This week's build focuses on AI upgrades, some balance tweaks and 2 added difficulty settings.
The size on disk also went from 3.5GB to 1.5GB, after a big update to our assets system.

Here are the highlights of the build:

• Build Size: Very significantly shrunk the build size (3.5GB to 1.5GB).
  
• AI: Many improvements and fixes!
  
• Difficulty Settings: Adding 2 new Difficulty Settings to better control AI item usage and enemy spawning passives and counters.
  
• Performance: Made a change to the asset loading system to make it a little bit faster.
  
• Debuffs: If a character already has a debuff, the listed % to inflict it will now be shown as 0% (you can't reapply a status that's already on).

Full notes are listed at the end of this post.


Our composer, Jan Morgenstern, has been working on preparing the OST for the game. We're still not there yet, as there's still a few tracks missing, but it's getting there and sounding great. :)

Check out this link for more details on the OST, including some free tracks!


We finally finished our dialogues early this week!
They should be final at this point, barring any problems. The localization process has just begun it and they should be ready within about a month.

You can expect to see a lot of added languages early next year!

This week, we've worked mostly on our Xbox One build. Most of the work is done, save for the achievements. Next will be the PS4 build and preparing for December's big content update.

As soon as the console builds are taken care of, we'll start splitting our focus between creating the rest of the encounters and on a slew of UI/Balance updates that we've been preparing from all the great feedback we've been receiving.

Again,a big "thank you" to everyone for the feedback and suggestions. It's going to help us tremendously getting it done right!

On the art side, our maps are almost finished by now and our final tally should be 52 maps.

Currently, we're working on finalizing our special classes spells and have started work on our next "summon" style spell. Here's a preview for it:



12/07/2018 - Version 0.5.3

• Build Size: Very significantly shrunk the build size (3.5GB to 1.5GB).

• Fellblade:
  
  • Bleed Slice: Removing Bleed Slice and replacing it with Chaos Slice. Chaos Slice does damage and inflicts the target with a random debuff.
    
  • Miasma: Will now require a "center target" to propagate debuffs, otherwise it will only do damage. Center target won't have its debuff removed from the attack (such as sleep/charm).
• Templar: Rapturous Chant will now remove all debuffs.
  
• Ranger: Evasion Up value lowered to 15%.
  
• Duelist: Reducing damage from elemental Flourishes to 1.55x (was 1.7x) and adding a small chance (25%) of a debuff tied to the element.
  
• Bulldrake: Increasing the damage of Somniloquy a fair amount.
  
• AI:
  
  • Abilities: Enemies will now be generated without missing abilities at higher level (there was a small chance before they wouldn't know all abilities if a skilltree had many abilities on 1 tier).
    
  • Levels: Enemies will now have a min/max level variance cap. Enemies spawn within roughly plus or minus 10% of the army's average level. This means that at very high levels, the level difference can start being very big. Now it's bounded to +/- 5, roughly.
    
  • Random Enemies: Enemies with a random job/subjob have a restriction on how many "healing" job/subjob will be generated so there aren't too many healers. Updated what is considered a "healer" to be more accurate (this should result in more healers than before on random maps, in general, since many jobs are now considered "partial healers" only).
    
  • Hybrid: Hybrid enemies will now spawn with better passives in general.
    
  • Items: Bypassing the odds of "not using an item even if we need it" for enemies if they couldn't take any action that turn.
    
  • Self-Panacea: Enemies will have much better chances of removing debuffs on themselves if they didn't take an action during the turn.
    
  • MP Granting: Improving the logic around giving MP to allies/self to be much better.
    
  • Accessories: Enemies won't spawn with duplicate Rings and Boots anymore, unless specifically meant to.
    
  • Smarts: Making the AI smarter with killing blows and with MP shield, so they won't be as likely to waste big attacks that would have the same effect as a smaller attack.
    
  • Counters: Enemies will be smarter about not triggering counters needlessly.
    
  • Revives: AI should be more likely to use Revive spells or items in general.
• Difficulty Settings:
  
  • Enemies Passives/Counter: Adding a setting to control the chance of enemies not having a passive/counter.
    
  • Enemies Use Items: Renaming old settings to "Enemies Have Items". It controls the amount of items the enemies have.
    
  • Enemies Use Items: Adding a new setting to control how likely enemies are to using items.
    
