Hello everyone!

It's Chronicle time!

I feel like I'm only talking about Slorm Reapers lately in these Slormite Chronicles, but that's pretty much what this is what our daily lives are like. Slorm Reapers everyday, and night.

For those of you that have missed our latest Slormites Chronicles, we are currently working on finishing the whole Slorm Reapers Collection. As of now, there are currently 52 Slorm Reapers available in The Slormancer for a total of 120 wanted. This means 68 new Slorm Reapers to deliver.

The good news is that everything is coming along. We are slightly late on schedule but not by a big margin. This could have taken much more time than previously anticipated, so we're happy with how things are going. As for our current progress, at the time of writing this Chronicle, we are at:
- Pre-production and Brainstorm : 100% Complete
- Production (Actual Code) : 80% Complete
- Assets (Icons and Visual FX): 70% Complete
- Tests: Debug & Balance: 0% Complete

This means that we should be done relatively soon but I'm still reluctant to give a release window right now, mostly because Christmas holidays are coming up. And we want to make sure that we are fully available to fix bugs for at least a week once the update releases. We also don't want to release an update that may introduce gamebreaking bugs while the holiday sales is going on, since this would be a pretty bad experience for new players.

Basically, this means that we will probably aim for a release of this update slightly after Christmas, and possibly even slightly after the holidays, depending on how comfortable we are with our update.

That being said, we're close to finish quite a big milestone for The Slormancer, and for us. And we're pretty happy with how things are going. We're not sure about the impact of adding so many Slorm Reapers for our Early Access players, since most of you already have totally broken very viable builds with the weapons that already are in the game. But we're pretty confident that having so many different and unique weapons to choose from, level up, and discover will eventually pay off and hopefully be an important salespoint for the game.

Since we now have quite a bit of Slorm Reapers ready, I can finally show a bunch of screenshots of actual gameplay. It's not as efficient as videos but it's much faster to make, and it means that I will be able to return to coding Slorm Reapers soon enough.


The first screenshot is based on the notorious Vegetable Reaper. Tyler, the rabbit is there with you, eating vegetables.


This is the Slorm Reaper of the Desecrated Unholy Sepulcher: When killing enemies, they will drop a small sepulcher. You will then be able to either cast Tomb Explosion or Tomb Profanation on them.


Slorm Reaper of the Spider Nest, turning you into ... a spider knight.
On top of that, this Slorm Reaper makes your projectiles bounce off the edges of the camera instead of physical walls!

That's about it for today!
If you've missed the last Slormite Chronicles about Slorm Reapers, you can find them here, and there!

Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

It's Chronicle time!

As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, we are currently working on building the last Slorm Reapers for The Slormancer. This is a long and quite difficult process but we're making good progress.

We've now moved to production and I believe this part should take about a month. There are a lot of original (and hopefully fun) new concepts that require quite a bit of assets and resources, but we believe it's for the best.

We don't have much gameplay to show yet, or at least nothing visually interesting, so we will instead continue to reveal upcoming Slorm Reapers. (As always, everything is subject to change).



The Slormancer being The Slormancer, we have a couple of circumvoluted and absurd concepts that we want to share with you, such as a Vegetable as a Slorm Reaper.

Go Tyler, Go!

The Primordial Version has an effect called "Miscalculation" that reduces Critical Strike Chance or Ancestral Strike Chance to 0% before Probability occurs. It gets fun.

We also came up with a bunch of asymmetrical Slorm Reapers.
Here's Legion, Reaper of Unity!



This Slorm Reaper gets stronger based on the number of Slorm Reapers you own called Legion.
It has a total of 5 Evolutions, plus its base form, so adding up the Primordial Versions, it adds up to a total of 36 Slorm Reapers.

On top of that, each evolution starts at level 1 and can be leveled up to 100.

And here's a small preview of what a Slorm Reapers Collection looks like when complete!






If you want to read more about how we came up with Slorm Reapers and how the concept evolved, you can read our previous Slormite Chronicles.

That's about it for today!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

It's Chronicle time!

We're currently working on the upcoming Slorm Reapers, and since we're still on preproduction, we don't have that much to share with you guys, so I figured I might tell you a bit more about Slorm Reapers and how we came up with the concept.

At first, Slorm Reapers were supposed to be much more basic than what they are now.
The core was the same: Collectible Weapons that would always at least slightly alter the way you would play. But the result was very different back then. We came up with about 40 Slorm Reapers, with various effects. Most of them worked in a similar way: You get a nice bonus that could enable a build, but you get a malus that you have to play around.

And we also liked that it was a collectible, instead of a basic piece of Equipment. We wanted a "Weapon-o-Dex" that you could complete and that would also allow players to quickly change their builds on the go.

Here's an example of a very early prototype:



Slorm Reapers had rarities back then, and as you can see, one very simple bonus, and one very simple malus.

