Update #40 “Ravenous Raven”
Update #40 is now live on Steam! This is our penultimate release before 1.0, which we’re currently scheduled to release on June 22nd (assuming no massive, game breaking bugs are found between now and then).
With "Ravenous Raven”, we are feature complete for our 1.0 launch. We will be focusing on bugs and balance issues between now and launch, and there may also be a bit of polish added as well (touching up animations, changing some of the campaign wording, etc).
We have been in early access for a long time, and we appreciate all of the great feedback and ideas we have gotten from the community during this time. We look forward to getting 1.0 out the door!
Enough gabbing, here’s the release notes for this release:
Challenge Missions have been added to the game! These missions will be generated weekly, and give all players a chance to compete on an even playing field. Every player will get the same dungeon, with access to the same starting characters -- limited to a single profession each week. There is an in-game leader board that will show the top 10 people, and show you where you are in the leader board. A couple more notes:
Every dungeon in challenge mode has a miasma. It’s supposed to be challenging, after all!
The shoppe is closed for characters running through challenge levels
Likewise, these recruits are the rawest of the raw. They haven’t even been given the chance to learn any of the skills that you might have unlocked in the academy!
Challenge Missions are unlocked after finishing the third mission in the campaign.
Challenge Mission points don’t contribute to any unlocks for a chapter.
Challenge Missions can be repeated as much as you want to try to get to #1 on the leader boards!
The Hall of Records and the Beastiary have been separated. There is now a “Zoology Department” building in the Academy where your record keeps catalog all of the beast you encounter or might encounter soon.
Card Effects have been added. These are perks that are available for starting characters, or as level up perks during the game, and they provide extra effects when cards with certain face values are dealt. These four effects have been added:
4 the win: when a 4 card is dealt, earn 4 experience
Takes a 3 to make a Heart: when a 3 card is dealt, heal for 3 HP
Lucky 7s: when a 7 card is dealt, earn 7 gold
8 Gents of Shield: when an 8 card is dealt, gain a shield that absorbs 8 damage
Curses have returned to the game! People who have been part of early access for a while may remember these. They were way to powerful for monsters, and they have been tuned down significantly.
The 10,000 gold bonus for early access has been removed.
All flush attacks (3 or more cards of the same suit) were audited to make sure the damage they were doing was accurate, and that the damage was displayed correctly on the screen. In some cases (warrior attacks), the flushes were not doing the proper damage, and in others, they were doing the proper damage, but the predictive damage text was inaccurate.
Gem of Hunger is not quite so hungry. Before being sated, it will claim only 5% of your hero’s health. After sated, it will still claim 1 HP per turn. It now gives a +20 strength boost instead of +30.
A new credit screen has been added. You can view it from the main menu, or see it when you finish the campaign.
A new animation has been added for shuffling your cards. It’s about time that a card-based game has shuffling!
The predictive damage shows as part of the selected combo information has been removed. It was always a bit confusing, because there were two different predictive damage displays being shown: One on the monsters themselves, which took into account the monsters’s defense value, and the one on the bottom of the screen, which was the potential maximum damage the combo could have done. They never matched, and I don’t think it was ever clear why, so I removed the one on the bottom, leaving on the predictive damage number on the monsters.
As a corollary, the display at the bottom of the screen *does* show the correct bonus damage that playing the combo will do, and all of these have been audited to ensure they are displayed the same way (some showed +25% vs +125% when they really meant the same thing, +25%. If +125% is displayed now, it really does mean double plus an extra 25%).
An animation has been added to the icon that shows environmental effects (things like burps, slime, etc), to draw the player’s attention that there is some trouble they might want to be aware of.
Tooltips have been added on the player’s character sheet to help explain what the different attributes do (Strength, Intellegence, etc).