  • Beginner: Updating preset to allow enemies to have items, but to use them at a Low chance.
    
  • Enemies Gear: Default setting will now have 25% per empty slot of having an accessory (more is 50%).
    
  • Enemies Gear: Will now affect monsters as well (was only humans before).
• Gear:
  
  • Green Beret: Now gives +20HP (down from +25HP).
    
  • Enhancer: Increasing MND bonus slightly.
    
  • Energy Scythe: Reducing MND bonus a fair amount.
    
  • Energy Mace: Reducing MND bonus a bit.
    
  • Heavy Staff: Increasing ATK a lot and reducing MND bonus a fair amount.
    
  • Soul Armor: Changing resistance from -50 Holy to -25 Holy.
    
  • Brand Swords: Adding 50% resistance to their element.
    
  • Rapiers: Lowering their attack a bit, as their table had a problem that shifted some values upwards.

• Performance: Made a change to the asset loading system to make it a little bit faster.
  
• Tutorials: Updating some tutorials to be clearer.
  
• Menu: Changing character with L/R in the main menu would act differently if a character was selected or not. This now behaves the same always.
  
• Debuffs: If a character already has a debuff, the listed % to inflict it will now be shown as 0% (you can't reapply a status that's already on).

• AI: Fixing a bug that would make any Enemy with "Smart Casting" fail at casting spells.
  
• Descriptions: Fixed an issue with some rare descriptions not showing an icon correctly in the text.
  
• Name Input: Changing it so canceling out will not pick a random name anymore.
  
• Leak: Fixing a memory leak when using custom portraits.
  
• Gelligh City: Fixing some weird layering issues when in the water with floating units.
  
• Counter Pounce: Fixing an issue with enemies sometimes jumping in an occupied location if the player casted an AoE over multiple Pounce-Counter characters.
  
• Modding: Fixing a crash when trying to spawn a "hybrid" enemy without specifying their job manually.
  
• NPCs: Fixing a bug where very high level enemies could spawn without a counter or passives.
  
• Maps: Fixing a bug where some maps wouldn't load their correct background after running the Halloween event (until the next restart of the game).
  
• Steal GP: Fixing an issue that might have caused it to be used more often than it should.
  
• Sleep: The Sleep debuff will not be reapplied to targets that already have it anymore (if a target had sleep and you did damage+sleep to it, it would wake up then get reslept at times).
  
• Berserk: Units with Berserk won't ignore the nearest target if that target has "Evade Melee" anymore.
  
• Focus: Fixing a bug where Focus would get "used up" by "Debuff counters".
  
• Thespeiros: Preventing all "non-swimming" units from spawning with Flippers to ensure they remain "non-swimming".
  
• AI: Fixing a bug that made the AI ignore Def Down/ Res Down items usage.

• Linux/Mac: Fixing a crash on the Mac and Linux versions of the game.
  
• Patch Notes: Fixing a crash with the Patch notes in game.
  
• Guests: Fixing an issue where Bzil guests would have a weird portrait.
  
• Dispels: Dispels would incorrectly show they would dispel a permanent item-granted buff on a target before.
  
• Buffs from Items: Fixing an issue where some bonus from buffs from items wouldn't be granted until the character got targeted by an action.
  
• Secret Map: An optional secret map was visible on the worldmap when it shouldn't have been. It's being removed for now and will show up again when it's fully ready.
  
• Thespeiros: Fixing an issue with nighttime props showing during the daytime.
  
• Kawa Store: Somier was using the wrong sprite and portrait in his store.[/list]
  
  

Hi guys,

many of you might have already seen the final version of the Intro Movie in the game but for those who havent had the chance we uploaded the intro movie to Youtube! ːsteamhappyː

We wanted something magical to happen when you press New Game so we prepared a hand-drawn intro movie that appears when you start a new game and introduces you to the world. Soak in the atmosphere and let us know down in the comments what do you think!

Here it is:

https://youtu.be/EeVpFJi9en0

Let us know what do you think down in the comments

Also check out the roadmap we prepared:



https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/

This week's build has our Intro Movie updated with awesome Voice Over. It sounds pretty great, give it a listen!

Other than that, we added about 50 new SFX to the game, fixed some bugs and made some small balance changes.