As you can see on the screenshot above, we had a mechanic in place called "Focused Thoughts Elixir" that would allow players to try to loot a very specific Slorm Reaper he wanted.
Basically, you would loot Scrolls that would give you informations on a random Slorm Reaper, including where you could find it, then you could decide to use Focused Thoughts Elixir on that Reaper, greatly increasing the chances to find it.

We called this "The Hunt".

Slorm Reapers were much harder to drop without these Elixirs and the process felt tedious and not so fun. So instead of having to loot a Scroll, then spend a few Elixirs, then farm in the correct Environment, we removed these steps, increased the droprate and went full random.

At this point, we've only had one playtester beside us two (which is the composer), and when he played the first prototypes, he told us that he loved collecting Slorm Reapers, and that he thought we should go for more, and that 40 was not a big enough number.

So we went with 120.
This would lead to a LOT more work than anticipated, especially given the numerous reworks we've had to make.

We then went on and built 120 Slorm Reapers. Then moved on to other mechanics of the game, eventually reworking Class Skills, The Ancestral Legacy, addind Character Traits etc... And even though Slorm Reapers were "good to go", The Slormancer got much bigger and much more complex than we anticipated, and all of a sudden Slorm Reapers were very underwhelming for what they were supposed to accomplish.

So we decided to rework them all. This would lead to a very important change:

We felt that granting a bonus and a malus was a very nice idea but that most players would be so annoyed by the malus that they would not give the Slorm Reaper a try.

So we first decided to split things up. Let's offer a regular version of the Slorm Reaper, with a fun and interesting concept, and then, if players show great commitment to it, they would unlock an even stronger version, but with a Malediction they would have to overcome.

This would lead to the Primordial Version that it's in the game.

So it meant that we could discard almost all the work we've done on the first iteration of our 120 Slorm Reapers. And coming up with new effects turned out to be both long and challenging, so we decided that instead of having 120 Slorm Reapers from the beginning of Early Access, we would start with 32, and add more along the way.

At this point, we also removed Rarities, because we knew players would often disregard Non-Legendary Reapers simply because... they are not Legendaries.

Here's a Before / After of Aïondee :



This new version is a LOT more work. Now instead of having a simple Bonus / Malus, we also have to come up with an interesting base, with a few scalable stats and exciting things to build around. Usually, our goal when designing a Slorm Reaper is to create something that is good on its own, but that can also trigger the theorycraft part of a player. Basically, when you loot a Slorm Reaper, you should always think: "Oh, I want to build something around this."

During Early Access, as Pepperidge Farm remembers, we added a first batch of about 20 Slorm Reapers pretty early on, but it felt too early for most players, since the game was still lacking most of its content, so we decided to postpone the rest of the Slorm Reapers until further notice.

Early Access also saw the apparition of Slorm Reaper Affinity, a mechanic that would enhance the effects of your Slorm Reaper, reduce the difficulty to unlock Primordial Slorm Reapers and the addition of Cory Ironbender, an NPC that can craft Slorm Reapers you've unlocked with another class.

And this leads us to now.
With 68 Slorm Reapers left to go.

Since the last Slormite Chronicles, we've made good progress and are almost done with preproduction. We have all the 68 Slorm Reapers ready to go, and are currently validating every single one of them one last time so we won't regret anything during or after production.

Here are a couple of new concepts that we can share:
At this stage of development, things are heavily subject to change.




That's about it for today!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

The Ancestral Update (v.0.7) is now available!

Part I and II of the Adam Nostrus' Trials have been added to The Slormancer.

As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, they are an introduction to the endgame content of The Slormancer.



The Slormancer is now tracking the following data:

• The number of Bosses defeated during Expeditions.
  
• The highest Reinforcement among your Items.
  
• The highest Great Forge at Wrath 3+

This means that somes objectives of the Trials will be validated retroactively, while others (listed above) will not.

Have been added to the game:

• The 7th Ancestral Stone.
  
• The Primal Ancestral Stone.
  
• The last 5 remaining Ancestral Skill.

With this update, the Ancestral Legacy is now feature complete.

Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion, our first Endgame boss has been added to the game.

He has fixed stats and will not scale to your Character Level or Wrath Level.
He will be fairly easy to defeat for seasoned players but should be quite challenging for players running Wrath 5 to 7 Expeditions.

This is a first for us, and its first iteration, so feel free to let us know how you are doing against Adam Nostrus and if a mechanic is difficult to overcome.

• The Necromancer and The Dreadful Colossus, enemies you've defeated as Story Bosses, can now appear as regular enemies during Expeditions.
  
• Bosses will trigger more often during Battlefield Expeditions.
  
• Loadouts are now saving Character Traits.
  
• Story Missions from Act 1 to Act 3 can now be chained without returning to the Village when possible.

• Fate-Crusher, Reaper of the Seven & The Great Forge:
  
  • Fate-Crusher no longer grants an unknown and unusable Reapersmith Spirit.
    
