Update 36 - A faster show

Contestants!

I’ve been brewing up some changes for a little while but I simply couldn’t wait to share them with you.

This time I’ve focused a lot on making performance work better, fixing issues with crashes and low framerates and adding my world famous “Ugly but Fast” Quality setting, in case you didn’t care about bleeding your eyes out!
I’m very excited to hear your feedback on this new update, remember to visit the forums!

Features

• Lots and lots of performance optimizations.
• In-game news screen, to better keep our community up to date on upcoming content.
• The Chamber hall information is much clearer, only showing the modifier (because I’m balancing the show behind the scenes when you get good ones anyway!)
• The VS screen received a nice touch-up, adding companions, scaling the bosses up and adding information about the effects on enemy spawns from the Battle rules.
• All remaining cards have their illustrations.
• Settings
  • Reworked the settings menu into sub-menus for easier navigation
  • Added quality level selection to the visual settings

Balance

• Crucible chamber 1 battles (except keeper) made slightly harder.
• +20% point drops in campaigns.
• Point and gold drops stay 5 seconds, down from 6. The Greed Hurts bosscard increases this to 6 seconds, down from 8.
• The 'Kill' keyword now triggers when an enemy is killed, even if you did it through your companion, with a barrel or lured them into friendly fire for the killing blow.
• Brutus now heals 3 health per enemy hit instead of 10 health per enemy killed.
• Max boons increased - it should no longer be possible to cap out on points.
• Point pickups in dailies now increase your score by 3, down from 5.
• Most quests now add some amount of gold or shards to their reward.
• Champions:
  • Overcharge radius reduced from 6.15 to 5.80.
  • Overcharge now deals reduced damage the further an enemy is away from you. This should bring a higher skill cap to getting full value from the skill.
  • Beam of Light damage per stage increased from 4/5/7/30 to 4/6/9/30.

• Cards:
  • Call the sun now deals 12 damage per second (up from 8) and heals 8 damage per second (up for 4). Duration reduced from 10 to 8 seconds.
  • Stacking Aftershock or Combustion corpse now sums the damage into one big hit, rather than each stack hitting individually.
  • Aftershock kills now count as caused by Volcanic Strike, so it can chain reaction.
  • Masochistic Blade reworked: "+65% Damage. 10% risk of taking 5 Damage when you deal a hit." It now counts each hit of an AoE attack, rather than just dealing damage for it once.
  • Removed cooldown from Combat Healing Potion.
  • Removed cooldown from Rage Potion. It's now possible to have multiple of them active at once.

• Bosscards:
  • All For One clarified and rebalanced: "Killing a non-summoned enemy heals all other non-summoned enemies for 50."

• Battle Rules:
  • Desperate Survival rule can no longer occur for chamber guardians.
  • Rebel Whirly Rat rule is now considered less positive than before (they are pretty unconcerned about friendly fire).
  • Necromancer increases damage taken by 100%, down from 200%, and is considered less positive than before.
  • Fluctuations is now considered neutral.
  • Supplies: Masochistic Blade is now considered neutral.

• Enemies:
  • Frank's rocket attack made slightly easier to dodge.
  • Graw made less punishing at close range.
  • Legendary enemies (from boss cards) and treasure goblins now scale their health with battle and arena difficulty, similar to companions. They will start out a lot more manageable and scale up to being extremely strong in the endgame.
  • Alden no longer stumbles when hit.
  • Bannerman no longer heals himself. Healing reduced to 8 per second.
  • Snake Mage no longer stumbles when hit. This should make it a lot harder to prevent their giant ball spell being cast.
  • Living Armor Mage health reduced from 110 to 60.
  • Living Armor Lancer health reduced from 135 to 100.
  • Heavy Militia speed increased from 6 to 7 and damage from 13 to 18.
  • Garden World 1 crossbowman takes up a greater part of the spawn budget.
  • Musketeer takes up a greater part of the spawn budget.
  • Knight made slightly more expensive to spawn and no longer stumbles when hit.
  • Priestess damage and range nerfed. Her beams are slighty slimmer, fire a split-second slower and her attack pattern now has a slight opening to exploit. Her targeting AI was significantly improved.
  • Chargers can appear in Dungeon 2.
  • Chasing Ghost level 2 now has more damage and a longer charge. Can appear in Dungeon 3.

Quality of life

• Added a lot of niceness to the Fortune menu, with faster spins, cool FX and the option to click to make it even faster!
• Text now says if the boon you earn turns out to be rare or supreme.
• Loading Screen tips improved.
• Clarified some quest texts (e.g. "don't pick up any health globes" does not fail if companion touches them or they are sent by arena ending).
• The Addon effect of the Paranoid card now shows when the shield will be refreshed.
• Holding a consumable keypress too long no long casts multiple charges.
• Most consumables can now be spammed as fast as you can spam the button (used to be a 0.3 sec cooldown).
• Basic attack descriptions now specify that they are the basic attack.
• The defeat screen no longer reveals the keepers that the player did not reach.
• Concede no longer kills you before ending your run.

Fixes

• Rush buffs now correctly last 15 seconds, instead of 10.
• Fixed an issue where Stormbringer arrows would sometimes fail to fire.
• Force Barrier will now again hit all targets inside it when it is cast.
• Gold rewards were being given 3 times.
• Fixed an issue where all enemies in a daily would drop maximum possible points.
• Dailies no longer count points from pickups twice.
• The addon effect of Behold Me! now works again.
• Fusion Power was limited to two stacks of the buff.
• Comeback Kid now stacks correctly when multiple of them are played.
• Frenzy (card) now correctly grants the crit buff even when not below 50% health.
• Your buff icons now correctly show when you have played Sunscorch multiple times.
• Chaotic Illumination can no longer be fired infinitely when no minions are alive.
• Can no longer cause issues by rapidly spamming The Nuke (it has a slight cooldown now).
• New players were incorrectly given 2 copies of the 6 cards that are awarded at the start of the game for more deckbuilding options.
• Desperate For Kills was triggering in circumstances
• Points should no longer time out while flying to the player after arena completion.
• Fixed various issues with Necromancer rule and Dropkick of Persuasion.
• Some enemy types were still targeting player while on your team.
• Kicker upgrades now work when played automatically by battle rules.
• A Package Deal played by battle rules now only takes effect after mulligan is done.
• The 'Channel' keyword now also works in the tutorial (if you happen to draw them with Ooh, Shiny!).
• Fire traps can no longer spawn beneath gates.
• Enemy health bars were sometimes not showing.

Remember you can follow the progress of my Dwarf Development slav- I mean, servants, at:
https://trello.com/b/m8udgXeV/forced-2-main-board

<3
C-SAR