Here are the highlights:

• Intro Movie: The intro movie has been updated with Voice Acting.
  
• SFX: Adding over 50 new SFX.
  
• Patented Usage: Doesn't work with Manastone anymore.
  
• Loot drops: Many of the special drops had a wrong chance of dropping, which resulted in higher odds than normal. This is fixed, but it does mean that the current odds could be too low now. We'll have to monitor.

As always, the full change log is at the end of the post (as well as in-game in the Patchnotes section).


This week was our last week working on dialogues. All of the game's dialogues have been created, minus the ending, as we're still working out some details on that front. At this point though, we're pretty sure we'll have 2 possible endings.
That was a LOT of dialogue writing and we're glad to be moving on to something else, quite honestly.

Starting next week, we'll be splitting our time between console work, cutscenes and balance updates for the next month.

We also want to give a big Thank You! to the community for the great feedback and suggestions we've been receiving lately! Thank you very much for taking the time!

We have a TON of balance changes we want to get in from all that feedback, but it's going to take a little bit before we can get it all in.
Stay tuned :)

On the art front, we've been working on the "end game" maps (so we can't show them, too many spoilers) and new spell effects.
We've started work on our next "big scale summon spell" too. Here's the basic sketch of it:

It should be pretty epic when it's finished!


11/30/2018 - Version 0.5.2

• Intro Movie: The intro movie has been updated with Voice Acting.
  
• SFX: Adding over 50 new SFX.

• Patented Usage: Doesn't work with Manastone anymore.
  
• Monsters Resistances: Updated some enemies resistances to better spread elemental weaknesses and strength for the mid game.
  
• Strangled Cove: Changing a Water Buldrake to a Fire Buldrake in a Patrol.
  
• Plague Doctor: Changing Poison burst to be a Square rather than Cross. Reducing MP cost to 10 (from 14) and decreasing damage to 0.9x (from 1x).
  
• Werewolf:
  
  • Leap: Changed the cost to 8 from 6.
    
  • Fetid Breath: Reducing Weaken's base chance to proc from 100 to 75%. Increasing damage to 0.95 from 0.75 and changing the ability from a skill to a spell (so it's now magical).
    
  • Howl: Increasing damage to 1 from 0.5.
    
  • Blood Trophy: Changing the range to "weapon range".
    
  • Cunning Slash: Adding missing ability. It deals 0.75x damage to a single target in melee range, bypasses all counters and has 100% hit chance always.
• Gadgeteer: Changing Surpriser-Plus to be single target, but do 0.9x damage with a 10 MP cost.
  
• Kawa: Changed Swarm Strike to ignore flanks and have lower base damage, but higher damage for more allies.
  
• Loot drops: Many of the special drops had a wrong chance of dropping, which resulted in higher odds than normal. This is fixed, but it does mean that the current odds could be too low now. We'll have to monitor.

• Descriptions: Updating Blessed One and Focus description to make it more explicit if they work or not with items.
  
• Dialogues: More dialogue cleanup.

• Blessed One: Fixing an issue where Blessed One would restore HP to the caster for restoring MP to another character.
  
• Weapons Debuff: Fixing an issue where weapons with a debuff chance would use the ability's chance instead for abilities that make use of the weapon's debuff.
  
• Godstears Waste: Fixing some issue with the Event on that map, as well as with some of the special enemies on there (ignoring Rebirth effects and not giving Injuries to dead units).
  
• Worm Battle: Fixing an issue where Rebirth might not trigger when a character would be killed by certain abilities.
  
• Menus: Fixed a minor visual issue when unlocking more than 1 class at once from learning an ability.
  
• Kapawka Jungle: Fixing a bug where having your whole team die would result in a Victory rather than Defeat.

• Fixing an issue with certain save files where some of the later levels wouldn't appear on the map.

We hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! :)

We'd like to mention first that we wanted to release our updated Intro Movie (with added Voice Over) this past week, but it's been delayed. We're hoping it'll be ready next week instead.
The work on this is handled by an outside contractor, so it's not slowing down our overall progress at all, so no worries there.

Next, we have a new build this week. It's mostly light balance changes, targeted at increasing the attractiveness of some abilities/items/systems/etc. that the community has found to be a little weaker than others.

Quick highlights are:

• Weaken: Weaken's previous effect (increasing chance of Status Effects lading on the target) has been changed. Now, it will prevent any normal healing from working on the target while they are afflicted.
  
