I've started work on the Skill System that I mentioned in the Roadmap update a few days ago and wanted to share some information.



As you play the game your character will gain Skill Points. These points can be spent to obtain and upgrade skills. Each skill can be upgraded twice, creating three tiers for each skill counting the initial purchase.

Upgrading a skill will increase its chance to take effect and its potency. So for example, when initially purchased, "Tough Skin" reduces damage by 10%. Upgrading it will increase that 10% to 15% and upgrading it again increases it to 20%. I'm still working on the exact numbers, so take that as just an example.

Skill Points are gained from completing quests, completing construction of buildings, and killing monsters. I'm also considering giving a small increase to skill points earned if your overall town happiness is at 4 stars or above. I'm also still working out what the maximum number of skill points earned will be. Basically whether you can max out every skill eventually or limit it so you have to choose which ones to learn and upgrade and which ones to forgo.

There is no skill tree with prerequisites, so you can pick and choose whatever skills you want.

• Second Wind - when your hit points are reduced to 0, there is a chance that your health will partially regenerate, keeping you alive in the fight.
  
• Block Stun - when successfully blocking an attack you have a chance to stun your opponent.
  
• Athletic - use less stamina when sprinting.
  
• Hard Head - dash attacks do additional damage. Stacks with the Ram Helmet.
  
• Killing Blow - when killing a monster with your power attack, there is a chance your power attack will immediately recharge.
  
• Tough Skin - reduces melee damage taken in combat.
  
• Spell Resist - reduces damage from spells.
  
• Luck - chance to increase the amount of loot (such as alchemy ingredients and ore) you get from treasure chests.
  
• Riches - chance to find more gold in treasure chests.
  
• Nimble - reduce the amount of time to get back up when you are knocked down.

I'm sticking to passive buffs and bonuses over activated skills for now. And of course I'm open to skill ideas!

Also, the weapon and shield concepts are coming along nicely. So a sneak peek - The Copper Weapons! In addition to being the reference for the 3D models, I'm also going to use these as the icons in inventory and will eventually update all of the icons to match this style.

The concepts are being created by the same artist who drew the monsters. Really love his work!

And if you haven't checked out the roadmap yet, you can find it here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/664000/announcements/detail/1710706508279875941

Hello！

Since our game announced the Steam store page, there are always players and fans asking: What kind of game is this? Or is this game similar to XXX? How is this game played? And so on...

This kind of question is always difficult to answer in one word. In fact, it’s easier to understand if you play the game. But...the game is not done yet. So how can we explain ourselves without a playthrough? This is how The Big Eye Crown blog series was born. We hope that through this form, we will be able to talk to the fans and future players who I have not met, about the game, answer some questions, and most importantly do a little bit of shameless self-promotion, hehe!


（What are you staring? ）

We are a group of Rogue-like fans! We’ve played almost all the mainstream and non-mainstream Rogue games on the market. We’ve even put in thousands of hours on some of the games. Everyone on the team had the desire to make a Rogue-like game. We thought, hey we love Rogue games so much, why not making one?!

At the beginning of the project, we wanted to make a game in an underground city about exploring and fighting monsters. Different dungeon monsters will give you different abilities. You can capture all sorts of strange monsters as you traverse the dungeon and then you can use their skills to fight. The maze of the entire game is randomly generated, and there are other various changes which keep the game fresh even after multiple play throughs.


（Early demo screenshot）

In terms of combat mode, we drew inspiration from the classic Shiren The Wanderer (an incredible Japanese RPG series, also one of the earliest Rogue games) in the "synchronous turn-based combat". The "synchronous round " is simply explained as: when you don't move, the enemy does not move; when you take a step, the enemy also takes a step; all operations take place in the same round. The well-known music battle game Crypt of the NecroDancer also uses a similar combat system.


