Ver 1.0.6a - Big Balance Patch, 2 new items, many reworked, 1 new song
Ver 1.0.6a Patchnotes
2 new item: Anchor Shovel and Torch Shovel
Anchor has an effect that has been requested by several playtesters.
Also incorporates some of the Queen's Gaze elements, as Queen's Gaze has been reworked.
(Anchor Handle is the old Queen's Gaze Handle)
Torch Shovel is oriented at supporting lava-based gameplay.
Both shovels and handles are immediately available, no need to unlock via in-game achievements.
(If you haven't played recently, I also recommend Potion Dice Shovel, it's also nice.)
7 significantly altered items:
[Mild spoilers]
Queen's Gaze: Now gives runeless gems on the bottom of crate the mirror rune!
Queen's Insignia: Copper that hits bottom forges into diamond!
Chisel: Open chest -> Draw 1 extra drop next turn.
Sleight of Hand: Now triggers an immediate drop instead of adding to coffer.
Penny Ante (handle): Now decreases all shop prices rather than a free reroll for handle shops.
Recharge Shield: Now triggers on Ability Use rather than Coffer Refill, and uses charge cost of ability. In short, 1 charge stone is now 1 shield, but you can decide when you want to apply the shield.
Quiver: Basically, the base version now throws the rocks directly, like the old upgraded version of Quiver, but can only store 20. The new upgraded version still throws rocks directly, but stores 50.
Other item changes:
Rock Combo price reduced from 20 gold -> 15 gold nuggets
Sling price reduced from 12 gold -> 5 gold nuggets
Penny Ante price reduced from 6 gold -> 4 gold nuggets
Copper Knife price reduced from 10 gold -> 5 gold nuggets
Copper Knife base / default effect increased from 0 to 3. (Upgrade as well, 5 -> 8)
Copper Knife handle now gives +7 strength if last forge was a coin, instead of +3.
Small Hands handle effect increased (+5 per shovel -> +8 per shovel)
Purse handle effect increased (+3 per sell -> +5 per sell)
A certain secret item was buffed (it's a secret, so...)
Enemy Balancing
Based on the analytics data from players who opted into sharing anonymous data. (Default = opt-out.)
Mini-Bosses (Mid-run Bosses)
In general, the minibosses were too hard, ate up too much HP, and took too long. They were intended to mix things up and serve as a light check, but often determined a run too early.
Overcharged HP cut in half.
Alloyed HP reduced 30%
Stones dropped by Drowsy cut in half (less damage when it gets angry)
Bombadier HP reduced by 17% (roughly 1-2 bombs)
Poison dropped by Guarded and Puzzling reduced 40%
Puzzling no longer drops Tar
Guarded no longer drops Cursed stones
Guarded has one less lock, so it should be easier to get to full damage state.
Gold Eater attacks reduced 20%
Drowsy drops 34% less cursed stones.
Reflective now attacks directly half the time, and half the time drops tar.
Shifty, on the other hand, was a bit too easy, had it's HP increased by 10%.
End-Run Bosses
However, two bosses were far too easy, easier than any of the mini bosses even. I may have gone TOO far in the opposite direction, but here's the situation:
Faux HP increased 55%
Gold Allergy HP increased 80%. [Note, this makes Gold Allergy / Root King particularly tricky for other characters if you don't plan ahead for it.]
On the other hand, Earth Mother ("Protective") had the HP reduced 20%.
Regular Enemies
In general, in a previous revision, I had removed too much poison, which made it difficult to get poison based items working and complete the poison-based quest. Now, throughout the game, you should be able to see more poison and more cursed stones.
Flighty enemies now drop poison 2 out of 3 times (previously 1 out of 3)
Mysterious in Battle 1 is now slightly easier to unlock
Goliath gives more shield (4 -> 6) and hits slightly harder (7 to 9)
Growers now drop cursed stones, but no longer drop tar.
Shellfish now drop a small number of cursed stones 1 out of 3 times.
Greedy drops more poison now (used to be 3 -> 6 or 7), given that you can weaken it.
I'm sorry, there were several smaller changes to attack or chest patterns, but I forgot to record each one. This was to give some more balance to the attack distributions across battles. (That is, you might face a cursed-stone heavy wave, but other waves might be poison-heavy, or lava-heavy, etc.)
Several encounters also had their composition changed, roughly 1 in 5 of them. Most of these changes are for Battles 4, 5, and 6.
In addition, quite a few enemies had their names changed ("Regenerative" -> "Tonic", "Charger" -> "Ionic", "Overcharged" -> "Electric", "Turn Undead" -> "Undead"). Most of these name changes were for UI purposes, as the names were running off the allocated space. However, none of the monsters had their abilities changed in this patch. The name changes were purely cosmetic in this case.
New Song
The King's Gaoler has a new theme song, inspired by his starting equipment, Ilya's Present. It should play in the Mushroom Forest (or if you turn on Random Song Order, anywhere out of boss fights). I really enjoy this one by Fadlan!
Bugs and UI
While this patch was oriented more on incorporating changes from the data, I did spend some time fixing bugs and improving one or two UI elements.
I added back in the "warp bubble" effect when a merge takes place, but I need to increase it a bit more to make it juicier.
Frog Legs / Lunch Box crate were not resetting the stone size across runs, so if you didn't exit the game it would get larger and larger or smaller and smaller.
Tooltip for "Grip" added.
Other smaller bugs / UI issues fixed.
One secret item had the wrong trigger text, sorry! (The code would trigger at one time, but it said something else.)
A secret handle was ignoring whether the shovels were known or not, now fixed.
Other secret handles were showing up in enemy chests when they shouldn't have been, now fixed.
Future Patch(es):
The data and my own analysis suggests I need to change Vulture, so I will.
Target Crate needs both gameplay iteration and also art iteration (UI)
Wilting / Shellfish pointer still needs visual improvements
I'm not really loving Decay Rock, so it will probably be changed.
Some additional plans for new items to interact with cursed stones.
Additional Artifact artwork from Brian that I need to bring into the game. (Already complete, I just need to spend a little time to get it together.)
1 additional song in the works from Fadlan (more may be coming, but at least this next one).
I'd like to brainstorm more battle modifiers, I'm also tempted to switch the direction of the wind to blow left.
One of the quests, "Stubborn" is too easy to complete given the enemy shield system.
I want to revisit the bonus crates and think about Gaoler and Priest, which crates are particularly well suited for them.
I want to try playtesting Quick Crate so every battle is 3 waves, but does reset after any mid-run boss, but I'm not sure if it will make it into the main game.
Additional debugging, e.g. the "Rewards" button should say "Continue" if there are no more rewards. Greedy / Toxic / Tonic / Ionic all could use better animations to let you know what is happening, etc.
Additional stuff that I'm excited by, but don't want to over promise.
As always, I greatly appreciate all the ideas and feedback. I hope you enjoy Rutrum but please do let me know your thoughts on Discord or Steam Forums, or in game, about what would help you enjoy it more.