Hey Hunters,

How's it going? Hope you're having a stellar 2019 so far!

We've been a bit quiet during the first couple of weeks of the year, so thank you for your patience. It was time for us to onboard our new team members, review the state of the project, and set new goals with a new strategy.

Let's Speed Things Up!

It is no secret to anyone that we are taking a lot longer than we originally planned to release the Alpha (and consequently the Beta as well!). When the game was funded in late 2017, we believed we would have the Alpha around August 2018 and the Beta at the start of 2019.



And here we are with still no Alpha! :O

We've been super busy though - just take a look at this extensive list of everything that we got done in 2018. What happened is just that we underestimated how much work was actually involved in making this sort of mini-MMORPG.

Thanks to our super fans that backed us on Kickstarter and are supporting us with the Founders program, we still have funds available to complete the Beta, so don't worry about that. We have to speed up, though!

Here are the new year resolutions that we made to speed up the development:

• Increase the team size significantly (from 9 to 15) in the following months;
  
  
• Focus on core features of the game such as loot, progression and skills;
  
  
• Hold back on quality-of-life features and overall polish until the core stuff is done;
  
  
• Don't worry too much about providing tutorials/information to players until the core stuff is done;
  
  
• Leave minor bugs such as visual issues and things that don't compromise gameplay until the core stuff is done;

The GDC Loot Build

The trial by fire of our new development mentality will be to deliver a great build of the game for the Game Developers Conference that will take place in San Francisco during the second half of March.

We're calling it the "GDC Loot Build". It will feature all of the loot mechanics that we planned for the Alpha: item drops from Crude, Common, Uncommon and Rare rarities, including gear and weapons, for a total of about 100 items (each with different random rolls when they are dropped)!


Raff is checking out her Crude shoes. Not terribly impressive.

This is by far the most anticipated and requested feature of the game, and it is bound to change how the game plays and feels, so we are focusing 100% on that.

We've been promising loot drops for a LONG time now, I know. But this time I am confident that we're going to deliver it. We have properly estimated and detailed the work involved, using charts and numbers like adults.

We know we haven't been delivering things at the dates we've estimated them, and it can be very frustrating for you, our supporters and most important costumers. We don't take this lightly, and we are actively trying to improve.

Thanks for the encouragement and understanding that you've shown so far - we want to be worthy of it!


So what is changing for our Beta plans?

With our (very) delayed Alpha, our proper Beta phase won't start until the end of 2019, with a significant risk of slipping to 2020!

Since there are people who have supported us on the Beta tier ($20) since 2017 and still haven't had a chance to play the game during development, we think it would be unfair and unreasonable to make these people wait that long.

So here's our new commitment to you: all Founders and Kickstarter backers who purchased Beta access will have their Steam keys no later than June.

We expect to be in Alpha still by June, but it doesn't matter. At that point, Alpha backers will have had the game for a year and a half, so it's not fair to make the other supporters wait any longer.

An influx of new players will be healthy for the community, so I think everybody wins with this decision.


We are currently working on a build that have pretty much all of the item systems but still no loot drop systems. What this means is that we are going to populate your inventory with a lot of loot of different rarities, and as you level up you will be able to equip them.

This will allow us to test the inventory screen and the overall workings of items. Even though there is no loot system, the items that will be on your inventory will be randomly generated with unique affixes and rolls, since that system is already done.

This is the first major step towards full item progression, and I hope you're as excited to see it as we are!

If you have Alpha access, expect to see this update next Friday (January 25th).

And don't forget to join our community on our Official Discord Channel and follow us in our medias to stay updated on everything we're doing!
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Cheers,

~Mark

Hey hunters!

We are on the home straight of 2018 and this year was incredible for us. How was it for you?

This year was full of changes in our team and especially on the development of Relic Hunters Legend! We are very close to wrapping up all the features that we promised for our Alpha release.

How about checking out a recap of everything we did in 2018? ːsteamhappyː

Click here, and check the things we did this year!


Just like in 2017, we have a planned preview of what's to come for next year. I'll debut it today on our livestream, at 11AM PT / 2PM ET / 5PM BRT.

So come join me as I go through a brief recap of what went down in 2018, and what are we aiming for 2019!