• Fleet of Foot: Both the ability and the counter will now also remove Root from the character. Since the counter will only proc if the character doesn't already have Fleet of Foot, it will only protect them once until the buff wears out.
  
• Assassin: Cautious Step will now also prevent Root and Slow.
  
• MVP: Updating the MVP system to favor "low level characters" less than before and to have a higher overall chance of getting an MVP.
  
• Consumables: Adding XML file for consumables, allowing the player to create consumable items for battle.

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


Wrapping up all dialogues has been our focus this past week once again. It's still the main item on the agenda for next week as well, and then we should be done with those.

The work on the "character events" dialogues has started this week and it's looking good so far!

Otherwise, it's been more maps this week, such as this one, which will feature some old friends:



11/23/2018 - Version 0.5.1

• Equipment: Adding Flippers, an accessory that grants Swim to the wearer.
  
• Weaken: Weaken's previous effect (increasing chance of Status Effects lading on the target) has been changed. Now, it will prevent any normal healing from working on the target while they are afflicted.

• Fleet of Foot: Both the ability and the counter will now also remove Root from the character. Since the counter will only proc if the character doesn't already have Fleet of Foot, it will only protect them once until the buff wears out.
  
• Adaptative Aegis: Increasing elemental resistance bonus to 75 (from 50).
  
• Assassin: Cautious Step will now also prevent Root and Slow.
  
• Druid: Changing "Shield" spells to be AoE rather than single target.
  
• Warmage: Exchanged Critical: Haste and Earth/Thunder Burst in skilltree.
  
• Lich: Changing requirements to Sorcerer-6, Plague Doctor-4
  
• Lord: Lord can now equip a Shield by default.
  
• Fellblade: Changing Mute Slice to Decay Slice. It now afflicts with Weaken rather than Mute. Damage lowered to 0.8x.
  
• Scarred Summit: Making one of the enemies "more enemies" only.
  
• Oldebzar: Changing 2 Pektites from Water to Fire.
  
• Aqueduct Battle: Removing an ability and a passive from one of the enemies.
  
• Gelligh 2nd Battle: Increasing the main enemy's HP by a fair amount and gave them immunity to Berserk.
  
• MVP: Updating the MVP system to favor "low level characters" less than before and to have a higher overall chance of getting an MVP.
  
• Monsters: Updating resistances score again, generally increasing their resistance a bit to their weak element.
  
• Mana stone: Recipe changed so it can now be crafted much earlier (around Oldebzar).

• Crafting: Last sorting option for the crafting menu will now be remember the next time the crafting menu is selected.
  
• Abilities: When having no abilities equipped in the Abilities Equip menu, a description about what the slot does will be shown.
  
• Gadgets: Most gadgets have been renamed.
  
• Save Files: Changed the save file format to make it much smaller. Older save files are still 100% compatible.

• Wordlmap: Adding missing dialogues when certain story characters join the party.
  
• Adaptative Aegis: Fixing an issue where Adaptative Aegis would show "MISS" when switching to a different element, even though the correct element would be granted.
  
• Leap: Leap was missing its target confirmation stage. Fixed. Also fixing a visual issue happening when Leap target is in the water.
  
• Kawa Class: Adding missing description to Counter.

• Consumables: Adding XML file for consumables, allowing the player to create consumable items for battle.
  
• Errors: Adding error output for Ingredients.xml file.

• Fixing an issue with the new save file format not loading correctly new files under certain circumstances.

Sneak Peek at one of our new spell in the works.


Hello everyone!

This week, we're releasing our next chunk of new content, along with a lot of balance tune-ups and a big dialogues update.

Here are the highlights of the build:

• Story Content: Adding 4 new story encounters, 3 new patrols, 1 optional small event.
  
• Dialogues: All dialogues in the game were reviewed/updated by writer Scott Hamm. We have a proofreading pass coming at the end of the month, and then they should be final.
  
• AI: Lots of AI improvements again.
  
• Balance: Balance updates for many classes, including abilities and requirements.

Full notes are in the build and at the end of this post, as usual.


First, a big thank you to everyone for all the incredible feedback we've been getting on the game! We made another big round of balance tuning from it and it's looking better than ever!
We have several pages of balance notes that still need to go in though, so expect even more improvements in the coming months!

