This update is mainly focused on improving endgame balance, but a few small new features did manage to sneak in.
Glyph Balance
I did another full balance pass on all glyphs. Many existing glyphs are a little weaker now, and ones with Satisfy and Inspire have been hit the hardest. The early game difficulty is mostly unaffected, but lategame should be significantly more challenging.
The intent here is to reduce lategame reliance on cheesy builds that center on reusing Satisfy glyphs, while allowing more creative approaches like Adapt and Expand decks to shine, and encouraging players to engage with more game features.
There are a couple dozen new glyphs and two new invocations, Shrink (hand size reduction), and Pick (like Draw, but you choose the glyph). Both are fairly rare.
Another major change is that duplicate starter glyphs are now disallowed. If you are in the middle of an expedition, your deck will remain unaffected, but the next time you start a new expedition, duplicate starter glyphs will be reset. It's a bit heavy-handed, but allowing duplicates has been the cause of most of the game-breaking builds I've seen, and this completely plugs that hole. Note that you are still able to have two copies of a glyph as your two signature glyphs, and you are free to gain copies during an expedition.
New and Updated Hauntings
The hauntings feature has also received a balance pass. The frequency of hauntings is roughly the same, but the variance has been reduced greatly. You will no longer run into cases like encountering no hauntings for 8 forays then getting multiple 3-haunting forays in a row.
There are also 10 new hauntings, most adding negative glyphs to your hand as their effect. This gives another avenue for counterplay, and in some cases these can even be used for your benefit.
Some of the artwork has also been redone to better unify the style.
And finally, you can now right click a haunting during a foray to open its museum page.
Kanji Drawing
If you have learning minigames enabled, inscribing a glyph will now require you to draw its associated kanji. There's no penalty for failing and you can retry as many times as you want.
Minor Changes
- Several relics have been adjusted for balance. Most notably, the Traveler's Abacus, formerly the undisputed strongest relic, now reduces hand size by 2 rather than 1. It is still useful if you have other ways to expand hand size, but it is no longer an obvious choice.
- Relics are now also shown on the map screen outside of forays.
- The settings menu now also has an option to show an on-screen button to open the pause menu, allowing for truly mouse-only gameplay.
- The art wiki has received a thorough proofreading and tagging pass.
- Trying to slot a glyph ambiguously now shows clearer error messages.
- The negative outcomes of the Crumbling Rampart event are now less punishing.
- Randomized NPCs have received a batch of new lines.
- The default essence icons have been switched to the accessible versions. The classic ones are still available.
Bug Fixes
- The game's loading system has been reworked to address multiple engine bugs. It's still hitting some issues, but overall it should be faster and more reliable.
- Fixed several performance issues.
- Fixed several UI issues in the art viewer.
- Fixed several issues with the card tear animation.
- Fixed several rare bugs with contextual slot highlighting.
- Fixed relics selected at expedition start showing up as gained in the first foray.
P.S.
The Steam Next Fest is starting today, so if you haven't had a chance to drop a review for the demo, now's the time!