Greetings Wizards,

Lots of changes continue to work their way into Rogue Wizards.

At the end of 2014, the prototype idea for town was that we would build lots of structures, farms, landscaping, all of which would benefit your wizard in the dungeons. As the game has evolved throughout 2015 it became apparent building farms, landscaping, and material collectors was kinda boring and that the most fun part of town building was when you unlocked a new major structure such as the blacksmith, armory, jeweler. Therefore we concentrated on the most fun structures and as a result in the alpha there isn't really anything else to build except these cool structures that are unlocked as you progress though the storyline.

As we enter 2016, we decided to streamline the unlocking of new structures and build them in town for you as they are acquired. At the same time, town now has all new high resolution artwork and a hand crafted scene that expands over time as the player progresses throught the game.



We've also continued to push the spell content further in the month of January. The brand new nature spell "Swarm", summons a swarm of 5-8 pixies that flock around the player. At the start of each turn, one pixie automatically breaks off and attacks a nearby target, effectively giving you a second attack for that turn.



The new "Icicle" spell creates a stream of 2-5 ice shards that fire in rapid succession dealing cold damage to their target. If the target is frozen, these ice shards do double damage making the icicle spell the first spell that interacts with the results of another spell, in this case the freeze spell.



Finally, we're starting to see a little buzz about the game from the YouTube community. Zueljin Gaming has created 17 episode of Rogue Wizards gameplay.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios January 2016 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

• Completely new town presentation. Structures are now auto-built as they are unlocked when returning to town.
  
• Town is no longer on a tiled grid.
  
• Town has a completely new set high resolution artwork for the structures, islands, and other decrotative elements of the scene.
  
• New Spell: "Swarm", summons 5-8 pixies that surround your character, each turn a pixie will break off and attack a target if one is found
  
• New Spell: "Icicle", launch a stream of ice shards at a target, frozen targets receive double damage
  
• Youtube let's play previews

• Vault is now always present in town
  
• Ivan (Yvano) now inhabits the vault
  
• The Spellbook now auto open and moves a run into your shortcut bar (if there is space) when you learn a new spell at the spell tree in town.
  
• Town now has visual feedback when you mouse over a structure
  
• The town ring menu no longer comes up if there is only one possible action in the menu
  
• Removed the "Move" functionality from all town ring menus since it's no longer appropriate for the new fixed town (as was never implemented anyway)
  
• Followers are now given a ranged and a melee weapon
  
• Followers will no longer attack Blobs with the bow or chakram, doing so usually resulted in large amounts blobs everywhere and made the follower generally look stupid and make the battle very hard for the player. Note that secondary chakram bounces off blobs can still occur.
  
• Followers will now always do melee weapon attacks if the option is available instead of firing any ranged weapon they might have at the enemy standing next to them which is way not as effective as a melee attack
  
• The runtime now fully supports armor that visually changes the skin of your player between light, medium, and heavy looks when that armor is equipped or removed ... as the medium and light chest armor pieces are created we will trigger new character looks when equipped

• All new town artowrk is now online
  
• Human Male and Female Avatar medium and heavy armor skins created/animated
  
• Female Avatar walk adjust to have a little more flow and pep!
  
• Guild Wizard left foot shadow fixed (affected Magic01 and the Magic01 Start, Loop, and End animations)
  
• Hosperak z-sorting claw issue fixed
  
• Gryphon die animation adjusted to have more pop!
  
• Fixed human female hand right closed image to be grayscale and named properly (without a trailing space)
  
• New town travel gate art without the stone base

• Fixed loot not being able to be spawned when in tight quarters ... especially from a boss chest when the boss dies in a 1 square hallway block by a portal on one side and the player on the other.
  
• Loot will not always try to fall into the receiver cell if there is one, or gradually widen the loop drop search radius from 1 to 5
  
• Fixed spells being selected as secondary tooltip comparisons
  
• Fix check for "at inventory limit" that was off by one ... that caused the potion 4/5 to stack OK, but potion 5/5 did did not
  
• Fixed inventory full message not appearing when it should have when dropping a vendor potion on a stack of 5 potions in your inventory
  
• Fixed wrong position of damage icon on spell upgrade UI after upgrading a spell (sprite text was set as clipped with previous value)
  
• Fixed spell damage and effect values changing in the UI after acquiring the first level of a spell, the issue is that the spell rune used in for the UI had a different variance than the rune that was created and put into the players inventory
  
• Spell weapons (runes) no longer are allowed to have any variance, that was intended only for magic items.
  