We spent a lot of time testing and tuning this week and we started the final dialogue editing process. We have about 70% of the dialogues in what should be pretty much final form after writer Scott Hamm finished his giant pass on them. We'll still be focusing for 2 more weeks on creating the rest of the game's dialogues, then it'll be updated by Scott again, and then off to localization.
We're keeping a good pace on that front and we're on schedule. :)

We're also about 95% finished with the Voice Over for our intro movie. It's looking and sounding amazing and we can't wait to show everyone the final version! It should be ready Monday or Tuesday, so expect a quick update early next week!

Lately, we've been working on maps for optional/secret dungeons as well as the final battles of the game, so we can't quite show all of them, but here's one that should be safe to show:


Lastly, we've been working on the visuals for the abilities of one of our special classes. They should have a pretty unique style! (like the one at the top of this post).


11/16/2018 - Version 0.5.0

• Story Content: Adding 4 new story encounters, 3 new patrols, 1 optional small event.
  
• Dialogues: All dialogues in the game were reviewed/updated by writer Scott Hamm. We have a proofreading pass coming at the end of the month, and then they should be final.
  
• Cutscenes: A few cutscenes had minor updates.
  
• Sound Effects: Adding sound effects to many abilities.
  
• Outfits: Adding a new outfit to the game for males. The female version should be ready in a bit.

• Map balance:
  
  • Alpine Woods: Making one of the Daodrenners a "more enemies" option.
    
  • Gyaum Tor: Making one of the Mercenaries a "more enemies" option.
    
  • The Highlands: If the character doesn't have 7 units in total, one of the Vangals won't spawn.
    
  • Yates Cabin: Changing the player spawning tiles to make things a little easier.
    
  • The Banyan: Changing on the Rangers to be a "more enemies" option.
    
  • 2nd Temple: Changing the Wizard to be a "more enemies" option.
    
  • Ekhidna Falls: Changing the component yield on the 0,5 tree to 2 (from 1).
• Difficulty Settings: Changing Hard mode to use "more enemies" and "regular stats" and Very Hard to use "Regular Injuries".
  
• Berserk: Reducing duration to 2 turns (from 3).
  
• Thorns: Thorns damage will not apply to counters anymore (when a counter hits a target with thorn, thorn will not reflect a portion of the counter damage).
  
• Self Buff Counters: Those will not proc if the effect is already on the target (which means that damaging dispels won't trigger them anymore).
  
• Smart Casting: Disabling Smart Casting for all Single target attacks.
  
• Consumables: Reducing the vertical range of many items to 5 (they all had 8 before).
  
• Story Characters: Story characters that depart from the party will receive some bonus AP to basic classes after they rejoin. New story characters that join will get more AP when joining.
  
• Demon Knight:
  
  • Demonic Might: Adding Renew to the effects.
    
  • Vicious Punt: Lowering damage to 0.85 but increasing vert range to 4.
    
  • Vicious Slash: Increasing vert range to 4.
    
  • Cleave: Cleave won't grant 10MP on the bonus turn anymore.
• Ranger: Increasing vert range of Multishot (6 to 7). Increasing damage of Rain Of Arrows (.85 to .9).
  
• Knight: Exchanging Taunt and Defensive Hit positions on the skill tree.
  
• Warmage:
  
  • Requirements: Changed to Plague Doctor-3, Fellblade-4
    
  • Stasis Burst: Removing it from the Warmage. The ability doesn't fit very well with their kit and they still have 10 without it.
• Scoundrel:
  
  • Sneak Attack: Adding a MP cost of 6.
    
  • Steal abilities: Steal abilities that deal no damage will not trigger most counters anymore.
• Fellblade:
  
  • Sleep Slice: Increasing the MP cost to 12 from 8, reducing damage from 0.8x (from 0.85x)
    
  • Poison, Bleed Slice: Reducing damage to 0.85x (from 0.9x).
    
  • Mute Slice: Reducing damage to 0.9x (from 0.95x).
    
  • Black Blade: Damage is now non-elemental rather than Dark.
    
  • Health Siphon: Damage is now non-elemental rather than Physical.
    