Cheers,

~ Mark Venturelli

Hey Hunters,

I hope you've been excellent to each other!

We are finally at the end of the year. 2018 has been such a great year for us, thanks in no small part to your support and how you allowed us to make our dream game, full-time!

Even though we are a bit disappointed that our Alpha is still not done, we got a LOT of stuff in the game, and implemented some major systems that will be used for many years to come. Just skimming through these last 50 weeks of development updates fills my heart with pride for my team and this community :)

Lucy, our Community Manager, compiled all of the major features we developed in 2018 into a neat Recap email that should be going out tomorrow for all of you who are subscribed to our Newsletter.

(You can subscribe to it on our website, it's very quickly and we sometimes send exclusive content through it, so don't miss it!)

Inventory Screen Progress

If you've been following closely, you know that we are laser-focused on delivering Loot to the game, and everything related to it. For the last couple of weeks, we've been working on our Inventory screen. It is coming along nicely, and include things such as the characters' capes and scarves moving around when you move your cursor:


woosh goes the cape, yay!

The behind-the-scenes engineering work is pretty much done, and we are now working on making it pretty and giving it all the little details and juiciness it needs. We believe that Inventory management is one of the most important parts of Loot-based games, so it must be as fun, smooth and fluid as the combat and movement.

Items and Affixes

We also worked on the "Affixes" system for our items. It is not 100% complete, and sadly won't be for the next build, but it is getting there. For now, you will be able to equip items with basic effects such as "increased Life" or "increased Precision Damage".

The system IS very powerful though, and will allow for much more interesting and intricate item effects in the very near future!

If you want to know more about item Rarity, Affixes and such, go check out our previous update about them.

Betu and Pedro have been working on the items themselves: lore, descriptions, and, of course, icons!

Here is a preview of some of the gear that Betu has designed:

some pieces of Loot of Crude and Common rarities

The new build should be coming this weekend for those who are Alpha tier Founders or higher.

What's coming in 2019?

Just like in 2017, we have a planned preview of what's to come for next year. We will debut it on tomorrow's livestream, so come join me as I go through a brief recap of what went down in 2018, and what are we aiming for 2019!

That was a lot of numbers on a single paragraph, sheesh.

TL:DR Livestream tomorrow, 11 AM Pacific Time / 2 PM Eastern Time, come check out what we have cooking for next year!

http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters

And don't forget to join our community on our Official Discord Channel and follow us in our medias to stay updated on everything we're doing!
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Cheers,

~Mark

Hey Hunters,

How have you been? On the month of November we at Rogue Snail have been hard at work on the Item System. It has been a lot of work (like, a LOT), but it's so rewarding! For many of us here, working on a loot-based game was a childhood dream - and it is finally coming true! We are SO close!

After months and literally dozens of iterations, we have finally settled on the (for now) final version of our Hunter Screen, where you will view your character's equipped items, and all the sweet loot you just dropped. Here it is:


Huzzah!

The Destiny UI influence is still very obvious, but I think we finally hit a point where it fits our game perfectly, and has its own flavor and identity. We wanted something sleek and cool that would work the same way regardless of your screen (4:3, Widescreen, Ultrawide) and input device (mouse+keyboard, gamepad, touchscreen), that showed all the important information at a glance with no sub-screens, and allowed you to view and equip items with a single click.


There are 6 Gear Slots on the left side, as well as 2 Weapon Slots (Primary and Seconday) and 2 Relic Slots (Relic Weapon and Relic Gear) on the right.

As we explained on update #51, each Hunter will have different Types of Gear that they can equip on each Slot. Here is the current list for each of the 4 Hunters on the Alpha:

Jimmy: Light Clothes, Heavy Shields, Gloves, Medal, Shoes, Potion

Pinkyy: Heavy Clothes, Armor, Gadget, Medal, Boots, Potion

Ace: Light Clothes, Light Shields, Gadget, Accessory, Shoes, Potion

Raff: Heavy Clothes, Light Shields, Sash, Accessory, Shoes, Potion

Even though there is overlap in some Slots, we want every single Hunter to have a unique combination of item Types that they can equip. You can re-use Gear between Hunters, but not the entire build!


You can K.O. a Ducan and get their nice shirts. It's a thing.


