Almost there. Only major things left on my list are:

1) Improve suggested target UI

2) Ability descriptions

3) Final balance testing

Won’t be much longer now, I proimse.

And now, here are the three remaining relic previews: the Eye of the Dragon, the Faithful Heart, and the Orb of Power.

The Eye of the Dragon provides a breath weapon: no matter which primary element you pick, you’re getting one as the second ability. Depending on the element chosen, it will have any of a variety of secondary effects: stunning, extra damage over time, or a lingering debuff. The other abilities offered by the primary elements tend to be powerful single target attacks or multi-target melee attacks you can use to finish what the breath weapons start.

The Eye’s secondaries offer a variety of additional effects to support the high damage, group-smashing approach of the relic: life-steals, a variety of hindering effects that all can be applied to multiple enemies, and some self-buff options.

The Faithful Heart specializes in directly targeted effects, allowing you to stay safely behind your allies while targeting any unit you wish… so long as you meet the conditions of the abilities in question. Faithful Heart’s primary provide basic damage and healing options in this vein.

The Heart really opens up on secondaries, offering options that include damage, crowd control, healing, buffs, and debuffs. Regardless of which option you choose, as with the primaries, you will be able to target through allies and enemies alike. Unlike the primaries, the options here do not have conditions: think of your secondary as your Plan B that you can use when your primary’s abilities are on cooldown or no targets meet their requirements.

Finally, the Orb of Power: the Orb’s primaries offer long-ranged nukes and various area effect attacks for the most part, though Buff and Debuff are worth calling out as exceptions: they may not get damage, but they start with abilities that can greatly improve or reduce the damage output of other units respectively.

The secondaries for the Orb follow the primaries in flavor, allowing you to focus in on a single element or strategy or branch out and dabble in a second. Two different defensive options are also provided: deflect elemental attacks with the Triad Ward, or pick up Short Jaunt for access to a staple of roguelike caster gameplay: blinking.

Since this covers the previews for all six relics, it shouldn’t be a secret that things are moving along pretty well and I’m closing in on a release. Main tasks left are to knock out a few more bugs, do some balance testing, and (whimper) re-type the ability descriptions in a new format so that they will be a more transparent. This will include (when space allows) having status effect descriptions directly mentioned in abilities. A bit of an undertaking, yes… but I want to do it with this build, since there will so many more abilities front facing due to the relics coming online. I want everyone to be able to see the myriad possibilities the various combinations of relics, elements, and their abilities allow.

I’ll keep everyone updated on my progress towards the next release. Until then, don’t forget to visit the newly opened forum. Still pretty quiet in there, but maybe we’ll get some more new blood with the relic build. See you soon.

Two more relic previews to show off tonight: The Crown of Glory, and the Vodun Mask.

The Crown of Glory is intended to provide melee/support hybrid starting options. This is apparent from the primary elements it offers: though none of them are traditionally melee elements, it fills them in by using Slash and Impact melee abilities that have “side effects” of the chosen type. In this way, characters can be up front dealing melee damage while also providing various flavors of support effects from the six “support” themed elements provided.

The secondary elements for the Crown veer off in a variety of directions: you can season your primary choice by adding area effect melee attacks, a distance-closing charge, an area-effect Stun attack, a collection of passives and reactives that aid offense and defense in various ways, as well as a couple of other options for melee + “extra” attacks.

Next up, we have the Vodun Mask, a relic focused on providing starting options that focus on laying various negative effects on enemies so that your allies can overpower them with ease. Both physical and magical elements have access to these sorts of powers, which is reflected in the primary options offered by the Mask. It is worth noting that the Mask’s starting stats vary wildly based on the elements you choose: some builds will have high Strength and Agility, others will focus on Magic, but all will tend to have excellent Cunning.

The mask’s secondaries focus on giving you options to round out or expand upon the package you chose initially. Whether you want to add more damage (direct, smite, or by damage-dealing debuff), life-stealing, stalling and distracting tactics, or even a little healing, you’ll find what you’re looking for in these elements.

