sparkle instead of offensive cantrips if you have Sparkle in your spellbook. Since monsters aren't torches, nothing will happen.
The Minotaur does not like when you use Ready Action. If you attack him it with a ready action when he is charging, he will ask the game for a 10 second time out before resuming his charge.
There are some missing textures on the ground next to the cemetery in one of the new areas.
In a certain prison cell you will find not one, but two barons. While we could try to shift the blame on your alcohol intake, that's just a mistake by the DM.
Broods have learned how to cheat the system and can no longer be targeted by weapons while on walls. However, we have learned to outwit the Broods by telling you that you can still target them by clicking their portrait instead while we fix this loophole of theirs.
If you save during a specific encounter against a single Brood and later load that save, you will see that this particular Brood somehow managed to cast Kage Bunshin no Jutsu and you will be facing five broods instead. You don't know, maybe it was a Hokage in its past life.
[Old Save] It is possible (not 100%) that some saves from older versions will run into a blocker in Bone Keep, where you will be unable to open a certain door because the lever that opens it won't appear on the wall (see screenshot below). If that happens, either load another save and try again - or you will need to start fresh again :(

Difficulty and you:

We've seen a few people concerned that the game might be getting too easy due to certain changes. As always, keep in mind that we're mostly doing those changes because we haven't implemented difficulty settings yet - so we need to make sure people who are not expert at tactical RPGs can also enjoy Solasta. Fear not however, as you will find all the challenge you wish for once we implement higher difficulty options when version 1.0 hits the store.

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Dec 3, 2020

Dev Update #25 - New Content Sneak Peek

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Myzzrym

Hey there folks!

How are you all doing? Winter is starting show its nose, it's getting pretty cold here in Paris! However, that also means we're getting closer to the Winter Update, which we will be talking about a bit more in today's Dev Update. But before that...

Sometimes I wish I could swap places with our pets. Sneaking a nap under a sofa sounds pretty fantastic right now.

Remind me what's in the Winter Update?

Worry not, we've got you. After all, it's already been 3 weeks since we first announced the upcoming Winter Update, and not all of us picked Keen Mind during character creation (though I sure wish I did, now where did I put those damn keys again...). So here is a reminder of what you can look forward to:

An overhaul of the Lighting System, we're going back to the Tabletop Ruleset with no disadvantage in Dim Light and Darkvision working as its name implies.
A new area and its set of quests, taking place after the Necromancy Main Quest
The Scavenger System - no more lugging around all the junk you see lying around
New combat features, such as hiding during combat and applying Poison onto your weapon
More customization options in Character Creation, and a bit of plastic surgery on some faces
Inventory and Shopping improvements, hand picked from your suggestions
Optimization to the Food mechanic, so your party won't end up starving as often

Be prepared, this new location is absolutely gorgeous. Are you ready to enter the Wizard's Tower?

After Necromancy comes... which school again?

We'll talk about the light below, we've been talking non-stop about it these last weeks. What about the new content? Well friends, you're in luck - for I snatched two screenshots to share with you. To avoid spoiling too much, I'll simply show - and not tell.

New monster, coming through!

A new area means new monsters. Today the star of the show is the winner of the February Community Vote, let us give a warm welcome to... the Minotaur!

That's a big boy! You better be prepared, the Minotaur does not joke around.

The Minotaur's Charge, which deals extra piercing damage and can knock you down on a failed Strength Saving Throw.

The Minotaur's Reckless Attack, which grants it advantage on attack rolls in melee combat

Let there be Light, again!

You talked about it, we talked about it - Solasta's Lighting System had quite a few flaws. It wasn't properly explained, meaning a lot of people thought their constant disadvantage was caused by bugs. It was eating into the party's action economy, which was frustrating for some more experienced tabletop players. And to top it off it didn't affect monsters, who happily received a free coupon for a superior darkvision upgrade graciously offered by the MAAA (Monster Association Against Adventurers).

So we went back to the drawing board, and decided that sometimes the best solution is also the simplest - we're reverting the lighting system to the original Tabletop one. For those who may not be familiar with it, this means you will no longer suffer disadvantage to attack rolls while in Dim Light - only Perception Checks will be affected (meaning you're still advised to have a torch out if you don't want to run blindly into traps). Darkvision will also now allow characters to see in non-magical darkness up to a certain range, making it as if it were Dim Light for them (again, it won't help you against traps).