• Fixed Z sorting on the spell rune that animates from the new spell book ui into a free slot on the shortcut bar
  
• Fixed Z sorting on the TravelUI and QuestUI so that they can both be displayed at the same time from the Travel Gate in town again
  
• Fixed the Forgestone crashes when using it in town due to the ropes not understanding Map vs MapBase
  
• Fixed all structure portrait size and positioning for new town art

Visit the Spellbind Studios January 2016 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

Greetings Wizards,

Lots of changes continue to work their way into Rogue Wizards.

At the end of 2014, the prototype idea for town was that we would build lots of structures, farms, landscaping, all of which would benefit your wizard in the dungeons. As the game has evolved throughout 2015 it became apparent building farms, landscaping, and material collectors was kinda boring and that the most fun part of town building was when you unlocked a new major structure such as the blacksmith, armory, jeweler. Therefore we concentrated on the most fun structures and as a result in the alpha there isn't really anything else to build except these cool structures that are unlocked as you progress though the storyline.

As we enter 2016, we decided to streamline the unlocking of new structures and build them in town for you as they are acquired. At the same time, town now has all new high resolution artwork and a hand crafted scene that expands over time as the player progresses throught the game.



We've also continued to push the spell content further in the month of January. The brand new nature spell "Swarm", summons a swarm of 5-8 pixies that flock around the player. At the start of each turn, one pixie automatically breaks off and attacks a nearby target, effectively giving you a second attack for that turn.



The new "Icicle" spell creates a stream of 2-5 ice shards that fire in rapid succession dealing cold damage to their target. If the target is frozen, these ice shards do double damage making the icicle spell the first spell that interacts with the results of another spell, in this case the freeze spell.



Finally, we're starting to see a little buzz about the game from the YouTube community. Zueljin Gaming has created 17 episode of Rogue Wizards gameplay.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios January 2016 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

• Completely new town presentation. Structures are now auto-built as they are unlocked when returning to town.
  
• Town is no longer on a tiled grid.
  
• Town has a completely new set high resolution artwork for the structures, islands, and other decrotative elements of the scene.
  
• New Spell: "Swarm", summons 5-8 pixies that surround your character, each turn a pixie will break off and attack a target if one is found
  
• New Spell: "Icicle", launch a stream of ice shards at a target, frozen targets receive double damage
  
• Youtube let's play previews

• Vault is now always present in town
  
• Ivan (Yvano) now inhabits the vault
  
• The Spellbook now auto open and moves a run into your shortcut bar (if there is space) when you learn a new spell at the spell tree in town.
  
• Town now has visual feedback when you mouse over a structure
  
• The town ring menu no longer comes up if there is only one possible action in the menu
  
• Removed the "Move" functionality from all town ring menus since it's no longer appropriate for the new fixed town (as was never implemented anyway)
  
• Followers are now given a ranged and a melee weapon
  
• Followers will no longer attack Blobs with the bow or chakram, doing so usually resulted in large amounts blobs everywhere and made the follower generally look stupid and make the battle very hard for the player. Note that secondary chakram bounces off blobs can still occur.
  
• Followers will now always do melee weapon attacks if the option is available instead of firing any ranged weapon they might have at the enemy standing next to them which is way not as effective as a melee attack
  
• The runtime now fully supports armor that visually changes the skin of your player between light, medium, and heavy looks when that armor is equipped or removed ... as the medium and light chest armor pieces are created we will trigger new character looks when equipped

• All new town artowrk is now online
  
• Human Male and Female Avatar medium and heavy armor skins created/animated
  
• Female Avatar walk adjust to have a little more flow and pep!
  
