Codex Daemonium

Theorycrafters rejoice! Coming in the next build: The Codex Daemonium! Behind this impressively Latin name hides a fairly simple concept: the ability to view details on any demon in the game (EDIT: Should you enable the Codex’s Spoiler mode in the Options menu, that is. Otherwise, you’ll have to find them first!)

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Still a little bit to do before I release this build, but shouldn’t be too much longer now. There won’t be a scoring version change, by the by: while there are some balance changes coming in the build, I don’t warrant them major enough to update the scoring model so quickly. Cheers, and Happy New Year. :D

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Coming Soon

As previously discussed, the next major build will add Tower floors 21, 22, and 23 to the main dungeon, but before that, there will be smaller build containing some other smaller things I want to get out of the way so they don’t have to wait behind a content push for no reason. :) Here’s a quick look at what’s coming in that:

 

Offline Mode

Starting with the next version, it will be possible to set an option that turns off all of Demon’s online features (with the exception of anything the Personal edition of Unity does itself, which I have no control over. You can read about what Unity itself collects here: https://unity3d.com/legal/privacy-policy )

 

Enemy Sense now helps with Corpses

Enemy Sense now also detects when interaction with a corpse is going to trigger an encounter. Notably, it does not tell you what the nature of the encounter is: only that there is one. When you have Enemy Sense, corpses that will trigger enemy spawns will have a different tooltip and mini map appearance, and require confirmation before searching them.

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DangerousPOI

 

Corpse Encounters Upgraded

I like corpse encounters, but they tended to end up easier than I wanted in the first pass: they often included demons that were just too low level to actually be a threat, and by spawning grouped together, the groups were often highly vulnerable to area effect abilities. Both of these issues have been addressed for the next build: demons in corpse encounters now use the same “catch up” feature demons enemy summoners spawn with do, and the demons spawn in much looser formations… indeed, they often end up surrounding the party in an open area, or blocking a party in in a hallway. Beware!

Additionally, a bug was fixed that caused corpse encounters w/ “sleepy” demons to unintentionally never spawn modified demons: now they have the usual chances of spawning modified demons for a corpse encounter (which is a slightly elevated chance, relative to normal encounters.)

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Heroes Reborn

Heroism has been redefined a bit to make the effects a little more transparent, and, I admit, a little more challenging. Here’s how the changes shook out:

Heroic Damage Bonus: Previously +20%, now +50%
Heroic Defense/Status Resistance Bonus: +200% (unchanged)
Heroic Status Accuracy Bonus: Previously 0%, now +50% (i.e.: A 40% chance to hit with a status becomes 60% for a Hero)
Heroic SP Cost Reduction: Previously 0%, now 50% (reflected in ability tooltips)
Heroic Cooldown Reduction: Previously 0%, now 50% (reflected in ability tooltips)
Heroic SP Regen Bonus: Previously +150%, now 0%

DiscountChainLightning

To parse that into something more like English: Heroes will now do a bit more damage, and have a much better chance to land negative status effects. Heroes will be slower to run out of SP, though once they do they have a harder time digging out of it. Finally, Heroes will enjoy the same more frequent usage of cooldown-based abilities that they have always enjoyed with SP-based abilities. Will this be enough to finally make Adria dangerous? Eh, probably not. :P

In a related change: Minions’ vulnerability now also applies to hitting them with status effects: you virtually can’t miss them with any status effect out there unless your Cunning is terrible or you’re trying one they have Resistance to.

Finally, it is worth remembering: natural Hero status and the Heroism buff are exactly the same in terms of how they work, so these changes also apply for characters benefiting from Heroism.

This build will be releasing fairly soonish, and then it’s on to Tower:21-23! Cheers, good luck, and happy holidays! :D

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What’s Next and Merry Christmas :D

Hey everyone. :) As far as I can tell, people are enjoying the Relic Wraith builds: there’s already over 400 Relic Wraiths roaming about in the Tower. :D

Wanted to write a quick blurb about what’s coming up next:

* I’ll be taking a short break for Christmas!
* Then, a smallish build that addresses a few minor things I want to take care of before…
* …a larger build that adds Tower:21-23 to the game and some balance tweaks (specifically to Agility + “cannot miss” mechanics)

Even while I’m on break, I’ll keep an eye on things just in case some sort of late-arriving bug pops up with Relic Wraiths, so have no worries on that front.