As you may already imagine, this made some encounters quite a lot easier - and some monsters much less scary. In order to rectify that, monsters who specifically relied on the darkness will now get extra bonuses while they remain in the dark. So... you should definitely get some light out, because as a wise adventurer named Zork once said: "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue". Worry not though, we've added two new cantrips to help with that!

One Goblin, bright and shiny thanks to the new Shine cantrip which lights up an enemy

Light up to three wall sconces at once with the new Sparkle cantrip

For those of you who enjoyed the previous Lighting System, we'll consider adding it back as a difficulty setting. Some people enjoy their dungeons dark. Very Dark. Like, the Darkest of Dungeons (if you never looked at Darkest Dungeon, do yourself a favor and go check it out).

The fun doesn't stop here

There is still plenty of content we're working on for the final 1.0 version that won't be in the Winter Update, but that doesn't mean we can't show it to you! Here is a selection of some of the work our team's been churning out these last few weeks.

Research on armor texture to create magic variant for the Leather Armor (+1 / +2)

Studded Leather Armor Concept Art

Research work on tabards and robes to recognize faction NPCs more easily

Concept Art of a future undisclosed questline. This one is going to be a fun one!

Alright folks, this is the end for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Nov 25, 2020

Dev Update #24 - Community Feedback & Sourcebook Update

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Myzzrym

Hello there everyone!

Today we're going to be doing a slightly different Dev Update than usual. You might remember that we've always been talking about working hand in hand with the community. This stance, which started during our Kickstarter Campaign, has not changed - if anything, Early Access is a direct extension of that. So far we've mostly used our Dev Updates to talk to you about what we have in store for Solasta. What we've planned, what we're working on, so on and so forth. This time however, we're going to be looking at some of the most popular suggestions and feedback we've received so far - and tell you what we'd like to do on each topic after sitting down together and discussing about it. For those who are curious on how we tackle feedback, we're holding regular meetings with the core team to go over the various community feedback. Considering the amount we've received, there are many suggestions that won't be featured here - but worry not, Community Feedback Reviews will come back in future Dev Updates as well.

... Alright, that was a meaty introduction! Who's up for some cat pictures?

And by cat pictures, I mean cat picture. One is enough, lest we all die of fluff overdose. Say hello to Kaiju!

Last chance to get your Solasta Sourcebook - Shop closing November 30th!

Over the past weeks since Early Access launched, we've received many requests from people asking if they could become backers even though the Kickstarter Campaign is over. Unfortunately, we've decided long ago that we wouldn't accept late backers - our Kickstarter Campaign officially ended early October 2019. That being said, we also have our Physical Goods from the Kickstarter Campaign available to preorder on CrowdOx... which often are the main reasons why people who missed the campaign wanted to join. As a reminder, we plan to send the Physical Goods within 3 months of the final 1.0 release of the game in 2021.

The three items available are the Solasta Sourcebook, the Adventure Box and the OST Vinyl

As we'll soon be moving towards the manufacturing of our Physical Goods, we'll be closing on Crowdox shop on November 30th 2020. If you want a Solasta Sourcebook, an Adventure Box or an OST Vinyl, make sure you preorder one before it's too late - we don't plan on printing / selling them again in the future.

For those of you who are curious, we just completed the first draft of our sourcebook... which is currently sitting at 75,000 words - 165 pages of pure text, and that's before adding any pictures! From there on, we still need to do editing, validation, layout and proofreading before sending the final document to the printer.

Community Feedback Review #1 - Let's get started!

Alright folks, time to tackle them suggestions and feedback! Hope you've got a mug of coffee / cup of tea / bottle of vodka (wait what) ready, because this is going to be fairly long.

Do you plan on adding a "quick start" feature to skip tutorials once we've already completed them once?

Yes. This is something we're planning to do in the long run, however it is very likely that this feature won't be available during Early Access as we might still be adjusting things left and right - which might include the tutorial levels. Our current idea would be to have your party start in Caer Cyflen, skipping the tutorials and cutscene with lord Carran so you can immediately go to the council to start your adventure.

Will you be adding more crucial choices to dialogs?

This one is a hard one. Ideally, we'd love to have a wide range of impactful choices that would strongly impact the various quests you're tackling, but here's the thing - these things need time and money. A lot of it.

Let me elaborate. Adding a dialog choice would mean additional writing, which in itself isn't too bad. Considering Solasta is fully voice acted, you'd have to add voice recording which already starts to become expensive. Then, if you decide that the decision affects the quest - for instance by opening a new path to go around an encounter for instance - you add on top of this time required for game design and level design (to create that new path). And then you also add time required every time we do a test run, because if we don't test all the options chances are some of them may not work.