• Guild Wizard left foot shadow fixed (affected Magic01 and the Magic01 Start, Loop, and End animations)
  
• Hosperak z-sorting claw issue fixed
  
• Gryphon die animation adjusted to have more pop!
  
• Fixed human female hand right closed image to be grayscale and named properly (without a trailing space)
  
• New town travel gate art without the stone base

• Fixed loot not being able to be spawned when in tight quarters ... especially from a boss chest when the boss dies in a 1 square hallway block by a portal on one side and the player on the other.
  
• Loot will not always try to fall into the receiver cell if there is one, or gradually widen the loop drop search radius from 1 to 5
  
• Fixed spells being selected as secondary tooltip comparisons
  
• Fix check for "at inventory limit" that was off by one ... that caused the potion 4/5 to stack OK, but potion 5/5 did did not
  
• Fixed inventory full message not appearing when it should have when dropping a vendor potion on a stack of 5 potions in your inventory
  
• Fixed wrong position of damage icon on spell upgrade UI after upgrading a spell (sprite text was set as clipped with previous value)
  
• Fixed spell damage and effect values changing in the UI after acquiring the first level of a spell, the issue is that the spell rune used in for the UI had a different variance than the rune that was created and put into the players inventory
  
• Spell weapons (runes) no longer are allowed to have any variance, that was intended only for magic items.
  
• Fixed Z sorting on the spell rune that animates from the new spell book ui into a free slot on the shortcut bar
  
• Fixed Z sorting on the TravelUI and QuestUI so that they can both be displayed at the same time from the Travel Gate in town again
  
• Fixed the Forgestone crashes when using it in town due to the ropes not understanding Map vs MapBase
  
• Fixed all structure portrait size and positioning for new town art

Visit the Spellbind Studios January 2016 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

Greetings Wizards,

At the beginning of December we started the Rogue Wizards closed alpha program and received a ton of great feedback from everybody. Your feedback for what to improve next in the game is invaluable to us, thank you for all the countless hours of exploration, loot hunting, and monster slaying.

Though December we’ve continued to press forward and got all the engine NPC coloring working. Now when you find companions they’ll have some variation in their visual look.



One thing we got a lot of feedback in the alpha was to improve the item tooltips and make it easier to compare new loot with existing gear, so now every property has a comparison up/down arrow as well as an overall better or worse attack/defense arrow. Also, because many weapons can be readied at the same time a lot of thought has gone into deciding which single weapon to compare.



Finally, during the alpha we managed to get the entire main quest storyline in the game in rudimentary form including all 6 elemental rifts and placeholder Guild Wizard bosses. We’ll be improving all these areas and adding unique AI and powers to each boss over the next few months.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios December 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

• All 6 rifts are now accessible at some point during the quest line, each of them contain a Guild Wizard boss (their AI and dungeons needs lots of work still), journal scrolls, and rewards
  
• Radically changed XP curves. Note your player current xp level progress has been set to zero, however this will not happen in future updates when XP curves are rebalanced
  
• Radically changed vendor upgrade prices
  
• Massive overhaul to item tooltips using up/down arrows and smart selection logic on what currently equipped item to compare against
  
• Lots of preliminary code and artwork on a new town visual presentation, will be live in a couple of weeks

• NPCs are now colorized by the game engine so they all look different
  
• Increased block chance for shields and the blocking bonus affix for shields
  
• Thieflings now always have 2 actions per turn
  
• Dagger, Chakram, and Bow damage decreased
  
• Experience and Defense shrine duration decreased
  
• Thieflings are now limited to stealing 2 items max
  
• Thieflings now become scared for 3 turns and run away if you hurt them
  
• Chests now show a floaty key to indicate a key was used to open the chest
  
• Materials will no longer spawn if you are already at the inventory limit for that material
  
• Items that cannot be picked up are now always flippied to an adjacent cell
  
• No inventory full message is displayed when you can’t pickup materials when at the limit now
  
• Health regeneration now regenerates health on turn multiples, has been rebalanced for regneration values, and fixed the regen 0 health bug
  
• Click and hold movement no longer also requires a pointer drag too in order to start the movement
  
• Wandering merchant now always have 2-3 potions available
  
• Replicated blobs no longer replicate champion qualities to their offspring, that was brutal!
  
