Hey everyone!
Prologue v1.0.05 is ready, and it includes a lot of great changes!
Balance
The focus of this update was to address some major balance issues. Looking at the analytics was really interesting. One would assume that the win percentage for a players first run would generally be lower than subsequent runs, but this did not turn out to be the case! The win percentage for run #1 in aggregate was almost two times higher than the win percentage after the first run. The tutorial seed was just that powerful!
In addition to looking over the most common spells in winning runs, this led me to an interesting conclusion. The most powerful, unbalanced spells were all present and prominent in the tutorial seed. And the most experienced roguelike players could identify that they were broken pretty immediately and were able to easily shift their builds to amplify this imbalance. This line of thinking consolidates the conflicting "The balance is perfect." comments and "This game is way too easy." comments. So the major target for this balance patch is nerfing the few very unbalanced spells to make the game more interesting.
Spells:
Boulder Toss damage: 25 -> 22
Cleave the Mountain's damage is no longer affected by dice runes or bodies
Cobbled Armor barrier: 2 -> 4
Cobbled Armor repeat: 2 -> 1
Force of Nature dice cost: Exact 1 -> Exact 1 & Exact 1
Huddle Up barrier: 10 -> 9
Landslide dice cost: Countdown 7 -> Countdown 8
Landslide damage: 7 -> 6
Mined Explosive's effect now stacks
Mined Steel's effect now stacks
Mined Steel stacks: 25 -> 20
Nurture the Land dice cost: Countdown 3 -> Countdown 5
Quicksand dice cost: Dice with Rune -> Min 7 & Dice with Rune
Seek Shelter barrier: 20 -> 16
Stone Strike dice cost: Max 3 & Max 4 -> Max 3 & Max 3
Stone Wall barrier: 20 -> 18
Topple the Spire damage 15 -> 11
Walk Without Rhythm sandstorm intensity: 2 -> 1
Dice Runes and Bodies:
Unstoppable Dice Body's permanent damage increase: 5 -> 4
Immovable Dice Body's permanent barrier increase: 5 -> 4
The data showed that for the most part, dice runes and dice bodies are mostly quite well balanced at the moment. Anecdotally however, I have seen that the Unstoppable and Immovable dice bodies are quite absurd though, so they received a slight nerf.
However, since game balance is all part of one big ecosystem and the dice modifier's strength is largely tied to spells, I'll be keeping an eye on them with the large list of spell balance changes.
Enemies:
Area 1:
The Replicator HP: 104 -> 102
Area 2:
Bladed Dancer HP: 44-49 -> 47-52
Emerald Demon Flat Damage attack damage: 14-17 -> 17-21
Emerald Demon Multi-Attack damage: 6 -> 7
Luck Feeder HP: 37-42 -> 39-44
Spell Mite Multi-Attack count: 3 -> 4
Arena Hero HP: 97-105 -> 101-109
Master of the Armory HP: 93-100 -> 97-104
Master of the Armory Flat Damage Attack #2 damage: 8-10 -> 15-18
Master of the Armory Flat Multi-Attack #2 count: 3 -> 5
Writhing Slime Multi-Attack damage: 3 -> 4
Area 3:
Trickster HP: 65-78 -> 75-88
Orb HP: 72-81 -> 81 -> 92
Chaos Mass HP: 325 -> 315
Deathless One attack base damage: 30 -> 25
Exploding Ether Explosion Attack damage: 45 -> 40
Volatile Being Explosion Attack damage: 90 -> 100
Origin of Sickness HP: 465 -> 442
Updated Origin of Sickness' attack pattern code
Area 5:
No Changes
The enemy balance issue is a bit more complicated, and is also closely tied to the strength of the spells. I didn't want to mess with the enemy balance too much after making such large changes to the spells. So expect another balance update focused on the enemies in the next couple weeks as I gather more data. For now, these changes address some dramatic misalignments with the game's difficulty goals that need to be corrected now.
Events:
Self Help Guru: The amount of runes given for option #1 has increased from 3 -> 5
Totems of Sacrifice: Added an option to lose HP for 5 random runes
I wanted to add some more options for gaining dice runes and to make events more attractive in Area 1, so that's what these changes are meant to address. I've got plans to improve Area 1 gameplay diversity planned for the final version of the game as well.
Misc:
Combat rewards give slightly less gold
New Dice shop price: 230-250 -> 214-227
Quality of Life improvements:
Price display text in the Shop will now turn red when you cannot afford the item
You now gain 10 gold when you trash a spell
Increased scroll speed of Credits screen
There are some other quality of life changes I want to add, but doing so in this patch would have greatly delayed the very important balance changes, so look forward to those in future patches.
Clarity Improvements:
Deep Roots now clarifies that it doesn't stack in the tooltip text.
All spell effects that have "Destroy dice" now clarify that the dice are only destroyed until the end of combat
Seeing Red unit ability in non-English languages updated to match the English text
Erratic Dice Body effect in non-English languages updated to match the English text
Some non-localized texts that were not localized are now localized to all supported languages
The following spell effects have been un-keyworded on their spells for additional clarity:
Abrasive
Mined Explosives
Mined Steel
Turn to Sand
Bug Fixes:
Avatar of the Soul's Unit ability now shows the correct Status tooltip for the affected Status effect
Fixed a bug where Mined Explosives' status damage would sometimes not trigger victory when killing the last enemy
Fixed a bug where a spell with a countdown dice slot that destroyed itself while using time rune would not correctly count down all other spells with countdown dice slots before destroying itself
Fixed a visual bug where a spell that destroyed itself would destroy its dice slot after the rest of the spell
Visual Improvements:
Triggering Mined Explosives now spawns an explosion particle effect
Other Misc Changes:
Added credits for the localization team
Wow... that was a lot of changes. Thanks for reading until the end! If you thought the game was too easy, I would encourage you to hop back in and give it a try!
Thanks as always for playing my game, and I hope these changes make it an even better experience for you!
-Thomas, PolyGryph