  • Fate-Crusher now has a bonus Reapersmith Spirit reward with every Reapersmith Spirit.
    
  • As such, a defeat in The Great Forge equipped with Fate-Crusher will result in you keeping every Reapersmith Spirit in your War Chest.

The Might Knight:

• Grappling Hook should now behave and animate properly.
  
• Grappling Hook should no longer teleport you around.

The Great Forge:

• Light Beam and Ice Bomb should no longer stop as soon as the "Next Wave" Button is enabled.

(Bugs were definitely not a priority lately)

That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!

Today is Chronicles day! So let's jump into it!
We've mentioned this in our previous Chronicle but we have a short term plan in mind for the rest of 2023. Ideally, we would like to release 3 Updates:

• The Ancestral Update
  It's the one we are currently working and I'll detail all about its content right down below.
  
• The Slorm Reapers Update
  Is the one where we want to release all the Slorm Reapers that are left to be introduced. That's a whopping 68 new Slorm Reapers!
  
• The Warlords Update
  Is the update that will introduce the big Endgame content that we have in mind for The Slormancer.

Best case scenario is that we manage to release all of that content before the end of the year. But depending on how things may turn out when developping Slorm Reapers or The Warlords endgame mode, it may take longer than that.

Once we're done with these 3 Updates, the vast majority of the content will be in The Slormancer so we would like to move on to balancing the game.

Now let's talk about the upcoming Ancestral Update.
The idea here is to tie the end of the Story to the beginning of the Endgame via a few objectives to complete that will give the players a good idea of what's left to be done when reaching this point.

On top of that, we will introduce the last 2 Ancestral Stones for the Ancestral Legacy tree, along with our very first non-scaled Endgame Boss.



Once you reach the end of the Story and defeat the Boss in Act 5, Adam Nostrus will give you a few tasks to complete to make sure that you are indeed ready to fight The Slormancer itself.

His Trials are divided in 3 Parts. You will have to complete each part to unlock the next one, and everytime you complete a part, you will unlock a reward.

The first part grants the seventh Ancestral Stone, while the second part grants The Primal Ancestral Stone which is a unique Ancestral Stone that can be enshrined into any slot of your Ancestral Legacy.
As for the third part, as you can see, it is currently waiting for "The Warlords" content to be available but it will reward you with a unique Slorm Reaper (only available through the Trials).




Adam Nostrus' Trials are designed to encourage new players reaching Endgame for the first time to explore all their options.

For seasoned players looking for harder goals, we will instead use Achievements to create interesting challenges.

Regarding the tracking of all these Objectives, the game is already tracking most of them, and this is also true for Achievements. However, some of them are currently not being tracked, such as Defeating Expeditions Bosses, so you will start from scratch once the Update comes out.




One of the most important goals of this update is to unlock the full potential of the Ancestral Legacy.
So for those of you that have been playing The Slormancer since Day 1, where you only had 2 Ancestral Stones at your disposal, this is the end of a very long journey.

With this update, we introduce the seventh Ancestral Stone that will allow you to reach the very last Skills that were not reachable yet. And with the new Primal Ancestral Stone, we hope to provide an interesting option to enhance previously impossible combinations, and hopefully break the linearity of the Ancestral Legacy a bit.

We do not consider this to be a spoiler since this is a friendly challenge (some sort of a final test) and not a major plot twist making Adam Nostrus the big villain. And since you've been giving this poor old fella a bunch of the most powerful artifacts known to man, it is now time to face him.

Adam Nostrus is our first Boss with fixed stats which means he will not adapt to your level or your current Wrath Level. He will represent the same challenge for everyone and a good way for us to have a non-scaled way to measure the strength of the various classes and builds.

We've yet to determine his actual strength but he is meant to give players a reachable goal and a first taste of an Endgame fight so he will probably land around something similar to Level 100 + Wrath 7. So if you're alreay crushing Wrath 10, besides understanding his mechanics, he will not be particularly challenging. For that, we will have The Slormancer itself.


That's about it for today!
We have no release date for this update but it should be around September.

Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

Act 5 has been added to The Slormancer. It is the final story act and is composed of 6 Missions leading to an (hopefully) Epic boss fight.

A new Ancestral Stone will be available once Act 5 is completed, granting access to more than 20+ new Ancestral Skills.

Level Cap has been increased to 80.

Loadouts have been added into The Slormancer and should be immediately accessible through the
big dresser next to the Storage area.

The Storage area has also been changed to be easier to navigate and look nicer.

The Royal Wing Update Part II also comes with a hefty list of changes.

1. You no longer have to wait for every enemy of a Wave to die before triggering the next one.
   Instead, you now only have to wait for the Wave to spawn before triggering the next one.
   Limitations:
   
   • Up to 5 Waves can be active at once.
     
