Hello everyone!

This week, we're going to cover in detail one of the new classes that will be available in Missions and Monsters: the Beastmaster class!

The Beastmaster is our biggest class yet, with a ton of abilities. They are somewhat of an hybrid between a regular class and the Gadgeteer class, but with many new and unique mechanics.

The Gadgeteer style part of the class comes from the way they will learn 14 of their abilities. These abilities are each tied to a specific pet monster and have 2 parts: the active part, which works the same way as any regular ability: you select the ability, you choose the target(s) and then you use it. Those have a wide range of effects, as the Beastmaster is incredibly versatile: damage, healing, debuffs, buffs, special abilities...

Once the ability is used, the pet that it's associated with will appear next to the caster and remain there (almost) indefinitely. You can have up to 3 pets out at once per character, and if you summon a 4th one, the oldest pet will go away. Each character can only have 1 of each pet out, meaning they must have 3 different pets out at once. This is per character, so having 2 Beastmasters out won't interfere with their pets' availability.


At the end of the character's turn, any pet they have out will apply their effect to targets adjacent to the character. All pets are "smart", so healing pets will only apply their "end of turn effect" to friendlies and damaging pets will only target enemies, etc.

In the example above, 3 pets are out: the Blardger Brat, which deals damage, the Daodrenner Kit, which heals allies and the Arpia Guttersnipe, which has a chance to poison (and refresh poison duration on) adjacent enemies. All the effects happen at once so the information is displayed as quickly as possible.

These 14 pets are unlocked by recruiting the corresponding monster, which means that once a monster is recruited, every Arbiter on your team will have access to the given pet summon (assuming they have access to the Beastmaster class to begin with). In this way, those behave much like gadgets. Monsters can be recruited through missions or through Taming (with the new Wrangler class).

On top of these 14 pets that can be summoned, the Beastmaster has access to 7 more abilities that are learned normally through their skill tree (so those are not shared across all units and must be learned individually, like regular class skills).

Those abilities are "Pet Dismisses" and are a new mechanic to the game.
The Dismissal abilities can only be used when the character has at least 1 pet out. When they use a Dismiss ability, all their currently deployed pets will be dismissed and the spell will gain more power for each pet dismissed that way. The dismissal abilities have a very wide range of utility (and scale well with a high number of pets), such as damaging enemies, healing an allly or even all allies at once, revives, character displacement, etc.


All in all, the Beastmaster is a VERY versatile class, with varied play styles possible. The player can opt to maximize the pets' "end of turn" effects and run around with an aura of healing/damage to everything in range, or they can opt to focus on the Dismiss abilities, bringing out pets as fast as possible to prime big ratios to Dismiss abilities. Or they can pursue a balanced approach of the above, of course.

One thing is certain, the true power of the class is tied to the cute pets it can bring out. And to help with that, there are various abilities to summon them faster, such as the counter Loyal Friends, which will trigger on any offensive action taken on the caster by summoning a random pet, thus helping the character bring out 3 pets faster than normal.

The Beastmaster has 2 powerful passives, one which restores MP for each buff/debuff/pet that wears off or is dismissed/dispelled from the character, helping them build MP faster as they use their pets (or through buffs/debuffs removal).

Their second passive is called Rampart, and it creates a "zone of control" around the unit, preventing any enemies from moving further once they move to an "adjacent tile" to the character. They'll only be able to walk past that tile on the next turn.

Here, Reiner can't walk past the unit with Rampart, as the shortest path is blocked by Rampart and he doesn't have enough movement to go fully around.

With all these tools at their disposal, we expect the Beastmaster will quickly become a fan favorite!

Let us know what you think! And as always, thanks for the support!


Lastly, we hope everyone stays safe during these difficult times >.<

Hello everyone!

For this week's update, we have a bit of eye candy for the most part: we finished the monster customization menu and we're happy to showcase it in action! You can create some pretty crazy looking monsters with this!


For anyone paying attention, we ended up changing the design of it a little bit from the original sketch. You can now select up to 8 different monster variant visual effects (and 2 special added effects) and a custom portrait selected from any of the monster's portraits, the "unknown" portrait and player imported portraits.

Other than that, the Beastmaster class is almost completed. We're wrapping the last details today, and we'll focus on it in the next update. It's a MASSIVE class, with a total of 24 abilities in total (1 counter, 2 passives, 21 actives)! We'll have all the details on it next time.

