We have another build this week, this one focusing on various AI improvements and a host of small updates and bug fixes.

Here are the highlights:

• AI: Multiple improvements and fixes to the AI, covering a wide range (more details in the change log).
  
• Crafting: Adding Crafting.xml file. It contains Ingredients, Badges, Recipes and Gadgets. Each of those can be changed or new entries can be added, using the same system as for weapons, armors, etc.
  
• Gamepad: Modifying the gamepad system to maximize compatibility with Xbox controllers in general. Removing the previous "Gamepad Fix" option as it is now unnecessary.
  
• Difficulty Settings: We added new stats scaling options last patch and forgot to mention them. They are aimed at increasing the difficulty. We do have another system in the works on that front that should be more interesting than simply higher stats, but it's not quite ready yet.

Nothing fancy to report this week as we're still focusing on our dialogues for the most part. We're making good time on that front though!

We've also been hard at work creating new assets, including new sounds, new spells and new maps. Here's our latest map concept:


The overall plan is to keep making small balance improvements until we clear our dialogues load, then we'll take some time for a big balance update with all the feedback we've been gathering.

Keep it coming and thanks! :)


11/02/2018 - Version 0.4.3

• Sounds: Adding a lot of new sounds for abilities and cutscenes.
  
• Visuals: Updating/adding visuals for many abilities, including: Bite, Bulldrake Breaths, Primal Cry and Shadow Hunt.

• Difficulty Settings: We added new stats scaling options last patch and forgot to mention them. They are aimed at increasing the difficulty. We do have another system in the works on that front that should be more interesting than simply higher stats, but it's not quite ready yet.
  
• Yates Cabin: Reducing the difficulty of the 2nd encounter on the map by removing an enemy unless the "more enemies" difficulty setting is used.
  
• AI: The AI should be more aggressive with moving towards the player units and should be less prone to moving before buffing itself.
  
• AI: Making the AI smarter when choosing a path towards a target they can't reach yet.
  
• AI: AI with Charm status should be more effective (they were prone to wasting some turns moving towards their new allies without taking action).
  
• AI: Various small tweaks to AI behavior to make it smarter.
  
• AI: Updating the pathfinding for flying creatures to be much better.
  
• AI: Reducing chances of "offensive units" to go buffing their allies rather than charge at the player.
  
• AI: Increasing the minimum range a player unit must be to an enemy trapper for them to decide to place a trap.
  
• Buffs/Debuffs: Making it so Stats Up/Down buffs and debuffs remove their opposite when applied, the same way haste/slow currently works. (So, applied Atk Up will remove Atk Down from the target).
  
• Barrier: Counter: Barrier will no longer activate if the target already had barrier at the start of the attack (so, casting a debuff on a target with Barrier and Counter: Barrier will use up the current Barrier and not recast it on the same attack).
  
• Knee Shot: Reducing damage to 0.85x from 0.9x. Also renaming to Rooting Shot.
  
• Thespeiros Encounter: The guest helping on this map will start using recovery items once no other actions can be taken.
  
• Abilities: Small tweaks to some monsters abilities (spell to skill, etc). Adding a MP cost of 12 to Rest Up.
  
• Charm: Charm ability MP cost increased from 6 to 16 and chance up to 100%. Increasing chance of Allure to 75% base (from 62%).
  
• Charm Debuf: Charm debuff duration lowered to 2 turns (from 3).
  
• Focused Rage: Increasing the damage per MP converted from 2% to 2.5%. Also including the damage conversion ratio in the description.

• Gamepad: Modifying the gamepad system to maximize compatibility with Xbox controllers in general. Removing the previous "Gamepad Fix" option as it is now unnecessary.
  
• Gamepad: Adding an option to use specific icons for the gamepad. Current selection is: Auto, Xbox360, Xbox One, Ps4, Steam Controller.
  
• Projectiles: Speeding up projectiles (arrows, bolts, etc) travel speeds by quite a bit.
  
• Graveyard Story Battle: Making a certain character immune to Sleep so they aren't slept during the quick dialogue cutscene during battle.
  
• Critical Hits: Adding a screenshake to critical hits to make them more impactful.
  
• Charm, Sleep, Berserk: Updating help tooltips to show that only one of these debuffs can be on at once. Updating visuals during damage phase to correctly show if a previous debuff was removed by a new one.

• Rebirth: Rebirth will now correctly trigger if a character dies by being countered to death.
  
• Rebirth: Fixing an issue where Rebirth might not trigger on the target when killed by a Dual Wielding regular attack.
  
• One for All: Fixing a bug where One for All would trigger from Counterattack and Counter: Magic.
  
• One for All: One for all will now correctly trigger Counters on the person attacked and also won't bypass Rebirth anymore.
  
• Spiked Glove: The description box now correctly shows "None" as the stat that will defend against it.
  
• AI: Fixing an issue where Gadgeteers AI sometimes didn't get access to the correct gadgets.
  
• Evasion: Fixing a bug where the base evasion of units was listed as 0 but was internally 1.
  
• Events: Fixing incorrect text being shown on the worldmap after finishing the 3rd Temple.
  
• Counter Steal: Fixing an issue where Counter: Steal would sometimes fail to trigger when it should.
  
• Height Advantage: Fixing an issue where the bonus from Height Advantage would be incorrect under many circumstances.

• Crafting: Adding Crafting.xml file. It contains Ingredients, Badges, Recipes and Gadgets. Each of those can be changed or new entries can be added, using the same system as for weapons, armors, etc. Each item can only have 1 recipe for it though, so keep that in mind.

• Wrathful Blow: Fixing Wrathful Blow acting weirdly.
  
• AI: Tweaking the AI so it won't use Rest Up as soon as possible every time for Bulldrakes.
  
• AI: Adding a flag to abilities not meant as a healing spell but that have a weak bonus healing component. The AI won't try to heal itself with those anymore since they're not meant for healing.
  
• AI: Fixing a bug where the AI could do a movement after falling asleep under rare circumstances.
  
• AI: Making a full HP AI less likely to back away from the player units if they are of a style that enjoys doing melee attacks.

Hey everyone :)

We have another update this week, which features a Halloween themed encounter, with a special reward. Give it a try, it should prove to be challenging!

To check it out, you'll have to finish the last battle of the current build (the one in Drakesmouth Seaway). Don't worry, we won't remove the encounter after Halloween, so you'll be able to try it later if you haven't reached that point yet.

The update also has a bunch of bug fixes as well as UI and balance improvements. Here are the highlights:

• New Battle: Adding a new Halloween themed encounter once the Drakesmouth Seaway encounter is completed (it will be red on the map, although it is not a mandatory story encounter). It should be difficult and has a special reward.
  
• Patch Notes: Adding the Patch notes directly to the client from the title screen.
  
• Intro Video: Updating the video with the correct music. Just missing the VO now!
  
• Visuals: Updating/adding visuals for Multishot, Critical Expertise, Mirage, Counter Mirage, Counter Barrier, Sedate, Phantasm, Steal GP, Boomerang Toss and Nameless One.
  
• Movements: When using Show Details in battle, all enemies movements will be shown in blue to quickly see the "dangerous" areas.
  
• Difficulty Stats Scaling: Fixing an issue where many enemies would not spawn with the correct stats scaling. This should impact both easier and harder difficulties.

As always, the full notes are at the end of the post.