   • You won't be able to trigger a new Wave if 300 or more enemies are currently alive.
2. At the start of The Great Forge, you will now be offered with a new choice that will impact the spawn rate of the rest of the Expedition. You will now be able to open up to 6 Spawn Locations (instead of 2), thus increasing the spawn rate by up to 200%.
   Increasing the spawn rate has an Elder Slorm cost tied to it.

Armor & Elemental Resistance have been completely reworked and should now be much more effective, and be equally useful against heavy or light hits.

Since Armor is now pretty straightforward, the % value displayed below your Armor value under your Stats recap represents exactly what your Armor does at a given Wrath Level against ANY attack.

This rework also affects enemies. So be prepared to face enemies with actual Armor & Elemental Resistances.

For this reason, we've changed Wrath Modifiers to match this new efficiency.
At Wrath 10, Armor & Elemental Resistance Multipliers are now 1000% instead of 2000%.

We've also reduced the base Armor, Elemental Resistance and / or Life values of some enemies to better reflect the contrast we want for each of them.

We will adjust these values based on the feedback we get.

Spellcasters:
Enemies are now split into various categories. One of them being “Spellcasters”.

Silence now only affects Spellcasters enemies.
List of Spellcasters can be found inside Silence’s tooltip but it's supposed to be obvious (Enemies casting spells).

The Mischievous Mage:
Shutdown now reads: Your Ancestral Strikes (instead of Critical Strikes) Silence enemies hit for the next 1 second.

Ancestral Legacy:
Gliterring Silence now silences for 0.5 (+0.1 per level) seconds, instead of 2 (+0.3 per level) seconds.

Exaltation of Silence has been renamed to Exaltation of Bliss and does the following:
Enemies within a 3 yard radius are Blinded, Rooted and Silenced.


Legendary Reinforcement:
Legendary Effects can no longer benefit from Reinforcement Levels above 15.

It leaves a decent room to upgrade Equipment without allowing players to completely bypass any form of challenge or difficulty by upgrading some Legendary Effects to infinity and beyond.

Soul Eating Mantle now reads: Damage over Time effects and Channeled Skills deal Additional Damage equal to 1% (+0.2% per Level) of the enemy's Max Life per second (instead of "per tick").

Activation Rune of Hagan:
Activation Rune of Hagan now triggers after 20 Ancestral Strikes instead of 12.
Activation Rune of Hagan now reads:
After you've dealt Ancestral Strike Damage 20 times (and up to 1 Ancestral Strike per second), you trigger your Effect Rune.

Thornbite Rune now reads:
You gain Thornbite Protection that shields you from the next X Incoming Damage.
Thornbite Protection is equal to 15% of the sum of your Armor, Elemental Resistance and Evasion.
Thornbite Protection cannot excess X. The limit is equal to 150% of the sum of your Armor, Elemental Resistance and Evasion.

Rune of the Nimble Warrior now grants (at max rank):

• 45% Critical Strike Damage (instead of 75%)
  
• 150% Ancestral Strike Damage (instead of 225%)
  
• 45% Primary Skill Damage (instead of 75%)

Enhancement Rune of Hagan now grants (at max rank):

• 180% Increased Effects (instead of 300%).
  
• 150% Constraint (instead of 225%)

A new dialogue is now available with Pr. Geranium when you loot your first Slorm Reaper, granting a new Legendary Item called "Pr. Geranium's Amulet of Stimulation".
This Legendary Item has been designed to quickly use freshly looted Slorm Reapers.


A new dialogue is now available with Pedro, The Gravedigger when you complete the third mission, granting a new Legendary Item called "Signet Ring of the McRippeds".
This Item grants you a Skill that acts like a Potion.

These Items can also be looted like any other Legendary Item.

• The Reconstruction Effect will stop its Cooldown when an Invulnerability shield from the "Invulnerability" Cataclysm is active.
  
• Regeneration as a Battlefield Boss modifier now heals the boss every 10 seconds instead of granting Life Leech.

The Mischievous Mage:

• Additional Projectiles should no longer reduce Projectile Damage from Arcane Missile while Arcane Sovereign is active.

Legendary Items:

• Ancient Blacklight Talisman should now work properly.

Controller:

• You can now properly rebind Menus keybinds.
  
• Not setting a keybind for your Inventory should no longer result in a crash.

Various:

• Joane should no longer spawn with Chests when unlocking her for the first time.
  
• Leaving an Expedition while Frozen should properly remove the Frozen debuff.
  
• Click-to-Move should no longer crash the game when playing "The Storage" Mission in Act II.

That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!


First and foremost, The Royal Wing Update, Part II will be available on Monday, July 10. This update comes with new content and quite a bit of reworks.

New Content includes:

• Act 5: New Missions.
  
• An Epic Boss Fight.
  
• The 6th Ancestral Stone and new Ancestral Skills.
  
• Increased Level Cap to 80.
  
• Loadouts.

Reworks include:

• Armor and Elemental Resistance.
  