Those little squares on the side of the slots are your Backpack. Each Slot will have a capacity for 12 items. We know it is not much, but the Backpack is meant as a "quick access" for your most-used items, or recently-dropped ones.

At any time (or when your Backpack is full) you can send items to your Vault - that is your bigger, long-term storage. We still have to decide how big the Vault will be, and we will do so over time with the help of our Founders.

We understand that Vault space is a very contentious subject in looter games, so we are giving it serious thought and we have come up with some guidelines:

How will we decide on available Vault space?

a) Vault space costs real money to us. Increasing item carrying capacity means that server costs go up for every single player account. In every system in Relic Hunters we try to design things smartly, with low server costs in mind. Money saved in server costs means that we need to make less money to support the game, which means less need for aggressive monetization. By saving costs we can be more generous.

b) Begginers need less Vault space than veterans. When you are just starting out, having a lot of storage space is pretty much meaningless - a luxury at best. But later in the game, when you are trying to make a profit with Trade or chasing for that perfect roll, it can be vital. Also, in every free-to-play game, the majority of accounts are "noob" accounts that never get into the endgame. So we will surely implement a system that gives you VERY limited inventory space when you start out, but allows you to unlock (for free) more space as you progress in the game. It is a great way of saving costs for us, with no cost to our players.

c) Really big Vault space will have to be purchased with premium currency. At the end of the day, if you want to have a lot of space, you will have to invest premium currency. This does not mean you have to pay real money, though. We are very serious about making everything achievable for free, so you will be able to Trade for premium currency and get that Vault space you want, if you put in the time.


We are working extra hours these days to try and complete the next build for next Friday (30th). It is still a bit risky, so we might be delayed. We appreciate your patience, as we are doing the best we can.

The build will feature the new Hunter screen, complete with some pre-rolled items for you to play around with.

This build will NOT feature loot drops yet, though - that is the next milestone that we will work towards!


Meanwhile, Mari has been working on the new environment that will be available on the Galyno Desert Region: The Kami caverns! These will feature many mushrooms, old Ducan equipment, and the mysterious ruins of an old city skyline. Take a peek:


Mushrooms bonanza!


Concept art for our new 3D tilesets!

Can't wait to fight some Kami in there, leaping from building to mushrooms!

The year is almost over, but we want to deliver cool things before Christmas, fingers crossed! 2019 will be the year of Relic Hunters!

Join our community on our Official Discord Channel and don't forget to follow us in our medias!
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Cheers,

~Mark
Game Designer of Rogue Snail

Hey hunters,

This is our first time using the steam announcements to upload our updates! We have a blog on our Kickstarter page where we post updates of Relic Hunters Legend, but we notice that probaly part of our audience here on Steam don't know about them. So we're about to start to publishing them here too!

If you want to know more about the previous updates that we make go to: Relic Hunters Legend Kickstarter Page

So, Let's talk about ITEMS!

Mark Venturelli, our Game Designer, has finally back to Brazil and is ready to help the team push our most anticipated feature so far: sweet, sweet loot.

There were many (so many!) boring things we had to take care of before we could finally tackle this, but boy is it on right now!

So for today's update we thought we would talk a bit about where we are, and how this whole Item thing is going to work out.

What is our current progress?

We are currently working on the structure of the Items. For the next couple of weeks we are working on the RPG Stats and how they scale, as well as how Items are structured in the code.

Our next Steam update should have some hand-made Items to test out the system, but the Drop System itself will take another 2 weeks.


Gimme LOOT!

Items in Relic Hunters Legend

There are 3 kinds of Items that you can equip in Relic Hunters Legend: Gear, Weapons and Relics.

Gear is stuff like boots, armor, shields, medals and whatnot. You equip them on 6 slots on the left side of your character's inventory, and they offer you protection in the form of Physical Defense Rate and Elemental Defense Rate.

Weapons are, uh, weapons. Both ranged and melee.

And Relics are... different. We will talk about those at a later date.

Every item in Legend will have an "Item Type" that gives it some basic characteristics. For example, a Weapon can be of the "Light Pistol" type, or the "Shotgun" type. Gear can also be from the "Heavy Shields" or "Light Armor" types, for example.