• Health potion recipe has been changed to just 10 fire materials for now
  
• Most follower backstory delivery in the dungeon will now only be done after a kill count condition is met *and* there are now hostiles on the screen (and the follower is visible and not dead etc)
  
• Evi can now be found in the Earth Rift dungeon
  
• Audrey is now found earlier in the Blacksmith dungeon cause finding her in a tinly last level was not fun
  
• Traps now occur on 100% of the levels at rank 2 or higher (dungeon only for now)
  
• Removed follower quips when you take loot because it’s making people thing you can share with the followers or do more complicated stuff with them.
  
• Added Chakram 03 into the game

Visit the Spellbind Studios December 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

Greetings Wizards,

At the beginning of December we started the Rogue Wizards closed alpha program and received a ton of great feedback from everybody. Your feedback for what to improve next in the game is invaluable to us, thank you for all the countless hours of exploration, loot hunting, and monster slaying.

Though December we’ve continued to press forward and got all the engine NPC coloring working. Now when you find companions they’ll have some variation in their visual look.



One thing we got a lot of feedback in the alpha was to improve the item tooltips and make it easier to compare new loot with existing gear, so now every property has a comparison up/down arrow as well as an overall better or worse attack/defense arrow. Also, because many weapons can be readied at the same time a lot of thought has gone into deciding which single weapon to compare.



Finally, during the alpha we managed to get the entire main quest storyline in the game in rudimentary form including all 6 elemental rifts and placeholder Guild Wizard bosses. We’ll be improving all these areas and adding unique AI and powers to each boss over the next few months.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios December 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

• All 6 rifts are now accessible at some point during the quest line, each of them contain a Guild Wizard boss (their AI and dungeons needs lots of work still), journal scrolls, and rewards
  
• Radically changed XP curves. Note your player current xp level progress has been set to zero, however this will not happen in future updates when XP curves are rebalanced
  
• Radically changed vendor upgrade prices
  
• Massive overhaul to item tooltips using up/down arrows and smart selection logic on what currently equipped item to compare against
  
• Lots of preliminary code and artwork on a new town visual presentation, will be live in a couple of weeks

• NPCs are now colorized by the game engine so they all look different
  
• Increased block chance for shields and the blocking bonus affix for shields
  
• Thieflings now always have 2 actions per turn
  
• Dagger, Chakram, and Bow damage decreased
  
• Experience and Defense shrine duration decreased
  
• Thieflings are now limited to stealing 2 items max
  
• Thieflings now become scared for 3 turns and run away if you hurt them
  
• Chests now show a floaty key to indicate a key was used to open the chest
  
• Materials will no longer spawn if you are already at the inventory limit for that material
  
• Items that cannot be picked up are now always flippied to an adjacent cell
  
• No inventory full message is displayed when you can’t pickup materials when at the limit now
  
• Health regeneration now regenerates health on turn multiples, has been rebalanced for regneration values, and fixed the regen 0 health bug
  
• Click and hold movement no longer also requires a pointer drag too in order to start the movement
  
• Wandering merchant now always have 2-3 potions available
  
• Replicated blobs no longer replicate champion qualities to their offspring, that was brutal!
  
• Health potion recipe has been changed to just 10 fire materials for now
  
• Most follower backstory delivery in the dungeon will now only be done after a kill count condition is met *and* there are now hostiles on the screen (and the follower is visible and not dead etc)
  
• Evi can now be found in the Earth Rift dungeon
  
• Audrey is now found earlier in the Blacksmith dungeon cause finding her in a tinly last level was not fun
  
• Traps now occur on 100% of the levels at rank 2 or higher (dungeon only for now)
  
• Removed follower quips when you take loot because it’s making people thing you can share with the followers or do more complicated stuff with them.
  