• Changes to Silence.
  
• Changes to Legendary Scaling.
  
• Rune Balance.
  
• Changes to New Player Experience.
  
• New Legendary with early game sustain.
  
• New Legendary with early game leveling help.
  
• The Great Forge:
  
  • Multi-Waves.
    
  • Increased number of Paths (up to 6).

You can read more about most of the upcoming changes in Slormite Chronicles #25 and Slormite Chronicles #26.

With this Update, we are done with most of the heavy / mandatory stuff and the future will allow us more flexibility. We still have quite a bunch of very important features coming up, but they are a very different aspect of the game than what we've been working on this past year (Enemies / Environment / Story / Missions) so we're pretty excited by this.



Our plan for the rest for the year 2023 is as follow:

• Release The Ancestral Update and tie the Story to the Endgame.
  
• Release 68 New Slorm Reapers to reach our target number of 120.
  
• Release The Warlords Update: Our 4th Endgame mode.

Let me say this right now, Slorm Reapers can be REALLY hard to design so it is quite hard to determine how much time it will take. Above is what we have in mind, but if taking the time to create fun and interesting Slorm Reapers delays the release of the Warlord Update for a month, then so be it.

Then 2024 will be about adding final features such as adding a Codex, Achievements etc... We also want to rework classes and skills with the help of the community while balancing the whole content. And hopefully move on to 1.0.


The Ancestral Update is next on the line.

The goal of this Update is to link the end of the Story that you will get to discover on Monday's update (The Royal Wing Update, Part II) to the Endgame. And altough everything I'm about to say is subject to change, this is roughly what is planned for this update:

• Adam Nostrus will give the players that just completed the story a good introduction to what can be done in the endgame. We currently call this "Adam Nostrus' Trials", and it will consist of a series of various milestones for the player to complete.
  
• Adam Nostrus' Trials are divided in three parts. Completing a part will grant you much needed rewards to complete your build.
  
  • Completing Part I will grant you the 7th Ancestral Stone.
    
  • Completing Part II will grant you the Primal Ancestral Stone.
    
  • Completing Part III will grant you the last Slorm Reaper in the game.

The Primal Ancestral Stone?!
It is a very special Ancestral Stone we've talked about a few times that you will be able to enshrine in any Ancestral Slot without restriction.



This Update, rightfully called The Ancestral Update, will grant the player the final pieces to use the Ancestral Legacy, open up its possibilities and unlock the last Ancestral Skills.

More on that in the next Slormite Chronicles!


That's about it!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!


We are making good and steady progress on Act 5, and although we are not working on particularly new mechanics, we are putting extra care on that last boss and dialogues.

It won't be the final boss, and we still have quite a bit of story elements to drop here and there but these put an end to the "Story" portion of the game, so we're trying to close that chapter with extra love.

This Update is turning out to be larger than our previous ones because we are introducing new missions and Ancestral Skills, Loadouts, on top of substantial reworks of some mechanics and game modes.



If you've read the previous Slormite Chronicle, you've read about upcoming changes regarding The Great Forge, New Player Experience, Armor & Elemental Resistances and a few other things here and there.

In today's Chronicle, I'd like to talk about other changes that are coming up: The first one is actually another change to The Great Forge (reworking our rework basically) and the other one is about Legendary Items and scaling.


After reading all of the comments we've had regarding our intention to add a "Fast Forward" mechanic to Challenges, it was clear that it was not going to do what we wanted it to do.

It's a fun mechanic that we might eventually add at some point, but we now tend to think that it won't actually fix the issues raised in our last Chronicle (being that The Great Forge is both too long and/or too boring).

We came up with two solutions that have both been implemented. They both feel much more natural because they make The Great Forge work smoother without adding additional features.

Here's our take: If you manage to 1 or 2 shot packs inside The Great Forge, then the vast majority of your time is spent waiting. You wait for the wave to spawn, then you wait for packs to get inside the combat area. You eventually also wait for enemies to walk toward you or you move back and forth between active Forge Paths. And it's not fun either way.

What we did is that we tried to remove the wait time to 0. This would make The Great Forge both faster to clear but also more exciting which is the initial goal.
Obviously, we want The Great Forge to remain a fair Challenge for new players so we couldn't just increase the speed of everything. So here's what we did:

At the very beginning of The Great Forge, you will now have the choice to open up more than 2 Forge Paths (these options are unlocked at higher Wrath Levels, a new player will only open up 2 Forge Paths up to a certain point).

Above Wrath 4, you will get to open up to 6 Forge Paths.
It basically make enemies spawn 3x times faster, and they come up from every direction so your best option is to stand in the center instead of running around Forge Paths, which was neither fun nor intented.

And I've felt that it creates much more epic fights.


Placeholder icons, but you get the idea.

As you may notice in the screenshot above, choosing to open up Forge Paths has an Elder Slorm cost. And although you can't see it in the screenshot above, it will be equal to the Elder Slorm cost you paid to get there.