There isn't a whole lot of new things to report this week. We're still focusing on getting all our dialogues fully written so we can have a big review of them and then start the localization process. We're focusing on new maps, story events and dialogues right now and this will remain the case for a while still.

We have a few new maps for optional content in the works, like this one:


In terms of new art, we have another spell for the Vessel class and this is what it looks like:



Lastly, we have a bunch of Halloween themed assets that we've been creating recently and those should all be part of the Halloween encounter we're adding in this update. Here's some nifty art one of our contracted artists made to celebrate Halloween:




10/26/2018 - Version 0.4.2

• New Battle: Adding a new Halloween themed encounter once the Drakesmouth Seaway encounter is completed (it will be red on the map, although it is not a mandatory story encounter). It should be difficult and has a special reward.
  
• Patch Notes: Adding the Patch notes directly to the client from the title screen.
  
• Intro Video: Updating the video with the correct music. Just missing the VO now.
  
• Equipment: Adding new accessory Glasses that gives +10% accuracy.
  
• Visuals: Updating/adding visuals for Multishot, Critical Expertise, Mirage, Counter Mirage, Counter Barrier, Sedate, Phantasm, Steal GP, Boomerang Toss and Nameless One.
  
• Visuals: Somier now has a different sprite/portrait to other Kawas.
  
• Visuals: Adding ElvensEarsHorns and Horns hats for the player to use.
  
• Visuals: Adding Vampire portrait.

• Abilities: Giving a MP cost to One for All of 16 MP.
  
• Abilities: Changing cost of Shock box to 24 from 28 MP.
  
• Abilities: Coalesce will not cause an injury for the user anymore.
  
• Abilities: Skyjack will no longer drop targets into the water. Skyjack will always do a minimum of 1 damage.
  
• Gameplay: Removing Boon and Focus effect from a character when they die.
  
• Monsters: Increasing Pektites RES a bit.
  
• Passives: Into the Fray will now grant an increasingly larger bonus based on the amount of adjacent targets (before: 0.125x to 0.5x. Now 0.125x to 0.85x depending on the amount of targets around).
  
• Item Usage: Increasing the level needed for the AI to gain access to powerful healing items (so they will get them later).
  
• Item Usage: Adding decreasing odds of the AI using a healing item after it's used one already. The more they use, the lower their chance of using one again will get.
  
• Dual Wielding: Boon and focus will now only affect the first attack when dual wielding. It will also only apply to the initial attack when used with Infused Edge.
  
• Charm: Charmed units can no longer break their own Charm status by doing damage to themselves (this isn't a normal behavior, nor happening often, but it does at times).
  
• Charm: Improved charmed units behavior as they were doing a few weird things at times.

• Scrollbars: Cleaning up the scrollbar visuals, specifically in resolutions other than 1080.
  
• Descriptions: Updating Boon's description.
  
• Movements: When showing the movement range of enemies in Free Navigation mode, it's now accounting for Root.
  
• Movements: When using Show Details in battle, all enemies movements will be shown in blue to quickly see the "dangerous" areas.
  
• Skill Trees: Improving the visuals for skill tree nodes that contain multiple abilities.
  
• Attacks: When the target of an attack that gets bonus damage from sides/back has No Flank, it will be shown instead of the direction in the attack prediction box.
  
• Kyrie's Portrait: Some of Kyrie's portraits will not use image compression anymore as it wasn't looking as good as we'd like.
  
• Equipment: Made the optimize equipment a little smarter with accessories. It will try to reuse more accessories than before if it can when optimizing.
  
• Double Cast: Updating the description of the double cast command while in combat, so it shows it will use spells at 75% power.
  
• Turn Order: Updating the remaining HP bar on the turn order as the damage gets dealt, rather than after the damage is dealt for slightly faster update.

• Difficulty Stats Scaling: Fixing an issue where many enemies would not spawn with the correct stats scaling. This should impact both easier and harder difficulties.
  
• Visuals: Fixing an issue where the wrong portrait would be selected in the turn order at times when selecting a unit that had a turn so far in the future, it's not shown on the bar.
  
• Descriptions: Fixing a typo for Rekindle. Fixing Firescourge and Howl descriptions not correctly mentioning they do damage.
  
• Blessed One: Fixing an instance where Blessed One would apply when it shouldn't (when using a multi-target spell on 1 target only).
  
• One for All: Fixing a bug where One for All would trigger for sleeping characters.
  
• Focus Fire: Fixing Focus Fire showing the wrong spell names if the user backed out and came back in during the targeting process.
  
• Abilities: Fixing monster abilities that should have been spell/skills but were the wrong type.
  
• Abilities: Fixing the minimum range of many abilities that should have not been able to target self.
  
• Dodge Melee: Fixing a bug where Dodge Melee didn't correctly apply to the 2nd weapon when the attacker is Dual Wielding.
  
• Charges: Fixing a visual glitch when showing the area of a charge attack.
  
• Mouse Cursor: Fixing an issue where the mouse wheel icon that shows a 2nd tile exist on a space would remain on screen during spells and other circumstances.
  
• Rebirth: Fixing an issue where Rebirth would sometimes fail to trigger when killed by Infused Edge.
  
• Collect Abilities: Fixing an issue where the wrong table was used when collecting some targets.
  
• Equipment: Fixing a bug where using "equipment optimize" by changing passives would sometimes leave some pieces of gear flagged as equipped until the next load.
  
• Focus: Fixing an issue where the focus visual frames would remain after focus had been taken away at the end of the turn if not used.
  
• Boon: Fixing an issue with Boon not going away correctly at times.
  
• Dispels: Fixing an issue where Dispels wouldn't remove Fleet of Foot.
  
• Equipment: One of the secret classes was incorrectly flagged as unable to equip helmets. This is fixed.

• Fixing Rest Up not being able to target self after the last build.
  
• Making some small change to the telemetry module to make it more lightweight.
  
• Fixing wrong date in the patch notes. >.<

We have another update this week. It focuses on balance, UI and difficulty updates based on community feedback. And we've also made a targeted pass at equipment pieces to make them more unique and interesting.

We still have a long backlog of community feedback and ideas that we want to get in, and it should keep us busy for a while yet!

Here are the highlights of the new build:

• Ease of Mouse: Redoing the system to select overlapping tiles with the mouse. Should be a LOT more intuitive and easier to use!
  
• New Assets: New assets, including new sounds, portraits and spell shapes.
  
• Weapons: Staves will now grant +1 range to ranged spells.
  
• Weapons: Some rods will now grant a bonus damage to a specific element.
  
• Accessories: Adding Throwing Gloves crafted accessory. They grant +1 to item usage
  range.
  
• Equipment: Updated the stats of a lot of gear pieces.
  
• AI: Made the AI smarter and more efficient in many ways.

As always, full change log is at the end of the post.


Our main focus currently is wrapping up the first version of all the dialogues in the game, then doing a big quality pass on them, and finally starting their localization.
We have a big localization team already booked to handle that part, so we have to get ready for it.

Otherwise, we've mostly been busy making various improvements across the board from community feedback, with a focus on adjusting the difficulty. Now that we have the Difficulty Settings, we want to make sure we start tuning things to ensure both new players and veterans alike have a space they can live in happily. There are many changes in this update that should help on that front.

On the art side, we have some new maps in the works, like this one:


And we're adding new portraits to the game. Perhaps in preparation for Halloween?


Version 0.4.1

• Spell Shapes: Adding a square shape to possible abilities shape. We'll need to do a pass to see what spells might make sense to change to this new shape.
  
