Streamer LuckyLuckLuc recently took Demon for a spin on his Twitch channel, and has posted a recording on YouTube. Check it out! 
You can also watch his live streams at https://www.twitch.tv/luckyluckluc2
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Starting New Job on Monday
Hey folks. 
Just a small note: I’m starting a new job on Monday, so my hours available for Demon work are going to drop a bit. Based on past experience, the drop in Demon will work will be heaviest just as I start the new job, but will slowly ramp up a bit after that as I settle into the new groove. As a result, updates may be a bit sparse the next few weeks, but don’t worry: progress will always be happening, just maybe a bit slower than at previous times.
New Demon Sprites
pantpantpant. Busy me has been busy, but I finally finished all the sprites for the next build’s 20 new demons! I’ll let them speak for themselves.
Abbey Lubber
Alma
Baba Yaga
Basilisk
Brucha
Buruburu
Couril
Death Worm
Estas
Eye Killer
Flying Head
Friar Rush
Jotunn
Leib-Olmai
Mulassa
Mummy
Ogun
Sankai
Shikome
Virtue
Zaltys
Whew. Next up: ability implementation and ability icon art! Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to share details about the interesting new abilities these demons, and some old demons, will have. Cheers!
Agility, Area Effects, and Attenuation
The next build will include three new floors and twenty new demons, but it also include some balance changes worthy of discussion.
For awhile now, Agility has been regarded as the weaker of the five stats: unlike Strength, Magic, Vitality, and Cunning, there didn’t seem to be much reason to spend many points on it: base accuracy is already rather high, and many attacks don’t use accuracy or evasion anyway. Indeed, enough attacks didn’t use Agility where it was relatively easy to make builds that simply didn’t need it at all.
On a seemingly unrelated point: area effect attacks were proving a bit too dominant in the current mid to late game and needed to be reined in a bit in some way. As it happens, many of these were also attacks that did not use Agility in any way.
Addressing both problems: the new Attenuation mechanic!
Attenuation is an adjustment to the effectiveness of an area-effect based on the distance a given target is from the ‘blast point’. The blast point varies based on the ‘shape’ of the effect (for spheres, it is the center; for lines, it is the first cell in the line, etc.)
To begin with, a character directly at the blast point takes 100% effect; a character at the furthest edge will take only 50% effect. However, this is just the starting point: a character’s evasion (determined largely by Agility, but can be affected by various other abilities and status effects) can increase the reduction even further: it’s no help at the ‘blast point’, but at the furthest edge, 100% of a character’s evasion bonuses will count as additional defense against the damage and status effect accuracy of the attack.
Block and Dodge can also be used to defend against attenuation attacks, entirely nullifying them as they do regular attacks! As with evasion, their effect is 0% at the ‘blast point’, at the furthest edge Block and Dodge have their full chance to trigger.
In addition to updating ability tooltips to indicate when an attack uses this mechanic, the UI has been updated to help illustrate when attenuation is in effect, shown here for the Snowstorm ability with the help of some test goblins:
And the result of actually casting that Snowstorm?
Two lucky goblins managed to Dodge thanks to their Evasion passive (10% Dodge chance vs. all attacks): the rest took damage based on how close to the center point they were. Attenuation usually protects against status effects like Chill, but since Chill never misses unless the target is Ice immune, it didn’t change anything here.
The news is not all bad for area effects, however. To compensate for the reduced total damage, area effect abilities that use attenuation received Power increases in nearly all cases, and SP cost / cooldown reductions in many cases.
Well, that takes care of area effect abilities hopefully. Agility’s effects on attenuation certainly help that stat, but there were still too many abilities that just didn’t use Agility for either accuracy or evasion, so I did a pass on abilities with an eye to trimming the use of the “Cannot Miss” mechanic. There were approximately 60 such abilities before the pass, about 20 of them were changed to either use attenuation, or simply no longer have the “Cannot Miss” mechanic. But, as with attenuation, the news is not all bad: abilities that lost “Cannot Miss” also gained additional Power and/or reduced SP costs.