I explained this in a forum post a long time ago, but it's the same reason we're not going for multiple endings. Let's say you have the time to write three large story quests for the end of your campaign, each taking around 5 hours to complete for the player. When you arrive at the end of the game, if you play those 3 quests back to back, the game is linear but every player gets 15 hours of extra playtime. On the other hand, if you have a to choose between three different endings - each with their own quest - each player only gets 5 hours of gameplay. Now you may argue that players get more overall playtime because they would be encouraged to re-play the game to see the other endings, but those players are exception and not the rule - most players are satisfied with a single playthrough.

So, a single end with more content, or multiple endings with much shorter content for each of them? In the case of Solasta, we never intended our game to be very long - so cutting content to add more forks in the road doesn't sound like a wise choice for us. We'd rather focus on delivering a single, well crafted campaign - even if it might feel a bit railroaded at time.

Now that being said, we also noticed that some dialog options may feel redundant or poorly exposed - for instance a lot of players were really surprised at the fact that experienced adventurers would just put an unidentified crown on their head without second thoughts. You can help us by bringing up particular cutscenes / dialogs where you feel like something just feels wrong so we can take a look at them and change the script a bit to make them feel more natural - I'm sure most of you would have less issues with the crown scene if it was implied that the crown was magically influencing the party to wear it.

Will you be adding more feats that would allow for more interesting martial builds, such as feats that add bonus action options for specific weapons?

We're definitely going to take a look at it. We understand that while spellcasters often get a lot of versatility and options through their spell choices, martial classes often need to rely a lot more on feats for customization - which is why we're not closing the doors quite yet on feats. One thing to note is that feats can either be very fast to implement... or very hard if it implies additional animations and / or programming work when it allows you to do something that doesn't yet exist in-game. We're likely going to stick to more simple ones to avoid delaying other parts of the game - but not just "passive" feats that give +1 here and there, we'll rack our brain to give you more options in combat.

Verticality creates a lot of issues for melee-focused characters, as they often can't reach enemies and have to rely on their ranged weapon

That feel when your Paladin can't smite anything because he's relegated to crossbow duty. More seriously though, while it is true that melee characters may feel a bit left behind in the early game, know that they will eventually come around when monsters become beefier as you won't be able to shoot them down before they reach your squishy backline. And trust me, when that happens boy will you be glad that your Paladin or your Fighter is standing in their way.

That being said, we're not saying just to "tough it up" until you reach higher levels - especially considering Early Access mostly covers the beginning of the campaign. We're looking into solutions to help our melee-loving friends - such as with minor wondrous items that may increase move speed so you can reach enemies more quickly, adding more melee units instead of ranged units in encounters, lowering monsters' AC and increasing their HP instead so they're not dead after a few shots (also lowering the frustration of missing too often).

My rolls are incredibly bad while the monsters' rolls are super good! What the hell?!

This is something that you will see in every game using true RNG. It is human nature to believe that after a series of poor rolls, you will be more likely to get lucky on your next one... but that's not the case. Sure, if you roll a million times the rolls will eventually even out - but if you roll just a mere 10 times, you can absolutely get nothing good. This is why many games use pseudo-RNG that will slowly increase your chances if you keep on failing, in order to reduce frustration. However, that's not what happens on Tabletop - which is why it's not something we've implemented in Solasta to start with.

To be perfectly clear, Solasta uses true RNG (pretty sure modders can look at our code to verify my claim) - but one thing that likely aggravates the belief of the player rolling worse than the monsters is due to a lot of players fighting in the darkness and thus rolling with disadvantage, which further increases the chances of getting a bad roll. We're hoping that the upcoming Lighting System changes which revert it to the Tabletop Ruleset will help lessen this belief that the dice rolls are skewed. We're also considering adding a difficulty setting called "Karmic Dice", which would add pseudo-random rolls as explained above (the more you fail, the more likely you are to get a better roll next).

Why am I getting a game over screen when a critical NPC gets downed? Can't they have death saves? Why can't I use my scroll of Revivify?