• New Portraits: Adding new portraits for enemies and players.
  
• Added Cutscene:: Adding a small cutscene to the Ship battle so it's less abrupt.
  
• New Sounds:: Adding many more sounds, specifically for gadgets and more worm effects.
  
• Ease of Mouse: Redoing the system to select overlapping tiles with the mouse. Should be a LOT more intuitive and easier to use!

• Difficulty Settings:
  
  • Updating difficulty presets names and changing the default one to "Easy". Changing Easy preset options a bit.
    
  • Reducing difficulty level in The Crossroads story battle by lowering the level of most enemies and removing Counterattack from the one enemy that has it.
    
  • Reducing difficulty in Timber Road story battle by lowering the level of 2 enemies.
    
  • Reducing difficulty in all the starter maps for "Equipment: Full" setting, but ignoring that setting on "starter maps".
    
  • Increasing difficulty in "Equipment: More" setting by having it try to spawn accessories in empty slots using the default "accessory chance" (roughly 75% per slot near the end of the game).
    
  • Changing the way the "max levels" are calculated so enemies are never above them (before they could still be randomly above that level by about 10%).
    
  • When playing with enemy stats scaling upwards, Guests will also have the same scaling applied to them so they are sturdier.
• Story:
  
  • Cleaning up the secret-kawa-questline significantly so the clues are easier to find and easier to follow.
    
  • Changing "escape from the cave" to spawn enemies that are not "neutral" and only hostile to the player. Reducing the amount spawn to 1 per 2 turns (from 1 per turn) to compensate and removing 1 enemy (unless More Enemies is selected).
    
  • Removing "slow" from the worm Quicksand spell. With the recent fixes to the turn order system, this looks too potent now.
• MP related Updates:
  
  • Changing Mana Font to 1 MP per step.
    
  • Economy will now reduce the MP cost of abilities by 1/3 (rather than 1/2).
    
  • Blood Magic will now use 1% HP per 1MP (rather than 2 HP per 1MP).
    
  • Boon no longer gives HP/MP on a kill, but instead will make your next action a guaranteed crit, even if it's an ability. It will dissipate at the end of the next turn, used or not.
• Various Classes/Mechanics Updates:
  
  • Adding MP cost to Focus of 6.
    
  • Focus will now wear off on the next turn, regardless of if it was used or not. This adds the risk that you might have wasted a turn putting it on if you don't get to use the buff.
    
  • MP damage will get a bonus from crits now.
    
  • Making small stats growth adjustments across most classes.
    
  • Slightly reducing damage to Whirling Blow (1 -> 0.95x).
    
  • Increasing MP cost of Sniper shot to 36 from 32.
    
  • Changing the bonus to the next turn start to 25% from 20% when not taking an action.
    
  • All "all enemies" spells will now have damage scaling from their proximity to the target (far away -> less damage, closer -> more damage). This should help adding a higher risk/higher reward scenario to them.
    
  • Accuracy can now be 100% if using the Concentration or Lucky passives.
    
  • Bzaro will now receive bonus AP after gaining Monster Essence for a class he's already unlocked (he will gain the bonus AP to that monster class), to compensate for the fact he can't benefit from Vicarious Learning.
    
  • Increasing the MP cost of many gadgets as the kit is probably too versatile otherwise.
    
  • Increasing the MP cost of Treatment and reducing the amount of status effects it handles.
    
  • Slightly reducing the Daodrenner's ATK/MND starting value.
    
  • Reducing potency of tier 1 potion to 45 from 50.
    
  • Increasing flat potency of healing magic a little bit and reducing its MND scaling a little bit. This should bring healers a little closer to pure casters for numbers and increase the healing at early levels a little bit.
    
  • Reducing healing from Lick Wounds a bit (0.9 to 0.8).
• Fellblade:
  
  • Abilities that don't do damage can't crit anymore from Versatile.
    
  • Adding Daggers to Fellblade weapons.
    
  • Changing most abilities of the Fellblade to skills to make things more consistent. They still have 1 spell (hp drain spell).
    
  • Updating tooltips to mention which abilities count as "regular attacks".
• Templar:
  
  • Changing ratios on Cleansing Blade so it does more damage per buff removed. Damage at 1 debuff remains unchanged.
    
  • Updating Siphon's damage to be Mixed Atk+Mnd. Also adding HP damage to it.
    
  • Increasing the healing done by Soothing Chant from 0.5 to 0.65.
    
  • Changing holy chant to a square shape (so it's bigger).
• Gear Changes:
  
  • Staves will now grant +1 range to ranged spells.
    
  • Some rods will now grant bonus damage to a specific element.
    
  • Reducing some of the bonuses to Blood Armor and Soul Eater. Adding a configurable cap as well.
    
  • Updating Status resistance Earrings to cover less statuses.
    
  • Adding Throwing Gloves crafted accessory. They grant +1 to item usage range.
    
  • Increasing speed bonus on all Daggers.
    
  • Increasing defense malus on all axes.
    
  • Updating inaccurate def/res values on a lot of gear (this was technically a bug), mostly accessories and some weapons..
    
  • Changing Auto Crossbow to work differently.
    
  • Increasing shields defense across the board.
    
  • Lowering random badges drop chance (with the fix to the wrong loot-table being used at times, it would have been too high).
    
  • Changing base chance of "no loot" from 65% to 70% (this applies to killing an enemy mainly).
• AI Updates:
  
  • Updating again how the AI prioritizes removing debuffs so it's less trigger happy on that.
    
  • Making the AI smarter about where it'll stand when trying to find a defensive position.
    
  • Updating the AI so healers are more efficient with healing themselves + allies when their HP is low.
    
  • Fixing an issue where enemies had a much lower chance than they should at having accessories equipped.
    
  • Updating AI so it won't try to remove Sleep from targets with Somniloquy (unless they are afflicted by enough other things).
    
  • Made the AI smarter with how it uses debuffs on enemies.

• Cleaning up visuals for classes that have "too many abilities" on one skilltree node.
  
• Adding an error popup when trying to reset a character to level 1 without having enough gold.
  
• Updating tooltips of Wild Cards to properly show they ignore evasion.
  
• Music won't stop playing anymore in the Options from the Titlescreen.
  
• Adding a tutorial popup reminding the player about the "details button" when escaping the cave.
  
• Cleaning up the Elemental Mastery description to better reflect how it works.
  
• Adding a tutorial about back and side attacks. This will be shown on the very first map on a new game, but existing save files will see it in their next battle.
  
• For abilities and passives that bring crit chance to 100%, the damage prediction will show the correct expected damage.
  
• When targeting, showing the red tiles that are "out of vertical range" as dimmed-out to better show what's in the vertical range or not.
  
• Making the fade in/out of the music smoother during various transitions.

• Fixing a bug where the wrong loot tables where being used at times. This should result in more appropriate loot in general.
  
• Preventing errors due to the use of invalid data in modding files. Things should be more stable when working on mods.
  
• Updating the prefetch sound and image systems to be more efficient.
  
• Making some small adjustments to reduce "jumping frames" after loading data.
  
• Fixing the Bulldrake having 2x the same passive on its skilltree.
  
• Fixing the target damage information so absorbed damage doesn't show a negative number anymore.
  
• Fixing issue where sleeping enemies could sometimes select a different direction at the end of their turn.
  