Here in Wrath 4: I paid 250 Elder Slorm to get into The Great Forge. I have to pay an extra 250 to open up 4 Paths, and an extra 500 to open 6.

In The Great Forge, you previously had to completely clear a wave before triggering the next one.
You now only have to wait for a wave to spawn before being able to trigger the next one.

This adds a very nice "greed" layer to The Great Forge on top of Challenges and allows players to increase the intensity if they feel like it, and eventually slow it back down after a though fight.

It also feels very natural and tower defense-esque to spawn waves when you feel that you're up for the next wave.

There are a couple of limits to this: First, you can't have more than 5 active waves, and you can't trigger a new wave if there are more than 300 active enemies (to prevent performance issues).



With these new mechanics, we believe that The Great Forge will be fun again for everyone, including players easily going for Wave 100.

That being said, we know that The Great Forge is way too efficient compared to other game modes. And we don't want anyone to think that we are increasing the efficiency of The Great Forge without measuring its effects regarding the rest of the game.

Our goal here is to make it fun for everyone, even for intense farming sessions.
Once every game mode is out and once the game is feature-complete, then we will look at ways to balance game modes, currencies (Goldus, Elder Slorm etc...), and farming options. It's just not our top priority right now.


We've been having a general issue regarding Legendary Effects since the beginning of Early Access, and we've had numerous reports talking about how this or that Legendary Effect was unbalanced.

And we believe that it mostly comes down to the fact that Legendary Effects scale with the Reinforcement Level of your item, with no cap whatsoever.

This means that the Legendary Item "Winds of Harmony", which has the perfectly fine effect of granting "All Skills have -10% Cooldown" would eventually turn into something broken once you get to Reinforcement Level 50+ (or 90+ for a 100% Cooldown Reduction).

We've mentioned this before when we made a first change to regular Items Reinforcement scaling, but we never intended for players to reach these levels of Reinforcement "so easily".

It was made possible with a few oversights on our side regarding the crafting system that made it possible to completely bypass the "Potential" mechanic.

From now on, Legendary Effects will only benefit from Reinforcement Level up to Level 15.

Reinforcement Level 15 has always been the soft cap we wanted for items.
Slormites only go up to 15 after which Reinforcing gets unstable. And as you may know, the scaling of regular Stats on items decreases with every Reinforcement Level, down to its minimum value when you reach Reinforcement Level 15.
So stopping the progression of a Legendary Effect at Reinforcement Level 15 is what seems the most natural.

We could change the crafting system to prevent this or we could add a soft cap instead, but both options would only delay the issue. That's why the more radical option felt appropriate here.

We understand that this is a hard nerf for our most dedicated players that may not be welcome.
But we truly believe that this is a step in the right direction of slowly balancing the game to something healthier.


That's about it!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

Our next update is on tracks, its name: The Royal Wing Update, Part II.
No surprises there, it will include Act 5 (so new missions), new boss fights, new Ancestral Skills and an increased level cap. One important thing to mention is that it should be the last update containing a new Act / Missions. Once this one is out of the way, we will be introducing our last 2 endgame modes followed by various objectives and quests that should link the endgame altogether and lead to a glorious fight against the infamous Slormancer.

That being said, we've mostly been working on "side" stuff lately and things we've been delaying for a while because once we're done with the main content of an update we tend to publish it as soon as possible without taking the time to rework past content or work on "secondary" features. So this time, we're doing it the other way around.

This is something that we've always wanted to have in the game since we want to encourage players to change their builds and explore fun and interesting options on the go.

The way it works is that you can take a snapshot of your current build, switch to another build that you've been looking to try (eventually save it aswell), and load back your previous build once you're done. If you're familiar with the Diablo 3 system, I believe that it is exactly the same.



So there now is a large Wardrobe next to the storage area with 5 Loadout Slots per character.
It is important to note that it is not a storage space. Items are not being stored, so you can use them in multiple builds (of the same character).
The tooltips of Equipment pieces will now display whether or not these items are being used in a Loadout Set. In the screenshot above, my Ring is used in Set I and in Set II.

We've also been reworking the "Storage Area" so you access everything faster. The top left chest replaces the Storage NPC, so you no longer have to talk to her. The top right chest, is the legendary chest and the wardrobe opens up the Loadouts menu.



We have a few reworks coming with this update. I will not detail most of them right here mostly because we came up with solutions that are yet to be tested (so they are subject to change).

You can expect changes regarding: Legendary Equipment Scaling, Soul Eating Mantle, Runes: such as Thornbite Rune, and Activation Rune of Hagan, Silence in general.

However, we have a few changes coming that I'd like to talk about:

(I'll only talk about Armor here out of simplicity but the same changes will be applied to Elemental Resistance since they are identical).