Progress on the relics and their abilities is coming along nicely, as you can see. I should have more previews ready to show you soon.

Oh, I almost forgot. I added Mind as an option for Titan’s Fist on secondary, giving it an ability called Mind Reader. Mind Reader is a passive that raises your accuracy and evasion against non Mind-immune enemies. (Enemies actually weak to Mind give you a bigger bonus! … though of course, Mind resistance cuts a large chunk out of it.)

Well, back to work on the remaining relics. Cheers!

The new ability icons needed for the new abilities the relics you can choose from will offer have been completed. Next up is implementing and testing the abilities associated with them. (Note: A few of these will not actually appear in relic starting packages, but were included since they are logical extensions of abilities that will be. Arresting Glare is a good example of this: it isn’t on a relic itself, but since I was making Arresting Gaze, I went ahead and made the AE form too.)

From left to right, top to bottom: Arresting Gaze, Arresting Glare, Avalanche, Bolt Rune, Cleansing Cut, Combust, Cyropulse, Darktouch, Fearsome Cry, Fire Rune, Frost Ring, Heat Wave, Ice Rune, Lighttouched, Mind Blank, Mind Reader, Fetid Blast, Numbing Touch, Oppressor, Rattling Cry, Restoring Cut, Shocking Spear, Triad Rune.

Of course… relic starting packages won’t be the only places these show up…

Figured it’s about time I start to pull back the veil on relics, which are moving closer to release.

Here’s a screenshot of the six relics that will be initially available after this feature release.

And here are the primary and secondary elements, and the abilities they grant, for the Titan’s Fist relic.

The Titan’s Fist is relatively straightforward: its primary elements offer a choice between straight damage in Slash, or a mix of damage and disabling in Impact. The secondary elements offer a variety of “seasoning” options to augment the raw melee power the Titan’s Fist starts with: area-effect attacks, charge attacks, reactive auras that damage, stun, or debuff attackers, support effects to further increase damage output, or quick recovery from damage taken. Titan’s Fist is a good example of one of the interesting facets of the relic system: different relics will have different takes on the various elemental types of abilities. Titan’s Fist demonstrates this in its melee-oriented takes on traditionally ranged and support elements such as Fire, Buff, and Healing.

I’ll be posting previews of other relics in detail as they near completion. Stay tuned! If you have comments, feedback, or questions, don’t forget the forum is back online: check it out at the Forum link just above the Twitter button on your right.

I’ve opened the forum back up. The link is over on the right above the Twitter button, or you can just go to http://forum.ferretdev.org.

I think the anti-spam measures I’ve installed this time will be close to 100% effective: creating an account will now ask you questions about the starting allies you choose from at character creation. If you have any problems making an account, please let me know.

If you’ve read the teeny bit of story information in the manual or gleaned it from in-game descriptions of summoners you encounter, you already know that relics are the devices that allow summoners to be summoners: they grant the ability to control, summon, train, and learn the abilities of the demons encountered in the tower.

However, there are actually many kinds of relics, each with their own properties and traits. Starting with the next major build of Demon, you will have the ability to choose which relic to use when creating characters.

Relic selection will occur before your starting elements and starting ally are chosen. Your choice of relic will determine several things, including:

• Character sprite, starting stats, and resistances.
• What elements are available as primaries, and what abilities, resistance changes, and starting stat changes they offer. (The same element may not behave the same on different relics.)
• What elements are available as secondaries, and what ability and starting stat changes they offer. (Some elements may only be available as secondaries on given relics.)

For the first pass, relics will have significant effects, but still maintain the same basic style of gameplay. Two expansions upon the idea will come in later builds: relics that provide unique bonuses outside of stat, resistance, and ability changes, and relics that fundamentally change basic game rules.

I’ll have more details to share about the first set of relics soon. Cheers!