• Fixing an issue where character could stop on top of another character while walking if they got interrupted by a trap. Now walking over a trap that's already "occupied" will not trigger it.
  
• Fixing issue with Bzils where they would lose their "natural weapon" after changing their passives.
  
• Fixing issue where unequipping a passive on a Bzil would prompt an automatic "equip optimize" that shouldn't have happened.
  
• Fixing some interactions between mirage, rebirth, cleansing blade and coalesce.
  
• Fixing a bug where placing a trap wouldn't cost any MP for the player.
  
• Fixing a bug where jumping over a tile wouldn't grant a step for Mana/Life Font.
  
• Fixing issues in various options where the mouse might not always have behaved as well as it should.
  
• Fixing a bug where Elemental Mastery would work on Dark and Holy damage. Also fixing bugs where the wrong amount of resistance would be ignored (usually more than it should have).
  
• Fixing a UI issue where all abilities would be described as a "small area" in their description, when some should be marked as "large area".
  
• Fixing a bug where Shakedown wouldn't show the component that was stolen (even though it would correctly steal it anyways).
  
• Correctly showing a "big crit number" when getting a crit of an ability with a push component.
  
• Fixing an issue where the AI wouldn't consider attacking from the position it started its turn on if it could move.
  
• Fixing a bug where the music could fail to start on the worldmap after skipping a cutscene.
  
• Fixing a wrong interaction between muti-target spells and some rare passives that could create inflated damage under certain circumstances.

• Adding "armorstyle" and "helmetstyle" to list of creation options when spawning a character (values: cloth, light, heavy. Default is random), so they can focus on an armor style if they can equip many.

Edit:

• Updating Economy and Boon descriptions as they had missing/wrong information.
  
• Updating Dual Wielding description to make it clearer.

• New Recruits: New recruits starting AP decreased a little bit (from 0.5 to 0.4).
  
• Templar: Capping Siphon's MP damage and absorb with the target's current MP to be consistent with other MP draining abilities.
  
• Healing Staff: Increasing Healing Staff ATK value a bit and giving it a little MND.
  
• ATK+MND Abilities: Many of those abilities were missing the flag that makes their damage non-directional. This has been added.

• Descriptions: Fixing description weirdness for Drain Soul and Soul Suck.
  
• Descriptions: Clarifying description of Perfect Focus.
  
• Elemental Resist: Fixing a newly introduced issue where elemental resist >= 100 would still take 1 damage rather than nullify or absorb the damage.
  
• Healing Staff: Fixing issue where Healing Staff didn't heal on attack but dealt one damage.
  
• Fellblade Abilities: Fixing an issue where the weapon's element and status effects could be ignored by the Fellblade special skills that use the weapon's properties.

It's finally time for the next big content update!

After the big balance update last week, this build is focusing more on adding new content. Here are the highlights of this update:

• Adding an intro video to the game. Hit "new game" to check it out! The current music is a placeholder and we have a narrator planned for the video as well, but that's still in the works.
  
• Adding 4 Story Battles, 3 Patrol Areas, 1 Optional/Secret battle.
  
• Adding an extra patrol for zones: Caravan Trail, Azure Plains, The Resting Giants, Alpine Woods.
  
• Adding difficulty levels to the game. You will be able to select them upon starting a new game or from the Troops Menu from the world map.
  
• Adding new visual customization options for characters, including some accessories, haircuts and hats.
  
• Adding a shield sprite to the idle stance in combat.
  
• Adding "monster specific sprites" to Bzils to show their main class.

As usual, the full notes will be at the end of the post.


This week has been all about creating and testing the new content, including our video system.
We also fixed a fair amount of important gameplay bugs, notably the one that was making the turn order act strangely at times, especially for longer battles.

We added shields to the idle animation and Bzils will now use show a special sprite depending of their base monster class. Here's how it looks in game:


Otherwise, we'll be focusing on new maps and new content for a while, although we have another batch of balance tweaks in the works from the community feedback. Keep it coming! :)

Version 0.4.0
Including some hotfixes notes for emphasis.

• Adding an intro video to the game. Hit "new game" to check it out! The current music is a placeholder and we have a narrator planned for the video as well, but that's still in the works.
  
• Adding difficulty levels to the game. You will be able to select them upon starting a new game or from the Troops Menu from the worldmap. The "added enemies" option isn't implement in all the maps yet.
  
• Adding 4 Story Battles, 3 Patrol Areas, 1 Optional/Secret battle.
  
• Adding a new patrol for encounters: Caravan Trail, Azure Plains, The Resting Giants, Alpine Woods.
  
• Adding a new hairstyle (shortlaced) and Elf ears as a hat (making those a hat was the only way for them to show properly with our layering system). A big thanks to Hector Velar for those!
  
• Adding visual customization options: Orc Tusks accessory, Pumpkin Head hat , and 2 new skintones.
  
• Adding new monster type: Bulldrake, Malcubus.
  
• Adding visuals for Massive Hit. Improving visuals of some abilities.
  
• Updated missing abilities/passives on some monsters.
  
• Adding more sound effects in general, specifically to the worm cutscene and battle.
  
• Adding Cone shape to abilities shape. We'll go over abilities and see if it would make sense for some to be changed to this new shape.
  
• Adding a shield sprite to the idle stance in combat.
  
• Adding "monster specific sprites" to Bzils to show their main class. The class wheel will now show those sprites rather than the monster sprites for Bzils (you can revert to showing the monsters by changing the value "BzilClassChangeShowsMonsters" to true in the GameOptions.txt if you want).

• Reducing the amount of items counts per battle for most items, especially healing potions.
  
• Increasing movement of Plague Doctor to 4.
  
• Reducing boon's MP boost on kill from 12% of max MP to 10%.
  
• Small tweaks to some Ranger abilities damage.
  
• Updating Counter-Pounce to jump in water if the caster can swim.
  
• Healing Staff will not trigger counters anymore.
  
• Adjusting stats growth of many classes. Notably reducing wizard MND, but there's a lot of small adjustments to try balance classes a little better.
  
• Increasing the RES of most shields a tiny bit.
  
• Lowering the Sorcerer's damage from 1x to 0.9x for now, although we have a new system in the works for "full screen spells" for the next update.
  
• Changing the cost of Quicken to 14 from 10 MP.
  
• Reducing the difficulty of the Crossroads story battle by removing one enemy (they will stil be there with "extra enemies" difficulty setting).
  
• Reducing the difficulty of Timber Road story battle by removing one of the ranged enemies (they will still be there with "extra enemies" difficulty setting).
  
• Updating loot, steal and poach tables. Some entries were missing the further along the story the player went. This should result in better drops in general as the story progresses.
  
• Assassins are now able to use Bows rather than Crossbows.

• When selecting "end turn" in combat without having taken an action, the Turn Order will be updated to reflect the correct order.
  
• When Raising a dead ally, their turn will be shown in the Turn Order and they will be shown as a "target" so you can see the HP gained.
  
• Moving the Crafting option to the root of the Main Menu (on Extra Button) rather than from the character commands box, since it doesn't pertain to the selected character.
  
• Changing damage dealt to a character with Mystic Shield to be "MP colored". Changing damage prediction text to be MP colored as well.
  
• Changing the Bzil Class Change process so it saves better passives/subclass that were in used before the class change.
  
• When removing passives that changed the equipement you can use, the "optimize gear" will only be triggered if your current gear isn't valid anymore, rather than every time.
  