Thanks again to everyone for the support, we appreciate it! :)

Hello everyone!

Today, we'll go into the details of the Monster Variants system that we briefly covered a few weeks ago.

In Missions and Monsters, the player will be able to recruit monster units, either from Taming them (with the new Wrangler class), or by earning them as rewards from various Missions.

Monsters behave a little differently than humans: they can't change their "monster class", such as being a Vangal, an Ercinee or a Daodrenner. Instead, they have access to mini-classes called Variants. Each monster can use 2 such variants on top of their basic monster class (for a total of 3 classes equipped).
They can set up a primary Variant and a secondary Variant. It's easy to think of them as a main class and a sub class for the most part. Monsters gain access to the active ability sets from their equipped variants on top of their monster ability set and they'll automatically use any known passives tied to the variants they're using, thus equipping up to 6 passives in total.

Thus, monsters gain access to more passives at a time, but have a little less flexibility when picking them. They also gain access to more sets of abilities (3 rather than 2), but those sets have fewer abilities than human sets would have. All in all, they have their own strengths and weaknesses and should prove to be quite an interesting addition to a player's arsenal.

Monsters need to use AP to unlock abilities from their class and variants, just like humans. Since a monster's base class can't be changed ever, learning everything on it is somewhat quick, so we're keeping things simple and awarding AP to both their monster class and their primary variant at the same time.
It's also worth noting that when taming a monster, they will come knowing all the skills they knew when you tamed them, meaning quite often their monster class will start almost maxed (or fully maxed if recruiting a Tier 3 monster), so the real use of AP lies in the Variants.

New Variants can be learned in many different ways: through missions, by using special badges, and by learning enough abilities from other Variants (so, all in all, a similar way to humans). Variants (and base monster classes) will work with the Vicarious AP system to help the player train all their monstrous forces.

When it comes to stats, monsters have fixed stats that depend on their monster class (and tier). Thus, their stats will always be the same for 2 monsters of the same type (assuming they are currently using the same primary variant, more on that in a bit). All monsters in Fell Seal have 3 different tiers (such as Vangal, Komainu and Gyaum), and each tier confers higher stats and sometimes improved resistances and such.
A monster's skill tree has 2 "Tier Up" nodes that can be purchased and will increase the monster's tier, resulting in higher stats, etc:



The Primary Variant is more or less treated like a human's main class. The monster will gain AP for that Variant. The 2nd Variant behaves like a sub class, meaning the monster won't be gaining AP for it, but will gain access to its active abilities, and passives.


The primary Variant isn't just about gaining AP though, as it also influences the monster's stats. The primary Variant has an effect on the monster's base stats, immunities, elemental resistances, movement, jump, flight, swimming, etc.

For example, using Fire Drake as a primary variant will grant a %-based bonus to atk, mnd, def, res, a bonus to Fire and earth resistances, and a malus to water resistance. The Aerial variant grants Flying, a small evasion boost, earth resistance, and weakness to thunder, etc.

Each variant has different modifications; some are pretty small and others a little bigger, depending on various factors.

The primary variant can be selected from the Class wheel and will show the resulting stats and the bonuses granted, showing exactly how the primary variant will change things (that screen isn't finished, so we don't have a screenshot ready quite yet!)


As usual, we're all about giving the player options, so we're adding visual customization to the monsters. By default, recruited monsters have "automated" visuals that will show specific "accessories" representing their 2 equipped variants and show the base monster sprite representing their monster tier. This is how enemy monsters behave.

(Mystic/Clockwork Kawa)

Using the character customization screen, the player can select a color for the monster from the 3 tier sprites the monster has, rather than using the color of their current tier. They can also opt to select any number of variant accessories to create their monster's look, rather than use those tied to their equipped variants.


There's a lot to talk about when it comes to monster variants, but hopefully we haven't forgotten anything! Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and thanks again for the support!

Hello everyone!

Missions and Monsters is a collection of new systems, updates and additions to the game, resulting in a richer and more engaging gameplay experience. One of these new additions is the special Hunts.

The Hunts tie together the new missions system and the new monsters variants system (a quick refresher on this can be found right here). For most hunts, you'll unlock them by undertaking a special mission, or a "mission chain", which is multiple missions that must be completed in order and culminate into a difficult and rewarding special mission. These missions will become available from around the mid-game, right up to the final fight in the game.
After the mission is completed, it'll open a new "Hunt event", which will show a special icon on the world map, much in the same way as character events .