There are a couple of different issues here. In a technical sense, NPCs are considered monsters in Solasta, which is anything that's not a player character. They do not have inventories, they do not have personality flags, so on and so forth. As monsters do not have Death Saving Throws (and actually that the same on Tabletop),Critical NPCs are in the same boat and die immediately when downed. Now, we also know that on Tabletop your DM does not slam the table and yell "GAME OVER FOLKS" when an NPC die, no matter how important they were - because they can just start improvising when that happens (while slowly weeping as you just invalidated some 20 pages of quest they prepared for you, you monsters). So we're going to see if we can give Critical NPCs Death Saving Throws in the future, although we'll have to see if we have the time for that since it implies separating them from monsters.

The other issue is the scroll of Revivify. The way it works currently is that the character must be able to use the scroll in order for it to prevent a Game Over screen - so if the scroll is on your Fighter, go directly to Reload and do not collect $200. As a reminder, in 5e Tabletop the spell from the scroll must be part of your class's spell list for you to be able to cast it - meaning you're limited to Cleric and Paladin in Solasta. If we have the time, we'll change it so that the scroll is taken into account regardless of who's keeping it as long as you have a Paladin or a Cleric in your party (to avoid the mistake of giving the scroll to the wrong person coming to bite you).

Why is the game so hard?! I'm getting destroyed by those flying snakes in Caer Lem!

Game difficulty is always a very touchy topic, because it depends a lot on who's playing. We had some players ask us for more challenging encounters, all the while we've had some refund the game because they just couldn't make it past Caer Lem. This issue stems from the fact that we don't have a difficulty option yet in the Early Access - and considering the amount of overall work and balancing we need to do during that period, we likely won't implement difficulty levels before the full 1.0 release.

As for the Flying Snakes, you might be surprised to know that they are actually official SRD monsters and we're just using their stat block. However after looking into it in more details, it is true that they feel very dangerous for mere CR 1/8 (25 XP) monsters - especially with their high damage variance, which can go anywhere from 2 to a whooping 13 damage in a single attack. For newer players that may have taken damage against goblins and haven't done a short rest, a single round with poor luck can easily wipe out their party. We will be lowering their damage to 2 - 9 to start with (1 + 2d4 instead of 1 + 3d4) and see if it helps. For our more hardcore fans out there do not worry about us making some part of the Early Access easier, you will still have plenty of fun with the harder difficulty levels at launch.

What's the deal with food? The trips are long and the vendor in Caer Cyflen only has 10 rations available!

You'll be happy to know that the vendor has decided to stock up after seeing how many of you were coming to ask for more food - from the next update onwards, the number of rations in the store has increased from 10 to 99. You will mostly be limited by gold or weight if you decide to buy that many, but at least you'll be able to stock up as you want.

Another fix we've added to tackle the food issue is that the game will now prioritize food you've created and / or hunted before eating rations (it wasn't always the case before), so rations should only be consumed as a last resort. We've also added travel options to automatically cast and eat Goodberry and / or Create Food and Water before a long rest so that you don't have to micro-manage. Note that we've also made it so magically created temporary food disappear after a long rest to avoid stocking up on it - we know that RAW they should last for 24h, but it added too much clutter and work as you could end up with multiple stacks with different timestamps. Unfortunate as it is, you won't be able to convert your remaining spell slots into Goodberries before going to sleep!

Why do I not get XP when I talk my way out of a fight? I'm forced to face the boss at a lower level because I didn't murder my way through?

That's fixed in the upcoming update. Diplomacy will now give you as much XP as if you fought the encounter, so that you don't feel forced to take every fight just for the sake of optimizing your experience gain. Let's be honest, you need all the XP you can get before facing the new beefed up Madracht and his cronies.

Where is the Manacalon Rosary?

Poor Hugo Requer, no one ever visits his shop. Jokes aside, we understand that it was confusing for players that every crafting kit was available in the general shop with the exception of the Manacalon Rosary. In the upcoming update, the Manacalon Rosary will be available in the general shop next to the other crafting kits. Sorry Hugo, you needed to put a bit more effort into marketing, man.

Spellblade Fighter, Shadowcaster Rogue and Rangers in general should be able to replace a spell when they level up

This is indeed correct according to RAW, however it's also one of those features which are very time-consuming to add and may (and I say may) not make the cut for the full release. It involves a lot of fringe cases and adding a system we haven't worked on yet, so we'll need to see if we still have the time after completing the more important part of the game. That being said, you may be aware that there will be a free post-launch Sorcerer DLC - a class which also benefits from such feature. If we can't have it in the 1.0 release, chances are we'll end up working on it for the Sorcerer DLC.

Why can't we revisit locations we've already cleared?