• Updating the "attack command" description to show more information about the currently equipped weapon.
  
• Tweaking the items tutorial to try to encourage player to read it.
  
• Updated the "Gamepad Fix" option as it wasn't helping as much as hoped. This new version might help out more people (but is still not recommended unless you're having issues with your gamepad).

• Fixing a visual glitch where the Vicarious AP bonus would be shown as much smaller than it really is if you skipped the "AP countdown phase" in the Victory Screen (the correct AP was still awarded, but the screen wouldn't reflect the correct amount).
  
• Fixing issues where AI would sometimes ignore the chances of "not using an item it might otherwise want to use". This should make the AI use less items overall, as is intended.
  
• Fixing a bug where raising an enemy as a zombie would sometimes drop loot when summoned.
  
• Fixing visual glitch in item upgrade information box where the wrong power was sometimes listed.
  
• Fixing a bug where Bzil units wouldn't pickup the debuff immunities from their main class correctly.
  
• Fixing an issue where if a unit died on their own turn with regen, poison or bleed, they would take some damage/healing from it after death.
  
• Removing the ability to crit on "fixed damage" (damage that is fixed, such as a rock, % based, etc.).
  
• Fixing menu music not playing correctly when accessing the menu from the store.
  
• Fixing rare issue with weapon showing at times when unit is underwater.
  
• Fixing various issues tied to displacement abilities involving water and/or traps.
  
• Fixing damage showing 'miss' rather than the actual damage when pushing a target that can swim into the water.
  
• Fixing various issues with the turn order when using abilities to quicken or slow down characters.
  
• Fixing issue with volumes not being saved properly for users using a different locale.
  
• Fixing issue with the Store where one could buy items after running out of money under certain circumstances. And other small visual issues.
  
• Fixing an issue where a troop might have the wrong position in the menu after changing its class from the class change section.
  
• Fixing an issue when canceling video resolution change.
  
• Fixing a bug where Wild Cards that heal or damage were not counted as damage abilities for counters.
  
• Adjusting the volume of some sounds that were off. That process will be ongoing for a bit and there's definitely more sounds that need tweaking, especially the UI ones.
  
• Fixing an issue where the AI wouldn't consider Wild Cards buffs/debuffs as a valid option when checking for what to do.

• Fixing an issue where the game could hang on The Crossroads if a specific difficulty was chosen and a new recruit was hired prior to entering.
  
• Fixing an issue where starting a new game, skipping the intro video, quitting to the titlescreen, then starting a new game again would lead to the video being skipped automatically.

We just pushed another big update to the game!
On this one, we've been focusing mainly on balance changes and there's a lot of them!

The full and lengthy notes are at the end of the update, as usual, but here are the brief highlights:

• Significantly changed the Fellblade class.
  
• Changed some weapons and abilities for Gadgeteer, Reaver and Templar.
  
• Many changes to the Scoundrel abilities.
  
• Lots abilities and passives got updated.
  
• Lots of changes to the level caps for most story battles and patrols. The idea is to have a small amount of maps "tuned for very low levels characters" and most other maps tuned for higher levels characters, which will give more viable options for players wanting to run random maps. (We are also working on adding a lot of new patrols to maps, but that's not ready yet).
  
• Enemies now have access to a stash of items, much like the player does. This is a pretty big change to their possible power, so we'll need to make sure things are tuned properly.
  
• Lots of AI improvements were made and the AI should be even smarter now, especially around decisions involving buffs/debuffs
  
• Adding a lot of sounds and visual effects.

In terms of progress this week, other than getting this update ready, we've been working on new maps and spells. We've also started work on the Difficulty Settings option. I think it should be ready next week probably.

I know the difficulty settings were further down on our Roadmap, but we've been noticing a lot of feedback about players wanting the game to be easier, or harder, as well as some people struggling with the injury system, so we decided to start on those settings a little earlier.

We'll have more information next week, but the basic idea is that the player can select between many different options for injuries, level scaling, enemy power levels, and a few more things. You'll be able to select between presets labeled easy, normal, hard or make your own custom setup by tuning those values as you want.

We think it should be pretty awesome :)

On the art side, here's one of the new maps we've been working on:


And the final in-game version of that big dragon spell we showcased before:



Version 0.3.4
Including notes from hotfixes for clarity.

• Adding a lot of missing sound effects. The first temple scene specifically has now a lot more sounds going on.
  
• Updating all songs with final remastered versions. We also updated the volume of all sounds to better match the music. Some volumes might still need tuning from this.
  
• Adding new spell effects: Pulsar Generator (for real this time!), Blood Trophy, Spearvault, Barbed Blades, Mercurial Dance, Rally Howl, Diamond Form, Rally and updated many others.
  
• Adding guest characters to many patrols. If they survive the fight, a small AP bonus will be awarded.

• Doing more adjustments to map level ranges: story minimum level was raised a bit in general. Patrols got changed so there is more "high level zones" in general. Starter maps (The Crossroads, Timber Roads, Alpine, Gyaum Tor) have their patrol levels kept low so they can be used to level up very low level teams. Other maps in general have higher level ranges.
  
• Exchanging Vangal and Ercinee passives (Hallowed Body <-> Fortitude).
  
• Increasing Life Font HP restored from 8 to 10 per step.
  
• Rebalancing the stats and resistances of most monsters and associated bzil classes. Changes are too numerous to list, but in general: cleaning up resistances and lowering some stats that were too high.
  
• Changing the Mirage buff to proc only on actions that deal damage (so it will not protect from pure debuff abilities anymore).
  
• Knight lost Doublehand passive, gained Life Font passive.
  
• Gunner lost Life Font passive, gained Concentration (formerly Arcane Sight) passive.
  
• Sorcerer lost Arcane Sight passive, gained Eruptor passive.
  
• Duelist lost Perfect Focus passive, gained Blood Mark passive.
  
• Mercenary lost Heavy Blows passive, gained Health Expert (formerly Life Expert) passive.
  
• Templars gained access to weapon: Scythe.
  
• Reaver changes: the general idea is that Reavers have good offensive growth and a very versatile ability kit, so they shouldn't have access to the highest damage weapons as well (2H weapons), so they are losing those.
  
  • Reaver lost Deep Wounds passive and gained Doublehand passive.
    
  • Reaver lost access to Scythes and Mauls, and gained access to Swords.
• Scoundrel changes: the general idea is to make scoundrel abilities more worthwhile to use in general.
  
  • Changing Steal GP to also do some damage (0.75 ratio for now).
    
  • Changing Fleet of Foot to a regular buffs with 3 turns duration, but reduced the bonus to +1 (from +2).
    
  • Changing Exploit Weakness to act as Heavy Blows (+50% to critical damage).
    
  • While Steal Items currently remains unchanged, you'll now actually be stealing items that enemies could use, so it should feel more impactful.
• Fellblade changes: the idea is to make the class overall stronger and more interesting. They gained range/height on most abilities and their abilities are now more special, as they count as "regular attacks", which means they use the built-in weapon statuses and elements and benefit from regular-attacks themed passives. They might be a little too strong after this, so we'll monitor.
  
  • The 4 basic Slices abilities now do Mixed Damage.
    
  • They now have a range of 2.
    
  • They now count as regular attacks, which means they can apply weapon effects and work with passives that work on regular attacks.
    
  • Half of their abilities are Skills and the other half are Spells, so the Fell Blade won't be stopped by Mute or Cripple alone.
    
