Next up on the new status effect showcase: Melting!

Melting is by far Matter’s most commonly inflicted status effect: not only is it present on an unusually large number of Matter abilities, but it also has a fairly high success rate, making it relatively easy to apply even if Cunning isn’t the user’s strong suit.

Many of Matter’s abilities that apply Melting are “Acid” spells such as Acid Dart. Matter is unique among the ‘essence’ types (Body and Mind being the other two) in that it has a series of nukes available that are more like what you’d see from the ‘elemental’ types (Fire, Ice, and Electricity.) Matter’s Acid nukes tend to resemble Fire nukes, but trade Fire’s Ignite and a bit of their Power level to inflict Melting instead:

On it’s own, Melting is roughly equivalent to Poison: it lasts 5 turns, dealing 6% of the target’s MaxHP in damage per turn, but instead of being able to stack, it also shuts off HP regeneration (including from the Regen status effect, notably.) But in another example of how Matter sometimes more resembles an elemental type than an essence type, Melting has many abilities that play off of its presence and/or application, similar to how Ignite, Chill, and Shock do. I’ll show some of these off in my next post. Cheers!

The Matter build is adding plenty of new demons to give good homes to all the new Matter abilities. But, some older demons want to get in on the new flavors of fun too:

This might not end well.

Almost ready to start showing some of the status effects in action! Apologies for the delays on that, work continues to be pretty busy but I am making progress, if slow progress.

I finally got to the part of the process where I re-generate the ability icon texture atlas. My texture atlaser reported there were just under 700 icons in the atlas now. Pretty crazy! It’s been a long wait, and there’s still a ways to go, but I’m pretty excited to get these out to everyone ASAP.

Small update: I’ve started work on implementing Matter’s new ailments: Held, Held+, Held++, Blind, Melting, Harden, and Stone. Once I have something ready to show (hopefully soon!) screenshots and gameplay details will begin to follow.

And, one more small sample of what’s coming in the Matter build in terms of demons, with Geminimax’s sprites. (The ones in the post before were using his sprites too, but I uncharacteristically neglected to mention that! Apologies!)

There are three other characters in the Matter build besides these fifteen from the last few posts, but they’re uniques so I don’t want to give them away, at least not yet.

Here’s another sample of the new demons you’ll run into once the Matter build is released. Enjoy!

I’m slowpoking my way through my sprites, but Geminimax has already finished his. So, I switched tasks for a bit and got enough implementation work done to be able to show some semi-in-game screenshots. For now, I present five of the lower level Matter-wielding demons you’ll run across, but I will show more later in future posts. Enjoy!

Slowly working my way back into the swing of things as I adjust to the new (rather busy) job, here are sprites for four of the new demons coming in the Matter build.

Mandrake: A man-shaped root plant believed to have significant arcane power, but which emits a deadly scream when harvested. In game, it uses a combination of Matter and Mind abilities to entangle and then mind-blast its enemies.

Umibozu: A spirit of Japan that haunts the ocean, appearing on calm nights to destroy ships. In game, it can teleport to its enemies quickly, and utilizes blinding and disintegration based Impact and Matter abilities.

Umdhlebi: An African tree, capable of motion, which is known to be a source of horrific toxins and miraculous healing agents. In game, it assails foes with poison and acid ceaselessly using Body and Matter abilities, but is also capable of removing a variety of status conditions with Healing abilities.

Ooze: Another of the mysterious formless monsters which seem to inhabit the Tower as they do nearly every other dangerous place of legend. In game, they are rather speedy entities that rush towards their enemies to rapidly dissolve them using Matter abilities.

I hope to have more sprite art to share soon. Cheers!

Hey folks,

Apologies for the slowed updates this past week: a major work deadline is imminent (this Friday, in fact!) so I’ve been pretty blasted by the time I get home and that’s probably going to continue throughout the week. But, once Friday is behind me and a short resting up period happens, I should be able to return to my normal development pace.

Until then, good luck in the Tower!