• Added Chakram 03 into the game

Visit the Spellbind Studios December 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

Changes

• Item tooltips have received a big update to make comparisons easier
  
• All 6 elemental rift quests are now playable (boss and level generation still needs work)
  
• Click and hold mouse movement now easier to start
  
• Theiflings now always have 2 turns per move, run away when hurt, and can only steal 2 items max
  
• Spell materials no longer drop if you're at the max
  
• Items that can't fit in your inventory now always flip to adjacent tiles
  
• Rebalanced health regeneration affix
  
• Increased blocking chance on all shields as well as from the magic affix
  
• Radically changed XP curves. Note your player current xp level progress has been set to zero, however this will not happen in future updates when XP curves are rebalanced
  
• Radically changed vendor upgrade prices
  
• Chests now show a floaty key to indicate a key was used to open the chest
  
• All ranged weapons have had their damage reduced slightly
  
• Experience and Defense shrine duration decreased
  
• Enchanting shrine number set to 1

Fixes

• Fixed invalid items that were generated at max levels

Changes

• Item tooltips have received a big update to make comparisons easier
  
• All 6 elemental rift quests are now playable (boss and level generation still needs work)
  
• Click and hold mouse movement now easier to start
  
• Theiflings now always have 2 turns per move, run away when hurt, and can only steal 2 items max
  
• Spell materials no longer drop if you're at the max
  
• Items that can't fit in your inventory now always flip to adjacent tiles
  
• Rebalanced health regeneration affix
  
• Increased blocking chance on all shields as well as from the magic affix
  
• Radically changed XP curves. Note your player current xp level progress has been set to zero, however this will not happen in future updates when XP curves are rebalanced
  
• Radically changed vendor upgrade prices
  
• Chests now show a floaty key to indicate a key was used to open the chest
  
• All ranged weapons have had their damage reduced slightly
  
• Experience and Defense shrine duration decreased
  
• Enchanting shrine number set to 1

Fixes

• Fixed invalid items that were generated at max levels

Greetings Wizards,

We’re happy to announce that Rogue Wizards closed alpha program has begun. If you backed us on Kickstarter at the Shaman level or higher, you’ll be receiving a Steam key to join and play the alpha over the next couple of weeks to try out the game and provide us feedback and report issues. We’ll be adding users into the alpha in groups every week; so if you don’t receive your key right away don’t worry, it will arrive soon.



Missed the Kickstarter but still want to play the open beta when its ready? Subscribe to our Spellbind Studios Newsletter and we’ll be recruiting players from that list to join the open beta in 2016.

• Play through the main storyline until defeating Gaderian, the Guild Wizard of Fire
  
• Build the Wizard Tower, Blacksmith, Armorer, and Jeweler
  
• Run through 4 basic story quests plus random dungeons are available after building the Armory
  
• Find several item types with dozens of randomized magic properties
  
• Fight against 9 different monsters (and a few more that are incomplete with just melee attacks)
  
• Learn low to mid level spells across 6 schools of magic
  
• Play through the randomized Dungeon, Cavern, and Cosmic environments

• Storyline quests, NPCs, and structures beyond the Rift of Fire
  
• Creating special and magical attack for monsters and bosses that don’t have them yet
  
• Colorable character variations
  
• Town presentation experimentations

Now on to our regular development update for November 2015.

Over the past month we’ve been working very hard to get ready for the alpha. The biggest change in the gameplay comes in how the player acquires spells. Spells now rarely drop in the dungeons and instead the player acquires spell points when they level up. Spell points can be spent at the Wizard Tower in town to upgrade existing or learn new spells.



We’ve also got functional UI screens for video settings as well as user configurable keyboard control mappings.



Finally, we added new UI for comparing weapons and armor with the equipped armor or any of the readied weapons on the shortcut bar. Now a simple red or green arrow will appear on the item being inspected if it is more effective at attack or defense, and for weapons on the shortcut bar if the new item would do more damage than each of them they’re hi lighted with a glowing green box.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

• Alpha build now available on Steam for some users
  
• The “Blink” spell is now called “Regroup”, and does a teleport and heal
  
• Regroup spell now can only teleport the player to a tile that they have previously occupied, this keeps the spell from randomly teleporting you further into a dungeon and typically into a group of monsters or other danger when in fact you’re supposed to be falling back to get out of a bad situation
  