  • Their vertical range has been increased to 4, so they are as long as 2H weapons.
    
  • Health Siphon now does a lot more damage/healing with every debuffs on the target.
    
  • MP costs have been adjusted upwards in general.
    
  • Passive Versatile now also has the former effect of Exploit Weakness (on critical hits, some HP and MP is restored).
• Gadgeteer changes: the idea is to make them a little less difficult to unlock and have them be a little more interesting as a main class.
  
  • Changing requirements to unlock to Scoundrel-4/Wizard-4 (from Gambler-3/Wizard-3).
    
  • Lost Daggers, gained Maul.
    
  • Lost Life Expert passive, gained Perfect Focus passive.
    
  • Increasing Mana Expert passive MP from 10 to 15.
    
  • Slightly increasing def and speed growths.
• AI will now have access to a list of gadgets based on their level.
  
• AI will now have access to a list of items based on their level. Stealing items from them will deplete their stocks, etc.
  
• Scout will now also grant the Crit Up buff to the caster.
  
• Updating Ercinee AI to make it smarter and less prone to spamming Kamikaze right off the bat. Damage of Kamikaze was also lowered.
  
• Enemies will now have a chance at using Scout if the player places some traps.
  
• Made the enemies less likely to use a debuff that the target already has.
  
• Made various AI improvements. AI should be smarter in general, especially around buffs and debuffs.
  
• Adjusting the vertical range of most physical abilities that were mistakingly tied to the user's weapon vertical range.
  
• When "actions that aren't doing anything" are taken (such as healing a character that's already full), there is no EXP granted anymore.
  
• Cleaning up the Focus buff: won't proc from counter attacks and will proc on damage and heals. Description has been updated.
  
• Bringing the level of special guest characters "in line with the party" so they can't be abused to earn massive EXP.
  
• Adding Bandit Gloves as loot to the Banyan story battle.
  
• Reducing the amount of EXP gained from using Double Cast to compensate for getting 2 actions. The base exp is reduced by 1/2 per action, but the kill bonus is unchanged. This makes double casting "as good as normal" for exp gains for the most part.
  
• Reducing the cost of sorcerer spells to 24 for basic elements. This should allow them to use a "regular" 6MP attack once in a while to be a bit less 'idle'. Holy And Dark are now at 26 and Non-Elemental at 28.
  
• Lowering the MP growth and starting MP of several classes. This should make your max MP a little more relevant at earlier/mid levels (not retroactive).
  
• Adding missing passives to generated enemies list.
  
• Increasing the damage per debuff of Opportunistic Bullet from 0.3 to 0.5 and lowering base damage from 0.9 to 0.8
  
• Adding an option to GameOptions.txt to allow the setting of the maximum amount of units the player can field to be changed globally there, rather than just "per encounter" like before.

• Adjusting rain effect to be a little transparent and adding a small full screen darkening. Looks better :)
  
• Switching the names of Gamblers Wild Cards so colors are grouped for positive vs negative.
  
• Updating many tooltips and descriptions throughout the game to be clearer and have more information.
  
• Updating various tutorial tooltips to have better information.
  
• After using Double Cast, the Double Cast spell list will come up again rather than the regular list.
  
• Adding the Enter key as a default 2nd binding for the "confirm button" (so now by default Space and Enter will act as a confirm button). This only applies if you reset your key bindings/install the game for the first time.
  
• Adding a menu button to the Guild and Shop for faster access.
  
• Removing "Vsync" from the graphics options. It should really always be set to ON because the game's FPS is often too high. You can still manually change it in the Gameconfig file.
  
• Adding options to control the worldmap gamepad-cursor speed and the worldmap scrolling speed. Moving the battle map speed into "graphics" from "gameplay".
  
• Fixing a bug where Root and Bleed would always be part of a help description for abilities, regardless of their use in the ability.
  
• Adding a version number to the GameConfig.txt file to better reset values that need to be changed due to code updates.
  
• Resetting most volume values and vsync value in the config.
  
• Characters with invalid gear will now have that gear unequipped upon loading a save file.
  
• Improving the information shown in the Item list from the Menu screen to show the usual "full information".
  
• Fixing various visual issues that arose from allowing the targeting of blocked tiles.
  
• Showing the cursor "over everything and semi transparent" when using the mouse to select a tile that is visually masked by another tile. Should make it easier to use.
  
• Changing the layout of the AP rewards screen to show a bit more information.
  
• Realized the game doesn't show anywhere that Scythes give a bonus to Crit Damage. Now adding to their description.
  
• Changing equip screen so that a shield can be selected while a 2Hander is equipped. Equipping the shield will remove the 2Hander (much like a 2Hander will remove the shield currently).
  
• In battle, showing a red cursor rather than a green cursor when it is over a blocked tile.
  
• On the worldmap, you now have to "stop directly on" optional battle maps to trigger them. This will allow people to "walk past" the graveyard (and other potential optional maps) without triggering the fight.

• Updating the volume of most sound effects to be "correct". This let us update the music volume as well to be closer to that of the SFX, which will result in better quality.
  
• Fixing issue with Opportunist doing more healing on targets with debuffs.
  
• Fixing issue where extra weapons sprites would get created upon leaving the menu from combat for some characters.
  
• Fixing an issue where the "speed up" could get stuck and persist outside of combat.
  
• Adding some code to make sure the game doesn't spin too fast if vsync is off.
  
• Enemy peddlers will no longer use a strange version of "Patented Use" that uses no items and does damage.
  
• Fixing an issue with Turkish locale and consumable items not playing nicely together.
  
• Fixing an instance where a weapon would show above the water for a swimming unit.
  
• Fixing an issue where one could revive characters on blocked areas.
  
• Now correctly hiding visual accessories when wearing a "full hat".
  
• Fixing issue in the visual customization screen where some layers where not always shown in the correct order for the sprite being customized.
  
• Fixing the "there is a treasure here" note in combat showing on the Graveyard chest even after it has been opened.
  
• Removing a stray Mastery star in the top left corner of the class change screen.
  
• Fixing a bug where Life Font and Mana Font would restore values based on the distance traveled, rather than the amount of steps taken. This should make them a little better than before in general.
  
• Adding a missing icon for PS4 controller icons (Up-Down Dpad icon).
  
• Fixing a bug where enemies could go over level 99.
  
• Fixing an issue where dismissing a character would leave an empty open slot in the menu that could cause various problems (such as eating your characters while manually sorting them).
  
• Fixing a small volume issue with sounds played at the start of cutscenes.
  
• Fixing an issue where walking to a tile with a trap and hitting a trap on the way there would trigger both traps instead of only the 1st one.
  
• Fixing an issue with autosaves that might have caused problems for some users.
  
• Fixing a softlock when not having any weapons equipped.
  
• Fixing an issue when entering the menu for some rare users.
  
• Fixing visual glitch when switching characters in abilities learn/set screens with a very large number of units.

• Adding the ability to spawn guests in patrols (faction:player).
  
• Adding the ability to have enemies give some flat AP bonus if defeated (for enemies) or if kept alive (for guests) (apbonus:<amount>).
  
• Adding a global value to change the maximum amount of units that the player can deploy. This will still be restricted by the size of the zone where allies can be deployed in some maps, but we'll work on updating those as needed.

• Fixing issue with a Vangal passive being incorrect.
  
• Fixing issue with Bzarro unequipping his 'natural weapon' when loading a save file.
  
