MoteMancer's third Major Content Update is Live!
Foundations are modifiers that change the rules of the world and open the door to endlessly varied playthroughs. With the new Enduring Research system, your most optimized factories can now fuel infinite upgrades that carry forward into future worlds. Whether you want to sculpt a unique new challenge or push your alchemy further than ever before, the tools are now in your hands. Welcome to Foundations.
Foundations Make the World
This update comes with 23 unique Foundations that all change the rules of your automation garden significantly. Each Foundation is handcrafted to provide a unique challenge for a playthrough, and allows you to cater your world through deliberate choices rather than sliders.
Fling will double the reach of all Grippers whether you want it to or not - changing the geometry of your base dramatically. Chromatic Fields will create a rainbow of Motes on every patch, giving you access to every element early, but requires careful management. Miasma blankets the world in Entropy when the game begins, forcing you to carve into the cloud to stake your claim. Elementalist lets you begin with Elemental research, but prevents you from using any Salt-based logistics.
Not all Foundations make the game more difficult either. Twinseed makes Mote Patches spawn in pairs to aid early base development. Ancient Spindles prevent Entropy spawning outright, and can be broken to unleash massive Rifts exactly when you so choose.
There is also a randomizer that generates curated sets of Foundations in case you are looking for inspiration, using the same logic as a continued run. Each random set was designed to teach something new and provide a unique challenge.
Full patch notes below for all the gritty details :)
Chromatic Fields, Miasma, Fling, Elementalist
Eternal Research
Elemental Synergy Research has been overhauled in a variety of ways. The new early research recipes are now unique, and the max-tier structures are available as soon as you start farming entropic shards (usually plane 2, unless Foundations affect that). Each Synergy also has an Enduring Research capper node that can be researched indefinitely, providing benefits to your current world, but also a subsequent world if you choose to continue your quest of balance.
Echotracer (the blueprint filling spell) has been removed and Echoflare (that allows filling blueprints from Mana Flares) has moved to very early in the Entropy Research Tree. This guarantees that you can start filling blueprints early instead of having to wait until you get to Shadow. Shadow has received two new Rituals: Seep and Scrying as well.
Wavedash has been replaced with Oracle, allowing you to remotely view any plane from anywhere, and Wavedash now treats all streamways as Paths passively. A new sister research has also been implemented - Wind Surfing - that also passively increases movement speed while in a wind corridor, so enjoy levitating through your gusty grid of wind power.
Extra Highlights
There is a brand new option to play the tutorial from the plane of Fire in addition to Life, allowing you to immediately choose your challenges and benefits. The world of logistics puzzles in MoteMancer is massive, and as always, the path is yours to decide. The Free Demo for MoteMancer has also been updated, and while you cannot choose Fire from there, Twinseed and Apprentice Cache are automatically enabled to give players a taste of the system.
State of the Game and the Future
Now that MoteMancer has an incredibly rich and replayable endgame, the focus turns to art, polish, and quality of life additions. There are still improvements to be made for onboarding, controller support, and modding as well. The current plan is to continue Monday Musings and drop a small update every other week with improvements, since all the changes will be either cosmetic or surface level as opposed to structural changes.
Which Foundations are you planning to try first? Which Foundations would you like to see added in the future? The system was made to be easily extended as your ideas come in.
Time to respec back to an FX artist and bring the world alive 🌿
~CyanAvatar
With the addition of Foundations, MoteMancer now offers hundreds of hours of unique logistics puzzle content. Additionally, MoteMancer will be 20% off for Steam's Spring Sale - If you’ve been waiting to jump in, now’s a great time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3320980/
Steam Reviews
Sharing your thoughts about MoteMancer in a Steam Review is one of the best ways to help the game grow. Understanding what is working, what could use improvement, and most importantly what you hope to see for the future is and always will be what drives the game forward. Your voice matters, and directly affects decisions made throughout the development process.
MoteMancer has a Wiki!
If you are ever feeling stuck, check out the MoteMancer Wiki for additional information, or join our Discord and introduce yourself. There are plenty of friendly alchemists there to help.