• Added new Spell Tree UI available off the Wizard Tower in town where the player can select which spells to acquire and upgrade
  
• Spells are now acquired via level unlocks and spell points acquired on level up
  
• Feedback UI now has edit boxes where people can enter the name and email
  
• There is now a UI element in the turn mode UI where you can pass your turn (activated by space bar too)
  
• Added keyboard control UI with user configurable key mappings
  
• Resolution switching now functional from a new menu in the settings
  
• Item comparison UI has been reworked to show an up/down arrow at the item being tooltipped, and pulsing green boxes when that item is better at *all* possible locations it can be equipped at to be more effective

• Stalagmites spell now deals damage
  
• Stalagmites damage and radius now increase with ranks
  
• Reduced upgrade costs at vendors
  
• Sundries now re-populates the goods inventory every time the player comes back to town
  
• Removed all spellbook drops except the first one that grants the player fireball (magic shrines can still drop books tho)
  
• Your Wizard Tower now has a floating spellbook icon over it if there are spells that you can upgrade at the tower (you meet the requirements and have spell points to spend)
  
• Completely removed spellbook drop from default loot table tree (still present on magic shrines tho
  
• Added some tutorial logic to guide the player through the interaction at the Tower and upgrade of their first spell
  
• The game will now remind player via a message box at the start of every 4th dungeon to leave feedback to us via the Home menu option
  
• Level themes (Dungeon, Cavern, Cosmic) are now slowly opened up to the player as they progress. Dungeons can occur from the start, Caverns can occur at level 4+, Cosmic can occur at level 10+
  
• If a level them becomes available and has never been seen so far, the next quest generated is guaranteed to use that level theme
  
• 2nd tier spells now become available when 1st tier spells reach level 10 instead of 15
  
• Gaderian now summons fire minions during the battle
  
• Gaderian now has a lot more health
  
• Gaderian now gets scared at certain health ranges like Champions do to provide a break in battle
  
• Increased champion and boss health
  
• Drastically reduced the turns required for mastery of all equipped items.
  
• Decreasing XP bonus from all level clearing awards
  
• Critical hits now do 125% damage instead of 300%, it was just too much
  
• Removed magic rank +3 affixes from the game. Set magic rank +1 and +2 to appear at 90% and 10% frequency
  
• Dungeon loot is now always generated using the player base rank instead of the level base rank, this assures that the player is always finding level appropriate gear even if they have leveled up within a dungeon
  
• Fixed enemies not selecting their ranged attacks as much as they should have been, especially if they were the only enemy on screen with the player and the player was moving around
  
• Message box buttons now have text describing their action and are no longer and just x and checkmark images
  
• Increasing the effectiveness of burn to 25% health
  
• Increased frequency at which fireball causes burn
  
• Added visual feedback for a locked door
  
• Added a chest in the first room of the Wayside Inn so that player don’t get frustrating looking for something valuable in the first room like the player indicates should be there via thought bubble
  
• Removed blueprints from all loot drops
  
• You can now turn off the more help style tooltips on HUD buttons via an option in the settings menu
  
• Removed material crafting, you can now only create health potions at the cauldrons

Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

Greetings Wizards,

We’re happy to announce that Rogue Wizards closed alpha program has begun. If you backed us on Kickstarter at the Shaman level or higher, you’ll be receiving a Steam key to join and play the alpha over the next couple of weeks to try out the game and provide us feedback and report issues. We’ll be adding users into the alpha in groups every week; so if you don’t receive your key right away don’t worry, it will arrive soon.



Missed the Kickstarter but still want to play the open beta when its ready? Subscribe to our Spellbind Studios Newsletter and we’ll be recruiting players from that list to join the open beta in 2016.

• Play through the main storyline until defeating Gaderian, the Guild Wizard of Fire
  
• Build the Wizard Tower, Blacksmith, Armorer, and Jeweler
  
• Run through 4 basic story quests plus random dungeons are available after building the Armory
  
• Find several item types with dozens of randomized magic properties
  
• Fight against 9 different monsters (and a few more that are incomplete with just melee attacks)
  
• Learn low to mid level spells across 6 schools of magic
  
• Play through the randomized Dungeon, Cavern, and Cosmic environments

• Storyline quests, NPCs, and structures beyond the Rift of Fire
  
• Creating special and magical attack for monsters and bosses that don’t have them yet
  
• Colorable character variations
  
• Town presentation experimentations

Now on to our regular development update for November 2015.