（Try and catch me!）

In fact, the "turn-based" model of gameplay is not a mainstream type of gameplay. Even in the age when Roguelike games were more popular, this was a little more niche. Nowadays, there are very few such games, and there are many reasons for the decline. However, we feel that this classic gameplay feature should not fade away with time. We hope to reinterpret this classic style gameplay in our own way.


（Shiren The Wanderer ）

Our game differs from the big map setting of Shiren The Wanderer. Instead, our game is similar to The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with an underground labyrinth of rooms as the setting. Crown Trick also includes controls for different weapons such as swords, guns, and pistols. We wanted to give the game a clearer sense of purpose and strategy, while also making the game more accessible to players of any background or level. I’m not sure whether it wll be welcomed or not, but we just want everyone to be able to play the game.


（Randomly generated room）

In addition, the elemental interaction design is inspired by the game Divinity: Original Sin. The different elements of the terrain have different effects on the battle. In the original Divinity: Original Sin there are a small number of elements that can interact in pairs, resulting in new gameplay changes. We have made new gameplay features based on this concept, adding more elemental terrain to the randomly generated maze, and set up a function where elements can create new interactions with each other. This is a gameplay experience that is not currently available in similar games.


（In-game element dynamic effects）

Eight elements have been designed so far. Can anyone guess how they’ll interact?


Unfinished, to be continued...

Discount of 50%! Manage to buy a game!)

• Improved texture of Agnes.
  
• Change the Voice of Rian.
  
• Fixed an issue where trying to change the resolution and graphics level in the Settings didn't apply.

Features:
- Your survival points have been refunded. New crop harvesting nodes are complete.
- The Mushroom Station is in. Unlock it through the survival tree. Add Morris to your town!
- Reduced the cost of making the invulnerability potion from 5k to 1k crystal fragments

Bugs:
- Fixed a display bug with resistance rating on items. The popup still had '%' after the number, but it is fixed.
- Items that scaled with level did not take into consideration the new level 100 cap and were generating with 1/2 the stats they should have, but it has been fixed.
- Scaled affixes were still using 'Level 50' text, but the string has been fixed to say 100 now. The values were correct, the text was wrong.

Now live on Win32, Win64, and Linux, version 0.4.1g. Other than a number of small quality of life benefits like stack splitting, opportunistic saving, and a mouse cursor lock fix, this updates the game client to a server-client framework that I have mentioned in the beta patch notes a number of times.

In short, multi-player, which is currently under development, requires distinction between the server and client for almost everything that happens. No longer can I simply code "eat what's in inventory slot 2" everything has to now reference a client, and ask the server to perform the task. Rather than developing two different frameworks, one for single-player and one for multi-player, single-player now acts as if it is a self-hosted server, without actually listening for incoming connections or registering itself to the master server list.

This required many thousands of lines of changes to the code and sure enough started out with a lot of bugs. Thanks to our beta testers this build looks quite stable and I'm glad to push it live with all the new bells and whistles.

Multi-player development is a chore, and I've put it down for this week as I was really burnt out trying to 'grind' through it. I'm taking a break to work on more fun things like building/structure placement grids and procedural dungeons, but will get back into polishing it up for open beta shortly.

Condensed patch notes from v 0.3.3l to v 0.4.1g
General
- Single player now runs as a self-hosted server with no listening/connection capabilities
- Fixed the mouse wandering out of windowed mode after changing applications and coming back
- Game world max distance upgraded from 268,000km to 999,999km (will add more when needed)
- Auto-save will now wait up to an extra 5 minutes for you to open a window such as the inventory before saving
- Added "/autosavetimer [integer]" command to the console. 0 will stop auto-save functions. 60-3600 will set it to 1-60 minute intervals.