• Fixing issue with gear unequipping after loading a game if the gear was only equippable due to a passive.
  
• Fixing issue with some characters being shown in cutscenes when they shouldn't.
  
• Fixing issue where Bzil character gear would be unequipped upon loading the game after the patch.
  
• Fixing issue where AP earned after battles would be 0 after the patch >.<
  
• Reducing the amount of items enemies have access to significantly and fixing an issue where enemies sometimes had access to higher tiers than they should have.
  
• Reducing the odds of an enemy using an item in general.
  
• Adding the Bandit glove to save files that are passed that point in the story, so no one is missing out :)
  
• Cleaning up the way some assets are cached internally, which could improve memory usage in a fairly minor way for some users.
  
  
• Fixing an issue where players that started a fresh game on the new build would be using the new and not yet finished "Easy Difficulty Mode" rather than Normal.
  
• Adding a new hairstyle (shortlaced). Thanks to Hector Velar for those!
  
• Adding a Elf ears as a hat (making those a hat was the only way for them to show properly with our layering system). Thanks to Hector Velar for those!
  
• Fixing an extremely rare bug where damage would be applied to a different target than the selected one.
  
• Fixing an issue where killing someone with Forceful Strike could sometimes give them 2 injuries rather than 1.
  
• Fixing issues where AI would ignore the odds of "not using an item even if it needs it". This should make make AI use less items overall.
  
  
• Fixing issue introduced in earlier hotfix where some enemies would remain alive at 0HP after dying.

Hello everyone!

This week we released another build, packed with a LOT of QoL changes from community feedback, including the much anticipated option to change the spell animation speed and the walking animation speed. The build has an extensive list of QoL, UI and modding features upgrades and additions! You can view the full change log right here.

We’ve started working on the next update and this time we’re focusing on balance. We have lots of changes planned for many human classes, including the Fell Blade, Scoundrel, Sorcerer and Gadgeteer. We also have a huge update pass to the numbers of almost all monster classes to improve on their balance.

As you might have seen in the last build, we’ve also been busy adding a lot of new sound effects and new spell visuals. The big spells we showed in recent progress reports are finally done. Here’s what the Demon one looks like in-game:


Otherwise, we're just chugging along, adding more content, more maps and refining the game's cutscenes. We're planning on a big content update on October 12th and we're getting ready for it!

We just pushed hotfix 0.3.3a.

The big 0.3.3 QoL update introduced a softlock in combat when a character would have "no weapon equipped". This is fixed. Very sorry about that!

It's also including a few balancing changes that were started for build 0.3.4.

Version 0.3.3a

• Reducing the cost of sorcerer spells to 24 for basic elements. This should allow them to use a "regular" 6MP attack once in a while to be a bit less 'idle'. Holy And Dark are now at 26 and Non-Elemental at 28.
  
• Lowering the MP growth and starting MP of several classes. This should make your max MP a little more relevant at earlier/mid levels (not retroactive).
  
• Increasing Mana Expert passive MP from 10 to 15.
  
• Adding missing passives to generated enemies list.
  
• Increasing the damage per debuff of Opportunistic Bullet from 0.3 to 0.5 and lowering base damage from 0.9 to 0.8.

• Fixing an issue with autosaves that might have caused problems for some users.
  
• Fixing a softlock when not having any weapons equiped.
  
• Fixing an issue when entering the menu for some rare users.
  
• Fixing visual glitch when switching characters in abilities learn/set screens with a very large number of units.

We're releasing build 0.3.3 today. It's a compilation of fixes and, mainly, a lot of quality of life changes that have been requested by the community. Here are the highlights:

• Adding an option to speed up walking in combat.
  
• Adding an option to speed up casting animations in combat.
  
• Exporting Weapons, Armors and Accessories to an XML file. Modders can now add/modify them.
  
• UI clean up, including new tutorials, better tooltips, showing the source of the damage for abilities (ATK, MND, etc.), etc.
  
• Making AOE targeting able to target a "blocked area" in combat (like a rock for example) to make things simpler and less frustrating. Also hiding the target AoE area when targeting if it's not within the "allowed range", to help with clarity.
  
• Adding a lot of new spell visuals and new sounds.

Version 0.3.3
Including notes from hotfixes for clarity.

• Adding an "ability speed" setting in the gameplay options. This will allow abilities to play significantly faster.
  
• Adding a "walking speed" setting in the gameplay options. Similar to "ability speed", but for the walking phase in combat.
  
• Adding a setting to speed up the sound to match the "ability speed-up" (if it's sped up at all). This makes the sound higher pitched, but has tighter timings (off by default).
  
• Exporting Weapons, Armors and Accessories to an XML file. Modders can now add/modify them (those are/go in the same location as the Abilities.xml file).
  
• Adding a new option to Gameplay called "Gamepad Fix". If you're running into issues with your gamepad (or are using an Xbox One gamepad), this might help out. Otherwise, if everything is working already, you should leave it be.
  
• Updating various cutscenes with small added details.
  
• Adding a fair amount of new sounds effects and preparing to create another big wave of them.
  
• Adding new spell effects: Silverhorn, Coalesce, Demon, Dragon, Firescourge, Forest Flute, Pulsar Generator, Autohealer-3000, Healing Burst, Holy Locus, Holy I, Holy II, Poison Burst and Zohl Heal.

• Starting Bzaro with more learned abilities for his unlocked classes and a little more partial progression on some more classes (this is not retroactive).
  
• Adding MP bonus to maces and HP bonus to Mauls. This was always supposed to be there but was missing from the data files. These changes might make those weapons stronger than they should be (especially the Mauls), so we'll have to keep an eye on them and adjust as needed.

• Speeding up showing the Poison, Bleed, Regen, etc. numbers at the end of the turn.
  
• Cleaning up the worldmap navigation with mouse/kb a bit, especially when using "pan map".
  
• Updating "range" field for skills. When a skill uses the weapon range, but not the weapon vertical range (only a small amount of skills behave this way), the information displayed wasn't clear.
  
• Adding a tutorial about "info box pages" during the Gyaum Tor story battle.
  
• Adding a tutorial message in the crossroads for players using a small resolution, to let them know about switching on/off pixel-perfect visuals and show more of the map.
  
• Updating the description of all abilities to include the source of the damage (ATK, MND, ATK+MND).
  
• Updating a few abilities that were missing the description of their associated buff.
  
• Various small updates to the character visual customization screen so colors aren't reset as often when changing things around, specifically, when changing gender.
  
• Updated damage prediction box to zero out the status effect of the 2nd weapon when dual wielding if the user is out of range for the 2nd weapon attack.
  
• Updating the name of a few abilities.
  
• Adding a star over the classes in the Class Change menu if the character has mastered it already.
  
• Adding the game name of all maps to the Encounters.txt file so it's easier for modders to match them.
  
• Hiding the "red area tiles" when targeting if the cursor is outside the "possible zone (blue tiles)" to help make things easier to understand.
  
• Now allowing the targeting of "blocked tiles" when casting AoE spells. So, if a rock is creating a "blocked area", you could still target that area (assuming the heights are ok) to get the AoE damage on adjacent tiles.
  
• Showing "type: counter/passive" for those types of abilities in their description box to increase clarity.
  
• When switching classes, the game will now try to use your former main class/passives to fill up your subclass/passives if those would now be 'empty'.
  
