We're proud to announce that we will be taking part in this month's Steam Next Fest. From February 21-28, we will open up our servers and accept all playtest signups for Shattle.
But that's not all! To celebrate, we will be hosting a developer live stream and AMA on our Twitch channel. It'll be a chance to hear directly from the devs about the current build and what's coming up in future updates.
Join us on Monday, February 21 at 7:30 PM UTC/ 2:30 PM EST / 11:30 AM PST on our YouTube Channel.
The Russian Pass DLC will include several new resource and cargo types to haul around train valleys inspired by the Motherland. Today we are ready to introduce the Bus Factory and the Kimberlite Mine:
Quick facts:
Bus Factory requires Workers, Steel Plates, Processed Rubber, Glass and Fuel to produce shiny yellow public transport road vehicles :)
Kimberlite Mine requires Workers to produce Kimberlite Ore. I wonder what happens to that afterwards...
Settings like store size, production times and initial resource amount can be adjusted with the Editor for both buildings.
Both Bus Factory and Kimberlite Mine can be used in several Scenarios and trigger Activables across the level. Stay tuned for an update to our Activables guide!
We are looking forward to meeting you during this Friday's LPT challenge! Good luck!
A mysterious Samurai was just spotted in town. Shopkeepers at level 33 or higher may see her pay them a visit shortly. You’ve got what it takes to catch her attention, yeah?
Ashley is a Fighter type Champion well suited for any party. She provides small bonuses to her team’s Attack, Defense and Quest Speed. She’s not really trying, though. Ashley wants a challenge, preferably a lethal one. When facing off against bosses, all of her Leader Skill bonuses are doubled!
Extreme Dungeon Difficulty
A new difficulty level has been added to all dungeons. It can only be unlocked by maxing out a dungeon’s level.
In terms of difficulty, Extreme ramps up quite significantly. While early Extreme dungeons won’t be much of a challenge for experienced players, some of the later dungeons bulk up harder than even the Harpy Matriarch. Extreme monsters also have 20% accuracy by default, decreasing the evasion chance of opposite Heroes, and slightly increasing their Critical Hit rate against Heroes with negative evasion. Prepare adequately if you don’t want your socks blown off, and may the Goddess have mercy upon your souls if you run into a Miniboss.
In terms of rewards, Extreme dungeons drop more stuff overall, with some of the later ones even dropping Tier 11 items occasionally. Extreme bosses also have increased Key drop chances.
Major Changes
Guild Improvements
Guild Finder
Improved the algorithm. This should allow the system to find more appropriate guilds for early game players.
Keep in mind the system avoids showcasing inactive guilds, so if you have a lot of inactive players, you may want to kick some of them.
Automated Guildmaster Replacement
Guildmasters that fail to login for 2 weeks will be automatically demoted to Officer and have their Guildmaster status given to the oldest Officer in the guild. If no Officers are suitable, it will be selected among regular members.
Sleepy Guildmates
On the guild screen, guild members who have been inactive for more than a week will be shown sleeping at their desk. This is a purely visual effect, but may help guild leadership keep better track of their guild’s activity.
Friendly Wallace Advice
If the game detects that your guild is inactive, Wallace may decide to come in for a visit and recommend looking for a new one.
You’re free to ignore him! He will respect your decision, though he may come back again 2 weeks later if the situation hasn’t improved.
Minor Changes
Worker visitors will now only bring items for which they are the primary worker for. No more heavy armor tailored by Julia! Theodore and Sondra remain unchanged due to their special circumstances.
The fusion screen now displays the fusion time of crafts.
Ascension Score and Collection Score have been added to the guild leaderboard.
It is now possible to view all the tiers of a Content Pass’ task.
Players can now access the T11 seasonal offers so long as they own a T9 blueprint unlocked with research scrolls. Previously, Enchantments, Moonstones and Runestones did not count.
Balance Changes
Reduced gold requirement for Daily Piggy Banks.
Increased the gold cost to create a guild to 10k gold (from 2500).
Reduced the friendship point requirement for most guild friendship levels.
By Ashley’s request, effects that activate when facing bosses now apply against minibosses as well.
Tweaked the gem cost of a few Hero slots.
The Engineer is now available starting at level 23 (from 31).
Polonia now becomes available at level 26 (from 25).
Bug Fixes
Guild requests will now only generate a notification from within the market window.
Fixed LCOG spirits having an extra empty effect in their description.
Fixed an issue where the user’s name would not be properly highlighted on some leaderboards.
Fulfilling Champion offers will now count towards Sell tasks.
Fixed a bug involving equipping Familiars to Champions during the Tower of Titans event.
Fixed the fusion list not being properly ordered (again).