Most of the abilities that were allowed to keep “Cannot Miss” and not have attenuation are in the Light, Dark, Mind and Body elements. Most of the abilities that lost “Cannot Miss”, or which now use attenuation, are in Impact, Fire, Ice, and Electricity. Why so? Each of the four elements that was largely allowed to keep their “cannot miss” abilities has a quirk that justifies it:
Light and Dark: Often uses conditional targeting and/or cooldowns.
Mind: Damage abilities are usually very low Power.
Body: Body is one of the most commonly encountered Resistances/Immunities.
By comparison, the Impact, Fire, Ice, and Electricity abilities usually only have to worry about SP and enemy resistances in order to work.
With far fewer “Cannot Miss” and un-attenuated area effects in the game, Agility should be much more reliable as a defensive stat, in addition to being more necessary on offense due to fewer elements having easy “Cannot Miss” access. Hopefully this will prove to at least be a good first step to making Agility a valued part of character builds.
By the way, this won’t be the end of the passes I do for this build: content builds are a great time to make these sort of reviews and changes. Stay tuned for details on other changes and reworks.
P.S.: Special thanks to gaswafers, who has contributed significantly in design and implementation discussions of these mechanics on the forums.
Coming Soonish to the Tower: 20 new demons!
As promised, the next build will be a content push that adds 3 new floors to the Tower, bringing it up to 23 floors (not counting side-dungeons.)
But, what’s been less discussed is that I plan to shake up the early game a bit by adding some demons there as well, including 4 new starter demons. As I work on the build, I’ll be sharing information and details about the new demons you can expect to see in the Tower once it’s released (which I admit will be a bit aways still, this is a big content push!)
For now, here are the names and some short descriptions of most of the demons being added. A few have been omitted for various reasons… such as the new cryptid you’ll be able to meet using Enemy Lure on T:21-23
Abbey Lubber: Will be available as a starting ally. A European demon that haunts the larders and kitchens pf abbeys, hoping to tempt holy men into overindulging in food, wine, and women.
Zaltys: Will be available as a starting ally. A Lithuanian household spirit sacred to the sun goddess Saule, believed to bring fertility, good harvests, and wealth to families it lives with. Killing a Zaltys was believed to bring grave misfortune.
Buruburu: Will be available as a starting ally. Named for the sound people make when shivering in fear, Buruburu is a Japanese ghost that is created when mortals die while experiencing great fear. They haunt the living, causing them to experience unreasoning fear to the point of death.
Sankai: Will be available as a starting ally. A Japanese monster that will sometimes be born to mortal women in place of a human child. There are many variants of Sankai, but they share a common behavior: upon birth, they immediately attempt to flee from their mother, only to later return to slay her.
Alma: An undead named for a word people dwelling near the Andes use to refer to the flesh, soul, or mental presence of the dead. This entity is formed of the skin and fat of a deceased human, mixed with the sacred ice of the glaciers of the Andes region.
Flying Head: A spirit known to the Iroquois Native Americans. As the name directly states, it appears as disembodied flying head, having only wings and talons in addition to its namesake feature. They have voracious appetites which can often be used against them: a common legend tells of them being tricked into eating burning coals.
Estas: A bird which brought fire to Carrier people of what humans now call British Columbia , saving them from freezing to death during an age of ice.
Leib-Olmai: Literally “Alder Man”, Leib-Olmai is a Sami forest spirit that takes the form of a bear when interacting with mortals. He brings good fortune to hunters. To honor him, hunters sprinkled a mixture of alder tree bark and water on their faces.
Brucha: A creature of Ireland covered in countless iron spines, though stories differ on whether the animal is a porcupine, dog, or locust. It denies food to humans by rolling through their farmlands, impaling food on its spines and carrying it away.
Eye Killer: A South American demon that is born of women who become pregnant with the help of a certain cursed artifact. It has the body of a snake, two arms with claws, and the head of an owl. Their name comes from their remarkable ability to shoot lightning bolts from their eyes.
Basilisk: An incredibly poisonous snake first discovered near the Greek city of Cyrene. It has a distinctive crest upon its head that looks like a crown: its aforementioned toxicity and this characteristic lead to some calling it the “king of snakes”, despite its small size. As if its poison did not make it deadly enough, the Basilisk is also capable of killing creatures simply by gazing at them.