Let's be real, Armor does not work or at least, it doesn't make much of a difference.
We've been looking at some numbers to figure out why Armor was not doing its job, and we actually found out that we didn't know what job Armor was supposed to do exactly and where it was supposed to shine, so we had to start from there.

Currently, Armor is really only useful when you take light hits, the lighter the hit is, the stronger your Armor is. For some reason, it felt like the appropriate behavior to us.

Here are few numbers of the current Armor formula:
Assuming 10 000 Armor, which is a decent yet easily obtainable number.

A Level 70 (Wrath 5) Archer deals 486 Damage.
Your Armor will prevent about 91% of the Damage, resulting in about 43 Damage.

A Level 70 (Wrath 10) Archer deals 4 212 Damage.
This time, the same Armor will prevent about 16% of the Damage.

It is already pretty bad at this point. But it gets worse.
Some enemies hit MUCH harder than an Archer, and some Cataclysms and Forge Challenges push this even further.

Assuming a Level 70 (Wrath 10) Colossus (an upcoming enemy based on Act II Boss, Grotagrom), with the Gargantuan Cataclysm, and a Critical Strike from the Assassins Cataclysm:
He will deal 148 044 Damage.

This time your Armor will prevent 0,45% (!!) of the Damage.

It was actually quite fun seeing how wrong we were when doing all these calculations.

This is also true for when the player deals damage to enemies. Even enemies with high Armor values would just not mitigate anything from 100 000+ Damage (which is pretty common).

As mentioned earlier, we first had to figure where Armor is supposed to be useful. And we found out that it was cristal clear that it was supposed to be the opposite of what we were doing.

Given the massive difference in light and heavy damage at a given Level / Wrath (going from 4 212 to up to 150 000) we have in the game, we needed to have viable options for both.

Max Life combined with Life Regeneration and / or Life Leech are great to sustain light hits. But there are currently no proper options to sustain the massive hits that can eventually occur. Regardless of your Equipment, there is no way to sustain a 1-hit 150 000 Damage, except by somehow "cheesing" the game, which is what players have been doing (using Thornbite Rune, Primordial Aïondee etc...), and it is perfectly understandable.

Our rework goes in the way of making Armor the absolute best option to mitigate these heavy hits.

Basically, we are changing the Armor formula: Instead of being based on Damage, it will be based on Level + Wrath. We have yet to find the correct multiplier / value, but what this means is that 10 000 Armor (like in the previous example) will result in the same % of Damage being mitigated whether you're dealt 500 or 500 000 Damage.

And instead of 0,45%, or even 16%, we want to be closer to 30-40% (for 10 000 Armor).
Given how bad Armor currently is, we don't mind overdoing it.
And we'd rather see players being unkillable because they have tons of Armor rather than having lots of shield from Thornbite Rune because they have lots of Armor. It just feels more natural. :)

This also means that enemies' Armor will now work the way it is supposed to and be much more efficient.

To be honest, The Great Forge was never meant to be so heavily farmed. We expected players to reach the 100th Wave but given how long it takes, we didn't expect it to be the default goal.

There are a couple of issues with The Great Forge (at least when you are properly geared / farming endgame content):

1. It's too easy.
   
2. It's too long.

The first issue is not related to The Great Forge so our goal is not to try and fix it here. We could scale everything up, but it would not make much of a difference. Instead, we should trust ourselves and the many balance passes that are yet to come that will eventually resolve the issue.

So our focus was to work on issue n°2: It's too long.
I personally do not get to Wave 100. At some point, I lack the time and motivation so I actually leave The Great Forge, not because I feel like I can no longer sustain the upcoming wave (the way it's supposed to work), but because I no longer have the time to get to the end.
We believe that even if The Great Forge was much harder or much longer, the goal would remain the same: complete Wave 100. Players simply don't want to leave.

So we decided to embrace that goal and not try to go against it, and went with something that feels like a very simple yet elegant solution (at least to us).

Some Challenges will now have a new bonus tied to them, called "Fast Forward".
It is pretty straightforward: when you pick up the Challenge with a Fast Forward option, you will ignore the next X Waves. This will allow to modulate the length of Great Forge runs: You can complete a quick Great Forge run (by picking up every Fast Forward, you should be able to complete a run in about 30-35 Waves) but you will skip rewards for a certain number of waves.



This solution adds up a new layer of choices to Challenges which is interesting.

But ultimately, it is almost just like before except it's not. If you only have time / motivation to do 30 Waves, instead of leaving after 30 Waves and feel bad about it, you actually get to the end of The Great Forge before leaving. And if you happen to find a Legendary Reward that scales nicely, then you may feel tempted (and not forced) to slow down on the "Fast Forward" challenges.

The objective does not change, but you now have some flexibility to how you want to reach it.

This one is an ongoing issue that we've been having. We want the game working in a certain way that prevents certain things during the early game.

