Not really a development update so much as a public service announcement, but my actual move is happening in a couple of days. During this period, I may even back off my usual promptness replying to forum posts. I’ll still be reading them and able to respond to any sudden critical issues, but beyond that I’ll basically be going dark until I get everything setup at my new place again. See you soon!

Strange Journey Redux just came out… and I’m going to moving in the next couple of weeks to boot, so things are going to go semi-dark for a little bit.

Next up when I return: working on some tech improvements I’d promised players during the Matter build’s development, but felt were too risky to want to risk derailing the Matter build with.

Shortly after that in no particular order: Relic Upgrade revamp, Character Creation revamp, and Relic Preservation expanding to cover demons (with the resulting speed up in combat this will permit.)

Note that all of the above will probably be a number of smaller releases, rather than one big release like Matter: I’ve learned my lesson about my current job; it keeps me too busy to commit to that much in one build and get it all done in a reasonable time frame. So very likely, what I’ve described above will be four or more smaller releases, rather than another mammoth (but nearly 10 months coming) beast like Matter was.

ETA on my return to the normal development schedule is sometime in early/mid June, but I will remain active on the forum here (and semi-active in other realms), and will still fix any critical bugs that pop up.

Until then, I hope everyone is enjoying the Matter build! Good luck in the Tower!

5/13 fixes a small bug that sometimes caused enemy summoners to only start with one active summon under fairly common (but not 100%) conditions. Build links to the right have been updated to point to it. Cheers!

Updates, 5/11/2018

New Element: Matter
- Welcome to the official release of the “Matter Build”, so called because it introduces a new ability element, Matter, to the game.
- The Matter Build had several test builds before this, the official release. The build notes will detail all the changes present in this build.
- The only changes listed under this build, 5/11/2018, are those that were added since 4/3/2018 (Matter Test 6.)

Upgrades
- Added six new upgrades related to gaining partial (or, eventually, full) Heroic bonuses based on leaving active summon slots unused.
- Aux Power gives you the damage, healing, and resource cost discounts of Heroes. It comes in three levels: all three levels give you 1/3 of a Hero’s bonuses per empty slot; the only difference is the maximum number of slots they award this bonus for.
- Aux Guard gives you the damage reduction and status resistance of of Heroes. It comes in three levels: all three levels give you 1/3 of a Hero’s bonuses per empty slot; the only difference is the maximum number of slots they award this bonus for.
- No relic starts with any of these upgrades: thus, it is not under the current upgrade system possible to get the 3rd level of both
upgrades in a single run. Consider these a preview of things to come, with the knowledge that things will one day change in this
regard.
- Also added a seventh new upgrade: Call Demon, which allows you to spend Credits to summon a (hostile) non-unique demon of any species you have linked with at least once in the current run. (Note: This uses ‘your current run’, even if you have different Codex settings chosen under options.)

Balance
- Demons that bestow Heroism as part of their capture requirements now only give Heroism to the summoner, or to themselves, not both. The capture information for each demon of this type will specify who will receive Heroism.
- Reduced the rate at which gaining levels increases the Credits given by using Recycle by 33%.
- Reduced the maximum amount of Credits gained from using Recycle by 50%.
- Reduced the rate at which ‘rare encounters’ spawn by 50%.

UI
- You can no longer rest or auto travel when any ally is affected by Panic or Charm, to prevent unfortunate accidents.

AI
- Summoners with both Aux Power and Aux Guard will be much less likely to summon so many actives as to invalidate the effect of whatever level of these upgrades they have.
- Summoners now prefer to summon pacifists when possible, if they do not already have ne summoned. This helps ensure AI summoners make good use of support demons.

Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where attacks that move the character (Ghost Pierce) could not trigger the Leadership passive.

Our time has finally come.

Testing continues with no serious bugs, so here’s another upgrade I made.