Though this next build isn’t *the* Upgrades build, it will have a small number of new and changed upgrades.

Here’s a brief summary of each:

Fast Summon: Converts Summon to a fast action (takes 1/2 a turn instead of a full turn.) Unlike Quick Summon, this has no cooldown. Fast Summon is now a pre-req for Quick Summon, and replaces Quick Summon has a starting upgrade for Crown of Glory.

Fast Dismiss: Converts Dismiss to a fast action (takes 1/2 a turn instead of a full turn.) Unlike Quick Dismiss, this has no cooldown. Fast Dismiss is now a pre-req for Quick Dismiss, and replaces Quick Dismiss has a starting upgrade for Crown of Glory.

Lifeguard: Significantly reduces the MaxHP lost when Demon Preservation is triggered.

Death March: Requires Lifeguard. Restores a demon’s HP and removes negative status effects when Demon Preservation is triggered.

Restore Demon: Unlocks Restore Demon, which allows you to revive dead non-unique demon allies. No longer costs credits, but will have a cooldown similar in nature to Enemy Lure.

Consume (changed): No longer an upgrade to Delete Demon, it is now unlocks its own Consume transmutation, which you can use to heal yourself by draining your allies’ MaxHP.

First up in the parade: Demon Preservation!

Demon Preservation functions similarity to Relic Preservation: if a summoned demon would die, the relic can draw upon the demon’s MaxHP to save it via an emergency unsummoning:

Demon Preservation is a bit nastier a bargain though… a demon saved by it suffers a Severe drop in MaxHP. It won’t be much use for active combat again until you’ve won a few battles (since, remember, gaining experience restores MaxHP damage.)

Notably, while Demon Preservation drains roughly 90% of a demon’s MaxHP, it doesn’t require that much to trigger: a Demon need only be at 50%+ of its maximum HP in order to be able to be saved from death. (MaxHP will blink red when a demon’s MaxHP has fallen too low to trigger Demon Preservation; this feature is not yet present in the screenshots above.)

Some other things will be changing too, in relation to this mechanic’s addition:

* Restore Demon will now require an upgrade to use. Faithful Heart summoners will begin with Restore Demon (replacing Revelation.)
* Restore Demon will no longer cost credits, but has a non-standard (to be designed/decided) cooldown mechanic. Additionally, it will no longer be usable on uniques.
* Consume will no longer require Deleting a demon, instead it will be its own action, with the results based on both the level and MaxHP of the target. The target’s MaxHP will be reduced to almost nothing, rather than dying. Note: Consume will give practically no benefits on demons with any significant damage to their MaxHP… though the results of using it on demons with artificially boosted MaxHP might be surprising.
* Damage and healing will be increased across the board again. One of the major reasons for making this change is so that I no longer have to balance damage and healing against very very unlikely, but still vaguely possible, “effectively one shot” scenarios. Now that both summoners and demons have some cushion against such “bad luck”, I will be able to take off the leash a bit and speed up combat overall.
* …and other changes as well, to be decided.

I’ll continue to post updates and information as they become available (but still in busy times at work, so the pace will remain slow for a little bit longer.) Cheers!

Thanks to a lot of testing help from TChey, I think I will be able to release a build soon that has significantly improved fullscreen mode visuals, even on Linux builds.

The build will also include a few bug fixes for some of the new abilities, and a new keypress for ability swapping so that this feature is available on non-QWERTY keyboards.

After this release, I’ll need to switch to focusing on work for a bit as we head into a major deadline there, but after that, it will be time to start on some of the long awaiting feature builds that’ve been teased for some time now: things like Relic Preservation for Demons, Relic Upgrade Revamps, Demon Traits, etc. I’m looking forward to those, and I hope you all are too.

Sorry for the slightly longer than usual blog post gap; work is starting to pick up again unfortunately, so updates/work speed will be dropping a bit.

The next build I’m working on is an attempt to fix “stretching” issues some players have been experiencing when playing in fullscreen mode, along with a few other bug fixes.  I’m hoping this won’t take toooo long, it’s definitely an “eat my vegetables” sort of build, but I’d promised to look into this some time ago, and am more than overdue on finally getting around to it.

Speaking of demons that got new/changed abilities…

Here’s a few previews of the new/changed starting options coming in the next build. I realize any time I change these someone will probably be grumpy…

…but on the other hand, 1) I’m planning on nerfing starting builds as a whole Really Soon (will be the same build that revamps Relic Upgrades), 2) This is the easiest way to make sure people get to try out the new ability types, since there aren’t any new demons using them and most will otherwise be limited to modifiers and a few changed demons, and 3) Demon’s still in alpha

Quick update: I hope to release the “bucket of abilities” build, with nearly 60 new abilities sprinkled throughout the Tower, by sometime this weekend. Cheers!