[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40840856/1ed0bcb74da34d54d255180447662485be955c6f.jpg[/img] [h1]Improved with Player Collaboration[/h1] I’m very pleased to deliver this next update which is a direct result of collaboration with some of our top players. Survivors of wave 30 shared their strategies with me, and I was amazed to discover so many synergies and quite literally “unbeatable” armies that players had devised. It was clear that simply adding additional waves was not going to provide enough challenge - the system itself needed revision. Special thanks to Kaaz, Dusty, PorkDiesel, Scharlatan, Jear and Diezy for their collaboration with me on Discord and help designing the new enemy NPCs and balance optimizations for this update. Additionally, our recent PvP tournament and weekly play sessions have helped to reveal and solve additional balance concerns as we move closer to the release of [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2352400/Abalon_Arena/]Abalon Arena[/url]. If you’re interested in PvP and would like to join our intimate and well mannered test group, you are most welcome. The closed beta for [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2352400/Abalon_Arena/]Abalon Arena[/url] is currently open to any players who already own Abalon on Steam. Simply join our [url=https://discord.gg/d20studios]Discord[/url] and fill out the application in our #multiplayer channel so I can add the appropriate permissions. [h1]Player Spotlight: Reiga[/h1] This week we’re honoring one of our players, Reiga, by naming a card in his honor. Reiga has been a constant champion to the growth and strengthening of Abalon’s community by promoting player collaboration in our discord server, helping us connect with the content creator community and organizing PvP tournaments for our upcoming game, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2352400/Abalon_Arena/]Abalon Arena[/url]. The campfire is a symbol of camaraderie and party members bonding together. Henceforth, the Bonfire Elixir card will be known as “Reiga’s Bonfire Elixir”. Thank you for all of your kindness and support this past year, Reiga! [h1]Content Creator Spotlight: Retromation[/h1] Retromation is a rock-star on YouTube when it comes to roguelike games. His videos are great for introducing new games, and they’re also incredibly helpful for developers like myself looking to improve the experience. I’m honored once again for his recent “Let’s Try” video, this time trying out Horde Survival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=OYfCiYWrRvc&ab_channel=Retromation Some takeaways for me to further improve the game from this video: [olist][*]Auto-equip passive artifacts (In progress) [*]Better explain flying units - (They fly over traps, but still take damage if they end their move on a trap) [*]Consider balance such as reducing drop rate/num selection choices (Done in this update!) [*]New Gameplay Mode: 1 Hour Adventure - Start with choosing your team, explore a single larger/multi-biome world (Goal: Faster, more diverse runs to encourage more subsequent plays to try out the different teams) - I’m interested to build this![/olist] [h1]New Language Support[/h1] Support for German and Brazilian Portuguese will be coming soon in a future update. We’re currently looking for volunteers to help us translate our game in Polish and Italian. If you’re interested, please contact me on Discord (@rossd20studios) or shoot an email to contact@d20studios.com. Also please note that since I have changed a few card descriptions, these will appear in English text for a few days while our translators are updating the copy. Thanks for your patience and understanding :) [h1]v1.29.0 Release Notes[/h1] [olist][*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Added 5 additional waves to endless mode. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Added dynamic difficulty adjustment that adapts to the top player strategies by adding new elite NPC enemies to existing waves to disrupt standing army tempo. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Created a hard-coded a reward drop algorithm to make drops more consistent. Also made it so that only the first spawn encounter in each wave drops rewards, greatly reducing the excess drops seen in previous builds. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Limited the card choice selection to 3 for most pickups and 6 for the satchel dropped from summoners. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Added additional drop tier including small potions and weapons. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Added Sacrificial Orb, Lightning Orb, Forcefield Orb, Fire Orb and Trinity Orb to survival mode. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Added Hellfire Candle and Radiant Amethyst to survival mode. [*][b]Horde Survival:[/b] Created several new NPC units for upper tier waves and adaptive strategy [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Bringer of Darkness [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Greater Magma Golem [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Skeleton Barbarian [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Elder Gruar [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Dark Elf Elite Archer [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Vampire Succubus [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Death Knight [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Death’s Apprentice [*][b]New NPC Unit:[/b] Death Reaper [*][b]New Card:[/b] Lightning Crystal - Summons a Lightning Elemental [*][b]Balance:[/b] Babarian’s ability changed from “Wreck: May move and attack again.” to “Wreck: Move towards and attack the closest enemy.” [b]Note:[/b] Movement is not optional. I have received a lot of feedback about this character (players love him, but also felt he was too powerful). I believe this change effectively balances the barbarian AND makes him even more distinctive, challenging and fun to play. Effectively, he becomes the incredible hulk, charging recklessly towards the enemy in a blood drunk rampage. Without having explicit control of where the barbarian goes, he will be putting himself at high risk of counter attack. But players who set him up right will be rewarded with a crazy barbarian roaring rampage combo! [*][b]Balance:[/b] The “Dreamsteal” ability to steal a card from Summoner hand and cast it, used by the Dreamstealer and Glith of Nithsrott, is now an Inflict ability. This means it will no longer proc for combo attacks. This also means the glyph will no longer trigger twice when attacking with Clik’Clik’. ([url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/0/3941272762723250898/?tscn=1699201589]Thanks Furoggu[/url]) [*][b]Balance:[/b] Changed the wording of Abysmal End from "Destroy an ally and deal damage equal to its power to visible enemies." to "Destroy an ally. It deals damage equal to its power to visible enemies." This is to clarify that 1) Spellblock ability will not block this damage and 2) Veil and stealth units are protected from damage since it requires visibility. If a Veil unit is adjacent to the destroyed unit, it will take damage per regular Veil rules. (Thanks Scharlatan and mr.kitty) [*][b]Balance:[/b] Reduced the cost of Forcefield from 2 to 1. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Turn Back time now removes all enemy buffs in addition to its other effects. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Melt now removes enemy buffs in addition their equipment. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Cleansing Fire, Rust and Deconstruct now say “Any” instead of “Target” to clarify that these spells can now target any unit without line of sight required (including targets with Stealth and Veil). This is intended to help provide options for combating these abilities, as well as providing an option to recover Mind Controlled units. Note however that only Cleanse, Dispel Magic and Turn Back Time have the power to remove enemy buffs on an ally unit (such as Polymorph). [*][b]Balance:[/b] Revive spell will now only revive guardians defeated in the current battle. The Scroll of Resurrection satchel card will revive guardians defeated in any previous battle. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Reflect Damage spell now prevents damage before Inflict abilities trigger. [*][b]Balance:[/b] When a unit is transformed (with the exception of the Metamorph) it loses all status effects and equipment before being replaced with a new unit. The Metamorph will transfer over its health and status effects to its new form when changing shape. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Savage Transformation now removes all status on the summoner (buffs, debuffs, equipment) and replaces it with a 4/11 bear (including the health). When the summoner changes back, it will be at the previous health value before transforming. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Units transformed into a squirrel by the Polymorph spell will now have a buff applied to them that says “Unit Name is Squirrel”. Spells like Cleanse, Cleansing Fire and Dispel magic can remove this buff to transform the squirrel back into the original unit. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Metamorphs (or any unit transforming into a Marauder or Ironclad) will no longer trigger Rally effects associated with its unit type. This is to prevent unintended escalation of these abilities with repeated transformation (Thanks Jear). A morphed unit transformed into a unit with a Rally ability will still use that rally ability when a natural unit of designated type enters the battlefield. [*][b]Balance:[/b] To be consistent with the Marauder Metalist and Warlord’s Rally trigger, Legatus Isabelle no longer triggers her Rally when being summoned from the deck - only when starting the battle as a guardian and when another Ironclad unit enters the battle. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Metamorph’s life reduced from 10 to 9. [*][b]Balance:[/b] Reduced cost of Blue Dragon from 5 to 3 [*][b]Balance:[/b] Ice Golem’s life reduced from 7 to 6, and cost from 3 to cost 2 [*][b]Balance:[/b] Reduced Skeleton Reaver from 2/3 to 2/2 [*][b]Balance:[/b] Ring of Power no longer stacks. [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where a Metamorph that had life buffs was healing for each point of bonus life status when changing form. The metamorph should always retain its exact health when changing forms. (Thanks Jear) [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where polymorphing a Metamorph while transformed resulted in changing back into the Metamorph instead of becoming a squirrel. [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where Metamorph runs away after survival mode if battle ended while it was transformed. (Thanks Jear) [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where Occuloid Boss [NPC] appeared in the summoner selection screen. (Thanks Divine Sage Mahogany) [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where Farshot Attack from the Occuloid doesn’t trigger the frog demon heart artifact. (Thanks Scharlatan) [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where it was possible to clone guardians with the Resurrection Scroll satchel card by first reviving a single guardian at camp, then using the scroll. The game now properly tracks when guardians have been revived at camp (even if not in your party) and when they are encountered again in the world (if using the Lost Guardians challenge modifier). [b]Note:[/b] The Resurrection Scroll can be used to revive a lost guardian when this challenge is active until the player finds that guardian again. Lost guardians can only be found again in the next biome choice and beyond within the adventure once lost. [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where Revive spell wasn't reviving the last guardian defeated in combat, but rather the first. Additionally, Revive spell will only revive guardians defeated in the current battle, unlike the Resurrection Scroll, which can revive guardians between battles or in exploration mode. [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b]: Fixed bug where it was possible for players to enter adventure mode while in Horde Survival after clearing a wave in which their summoner had been revived using an ability such as Spirit Recall or Phylactery. (Thanks PorkDiesel) [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where Wave 27, 28, and 29 didn't have any text show up in the banner when the wave started. [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where armor was only rendering half of the texture on female armatures. [*][b]Fixed Bug[/b] where fire dragons and dragon whelps couldn’t damage units with Immune (Fire) with their melee attack. [*][b]Fixed Bug:[/b] Stacked Rings of Power were only showing +1/+0 in the status pane instead of the true amount. [*][b]Fixed Bug:[/b] Iron Angel Crest card was showing gain Armor (0) instead of Armor (1) [*][b]Fixed VFX[/b] on Abysmal End so it shoots particles at all targets [*][b]New SFX:[/b] for Banshee and Psychic Screamer[/olist] [h1]On the Horizon[/h1] Some new features in the works for future updates include: [olist][*]Ability to use satchel cards during battle in adventure mode. [*]Persistent artifacts on guardians when defeated/removed from party. [*]Potential for equip/dequip feature to customize heroes [*]Addressing more bugs and QoL requests [*]New Game Mode - Fast Adventure (See above in Content Creator Spotlight) [/olist] [h1]Help Me Reach 300 Steam Reviews[/h1] I have a goal to reach 300 Steam reviews before the end of this year…and we’re so close! Only 25 more reviews to go. If you haven’t yet written a Steam review, do please consider sharing your feedback. It means a lot to me (reviews are serious motivation) and it also helps other players discover what you like about the game. That’s it for now. Thanks again for all of your kindness, feedback and support! I hope you’re enjoying playing these updates as much as I enjoy making them for you. ~Ross