Shikome: A dreadful hag of the underworld spoken of in Japanese myth. When the god Izanagi broke a promise to his wife Izanami and viewed her rotting form in the underworld, she sent eight Shikome to capture him as he tried to flee. Izanagi escaped by throwing his headdress, his comb, and three peaches behind him to distract the pursuers.
Mulassa: A Spanish dragon, with the body shape of a mule, a very long neck, and fangs. Most of its scales are green, though the head’s scales are black. Like many dragons, Mulassa is capable of breathing fire. It has a very short temper, and is associated with heedless, reckless behavior.
Virtue: An entity created by Sources to serve as a conduit for their power. Virtues can channel divine energy directly into miracles, or bestow it upon designated saints for their use. They are sometimes called “shining ones” due to the brilliance of the power flowing through them.
Jotunn: A race of giants spoken of in Norse mythology, they trace their lineage all the way back to Ymir, who they believe to be the first living creature created from the primal chaos. They frequently are in conflict with the two groups of Norse gods called the AEsir and Vanir. However, some Jotunn have friendlier relationships with these gods, and there are even known cases of marriage between Jotunn and gods of the AEsir and Vanir.
Couril: An evil fairy of France that looks like a tiny human with webbed feet, and can often be found dancing in stone circles at night. Disaster will strike any mortals who observe them however: human observers are compelled to join their dance. Men will be forced to dance until the dawn or until they die of exhaustion; women will always be released alive, but will later give birth to a child cursed by the Couril to greatly resemble someone from the woman’s home village. Appears as a small dancing humanoid in garish clothing, and with an evil cast to its face and/or eyes.
1/7: Know Your Bugs
Managed to miss a slightly subtle bug with how enemies were spending their level up points, or rather more to the point, how they weren’t. 
Thanks to wizzzargh for the quick catch and report! Build links to the right have been updated with the 1/7/2017 build which fixes this bug.
Unfortunately it is not retroactive: any demons that already spawned with boosted levels will not gain their proper stats nor does it correct when they gain additional levels naturally, so please switch ASAP. Thanks!
1/6: Know Your Enemy
The new Demon build is out, build links on the right have been updated! Dive in and enjoy the wonders of the Codex Daemonium, revamped Hero and corpse encounters, and other exciting changes and updates! Full details are included in the change logs packed with each build. Enjoy, and good luck in the tower!
Next Build In Testing
The next build is now in testing.
As previously discussed, this build will contain several goodies including:
- Codex Daemonium: A reference containing full information on any demon you’ve recruited in the game. Depending on your option settings, it can be limited to demons only your current character has recruited, or it can show every demon you’ve recruited on any game played on the current install, or…. it can simply show every demon in the game, should you be a fan of spoilers or not a fan of unlocks.
- Online features can now be turned off in the option menu. (hit ‘-’ from in game to access.)
- Improved Corpse Encounters: Demons spawned by corpses will now adjust their level to be close to the player’s level, bringing these up to the proper challenge level, and will spawn more spread out to keep them from being easily area-effect nuked away. Corpses that will trigger encounters can now be detected by Enemy Sense as well.
- Improved Corpses: Corpses have been adjusted to appear a bit less often, but be much less likely to give “nothing” results.
- Demons who prefer to negotiate with summoners can now directly ask for Credits, instead of only doing so as part of other types of demands.
- Revamped Hero bonuses to make Hero encounters more interesting.
- ‘Free actions’ now properly count as your ‘last action’ for abilities that check this.
- Streamlined the confirmation prompting in situations where it probably was overkill (e.x.: if you are voluntarily doing something to get rid of a demon, you will no longer be asked if you want to copy abilities from it first, since presumably you’d have done that if you wanted to.)
- Reduced the difficulty level of the Actaeon encounter slightly.
- Fixed a bug that was causing too many item spawns and too many corpses to appear (separate from the adjustment to corpse spawning mentioned above.)
- Several other bug fixes.
Hope to be able to release this soon. Until then, I hope you’re having an awesome 2017.