The player can then visit that node and trigger the Hunt event, which will feature a custom battle against a very powerful hand-crafted named monster unit, boasting a complex monster variants setup. Achieving victory in a Hunt should be a challenging endeavor and will award the player unique rewards. Each Hunt can only be completed once.

On top of the new systems, new classes and new abilities, we'll be adding new maps as well. Notably, both Port Grendel and Fenfjord will get a town map, replete with special encounters and patrols. But we'll be adding many other extra maps as well (you can expect many Hunts to take place on these new maps we'll be adding!)

Here's a sneak peek at two of them:



Thanks again!

Hello everyone!

We have a fairly short update this week. We've been focusing on creating assets for a while now, so we won't be showcasing new mechanics or the likes this week.

We've also moved to a new location and the move took a lot of time >.< There'll be a bigger update next time!

We've been focusing on creating new maps, more monster variants visuals, and the visuals for the Guild Upgrades. As we've covered before, the guild upgrades are structures that you build in the various zones of Teora. Each zone will have its own grid to create the buildings in and each building has their own effect and bonus from being in the proximity of other buildings. The buildings mostly affect missions, but some affect patrols and others have a more global effect. Here's the original post about it for more details!









Those aren't quite in-game screenshots, but that's how it'll look in game as well!

Thanks everyone!

Hello everyone!

Today, we'll be covering our plans for the monsters! We'll be focusing on the monsters themselves, as well as their new sub-classes, which are tentatively called monster variants.

The short and simple version is that monsters have their base class (Vangal, for example) and then can equip up to 2 variants. They'll get access to the ability set of the variant, as well as their passives, on top of their base monster class. We're still tuning, but the current idea is that each variant has 2 active abilities, 2 passives and 1 counter. One of the goals is to give them something different than humans in the form of more equipped passives, while expanding their base abilities without crowding them too much.

We're focusing on the monsters today, but the systems in Missions and Monsters are all intricately tied together, so many of the features tied to monsters and variants will be obtained through special missions and new classes. We'll have updates about those later!


Missions and Monsters will be making monsters recruitable, so they can now join your Arbiter forces. You'll have to recruit them in a different manner than regular units, though. Monsters will join the player as rewards from special Missions or from being tamed during combat by the new Wrangler class (which we'll cover in a later update). Each monster base class (such as Vangal, Ercinee, etc.) will have its own skill tree, with their upgraded tiers (eg. Vangal -> Komainu -> Gyaum) being a node on their tree they can spend AP on to learn. There will be a tutorial on the process added early in the game to make sure things are well explained!

The monster variants can be seen as classes that the monsters can learn, and they function in a similar fashion to the human classes. A monster cannot change its base class , but they can equip up to 2 variant classes and 1 counter. A monster unit will be able to set its 2 variants and its counter from the UI, which means that all its passives come directly from its base class and 2 variants. They get 6 passives in total, but they have a little less flexibility than humans in selecting them.

The variant classes will have their own skill tree and AP pool and will unlock their abilities and passives in the usual way. New variants will be unlocked in a variety of ways, including having a high enough level in other variants, mission rewards, and special monster badges.

On the visual side of things, each variant will have its own unique sprite representation (like human classes have their hats) so it'll be obvious at a glance which variants a monster is sporting. Since each monster can have up to 2 variants equipped, they could be showing 2 different sprites at once.


Here, a Thorned Vangal uses Thornstrike on a Venomous Skeletal Daodrenner.


Here, we can see a Blardger showing many of its possible variants, although only 1 at a time (there could be up to 2 shown at once).

One of the reasons we didn't have recruitable monsters in Fell Seal before now is that we wanted to make sure they would be interesting and customizable enough compared to human classes. We feel that too many games in the genre have recruitable monsters tossed in, but never bother to make them as attractive when compared to human classes, which tend to be more feature-rich. With our system, we're aiming to change that and make monsters both viable and interesting. They'll have different pros and cons than humans, but ultimately should balance out well when compared. It'll be up to player preference at that point!

Thanks to everyone for the continued support!

Hello everyone!

First and foremost, we hope everyone had great holidays and a very merry new year!

We took some time off this year ourselves and had a great time with friends and family! It had been a while since we managed to take some time off during the holidays, as the last time was probably right before we started working full time on Fell Seal actually!