Crafting
- Campfires can now use fire fonts
- Updated enchanting material listings to use language specific names
- Added the option to craft/practice multiple items at once
- Crafting experience can now carry over to the next level
- Added crafting experience gained cap at up to 3 tiers higher materials than player profession level

Inventory
- Added a stack split input/button to the inventory
- Right-clicking over a viable slot while dragging a stack drops 1, now combined with shift = 10, control = 100, shift+control = 1000
- Changed +/- buttons universally to match the above method instead of control = 1000, control+shift = 100
- Water and food and other consumables can now be used from within containers, including water in buckets, and watering cans
- Consumables can now be right-clicked while in bags to be consumed
- Right-clicking on non-consumable items in a container will now attempt to move them to your main inventory
- Wells can now be placed on ground with less than 20cm of height variation instead of completely flat ground only
- Buckets will now fill with water of a tier proper for the location they are being filled at
- Combining water from two containers will reduce the water's tier to the lowest water present
- Changed enchanting table "pickup" button to always show like other facilities

Skills
- Changed Target AOE skills/spells to use a 2m high box check to prevent agroing mobs above and below 'ground' level

Harvesting
- Ferns can now be harvested for a small amount of stalk and globes of water
- Small cacti can now be harvested for a small amount of timber and globes of water
- Large cacti can now be harvested for a medium amount of timber and globes of water

Building
- Added a deconstruct general skill for rapidly deconstructing buildings

v 0.4.1g2 - 2019.01.24
- Fixed Store Signs missing material

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Klaus is available at the Steam store!

Valentines Day is fast approaching~! Time to shower love to the Auditioneers <3 Here's another art contest for you to join!

MECHANICS:
- Players will need to create an image that will be used in the game as loading screens
- File type should be in JPEG or PNG.
- Image size should be 1024 x 768
- Include your IGN in your post.
- Entries will be accepted until February 6, 2019 EST.

SEE EVENT THREAD HERE.

THEME:
Valentine's Day (hearts, chocolates, couples, friends, LOVE!!!)


REWARD:
- 5,000 BC per winner
- Entry images will be used in-game.
- All participants will receive 30% discount coupons!


NOTES:
- Redbana Staff will judge the entries.
- Edited forum posts are not allowed.
- Entries should be posted in the forum event thread.
- Including messages or "shoutouts" to your friends in the images are okay, so long as there are no inappropriate contents in the entry.

Let's see how cheesy you can get~~!

Coordinate a group of dissidents or suppress dissent in NewSpeak - a code-breaking team game of subterfuge, set in a bleak future for 3-6 citizens.



3-6 Players; 45-60 Minutes

NewSpeak is a tense game of dystopian subversion in which you take the role of either the 'dissidents' or the 'moderators' in a mind-bending battle of wits to determine the reality around you. Dissidents utilise matching underground codes to coordinate meetings at one of the locations on the map. They then each secretly use their location dials to declare their intended meeting point.

The Mods, in a short amount of time, then have to determine where they expect the Dissidents to meet by inferring their intent from a book of every possible code set the subversives could use, and agree upon a location to direct a state raiding party.

As the game progresses, moderated locations produce potential accomplices for the Dissidents to recruit, as undesirables are driven from now sanitized districts. However, as the Dissidents progress their mission to 'hack' as many locations as possible, the Moderators strike back with increasing numbers of surveillance outposts, installed to limit the Dissident's ability to move around the city undetected.

The Kickstarter campaign for the game's second printing is currently underway, so take this chance to fight for future reality.

Here is what patch 3.8 contains:

⭐Battle analysis window added.

⭐New Set legendary Level 50 added.

⭐Kuni Store updated
-New costumes
-New Costumes weapons
⭐New drop items added in each last boss:
- Kuntara (Exp Scroll - 10%)
- Immportal Blaskmith Rossinal (Exp Scroll - 10%)
- Master Groak (Transcendence EXP Scroll - 1%)
- Bulk (Transcendence EXP Scroll - 1%)
- Vallios (Transcendence EXP Scroll - 1%)
- Dasos (Transcendence EXP Scroll - 1%)
- Turncoat Borian (Transcendence EXP Scroll - 1%)
- Nemegaz (Transcendence EXP Scroll - 1%)

Thank you all for your cooperation and feedback.

Best regards