Unless there are very good reasons why, you should always be able to return to locations you've already visited. So far however we've had two different issues. First, in Caer Lem you could only revisit up to the broken fort because... well, there was simply no entrance to the Caer Lem Caves, making them inaccessible once you left them. Second, we've had a very annoying bug (that you may have ran into) that caused an infinite loading screen whenever you tried to return to Tower of Magic after completing its quest - effectively preventing you from setting foot there again. And considering that the third location (Necromancy) was the final level of the Early Access build, well... There wasn't anything else to revisit, eh?

Both those issues should be fixed for the next update. Go back and grab those treasures you couldn't before!

Can we get get an option to adjust how long the dice remain visible on screen?

This requests falls in the "quality of life and other option settings" bucket - meaning we'll work on it once we get to the polish stage if we get the time. Seriously though, that means we've noted it down in our backlog. It's there. It exists. I promise.

Can we get the battlelog to show the rolls of every dice and not just the D20 ones?

Same as above! We'll get to it if we have the time, but we understand that people may want to check what they rolled exactly to curse twice as loud when they realize they rolled three 1 and a 2 on a 4d8 roll. Curse you RNG gods!

Solasta in the Top Steam Releases of October 2020 & Steam Autumn Sales

Well folks, we made it. You made it. What I mean is, you made it possible. And we made the game. Okay let's stop here it's getting hella confusing and my head hurts. Long story short, we are in the Top Steam Releases of October 2020! So thank you, each and everyone of you, for supporting us.

MOM, GET THE CAMERA!

For those who may have missed the Launch Discount, we'll also be participating in the Steam Autumn Sales starting later today - so it's a perfect time to join in the fun if you were still on the fence! Oh and if you really love us, do you know what you could do? Nominate us for a Steam Award. Who knows, on a series of consecutive natural 20s it might just work. What do you mean I can't roll to seduce the dragon?

Alright folks, this is the end for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Nov 17, 2020

TL;DR #9: A New Lighting System

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Myzzrym

Hey there folks!

Today's going to be a shorter article, so strap up and let's get going. Oh but before that, let's welcome our newest team member, Newt!

Who's a good pupper? That's right, you are!

Now that you've all met Newt, let's move on to the main topic: Lighting.

We've been talking about Lighting quite a lot recently after receiving feedback from the community (that's you!), and we've been hard at work to tackle the issues you've brought up. I can safely say that we were quite happy to read your comments on our most recent Dev Update where we stated that we planned to go back to the original Tabletop Lighting System, however we also want to clarify a few things to avoid any misunderstanding.

Monsters Inc.

Some of you mentioned that if we are to buff monsters when they are in the darkness, than the problem would remain the same. Now, you have to keep in mind that we're not just planning to slap some generic buff on any hostile creature sitting in the dark - only a few, selected dwellers from the deep get to enjoy this. It will be part of their identity, not a simple video game gimmick - just like how Vampires regenerate while they aren't exposed to sunlight.

Those who had to fight Aksha know how tough these darkness-loving monsters can be!

Of course we don't necessarily think that we'll hit all the right notes straight from the get go, which is why Early Access is here. Considering how our previous lighting system added a hefty layer of complexity (although not necessarily well explained nor particularly fun to play with), some fights may become way too easy for parties with Darkvision. Monsters who get bonuses while staying in the darkness might end up a bit too strong to deal with at first. We'll be collecting data and feedback from you to make sure we adjust the difficulty properly for the 1.0 release in 2021.

Playing with the Light

Lighting is and will always remain a pillar of Solasta, which means that fighting certain monsters will require you to use light. Yes, even if your entire party has Darkvision. Just like how fighting Trolls with no fire or acid at hand is like shooting yourself in the foot with your hand crossbow, some Solastan monster will be extremely hard to take down if you refuse to shed some light in the darkness. Now the good part is, lighting a torch is something everyone can do!

Jokes aside, we've also taken to heart your comments about how hostile creatures could easily get out of an illuminated area which would lead you to a wild goose chase every round. We're currently testing around with a few new features to combat that, but keep in mind that not all of them may be implemented in the upcoming patches!

Secret Martial Technique: Torch Throw!

New homebrew cantrip: Sparkle. Light up multiple interactable objects at once from afar

New homebrew cantrip: Shine. Temporarily light up a hostile creature from range.

Too Easy, Too Hard!