• Cleaning up the "passives and counter" page in the character information box to be in the correct order and work better with right-stick selection.
  
• Adding a Simplified Chinese font to the available game fonts and updating the language system to allow modders to reference it.
  
• Increasing the internal max amount of units from 10 to 16 for the player. This means that modders can make/tweak maps that will allow for 16 user units. No max on enemies.

• Fixing an issue with Turkish locale.
  
• Fixing an issue that gave higher chance to land a status effect when the caster was lower level than the target.
  
• Fixing various small issues that made the game less stable.
  
• Adding more information to error logs to help diagnose errors more easily and fixing an issue with errors during initial loading of the game not always showing in the log. Also adding more logging for mod support.
  
• Fixing a bug in the UI when selecting "Cancel" after trying to change resolution.
  
• Fixing an issue with selling "the last items of the last category".
  
• Fixing issue with patrol levels not being correct after clearing the very last map of the current build.
  
• Preventing enemies to be generated with a gender that clashes with their selected class (for the rare classes that have a gender restriction).
  
• Fixing issue with Bat Swarm showing a floating weapon when used to go onto a water tile.
  
• Fixing an issue with Focus ability when used by Blargers/Bzils.
  
• Fixing visual glitches with many of the gadgets.
  
• Fixed Arpia ability "Opportunist" not working as intended.
  
• Fixing the sleep status (and some other statuses) persisting through cutscenes.
  
• Fixing an issue where most badges entries as "rare loot" had some typos. The "rare" badge drops should be less rare now.
  
• Fixing a bug with Blood Mark that made its damage grow to terrifying heights for the AI.
  
• Fixed a leak when browsing the class menu back and forth over Kyrie.
  
• Fixing issue with Impetus's bonus only affecting distant turns in the future rather than apply immediately as intended.
  
• Fixing a leak when switching resolution or language.
  
• Fixing an issue where the dialogues file wouldn't be reloaded with the translation when switching language until the game was restarted.

edit: Pushing a quick hotfix with small fixes:

• Reducing the value of buffs that raise a base stat (ATK, MND, DEF, RES) from 25% to 12.5% for ATK/MND and 15% for DEF/RES. The way calculations work with base stat, this should yield the initially envisioned bonus.
  
• Fixing an issue with the mastery stars on the class change menu being shown at a weird location on lower resolutions.
  
• Fixing an issue where having unbound keys might show "big text" in the hint bar at the bottom right of the screen.
  
• Fixing a potential softlock when raising a dead unit that had the float status.
  
• Grabbing a unity fix that might resolve some rare flickering some people have experienced.

Another big week for us. We put out another Early Access build this week, in part to fix an issue for Turkish users and to get a few new features out, the biggest one being a fan request for a system to reset your character to level 1, so you can redo their stats growth if you’re agonizing over previous choices.
It’s definitely not something that’ll be required in the normal game flow for most players, but there was a high enthusiasm for the feature from the Community, so we brought it in. :)

For the rest of the week, we’ve been working on more improvements from fan feedback, including a system to speed up spell effects in combat, some UI polish and improvements and adding new sound effects. I expect we’ll have another build out next week with these new features and improvements.

On the art front, our artist just posted a small tutorial about our animation workflow process when creating monster sprites. It has a lot information and a lot of nifty images too!
If you're interested in Pixel Art, you might want to give it a look.
You can check it out right here!

And we have another spell for the secret class we mentioned last week, although it’s not quite finished yet:


We’ve also just finished the sketch for our next map, a dark and foreboding tomb area (well, it’ll be dark and foreboding when it’s complete!):


And lastly, we started work on the final boss sprite. It’s looking pretty cool! We’ll share a spoiler free version of it when it has a little more details done! :)

We just released 0.3.1 a few days ago, so it's a bit early for a new build, but we've been adding many fixes and it seemed appropriate not to hoard them for ourselves!

Most of the changes we're adding were suggested by the community. Here are some of the highlights:

• Adding a system to "Reset a character's level to level 1", by popular request. Head to the guild and hit the "Reset Level" option. For a fee, your level will be reset to level 1.
  
• Updating 'buffs' descriptions to include the help text tied to the buff that is granted.
  
• Lowering the cost of Bzil skill tree abilities significantly. Will keep monitoring this to see if more adjustments are needed.
  
• Changing equip UI so a 2H can be selected while a shield is equipped. The 2H will be equipped and the shield unequipped automatically.
  
• Slightly lowering the power of sniper shot and making Sniper Shot and Assassinate acquired by enemies at a later level than other abilities of the same tier.

Version 0.3.2
Including notes from hotfixes 0.3.1b and 0.3.1c, for clarity.

• Adding ambient pops to a few more maps.
  
• Adding a system to "Reset a character's level to level 1", by popular request. Head to the guild and hit the "Reset Level" option. For a fee, your level will be reset to level 1.

• Changing the way Elemental Mastery calculates its values. It should be more consistent in general and a little stronger.
  
• Changed the caps for elemental resistances. Enemies with very low resistances should take quite a bit more damage from the right element now.
  
• Updating level caps for story encounters and patrols, generally raising them a little bit.
  
• AI won't try to Collect Bounty/Pelt a target if it won't kill the target.
  
• Reducing chances of enemies using Gold Steal a little more.
  
• Enemy healers with charm will no longer try to remove charm from themselves specifically (they will still try to Panacea themselves from other conditions and might thus remove charm as collateral-removal).
  
• Increasing a bit chances of healers trying something different than healing as their first choice.
  
• Swapping Scout and Collect Pelt around on the Ranger skill tree.
  
• Changing gambler damage ability to do "target current-hp - 1" damage to the target on "critical success", with a min/max value, rather than 500, 200 and 100 as previously.
  
• Lowering the starting AP of recruits from 60% to 50% of "max average AP of 6 highest AP characters."
  
• Slightly lowering the power of sniper shot.
  
• Making Sniper Shot and Assassinate acquired by enemies at a later level than other abilities of the same tier.
  
• Lowering the cost of Bzil skill tree abilities significantly. Will keep monitoring this to see if more adjustments are needed.

• Changing equip UI so a 2H can be selected while a shield is equipped. The 2H will be equipped and the shield unequipped automatically.
  
• Reworking Mystic Shield, Smart Casting, and other descriptions.
  
• Changing Execute to only apply to offensive abilities. Also lowering the damage bonus from 50% to 40% for now.
  
• Reordered the weapon categories in stores/menus to group similar things better.
  
• Updating 'buffs' descriptions to include the help text tied to the buff that is granted.

• Changing the way we read config files to force UTF-8 rather than "default user locale", as it seems it can cause issues with languages using completely different alphabets.
  
• In a hotfix, we reverted our changes to the "dimming the music" system we added last patch. The system was an improvement, but it surfaced a Unity engine bug that can crash the game. We sent a bug report and hope they will fix the issue. We'll restore the "cleaner music volume dimming" afterwards.
  
• Fixing an issue when switching resolution from the menu.
  
• Fixing a leak from accessing options from the Title Screen.
  
• Fixing a bug when pressing keys while the menu is opening from the battle placement screen.
  
• Fixing various typos in abilities, weapons, etc.
  
• Fixing a leak from accessing options from the Title Screen.
  
• Fixing a bug where items could be used with doublecasting under specific circumstances.
  
• Fixing many (fairly benign) internal exceptions.
  
• Fixing an issue that gave a lot more mvp points than intended when attacking an enemy.