Hello everyball and everycabbage!
Today we would like to take some time to talk about Somu’s Dream, the feedback we gathered, our own observations and what’s to come!
General feedback for our little over-designed side quest has been generally positive and we want to thank everyone for playing and giving us feedback so far!
When it comes to opinions about the mode we want to make sure to include as many players as possible so even though you might not see us comment on everything, we do read most of it (Especially in our dedicated feedback server on Discord).
Now when it comes to issues players have a lot of it seem to boil down to 3 major areas:
- More Content / Blessings
- More Bosses / Challenges
- Damage penalty and grinding tokens
Let’s go over each and talk a bit about what we plan to do about this and when these changes will release!
Content
Some players (correctly) argued that currently each run is rather short and each layer is on the smaller size.
This is for a reason however. As you progress through the game Somu will start to offer deeper dives, specifically whenever an area has been “cleared”, that area will then appear within the dream allowing you to go deeper.
We have quite a lot of areas planned out so making each layer small is crucial to make getting to deeper layers less tedious. With the next update the swamp area will be included as a new layer which now means to fully complete a dive you must clear 4 layers! We don’t want to spoil the final amount of layers just yet but... there will be a lot.
As for blessings, we definitely going to add more! One thing we totally missed out on so far is to simply offer Blessings which turbo charge a particular Enchantment to really allow for some wild builds. So with the next update you will see a lot of new Blessings which are aimed at exactly that.
We’d also like to experiment with risk/reward Blessings that have a malus but a larger buff.
An example which will be available in 0.2 is the Shard o’ Maniac Blessing:
As you can see in exchange for some strength, you’ll be able to get much more shards. In internal tests some high strength builds compared with layer 4 netted you tons of shards. Of course all these numbers are not final and we’ll tweak them if it feels to under- / overpowered.
Additionally new Blessings for the upcoming Cryo Aspect will be added as well. We also noticed that we forgot to implement some Blessings intended for both Physis and Aether! So look forward to fun stuff like Pointy End which drops Caltrops around you on every perfect dodge or Earthen Call, allowing you to summon boulders on every charged ranged shoot.
When it comes to perk prices we don’t want to change them just yet. Technically with the coming update it should be much easier to unlock everything faster. Because of this we don’t want to touch the prices of perks just yet.
Our plan is currently to also unlock perks progressively during the main plot of the game. For Early Access however we want players to be able to already test perks as much as possible, so all perks will be available from the start.
There’s not many perks coming in the next update but one will allow you to select a free Blessing at the start of a dive which we think could also help some early build choices.
Finally, we would like to hear from YOU on what kind of Blessings/Perks you would like to see in Somu’s Dream! For this purpose we created a Thread in our Discord over at Radical Dish - Blessing / Perk Request Megathread where you can make suggestions if you like! Posts can be voted on so if you find an existing idea interesting, vote on it, it really help us see what people want!
Bosses & Challenges
A frequent request we had was to include more bosses fought in their respective areas and we absolutely agree! So with the next update you will start to encounter more of your favorite bosses in the boss room. We realize that some of these bosses are harder compared to others in the same area and we have plans for that as well, which we’ll touch on in a minute.
As mentioned before, layers are short on purpose, however this does not mean we couldn’t at least offer a way for players to make the game harder if they so choose.
This is where the Nightmare Mode will come in. Similar to games such as Hades it is intended as a “build you own challenge”-type mode where options are given to the player to make a dive harder in exchange for Shards (in form of higher exchange rates) and of course bragging rights.
The next update will not include this the nightmare mode just yet mostly because we want to include a dedicated menu which will always display your highest tokens gained (aka your “highscore”) as well as give your access to a run history, fast perk toggles and more.
Here’s a sneak peak at the menu which will pop up when interacting with the bed next to Somu:
Damage Penalty and the GRIND
Probably one of the most talked about feature of Somu’s Dream (at least according to a particular Discord thread) is the damage penalty and how it incentives players not risk going deeper to get more shards.
And you are right here, especially looking at damage numbers in layer 3 onwards, getting hit just once could easily remove a large chunk of your total payout. This is frustrating and makes your time spent feel pointless. Especially if you then die and get an additional malus in form of the reduced exchange rate.
Because of all these very valid points we made the choice to remove the damage penalty entirely! This will already ship with the next update and hopefully make more enticing to grind out deeper layers. There’s also a new flawless combat encounter boni awarded when not getting hit during one.
But that’s not all! In a future update we’ll overhaul the bonus system to award more points for completing these side objectives (as we call them internally) the deeper you are.
For example, currently the flawless layer bonus awards a whopping 1000 extra points. Clearing the first layer is arguably easier than doing the same on the second layer. So our plan is to increase these bonus based on the depth your have reached. The same is true for simply clearing a layer as well. So while the first layer will net you 250 extra points, clearing the second one will get you twice as much and the third one trice as much.
As touched on earlier, some bosses are harder to fight even on the same layer so we also want to increase shard payout whenever you face tricky bosses.
To make sure this is all properly communicated to the player we have to refactor a larger part of the code base and also introduce new UI elements which will display your bonus points gained on a singular floor instead of only once when the dive ends. If you then end a dive we’ll display the bonus points gained on each floor. We’d also like to display some misc stats like the number of enemies defeated or total damage done throughout a dive.
All in all we hope this will make it more interesting to push yourself and not worry to much about taking a hit or two.
That’s all we have today! Thank you for all the feedback it really helps us make the game the best it can be!
See you next time!