Over the past month we’ve been working very hard to get ready for the alpha. The biggest change in the gameplay comes in how the player acquires spells. Spells now rarely drop in the dungeons and instead the player acquires spell points when they level up. Spell points can be spent at the Wizard Tower in town to upgrade existing or learn new spells.



We’ve also got functional UI screens for video settings as well as user configurable keyboard control mappings.



Finally, we added new UI for comparing weapons and armor with the equipped armor or any of the readied weapons on the shortcut bar. Now a simple red or green arrow will appear on the item being inspected if it is more effective at attack or defense, and for weapons on the shortcut bar if the new item would do more damage than each of them they’re hi lighted with a glowing green box.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

• Alpha build now available on Steam for some users
  
• The “Blink” spell is now called “Regroup”, and does a teleport and heal
  
• Regroup spell now can only teleport the player to a tile that they have previously occupied, this keeps the spell from randomly teleporting you further into a dungeon and typically into a group of monsters or other danger when in fact you’re supposed to be falling back to get out of a bad situation
  
• Added new Spell Tree UI available off the Wizard Tower in town where the player can select which spells to acquire and upgrade
  
• Spells are now acquired via level unlocks and spell points acquired on level up
  
• Feedback UI now has edit boxes where people can enter the name and email
  
• There is now a UI element in the turn mode UI where you can pass your turn (activated by space bar too)
  
• Added keyboard control UI with user configurable key mappings
  
• Resolution switching now functional from a new menu in the settings
  
• Item comparison UI has been reworked to show an up/down arrow at the item being tooltipped, and pulsing green boxes when that item is better at *all* possible locations it can be equipped at to be more effective

• Stalagmites spell now deals damage
  
• Stalagmites damage and radius now increase with ranks
  
• Reduced upgrade costs at vendors
  
• Sundries now re-populates the goods inventory every time the player comes back to town
  
• Removed all spellbook drops except the first one that grants the player fireball (magic shrines can still drop books tho)
  
• Your Wizard Tower now has a floating spellbook icon over it if there are spells that you can upgrade at the tower (you meet the requirements and have spell points to spend)
  
• Completely removed spellbook drop from default loot table tree (still present on magic shrines tho
  
• Added some tutorial logic to guide the player through the interaction at the Tower and upgrade of their first spell
  
• The game will now remind player via a message box at the start of every 4th dungeon to leave feedback to us via the Home menu option
  
• Level themes (Dungeon, Cavern, Cosmic) are now slowly opened up to the player as they progress. Dungeons can occur from the start, Caverns can occur at level 4+, Cosmic can occur at level 10+
  
• If a level them becomes available and has never been seen so far, the next quest generated is guaranteed to use that level theme
  
• 2nd tier spells now become available when 1st tier spells reach level 10 instead of 15
  
• Gaderian now summons fire minions during the battle
  
• Gaderian now has a lot more health
  
• Gaderian now gets scared at certain health ranges like Champions do to provide a break in battle
  
• Increased champion and boss health
  
• Drastically reduced the turns required for mastery of all equipped items.
  
• Decreasing XP bonus from all level clearing awards
  
• Critical hits now do 125% damage instead of 300%, it was just too much
  
• Removed magic rank +3 affixes from the game. Set magic rank +1 and +2 to appear at 90% and 10% frequency
  
• Dungeon loot is now always generated using the player base rank instead of the level base rank, this assures that the player is always finding level appropriate gear even if they have leveled up within a dungeon
  
• Fixed enemies not selecting their ranged attacks as much as they should have been, especially if they were the only enemy on screen with the player and the player was moving around
  
• Message box buttons now have text describing their action and are no longer and just x and checkmark images
  
• Increasing the effectiveness of burn to 25% health
  
• Increased frequency at which fireball causes burn
  
• Added visual feedback for a locked door
  
• Added a chest in the first room of the Wayside Inn so that player don’t get frustrating looking for something valuable in the first room like the player indicates should be there via thought bubble
  
• Removed blueprints from all loot drops
  
• You can now turn off the more help style tooltips on HUD buttons via an option in the settings menu
  
• Removed material crafting, you can now only create health potions at the cauldrons

Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.