Merry Christmas everyone, and good luck in the tower. :D

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12/12: There Will Be Bugs

Ugh, I knew there’d probably be a few bugs. Good and most important news is: none of them require me to wipe or edit the data for ghosts already on the server, so we can keep all the awesome ghosts that have been made so far! Links at the right have been updated, so grab it after you finish your current games on the 12/11 build. :D Thanks, and good luck in the tower!

Fixed in 12/12:
* Fixed a bug where Relic Wraiths always spawned with the MaxHP of a Level 1 character, regardless of their actual level. To reiterate: this is a client bug, not a server bug: ghosts made with 12/11 will have the correct HP when spawned in 12/12.
* Fixed a bug where Relic Wraiths using Consume and Recycle on demons that had been “de-leveled” as part of the Relic Wraith spawning process would actually take HP and SP damage from the act, often causing the AI to hang trying and failing to find an ability that could be used with 0 SP. Thanks to Geminimax for reporting and sending in a repro save file for this bug.
* Fixed a rare bug where searching a corpse simply gave no result message at all, not even a “nothing found” message. Thanks to wizaaargghh for reporting this bug.

12/11: Dawn of the Dead

Whew! It took nearly two months, but we’re here! The new build, containing both Relic Wraiths and Interactables, has been released! Links on the right have already been updated!

The rather extensive change log included with each build details the changes beyond what I’ve talked about here over the course of the past several weeks, so dig into that if you’re curious about the specifics.

Otherwise, dive in and enjoy! Good luck in the Tower! (You’re going to need it more than ever probably.)

CrownWraith

Well, at least the second ghost isn’t so bad…

Less of a baddie, though the random Combusts might turn out to be dangerous for parties with no healing available. Stopping to fix some minor bugs, but we’re still on schedule (I didn’t assume in planning that I’d find zero bugs, after all. :D ) I tried to summon Tremane’s ghost to fight, but Level 3 is too high to summon a Level 2 ghost, alas! (The range for level-based ghost summoning is QUITE small at low levels, and by that I mean it pretty much has to match exactly. :P )

Bolsar_T2

I Accidentally Made A Sigmund

Welp. At least since he’s a Relic Wraith, the odds of actually running into him will drop sharply once other people start making wraiths. :D

Meet the first ghost of… ahem… Tower… 1. The RNG apparently wanted the first ghost to be a bit of a doozy: the Hypnotic Gaze and Venomous were both found on corpses (and both extremely lucky rolls, most of the time, you get far less exciting things from the find ability result :P )

If anyone is still playing this game next week, it will probably be a miracle. :D

Tremane_T1

Relic Wraith Build Is In Testing

Alrighty, we’re nearly there. :D

Going to start the last round of testing when I get back from lunch. If all goes well with that today and tomorrow, we’re on schedule for a 12/11 release.

In a slight departure from normal testing methods, I will be endeavoring to create some initial ghosts to start things off for everyone so that early results of summoning Relic Wraiths don’t come up empty. :) Plan is to start games, then end them on consecutive floors so that as many floors as possible have at least 1 ghost each. :D (This will also give me some ‘real’ ghosts to test with in the later phases of the testing round.)

Cheers!

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Ghost Stats

As a very quick aside, it will be possible to check how your ghosts are doing to a limited degree by pressing Shift + Backslash:

GhostStats

The data available will possibly be expanded in future builds, but I want to the core mechanic pinned down and ironed out before spending too much time on the frills. :) Still, I figured I should at least provide spawn count and kill count info, so here it is. :D Note that these stats only reflect server ghost activity: spawns and kills by your local ghosts are not reflected here.

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