Fixed a bug where Moonstone and Runestone crafts could count towards Quality craft tasks.
Fixed a crash that could occur when using hotkeys to navigate the Antique Store.
Fixed Haunted Castle boss simply standing there menacingly instead of playing attack animations.
Fixed tiers for components appearing on Customer bubbles.
Added missing stat to the First Morning Star mace.
Fixed On The House! Token granting more energy than intended.
Hello friends! Every Friday 17:30 UTC/GMT we hold a “Let’s play together” competition. During next 24 hours everyone is welcome to try and score the best time in a preselected level. Join our Discord server and keep Discord running while playing — your results will be automatically published in the #lets-play-together channel. You need to get 5 stars to qualify.
Glittering prizes include: 1) Top 3 winners receive one random card each. Collect 18 locomotive cards and advance to next set of 6 all new cards! Complete that second set and enter a final tier of 2 very special and super limited cards! Assemble 26 cards and receive a special prize. Easy! 2) Every player registered by our Discord bot has a chance to get a card. The number of cards depends on the number of participants: one additional card for every 10 train connoisseurs on the list. More players means more prizes! Visit our Discord server (#lets-play-together channel) to learn more.
We have been working on our upcoming Spring Patch, which will include the long awaited Custom Lobbies! Though there are still some tweaks to be done, we feel the system is ready for you to help us test it! This is a pre-QA test, our goal is to stress-test the system and learn about as many bugs as you can help us find so we can get this out the door to you on our Spring Patch! 🌸
So - We would like to invite you to playtest this new feature this weekend, from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th. The playtest will run from the 18th at 10AM PST to the 20th at 3PM PST (18th at 6PM GMT to the 20th at 11 PM GMT).
What to expect:
This build will be a branch on Steam that only has Online and Practice modes available.
All the Physics Patch improvements tested on the previous playtest will be present.
There will be a new option under Online titled "Create Custom Lobby" - This is what we are testing!
How to join:
PC (Steam) only beta.
You must own the game to participate on the beta.
Test will run from February, Friday 18th at 10AM PST to the 20th at 3PM PST (18th at 6PM GMT to the 20th at 11 PM GMT)
The branch will be titled custom-lobbies-playtest
To help us with bug-tracking, please join Discord . We will also have special channels for chatting and organizing.
Make sure you are on the correct beta branch: If you are not on the correct beta branch and try to connect to a beta branch lobby or server you will receive an error.
Thank you for your feedback via Discord and elsewhere! Content updates will follow, but here is a quality of life update for AlCHeMoS.
ADDED:
"Next Level" button available upon winning a level (thanks, LilyNion & Mortistar!). Just remember you'll need to go back to main menu to spend any Quarks you may have earned!
Tutorial for the first time you reach a target element but can no longer complete all the side objectives (thanks, Mr Jacobs!).
CHANGED:
Default value for vsync flipped to on (thanks, Greg, Popcron, and 777!).
Navigating the periodic table is much faster.
Controller now has "Menu Close" / "Back" mapped to button B (lower row second button) by default (thanks, Doom!)
We are continually working to improve our game day by day and all your feedback is greatly appreciated! It is so wonderful to see all your videos, streams and content around our game and we really do love to hear from you.
Every week we're giving you detailed insight into what the current known issues are and which ones have been fixed!
Performance issues, framerate improvements (improved, but we are continuously working on this)
Texture render improvements
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Free muffin causing crashes
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Level 1: Player can get stuck inside the boat
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Level 1:Player getting stuck where the Murkraken spawns
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Level 1: Events can collide with scenario near the dock
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Level 2: Fixing fall area that can get the player blocked
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Level 3: Fixing bridge area causing player getting stuck
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Level 3 boss: Player can get stuck inside the boss geometry
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April icons for alternative weapons doesn't appear in game.
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Text overflow on options/video
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Crystals melting animation doesn't appear.
Rebinding keys makes some inputs unavailable
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Interacting with objects can take the shooting inputs from the player
Game is not adapted for wide screens but can be selected as configuration
Full screen toggle is not working properly
Giant anomaly murkors getting stuck inside the cargo
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Puzzle altar pieces fall through the floor making them unavailable
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It's safe to say, we've been busy! Thanks to all your feedback we've improved texture rendering and crushed bugs throughout levels 1-3. Work has been made into smoothing out the performance of the game - which we know lots of you are reporting in. We've made some improvements this week, and are doubling down week on week to address frame rate issues.
There's a few extra bits of feedback that have been pushed slightly out of this week's patch. Adapting the game for wide screens and working on the full screen toggle is still on our list for next week. Stay locked into the steam page next week for even more updates!