Greetings Wizards,

In preparation for the Rogue Wizards alpha we’ve spent most of October getting some of those core services in the game that are needed for a public test like crash reporting, in game feedback, and the uploading of save games and screenshots to our bug tracking server. Later this month we’ll start letting the first group of players try out the early alpha version and will continue to let more and more people play in batches during the months ahead.

We’ve also got some concept for the backer Wizard Tower to vote on. Head over to the forum post to vote for your favorite version of the tower.



We also wanted to give you a sneak peak of the Cavern environment we’ve been building, we’re not quite done with it yet but are liking how different it feels from the other environments already.



Much time was spent in October getting the first Rift of Fire looking special with the boss “Gaderian” fully animated walking around his arena. Gaderian can only do basic melee attack for now but we’ll really be pushing on his boss battle and powers in a few months.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Want to talk about these changes or other aspects of the game, then visit us in the Online Forums.

• Crash reporting now working with screenshots, save game files and logs on all platforms
  
• Hooked up Unity analytics and some simple events in preparation for alpha
  
• Council member boss “elemental rift” levels now have a swirling background effect present at all times
  
• Blink now has a much larger range, but will only take the player to previously known locations
  
• Cosmic rift background now scales tiles and alphas the actors during the reveal/hide effect
  
• Gaderian Boss is now colored and functional in his boss arena. He only has melee attacks still tho.
  
• Guild wizard bosses now have a death ceremony with dialog and effects
  
• Counter damage is now visualized with in world text and only occurs with close range melee damage
  
• The lance now gives up to three free forward attacks when you move
  
• Items now sell for even less gold to merchants
  
• Champions now have more health
  
• Setup proper music for Cavern environment
  
• Set unique music for Rift of Fire

• Guild Wizard bosses animated
  
• Experimental work on volcano background

Visit the Spellbind Studios October 2015 development blog post to see the complete details.

Greetings Wizards,

In preparation for the Rogue Wizards alpha we’ve spent most of October getting some of those core services in the game that are needed for a public test like crash reporting, in game feedback, and the uploading of save games and screenshots to our bug tracking server. Later this month we’ll start letting the first group of players try out the early alpha version and will continue to let more and more people play in batches during the months ahead.

We’ve also got some concept for the backer Wizard Tower to vote on. Head over to the forum post to vote for your favorite version of the tower.



We also wanted to give you a sneak peak of the Cavern environment we’ve been building, we’re not quite done with it yet but are liking how different it feels from the other environments already.



Much time was spent in October getting the first Rift of Fire looking special with the boss “Gaderian” fully animated walking around his arena. Gaderian can only do basic melee attack for now but we’ll really be pushing on his boss battle and powers in a few months.



Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Want to talk about these changes or other aspects of the game, then visit us in the Online Forums.

• Crash reporting now working with screenshots, save game files and logs on all platforms
  
• Hooked up Unity analytics and some simple events in preparation for alpha
  
• Council member boss “elemental rift” levels now have a swirling background effect present at all times
  
• Blink now has a much larger range, but will only take the player to previously known locations
  
• Cosmic rift background now scales tiles and alphas the actors during the reveal/hide effect
  
• Gaderian Boss is now colored and functional in his boss arena. He only has melee attacks still tho.
  
• Guild wizard bosses now have a death ceremony with dialog and effects
  
• Counter damage is now visualized with in world text and only occurs with close range melee damage
  
• The lance now gives up to three free forward attacks when you move
  
• Items now sell for even less gold to merchants
  
• Champions now have more health
  
• Setup proper music for Cavern environment
  
• Set unique music for Rift of Fire

• Guild Wizard bosses animated
  
• Experimental work on volcano background

Visit the Spellbind Studios October 2015 development blog post to see the complete details.