Happy New Year everyone! Same as last year, this Chronicle will be a recap of the year 2023 for The Slormancer and we will take a look back at what's been done. But first and foremost, let's talk about the [b]Slorm Reaper Update[/b] that was supposed to be done (damn you, devs!). It turns out that verifying and debugging a hefty amount of 68 Slorm Reapers took us longer than anticipated. We also took some time off during the holidays, and were busy eating raclette for a few days. There's still a degree of uncertainty regarding the release date. We have a few things to polish here and there, a few sound FX to add and still some Slorm Reapers that do not work the way we want. We're almost there but not quite. We're almost always regretting giving a release date too soon so I'm not giving any right now. Coming Soon is the best I can say. Now onto the Recap. [h1]A Year of Chronicles: 2023 Edition[/h1] [i]Fun fact: You may not know this but we publish the Slormite Chronicles devlog every 6th of the month, which is the day The Slormancer was released (on April 6, 2021). Everytime we publish a Slormite Chronicles, the game gets one month older, and it is currently 2 years and 9 months old. [/i] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3648510249383787904 We started the year with [b]Slormite Chronicles #21[/b]. A Chronicle similar to this one, with a roadmap for 2023, and it turns out that we did everything that we had planned. Yay! Moving to Slorm Reapers by the end of year was not planned but it is one of the most challenging part of the roadmap for us so we're happy to be (almost) done with it. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3677786821873442436 We then went on with [b]Update #1[/b]: [b]The Luxuriant Update Part II[/b] on January 30. This Update introduced : [list] [*] 8 New Missions (Act 4) [*] A New Ancestral Legacy Tier, adding 32 Ancestral Skills. [*] An Increased Level cap to 70. [*] Quality of Life for The Slorm Temple. [/list] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3645136358946943138 In [b]Slormite Chronicles #22[/b], we talked about the (mixed) feedback we got for Act 4 and our plan to fix things, and then talked about the upcoming rework on Controller Support. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3655271993680980796 [b]Slormite Chronicles #23[/b] was again about Controller Support and the numerous technical changes that were coming to the game in The Technical Update. We also talked about the new Environment and Enemies that we were working on. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3645137816263933584 [b]Update #2[/b], called [b]The Technical Update[/b], introduced a complete rework of the Controller. We had a growing playerbase on Steam Deck, and an unexpected amount of players using a controller so it was most needed. We also added numerous technical changes: [list] [*] A new Aim-Assist for Controller users. [*] A Toggle Option along with various Visual Feedbacks for the Aim-Assist. [*] Many Interface and Menu Navigation changes for the Controller. [*] New Font Sizes [*] Search Bars for Skills, Attributes and Slorm Reapers. [*] New Bindable Buttons [*] Uncapped FPS. [*] UltraWide Support [*] An ingame Zoom. [/list] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3696933459132056109 [b]Slormite Chronicles #24[/b] covered our upcoming Royal Wing environment along with 5 New Enemies. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/6754877058971340034 This led to [b]Update #3: The Royal Wing Update Part I[/b] on April 11 that introduced: [list] [*] 5 New Enemies [*] A New Environment (The Royal Wing) [*] A New Legendary Chest to store Legendary Items. [*] Changes to [b]Battlefield Expeditions[/b]: Now separated in two slightly different modes. [list] [*] Battlefield Journey. With Bosses on dedicated Floors. [*] Careful Examination. With the ability to farm in a chosen Environment. [/list] [/list] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3719453992477321493 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3721708329664648030 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3644023772659391558 Slormite Chronicles #25, #26 and #27 were all about our biggest update of the year: [b]The Royal Wing Update, Part II[/b] that would not only introduce new missions, story content but also loadouts and a rework of The Great Forge. The first iteration that we talked about in the Chronicles (#25) turned out to be something players didn't want so we went on with something simpler and funnier (#26) that seems to have pleased players. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/6027549530047881897 This led to [b]Update #4: The Royal Wing Update Part II[/b] on July 10 introducing: [list] [*] Act 5: 6 New Missions and 1 Boss fight. [*] A new Ancestral Legacy Tier adding 20 new Ancestral Skills. [*] Increased Level Cap to 80. [*] Loadouts [*] Reworks to: [list] [*] Armor and Elemental Resistances, making them more efficient. [*] The Great Forge, making it faster, greedier and with a better density by introducing "Multi-Waving" along with opening more Spawn Locations at once (from 2, up to 6). [*] Silence, toning it down and making it only affect spellcasters. [*] Legendary Reinforcement, by limiting it to 15. [/list] [*] And various changes to Runes or new player experience. [/list] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3685685238927988976 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3690191375767913128 [b]Slormite Chronicles #28[/b] and [b]#29[/b] were about the upcoming Ancestral Update that would introduce Adam Nostrus Trials, a series of endgame goals that would guide the player to the right direction along with setting nice objectives, along with our first endgame boss: Adam Nostrus. On top of that, we would introduce the Primal Ancestral Stone, a unique stone that you can enshrine anywhere on your Ancestral Legacy that would increase build possibilities a lot. In one of the Slormite Chronicles, we also talked about our ideal goal for the end of the year, which was to release: The Ancestral Update, The Slorm Reaper Update (the one we're currently working on) and The Warlords Update. It was very optimistic to say the least. I would have loved to release The Slorm Reapers Update before the end of the year, just to get 2 out of 3, but there was no way that we could have done this one faster. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/6819068581450405188 [b]Update #5: The Ancestral Update[/b] was then released on September, 19th. It introduced: [list] [*] Adam Nostrus' Trials. [*] An endgame Boss: Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion. [*] The last Tier of the Ancestral Legacy Tree adding 5 new Ancestral Skills. [*] The Primal Ancestral Stone. [/list] https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3749867242861566445 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3774639576536488352 https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3860210510760624428 Since then, we've been working on Slorm Reapers! So we pretty much only talked about Slorm Reapers in [b]Slormite Chronicles #30, #31 and #32[/b]. In 2023, we have released 5 Updates. A 6th before the end of the year would have been great but we had to settle for 5. It was a great year for us overall, we checked a lot of important boxes and made good progress. Once The Slorm Reapers Update is out, we will post our plan for 2024 in an upcoming Slormite Chronicles. along with an updated Road Map. We have high hopes for the year to come, so please stick with us for the final push! That's about it for now! And again, Happy New Year! May you all loot fat War Chests. Cheers!