We've also seen some of you quarrel about the right level of difficulty for the game. Well, not to worry - as we've said before, the final release will feature difficulty level options, so you'll be able to adjust the experience to your own taste. For those who preferred the old lighting system, we're also considering adding an option to swap back to the original Solasta Lighting system - that being said we'll need to see if we have the time to implement it before launch, so no promises!

Read our previous articles here:

Article by Tactical Myzzrym
Cover screenshot taken from Lord Lambert's video (hello Porro!)

Nov 10, 2020

Dev Update #23 - Winter Patch Preview!

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Myzzrym

Hey there folks,

Our Steam Early Access Launch has been a blast so far. We've spent hours upon hours reading your messages, comments, suggestions, feedback... and it's been great! This is everything we wanted from the Early Access period. Anyway, now that things have calmed down a bit, we're back with our scheduled Dev Updates - this time with a preview of the upcoming Winter Patch, which should drop in the coming months. But before that... Let's greet our newcomers with our usual ritual - a picture of one of our fluffy companions!

Say hello to Tallulah, our 3D artist's little buddy!

Winter is Coming

Grab your coat and fire up your computer, here's a little sample of what's coming next!

A new area and its set of quests, taking place after the Necromancy Main Quest
The Scavenger System - no more lugging around all the junk you see lying around
New combat features, such as hiding during combat and applying Poison onto your weapon
More customization options in Character Creation, and a bit of plastic surgery on some faces
Inventory and Shopping improvements, hand picked from your suggestions
Still under consideration, but we might be adjusting the lighting system following your feedback - potentially not in this patch!
And plenty of other additions, that we'll talk about in the coming weeks!

More content! With that, you should definitely be able to reach level 6 by the end of Early Access

Got a Light?

If you've been following Solasta for a while now, you might remember that the main criticism of our Demo (Ruins of Telema) was the camera - most people had issues moving the camera around without bumping into walls or other obstacles, making the experience slightly more painful than we originally envisioned. As such, we've worked quite a bit on that topic before the launch of our Early Access - and while we do still have a few hiccups here and there, complaints about camera control are now much rarer!

The most common complaint of our Early Access version has since switched to our Light System which we've explained more than a year ago in an article... and not without good reasons. We've been reading through your messages and suggestions, and we find ourselves agreeing on quite a few of them. The largest issues being:

We've been saying that Solasta is faithful to the 5e Tabletop ruleset, but we've made changes regarding the lighting rules
This design change wasn't clearly explained in-game, leading many people to be disappointed after expecting their Darkvision characters to be able to see without light
Fighting in dark environments is frustrating due to often rolling with disadvantage, especially against enemies that like to stay at range

While we had our reasons to change the lighting rules originally (as stated in our article), we've come to appreciate how difficult it is for Tabletop players to adjust to that new set of rules - especially since everything else stays fairly close to the original Tabletop ruleset. So... we're going back to the drawing board to make it better! After all, that's what Early Access is for is it not? Gather feedback from the players, keep what people love and rework what people find problematic.

A screenshot from more than a year ago! This old level named "The Crypt" sadly no longer exists.

For those who liked the challenge of playing around with the light during combat, fear not - light & dark, much like verticality, is a pillar of Solasta. We've been discussing about many potential options - one of them being to stop penalizing the player and instead buffing the monsters while in the dark. This way we can revert the lighting rules back to its original tabletop version, but still heavily encourage players to use light properly against monsters that benefit from the darkness. We're also discussing about adding ways to light enemies from afar, such as throwing torches for teams without spellcasters, or even adding a few homebrew spells.

That being said, keep in mind that all of this is still being discussed and tested - so we may not add everything I've been talking about above. We'll try to get a few changes implemented into the Winter Patch, but no promises!

Features and Improvements

Lighting isn't the only thing getting improved! We've made tons of little improvements here and there as well as adding missing features that we originally planned for our Early Access launch (that didn't quite make it due to time constraints). Here are a few of them that you can look forward to once the Winter Patch goes live.

AoE loot is finally a thing! Pick and choose items from the ground after combat, and switch who picks what up on the fly

Double click to loot & equip items, two quivers to easily switch between normal and magic arrows

The Hide Action is finally here. Rogues rejoice, sneak attack for everyone! You need to break line of sight first though

The Dash Action has also been reworked, a simple misclick doesn't eat your action anymore

Slowly working our way into increasing our characters' charisma by improving their faces, one by one

This is just a portion of what the Winter Update will contain. Hope you enjoyed today's little preview, we'll be revealing more in the coming weeks! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/

Article by Tactical Myzzrym