This does mean that we have less to show this week and we won't go into the details of a new system, but rather showcase our new splash art for Missions and Monsters.

We hope everyone finds it as awesome as we do!


Once again, we hope everyone had great holidays and we wish everyone the best for 2020!

Hello everyone!

This week, we want to cover one of the new classes that we're adding in Missions and Monsters, the
Samurai class!

But before that, some quick notes about Missions:

Since posting our devlog on the Missions system, we've been thinking about adding a currency cost to missions. As we've been creating the list of them (we're up to 79 missions so far!), it became obvious the cost was a good idea.

We've decided to use both GP and CP (Company Points) for the cost. A mission will only have a GP or CP cost at once, but they'll always have a cost. This will help make GP less "trivial" to accrue and give it increased worth. And it will give CP another use apart from being used for Guild Upgrades, which will create an opportunity-cost for them.

This change ties things together neatly and elegantly! It's just a question of creating all the remaining Missions now!

Thanks to everyone that sent us feedback on this, we appreciate it!

With Missions and Monsters, we'll be adding 3 new base classes to human units. Base class means they'll be usable by any unit (story and generic) and won't require a badge to open up.
The new classes are tied to missions though, and will only become visible after the associated mission has been completed, on top of having the usual class requirements (eg. 3 Mercenary, 4 Scoundrel, etc.).

The default portrait for the Samurai unit:


The basic design idea behind the Samurai class is a mix of high-risk/high-reward abilities and passives, as well as a fairly versatile kit. They sport some interesting unique abilities to give them varied options.
Samurais should be somewhat fragile in the face of taking damage, but deal fairly well with status effects, while providing high damage and utility for the team.

Here's their ability list (please note the names aren't final at this point). As a note, a fair amount of these abilities apply their status effect on the Samurai themselves, so pay close attention to the wording!

Actives:

• Overreach: 8MP. Attack range tied to weapon. Count as a regular attack. Deals 1.2x damage and inflicts def-down on the user.
  
  
• Meditate: 6MP. Self spell that removes all debuffs and heals 0.6x (mnd) for each debuff removed. Sets user evasion to 0% until next turn.
  
  
• Finisher: 20MP. Attack range tied to weapon. Count as a regular attack. Deals 2.4x damage and inflicts atk-down on the user.
  
  
• Single Out: 8MP. Range 5, single target. Inflicts def-down, res-down on the target and force them to turn towards the user.
  
  
• Spirit Sword: 14MP. Range 1. Does 2.6x (MND) non-elemental damage to the target and inflicts mnd-down on the user.
  
  
• Martial Spirit: 10MP. A small cross shape centered on the user. It deals 0.35x damage to all units around, inflicts cripple on them and forces them to face the user.
  
  
• Blood Spirit: 8MP. Range 1. Does 0.6x damage to the target and ignores their def stat. Also inflicts bleed on the user.

Passives:

• Razor Wind: Can use with any single-target skill. Adds 6MP to the cost and changes the range to 3. Sets user evasion to 0% until the next turn. (This adds a new command, much like Double Cast).
  
  
• Unbreakable Spirit: Being afflicted by def-down/mnd-down increases atk/mnd by the same amount. Being afflicted by atk-down/mnd-down increases def/res by the same amount.

Counter:

Counter Critical: Focus: Automatically uses Defend and Focus when HP becomes critical.

Weapons: Sword
Armors: Light, Heavy

Here's some of the art we're preparing for the new abilities:
Single Out:


Spirit Sword:


Thanks everyone for the support!

Hello everyone!

We've mentioned to you in the past about our good friends behind Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones. They have just published a major content update for their horror RPG, and as we know some of you from this community are interested in this game, we would like to share these news here.

Check out the largest update for Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/779290/announcements/detail/1687093048750087508

Hello everyone,

just wanted to share with you that over at https://videochums.com/article/retro-game-of-the-year-awards-2019#fell-seal-arbiter-s-mark Fell Seal was awarded the "Retro-Inspired RPG of The Year"

To quote Video Chums:

"Once in a while, a game developer completely nails a retro formula while offering their own gameplay twists. When I played the incredible Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark earlier this year, it brought back memories of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vandal Hearts and I absolutely fell in love with its challenging gameplay and immersive world. Talk about going above and beyond!"

ːsteamhappyː ːsteamhappyː ːsteamhappyː