Hey folks! Today brings the release of Update 0.45 for Camelot Unchained, including a swathe of balance changes, bug fixes, performance improvements for UI and more. We also wanted to discuss what we changed from a balance perspective in a bit more depth, in order to provide more context and information for our players.
This patch, we’ve centered our balance adjustments around addressing a few of the more stand-out abilities, as well as bringing Warlocks up to meet the standard of other damage dealing archetypes. Specifically, the longer cast times on some Warlock abilities combined with not being able to move while casting was being under-weighted when balancing them. To address this, Warlocks are seeing buffs to most of their damage across the board, but especially for longer cast-time abilities, to make up for the higher opportunity cost associated with standing still.
We've also seen the average time to kill moving in an overall positive direction over the last couple of patches. To move this further along toward where we want it to be, and especially to reward characters that build into high Vitality and high Bonus Health on gear, we’ve increased base Health as well as the scaling on Bonus Health granted by Vitality. With this change, all characters should feel a bit beefier, but characters who focus on their Vitality will see the biggest difference.
Another damage related adjustment was made to abilities that deal added damage based on a percentage of the target's Health. All of these effects now have caps on the max amount of damage added. These caps are high enough that they will mainly kick in against stronger NPCs and gates rather than against players. We’ve also addressed a bug in the math for these that was causing them to deal incorrect damage in some cases (more often too much than too little); the overall result is a bit lower average damage dealt by these abilities.
As a last note on balance tweaks, we know that out-of-combat Movement Speed buffs overriding each other in a party has been a pain point for a while. Our designers decided to make unique, out-of-combat Movement Speed buffs stack with each other. To balance this, the Performers' Song of Travel buff and each Warlock's Movement Speed buff have had their potency reduced. The overall effect is that having both Performer and Warlock speed buffs in a party will result in a slightly higher total buff than either did previously.
In addition to the above balance changes, you can look forward to updated visual effects for all of our zone portals, and now interact with them utilizing the Interact key instead of being instantly teleported. Each portal is now labeled in the game world to tell you its destination - we’re working on introducing this feature to the world map as well. The Party and Warband UI have had a round of fixes implemented that should greatly reduce instances of perceived lack of responsiveness, and we have introduced Quest Log UI elements for tracking tasks.
Above: Our updated portal VFX in action - daytime on the left, and night on the right.
Finally, we wanted to call out that we are aware of a bug causing players to be unable to move after being resurrected by an ally. We’ve figured out the specific circumstances of this bug, and players should expect to see it when they’re in a warband and under the effects of two different party buffs when being revived. If you encounter this bug, exit out of your client completely and log back in - this will resolve the issue.
We hope you enjoy Update 0.45, and we look forward to seeing you in-game!
P.S. - We released a video covering today's update on our YouTube channel - check it out!
Added new spider enemies to Silvermine Mountains.
Update to world zone portals.
The VFX at zone portals have been updated.
The portals are now interactive prompts instead of instant interaction.
The portals now have in-world naming to identify where they go.
New prospecting resource models.
Added the option to remove Friendly statuses by right-clicking them on your nameplate.
Increased the scaling of Max Health and Bonus Health Increase from Vitality.
Unique, permanent, out-of-combat speed buffs now stack with one another.
Added caps on the added damage of abilities dealing percent Health added damage.
Increased damage of Warlock abilities across the board, but especially on those with longer cast times.
Reduced Movement Speed granted by Aether Currents, Wings of Night, and Speed of the Forest Kin from +20% to +18%.
Flame Warden
Fixed a bug preventing Merlin's Shield from being used.
Updated Flames of Immortality to allow the stored damage to be cleansed before it is applied.
Fianna
Fixed a bug causing Inescapable Vines to require Courage in order to use.
Fixed the description of Nature's Defense displaying the wrong buff value.
Added a cap to the stored damage on Retribution Strike.
Mjolnir
Fixed bug causing the buff provided by Let's Begin to appear as a negative status.
Reduced damage on Drums of War slightly.
Black Knight
Fixed a bug allowing Blade of the Duelist to be used without having the required Courage.
Added a cap to the stored damage on Arm of Arthur.
Fixed a bug preventing Dread Cry from being able to break active Control Effects.
Fixed a bug allowing Blackguard’s Backstep ability Cooldown to be circumvented.
Reduced the damage of Empath’s Anam Truaillithe.
Fixed a bug causing Red Cap’s Poison Mastery to be removed on death.
Reduced the out of combat Movement Speed buff granted by Shadow Walker’s Master of Shadows from 25% to 18%.
Reduced Movement Speed granted by Song of Travel from 60% to 48%.
Fixed a bug preventing Dark Fool’s Tolling of the Dead from applying for the correct duration against Panicked targets.
Fixed a bug allowing the CD of Skald chants to sometimes be circumvented.
Fixed a bug causing Minstrel’s chants to sometimes not replace each other correctly.
Added new SFX to Max Reagents UI Select.
Added new DX for Troll Death.
Added new SFX for new spider enemy type.
Performance updates to party and warband UI. We believe this first round of performance changes should greatly improve responsiveness and resolve issues that may have looked like unresponsive UI.
Added Quest Log UI. Participation and trade in quests can now be tracked through a Quest UI window or HUD options.
Fixed a bug causing Max Health increases from food to not scale with Vitality/Bonus Health Increase.
Fixed a bug where party members in a different zone would show as selected.
Fixed a bug causing some abilities to deal the incorrect amount of percent Health added damage.
Healing yourself or applying a buff to yourself while in combat will no longer keep you in combat (healing or applying a buff to other allies who are in combat will still reset your in combat timer).
Fixed a bug causing Bran's Gift to apply Resurrection Sickness to living allies when cast.
Fixed a bug causing some Viking armor to apply the incorrect stats.
Fixed a bug preventing effects like Stun, Disarm, and Silence from interrupting abilities.
Fixed a bug allowing some abilities to affect allied gates.
Fixed an incorrect description on Conviction.
Fixed a bug where some textures would render at their lowest setting.
Fixed a texture streaming crash that may occur when traveling between maps.
Fixed a bug allowing negative status effects to be applied to characters with Zone Protection.