For instance, we love looting Level 1 Slorm Reapers. It is important for the experience that we want to offer that you level it from the start. But we understand that this completely prevent players from immediately equipping a new Slorm Reaper and experience stuff with it when they loot it. This is even more true for the first 2-3 Slorm Reapers you loot, since the vast majority of your DPS comes from your Slorm Reaper you cannot afford to switch immediately change it during the Story.

We've previously added a few things to ease the leveling process (such as Slorm Reaper Affinity) but it actually does not help new players at all.

So we're introducing a new Item that you will be able to pick up when you unlock Pr. Geranium that will set the level of your current Slorm Reaper to the level of your Character (up to a certain point). This way, players will be able to quickly experiment their freshly found Slorm Reapers, until they no longer need to.

We also love the fact that there are no potions in the game. To us, this mechanic often ends up into a spam-fest that is not fun. But we understand that it is really important in the early game and at least until you get your first Equipment with Regen stats, at which point the game switches to something much more enjoyable. But we've noticed how BIG of a difference the experience is for a player that loots an item with Life Regeneration early on, and the ones that don't.

We've tried adding some base stats to sustain Life, but it actually didn't make much of a difference.

So same as Slorm Reapers, we came up with a simple solution: players will pick up an item that has an Active Skill that acts like a Potion in the very early game and use it until they no longer need to.

On top of that, we'd like to experiment with "Life Globes" (a small globe dropped by enemies that regenerates a small amount of life when you pick it up). We like the mechanic and how it could add fun to early game fights. Life Globes would be available during the Story and in early Wrath levels, and slowly dissapear once you get to higher Wrath Levels.


That's about it!

We currently have no release date to communicate for this update as it is too early in development. We'll probably be able to give a proper date for our next Slormite Chronicles on June 6.

Cheers!

Hello everyone!

Patch 0.6.01d




5 New Enemies have been added to the game.



The Royal Wing has been added to the game and can be accessed through Battlefield Expeditions.
This is NOT a new Act. It will come in a later update.



A New Storage Stash has been added to the game and allows you to store up to 1 of each Legendary item that can be found in The Slormancer.

Battlefield Expeditions:
You can now choose between:

• Battlefield Journey: Random and everchanging Environment. Boss Events.
  
• Careful Examination: Chosen Fixed Environment. No Boss Events.

Super Elites

• Super Elites have been removed from regular Battlefield Floors.
  
• Super Elites have been reworked and are now Bosses during Battlefield Journey Expeditions.

Various:

• "The Great Maze" mission has been changed and now have regular fights along the way.
  
• The Jetlag Cataclysm has been renamed to "Invulnerability" to match its current effect.
  
• The "Head of the Syndicate" mission no longer has the Jetlag Cataclysm.

The Mighty Knight:

• Whirlwind should now work properly with Reaper of Vindictive Slam.
  
• Voracious Swing should now work properly with the "To Each his own" Cataclysm and with the Obelisk of Revocation.

The Fierce Huntress:

• The Force Transmission + Elemental Sorcerer loop should now be fixed.
  
• Fountain of Malady now reads: "While Delighted, you can now Leech Life with Poison Damage and have an additional +3.5% Life Leech on Poison Damage." instead of "While Delighted, you have +3.5% Life Leech on Poison Damage."
  
• Fountain of Malady should now work properly with the "To Each his own" Cataclysm and with the Obelisk of Revocation.

The Mischievous Mage:

• Chrono-Burst should now properly deal its damage to the enemy that triggered it.
  
• Chrono-Burst should now trigger properly with the new Leech mechanic.
  
• Empowered Rift Nova should now work properly with Supreme Rift.

Legendaries:

• Ancestral Champions' Present should no longer display Ancestral Gifts that are currently not available in Early Access.
  
• Battlefield Mantle (The Mischievous Mage) should no longer trigger when inside Bryan's Seal of Protection.
  
• Spectral Sight should now grant you the proper Pierce Chance.

Various:

• Starting an Optional Mission to unlock a new Hero then immediately leaving the game should no longer your Material Tab and Shared Stash to disappear.
  
• You should now properly lose the Stun status when leaving a Boss Room while being Stunned for cinematic purposes.
  
• Elite Life Bars should no longer show negative values.
  
• Slorm Temple Shrine animation should now be played at the correct speed.
  
• NPC moving during cinematics should now walk at the correct speed.
  
• Fixed a few typos.

Slorm Reapers:

• Animations from Vindictive Slam's Holy Ground should now be played at the correct speed.

Enemies:

• Suffering Soul's visual FX should now be consistant with FPS.

Controller:

• Reaper Damage and Skill Damage should now properly display their Tooltip when hovering.
  
• Talking to an NPC should no longer prevent you to then navigate the Slorm Reapers menu (and a couple of other buttons).
  
• Changing Font Sizes with a Controller with Simplified Chinese displayed should no longer crash the game.

If you find a bug, please report it below or on our Discord.
Cheers!