The Church is finally open! :}
After months of development, our biggest Twiwood Tales update so far is now live.
The update adds an entirely new dungeon, permanent progression, crafting and equipment upgrades, new characters and enemies, a new boss, new events and adult content, major combat changes, and a large rebalance of the existing game.
Existing saves still work. We have even tested saves from around 10 months ago.
However, for the best experience with this update, we recommend starting a new game.
A lot has changed throughout the earlier parts of Twiwood Tales as well. There is a new introduction, equipment has been redistributed and rebalanced, Lorrien is now introduced through progression, Foxy has a developing story tied to affection, and the overall difficulty curve works much better when experienced from the beginning.
You can absolutely continue with an existing character, especially if you want to reach the Church quickly, but heavily levelled characters may find much of the Forest considerably easier than intended.
The Church now opens into an entirely new dungeon with its own progression and economy.
Upon entering, your accumulated experience, gains, and sins (levels) are burned and converted into Sacrificial Ash.
This becomes the base reward for your run, but cannot be spent immediately.
Regular Dust also cannot be used inside the Church. Instead, you collect and spend Sacred Dust, which is converted back into normal Dust when your run ends.
As you descend, you accumulate Blessings and Curses.
Both increase your final Ash reward multiplier. Stronger Curses offer greater rewards.
When you:
complete the Church
die
or choose to return to the Forest
your Sacrificial Ash is multiplied by your final reward multiplier.
The Ash you earn can then be spent on permanent upgrades through the Cinder Rite.
The Cinder Rite introduces permanent progression between Church runs.
Current upgrades include:
Permanent stat scaling improvements
Reduced node counts across all three maps
A shortcut to the Prayer Garden
A shortcut to the Church Yard
The deeper you go and the greater the risks you accept, the faster you can build up your permanent progression.
Lorrien has now properly joined Twiwood Tales.
They operate a new crafting station where equipment and consumables can be created and upgraded using materials gathered throughout the game.
Nearly 40 pieces of equipment have been rebalanced and redistributed, and equipment can now be upgraded through two additional rarity levels.
Between equipment upgrades, consumables, grenades and other items, the update adds over 100 crafting and upgrade recipes.
Lorrien can also be challenged as a considerably tougher combat opponent and comes with their own adult scene.
Their appearance, dialogue, techniques and scene can change depending on the new Futa Content preference, which can be selected when starting the game or changed later in Settings.
The Church introduces several new encounters:
Cat
Ghost
Church Guardian
Aura Mimic
The Witch, a new major boss
The Forest Mimic has also returned from its suspiciously long break and now drops new crafting materials.
Batsy has moved out of the Forest and into the dungeon, where both Bunny and Batsy can now appear.
Three new random dungeon events have also been added.
And if you'd like to meet Death, there is one small requirement:
You'll have to die first. :}
Death now has their own conversations and story content, and may provide buffs or items before sending you on your way.
Crafting has grown into a much larger part of progression.
The update includes:
35-40 equipment pieces with two upgrade tiers
More than 100 recipes and upgrades
Three tiers of four different grenade types
Three tiers of three different potion types
New materials dropped by Mimics and dungeon enemies
Magic Pages now used for crafting and temporary combat buffs
This also means that equipment found earlier in the game has considerably more long-term value than before.
A lot of work also went into making combat faster and more rewarding.
Successful parries now restore twice the stamina they consume, meaning a properly timed parry results in a net stamina gain.
We're interested to see how this feels in actual play, so let us know whether parrying feels more worthwhile now.
Enemy Technique attacks now also display flash indicators.
Attack indicators have been standardized to appear 0.6 seconds before an attack lands.
The stamina bar now contains separators showing approximately how many parries you currently have available.
Maximum enemy turn time has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds, making turns roughly 33% faster.
The Fast Combat setting now also replaces walking movement with teleportation to further speed things up.
When only one enemy remains, offensive actions no longer ask you to select the obvious target.
Bosses can now have proper combat phases.
As their health decreases, their attacks and behaviour can change rather than repeating the same actions for the entire fight.
Offensive magic now does more than simply deal damage.
Spells can apply secondary effects such as:
Freeze slowing enemies
Burn dealing damage over time
additional elemental effects
Weaknesses, resistances and elemental absorption are also displayed more clearly when an attack lands.
A new adult Technique has been added:
Fricatio - restores MP based on the hero's maximum MP.
Several existing Techniques have also been reworked:
Mammatormentum and Punitor Natium now rely more heavily on Attack Damage scaling, while their base contribution from that stat has been reduced.
Suctus Mammarum now scales from the hero's maximum HP instead of enemy HP.
Techniques now stop automatically once their useful limit has been reached, for example when HP or MP has been fully restored, or enough damage has been dealt to defeat the target.
A completely new opening has been added.
Foxy now also has additional dialogue and story progression tied to Affection. Players who already have Foxy's Affection completely maxed may therefore want to experience this progression on a fresh save.
The story of Twiwood isn't finished yet, though. ;}
Default frame rate is now capped at 120 FPS instead of running unlimited
Added clearer Weak / Resist / Absorb combat feedback
Added secondary effects to offensive magic
Improved enemy Technique attack notifications
Reduced maximum enemy turn duration
Improved Fast Combat behaviour
Removed unnecessary target selection when fighting a single enemy
Equipment has been broadly rebalanced and redistributed
Fixed the Nameless Skeleton event being able to remove an item when the player already had 0
Numerous fixes, animation improvements, sound additions, balance adjustments and general polish throughout the game
This update became considerably larger than we originally expected, and it took us much longer to finish than we had hoped.
Thank you for sticking with us through the wait, reporting problems, sending feedback, and repeatedly reminding us that the Church was calling. :}
We hope you enjoy exploring it.
And as always, please let us know what you think, especially about the new progression and combat changes.