  • Miasma: Reducing range to 2 (from 3), increasing damage to 0.6x (from 0.5x), increasing vert range to 7 (from 6) and changing shape to Square (from Cross).
• Werewolf:
  
  • Leap: Updated how it works. Give it a go to see just how it works! The visual effect is temporary as it's missing the damage visuals, but the functionality is there.
    
  • Fetid Breath: Is now a cone (it was meant to be a cone, so it was technically a bug).
    
  • Gear: Adding swords to the list of weapons.
• Plague Doctor:
  
  • Treatment: Reducing MP cost of Treatment to 8 (from 10).
    
  • Mass Slow: Increasing base success rate from 50% to 75%
    
  • Weaken: Increasing base success rate from 75% to 100%. More changes will come to make this spell more attractive soon.
• Assassin:
  
  • Sleep Powder: Increasing vert range of to 1 (from 0).
    
  • Dispel Powder: Adding 0.6x damage to it.
• Druid:
  
  • Requirements: Changing to Mender-3, Wizard-5, Alchemystic-3
    
  • Dispel: Changing MP cost to 8 (from 10) and range to 3 (from 2).
• Gadgeteer:
  
  • Requirements: Reducing to Scoundrel-3 (from 4) and Wizard-3 (from 4).
    
  • Dispelotron: Reducing MP cost to 8 (from 10).
• Peddler: Can now equip crossbows.
  
• Duelist: Increasing elemental Flourish damage to 1.7x from 1.6x. And Cripple Flourish to 0.9x from 0.85f.
  
• Gunner: Changing requirement to Mercenary-4, Knight-4, Ranger-4
  
• Sorcerer: Changing requirements to Druid-5
  
• Templar: Adding MP cost of 8 to Soothing Chant.
  
• Human Classes: Lowering the MP growth of most classes.
  
• Bzaro: Starting Bzaro with the Daodrenner class unlocked as well.
  
• Rakkerjak: Changing passive from Cleave to Execute (that was actually a bug).
  
• Monsters: Updated the elemental resistances of most demonic creatures (mostly the Dark element).
  
• Bulldrakes: Increasing base stats. Increasing damage to Breath attacks.
  
• AI:
  
  • The AI will instantly switch targets if its current target moves to a spot where the AI could never follow (due to height issues, etc), rather than sadly follow it for a few turns.
    
  • Revive Items: The AI will now have a chance to use Revive items at times.
    
  • AI will be less likely to shove targets into their allies when using long ranged shoves.
    
  • AI will be smarter about including allies when buffing itself with AoEs.
    
  • AI will be less likely to self buff if it has the special "waiting for the player to get closer" flag.
    
  • AI will be smarter about using abilities that have scaling damage with proximity to the target.
• Equipment:
  
  • Vigil Band: Adding the Vigil Band, an accessory that protects against Sleep.
    
  • Judogi: Reducing Armor value.
    
  • Silver Helm: Changed the ATK bonus to a MND (it was always meant to be MND).
    
  • Main Gauche: Increasing ATK value. Also reducing the chance of enemies using it.

• Azure Plains: Making the tall grass 85% opacity so the movement tiles can be seen through them. It's still hard to see, but it should be more obvious where you can move to this way.
  
• Abilities: Cleaning up and adding details to a lot of abilities information.
  
• Special Classes: When prompted to use a Badge to learn a special class, the prompt will now mention how many badges you have in total.
  
• Difficulty Settings: Renaming "Easy" to "Beginner". Updating the description of Veteran to make it clearer the battles will be challenging for most players.
  
• Help Compendium: Fixing typos. Adding missing camp fire sprites to the background.
  
• System Menu: The Start button/Key will now close the menu (as well as the Cancel Button/Key).
  
• Accuracy: When an attack or a debuff has 0% to hit, the 0% will now be written in Red (rather than white) to make it more obvious.
  
• HP/MP Bar: The bar wasn't precise at low levels. Fixing it so it's accurate now.
  
• Items: Updating the Items command description to mention they are shared and refill automatically.
  
• Fullscreen: Changing the behavior of the game to remain "Visible in Background", as it seems to be the default recommended behavior. Sadly, Unity doesn't allow this behavior to be changed at runtime as it should, so we have to pick one or the other.

• Abilities Learn Menu: Fixing issue with character panel not updating when switching characters from the Ability Learn menu.
  
• Mouse/Kb: Fixing: Mouse wheel icon could remain visible when it shouldn't if using the keyboard rather than the mouse.
  