Full Patch Notes - v0.4.001
New games will now always begin through the Foundations Menu, you can simply choose a starting plane and go, or cater your world rules as you see fit. Note that the challenge for combining Foundations increases significantly!
New Foundations Available
Starting Plane - You can now choose to start your journey on any Elemental Plane.
Shattered Elements - Permanently removes an Element from the world.
World
- Twinseed - Each Mote Field spawns with a second kindred field.
- World Veins - Mote Fields are smaller, but last forever.
- Jeweled Fields - Mote Fields spawn with 3 intermingled Elements.
- Chromatic Fields - Mote Fields spawn with 5 intermingled Elements.
- Naturalist - Flora cannot be destroyed.
- Prism Portals - Planar Portals are repaired with Prisms instead of Keystones.
Progression
- Apprentice Cache - A small cache of basic logistics tools awaits you.
- Clean Hands - Hand crafting is disabled.
- Theoretical Insight - Research no longer grants free Structures.
- Phased Pockets - Player inventory is unique per plane.
- Elusive Knowledge - Research requires double ingredients per cycle.
- Deep Research - Research requires {0} times as many cycles.
- Marathon - All recipe costs are doubled.
Entropy
- Ancient Spindles - Mote Fields spawn with an Ancient Spindle that prevents Rift incursions.
- Nascent Entropy - Rifts spawn from Mote Fields on the starting plane.
- Drifting Rifts - Rifts slowly drift after spawning.
- Miasma - Entropy surrounds the Great Portal at world generation.
Structures
- Elementalist - Begin with all basic Research unlocked. Salt Logistics cannot be placed.
- Fling - All Grippers have double reach.
- Gripper Claustraphobia - Grippers cannot be placed next to other Grippers.
- Isolation - Structures cannot be placed next to opposing Elements.
- Weakened Tether - Structures cannot be placed on any opposing plane.
- Islands of Power - Power costs increase with each structure in the same network.
New Spells & Rituals:
- Shear - Destroys a Structure and its contents, reclaiming 50% of their Raw ingredients to your inventory. Multiple researchable upgrades.
- Oracle - Remotely view any revealed location on your Map.
- Windbound - Allows Player Inventory to reserve item slots for Vortex.
- Wavedash - changed to a passive that increases movement speed by 30% while on any Streamway, does not stack with Paths.
- Wind Surfing - new passive that increases movement speed by 30% while in a Wind Corridor, does stack with Paths/Wavedash.
- Levitating over chasms has a passive 50% movespeed boost for you Levihaste fanatics.
- Excavator now starts at double harvest speed (and still gets faster), Shear does too (without getting faster).
- Seep - Affected Structures grow Ichor Slick under them.
- Scrying - Affected Infusion Altars research every 3 seconds instead of 5.
Research & Recipe Updates:
- Echoflare - moved to the Entropy Research Tree
- Shadow has received significant changes following the migration of Echotracer/Echoflare, the addition of Shear, and new Rituals.
- Enduring Research - Infinite research is fully implemented and will carry over subsequent playthroughs for the same save file.
- Elemental Synergy branches have been restructured, with new research requirements.
Behavior Tuning and Bug fixes
- MoteMancer's Free Demo has been updated with the two Foundations enabled: Twinseed and Apprentice Cache.
- There is a brand new Tutorial path to start on the Plane of Fire in addition to Life (Retail only).
- Mote patches will start spawning a little further from the Great Portal to avoid early Entropy overlap.
- Planar Portals no longer require a Reaching or Whipping Grippers to repair them.
- Nudging a chest will no longer lose stonebound locks.
- Rift spread now has a little bit of noise to the edges so we get fewer straight lines.
- You can now harvest while you have a blueprint selection.
- Excavate + Raze now works when placing blueprints.
- Production Structures now have a contextual image for when a recipe is not yet researched; clicking will teleport you to the target research.
- Tutorial Corner now supports click to go to research tree for specific helper ?'s
Additionally, MoteMancer's Unity version has been updated which has fixed a few users that were crashing on startup.
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Enduring thanks to all of MoteMancer's Alpha Testers, you make the game better every day :) Thank you!