Item types define things such as which Affixes can be rolled into the item (see below), and also help group items together. You might have a "+10% Damage with Shotguns" bonus at some point, for example.

These types will help us define some basic "ground rules" for each item, but then we have the freedom to tweak and modify it for each basic item template (that we call "Item Base").

Finally, when the item drops, it will be its own beast - with its own randomized characteristics, generated from both the Item Base and its parent Item Type.

Gear and Slots

All Gear also have a special characteristic: which Slot they belong to. Like I said above, all Hunters have 6 Gear Slots that they can fill with their hard earned loot - but these Slots are not the same for all Hunters!

There are 12 different types of Slots in total, so each Hunter will have their own unique collection of 6 Slots. This means that some of the Gear pieces that you own can be equipped by some Hunters, but not others.

The goal is to create more build and playstyle variety, and overall more items to hunt and strive for!

Rarity and Affixes

And of course we will have different tiers of item Rarity!

There are 7 tiers of Rarity: Crude, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Ascendant.

There are also 3 tiers of Unique items. Unique T1, T2 and T3 are equivalent to Rare, Epic and Legendary respectively.

All of these items increase in Level and overall effectiveness as their Rarity goes up, but also the number and quality of affixes increase.

Affixes are special bonuses that an item can have, depending on their Item Type. For example, "+5% Movement Speed" is an affix. Or "+16% Attack Rate for 15 seconds after using a Mobility Skill".

Uncommon affixes are simpler, while Rare affixes tend to be more complicated/powerful. But Unique affixes live up to their name and are playstyle-defining.

They will also have "rolls", meaning that the intensity of their effects will vary. For example, you can drop a "+8% Movement Speed" boot instead of a "+5% Movement Speed" one.

• Crudes and Commons have no Affixes
  
  
• Uncommons have 1-2 Uncommon Affixes
  
  
• Rares have 2-3 Uncommon Affixes
  
  
• T1 Uniques have 1 Unique + 2-3 Uncommon Affixes
  
  
• Epics have 3-4 Rare Affixes
  
  
• T2 Uniques have 1 Unique + 3-4 Rare Affixes
  
  
• Legendaries have 2-3 Rare + 2 Intrinsic Rare Affixes
  
  
• T3 Uniques have 1 Unique + 2 Intrinsic Rare + 2-3 Rare Affixes
  
  
• And Ascendants, who knows?

Enhancement and Gear Score

Apart from collecting Items of ever-increasing Rarity with tasty god-rolled Affixes, there is another very important part of the item game in Relic Hunters Legend: Enhancement.

Materials will drop when playing Legend's content, with the quality, quantity and type of materials depending on where you are in the game world, and how tough the content is - much like in Warframe.

You can use these Materials to increase the power of your Items through Enhancement, turning it into a +1 Item, then a +2 Item, and so on and so forth. The maximum Enhancement level is based on the Rarity tier, like so:

• Crudes can't be Enhanced
  
  
• Commons can go up to +5
  
  
• Uncommons can go up to +10
  
  
• Rares and T1 Uniques can go up to +15
  
  
• Epics and T2 Uniques can go up to +20
  
  
• Legendaries and T3 Uniques can go up to +25
  
  
• And what about Ascendants? It is a secret to everyone

Don't worry, we will not punish you for dropping new and more interesting items after you've invested a lot of Materials into your current one: by Recycling an Item you can get 75% of your Materials back, and we'll also give you a special Material that can only be acquired by Recycling items that have reached their maximum potential!

And so much more!

We haven't scratched the surface of Items yet! Not only we have to talk about the Drop System itself, we still have to talk about Augmentations, Mods, Item World and Timelocked Affixes - and, of course, Relics! All in due time, Rebels, all in due time.

Community and Special Livestreams

We do Community Livestreams on Tuesdays at 11AM PT and Special Livestreams on Thursdays at the same time on our Official Twitch Channel! There we always talk about things related to our updates and stuff that we're developing for Relic Hunters Legend! Stay tuned on this channel so you don't miss anything about our game.

But should you miss any of our previous streams, don't worry! All of them are uploaded to our YouTube Channel

See you hunters in the next update!

Cheers,
Rogue Snail Team