• Difficulty Settings: Fixing an issue where starting a game on a different difficulty setting than the default one, quitting the game and starting a new game would show the wrong difficulty setting name.
  
• MP Values: After switching passives or before deployment in combat, the current MP value of characters can show the wrong value at times (this is cosmetic, as the correct MP is always used in combat).
  
• Various Maps: Fixing priorities that were a little wonky on many maps.
  
• Bzaro: Fixing a bug were Bzaro would start with most classes unlocked.
  
• Debuffs: Now correctly showing that Barrier was removed when a Counter: Debuff is triggered by a character with Barrier on.
  
• Crafting: Fixing rare case where Gear or Badges crafting categories would be flagged as unavailable after browsing components.
  
• Sound: Fixing a caching issue with the sound effects.
  
• Crash: Fixing a rare crash with Adaptative Affinity.
  
• StealTables: Fixing a bug where enemies that spawn during battle all had an empty steal table.
  
• Charge: Charge abilities can now correctly hit targets in the water, assuming the charge itself doesn't go into the water.

• Encounters: The "apbonus" field can be used on enemies to have them grant a flat AP bonus to the player if they were killed during the battle.

We've been busy wrapping up our dialogues, so we have only a small update this week.

The main addition is the Help Compendium. It has explanations on all the systems, tips for beginners and advanced tips. Give it a look and let us know if you think anything is missing!

It's accessible from the System menu (so, from the world map or during battle) and it's called "Help Compendium".

As usual, the full patch notes are at the end of the post.


As we've mentioned, we've been focusing on wrapping up all dialogues, so that's where most of our progress has been. But, we've also been working on new sounds, new maps and new abilities visuals. Here's some of them.

A new map that should be used for a secret optional dungeon:


A spell for a new enemy type that isn't in the game quite yet:


We've been working on new spells for one of our secret classes, so you should expect some cool visuals coming in soon! Also, we're almost done adding the Voice Over for our intro movie, so keep your eyes peeled for that one too. It's sounding pretty awesome with the VO! :)


We'll be at Free Play Florida later today and over the week-end. If you're in the area, come say hello!

11/09/2018 - Version 0.4.4

• Help Compendium: Adding the Help Compendium section to the System menu. It's accessible from the worldmap or during battle. The Help Compendium has a lot of information about many systems.
  
• Visuals: Updating Health Siphon, Vicious Blow and Rend. Adding Wrathful Blow, One for All and Enraged Blow.
  
• AI: The AI will now use One for All if it has access to it and it thinks it's a good move.

• AI: Adding various small improvements to the AI to make it a little smarter.
  
• AI: For AIs that have Teleport Other, they will now try to teleport targets onto traps if they can't drown anyone.
  
• AI: Ranged units will be less prone to charge forward after attacking.
  
• Drakesmouth Seaway: Making one of the 2 Gunners a "More Enemies" option spawn only.

• Ability Learn Menu: Now showing the character's information panel on the screen where you can select which class to learn abilities, for more clarity.
  
• Turn Order bar: Cleaning up the way the currently selected character is shown on the bar to be more consistent.
  
• EXP Sequence: Making sure the character is always on screen when showing their EXP (with very long range attacks, they could be out of the screen at times).
  
• Counter: Teleport Other: It shouldn't teleport people to spots on the map that are very isolated anymore.
  
• Titlescreen: Adding a back button option from the difficulty settings after selecting "New Game".
  
• Thespeiros: The map objective states the Guest must suvive, but no gameover came if they die. This is fixed now.

• Accuracy: Base accuracy is now 100% rather than 99%. Most enemies have 1% evasion, so it's still 99% unless you have Glasses/Passive. This was meant to be in a few patches ago, so it's technically a bug.
  
• Cleave: If the current character has the Cleave Passive and attacks a target, which gets killed by an ally's One For All, they will no longer receive a Cleave turn.
  
• Worm Battle: Fixing an issue where one of the corridors could be unblocked after a small worm died.
  
• Music: Fixing a rare problem where the battle music could fail to play at the start of some battles and the preparations music would keep playing instead.
  
• AI: The AI will no longer try to dispel permanent buffs from targets.

• New Classes: Defaulting missing class outfit to 0 rather than having an error.

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.