Blood Bonds Balance Patch 0.9.35

Version 0.9.35 is out! Its main focus is on balance adjustments to account for the introduction of a new hero and the Inspiration mechanics in the Blood Bonds update. It also includes several changes in the ongoing effort of making Bonfire more accessible and easy to grasp for new players.

Initially these tweaks and additions were meant to be a part of the next large content update, but as they're all of the small-but-high-impact variety, and there's already a lot of them, we've decided to roll it out earlier.

We would also like to give a shoutout to the community, as a good third of the following fixes were either reported or directly suggested by the players. In particular we would like to thank Midnightdragoness, Tobias Wehrum, TowerWizard, Mahotion, and ltwhiting who provided us with an absolutely copious amount of feedback!
[h2]FULL PATCH NOTES:[/h2]
[h3]NEW CONTENT & FEATURES:[/h3]

• Bloatscorch, a new enemy type, has been added to the monster pool.
  
• Two new mini-bosses have been added, both with unique abilities and combat patterns.
  
• Three new highly-challenging quests have been added, featuring the new mini-bosses.
  Dev note: these new enemies are designed around disrupting the currently dominant tactical patterns and should stir things up quite a bit.
• Character's progress towards their next turn can now be seen as a circle around their portrait.
  
• Affinity gains are now visible through a little heart effect on hero's portrait.
  Dev notes: These changes are a move towards more clarity for the basic mechanics, but they're more of a stepping stone than the final solution.
• A new tier of super-hard combat encounters has been added to late-game rotation.
  
• Links to Discord and Bonfire Wiki are now available in the main menu.
  
• Added some custom errand texts and interactions for Erzsie.
  

[h3]BALANCE:[/h3]

• Zhu the Pyra now accumulates Motivation XP 5% slower.
  
• Zhu's Detonator rune has been reworked to damage all enemies (leading to some sweet chain reactions), but its power has been reduced from 400% to 250%.
  
• Nadia's inspiration first-turn damage boost has been increased from 75-120% to 90-120%, but the effect is halved for area attacks.
  
• XP gained from area attacks has been reduced by 15%.
  Dev note: The combination of Nadia's Trickery and Zhu's high damage output made her the clearly dominant choice for the team carry on Endless runs. These changes aim to reign her in a bit and prevent her levels from spiralling out of control without resorting to ability nerfs. It should also free Nadia's inspiration as a viable option on other heroes.
• Erzsi's inspiration Max HP restoration effect has been reduced from 8-14 to 7-10.
  
• Erzsi's Hypnotize delay power has been reduced from 130% to 120%.
  
• The drain effect on Erzsi's Thrall debuff has been reduced from 80% to 70%.
  
• Erzsi's can now only have one skeletal minion at a time when using her Skull Seed rune.
  Dev note: Erzsi's power levels and damage output were simply too high for such a flexible hero, so a small nerf was in order.
• Nadia's Venom Strike has had its poison power increased from 50% to 60%.
  Dev note: On the other hand, Nadia's DoT output started to lag behind Zhu and Erzsie, so we've decided to give her a significant buff and see how it goes.
• Endless Journey has been re-balanced to be more challenging, with faster growing difficulty.
  
• Certain high-difficulty encounters may have mini-bosses mixed in as normal enemies.
  
• Food chests are now much less common in the Endless Journey.
  
• The effect of all stat-boosting items has been reduced from 12-10.
  Dev note: Endless Journey's challenge level couldn't keep up with the hero power spike caused by Blood Bonds, and some players were able to reach areas in the low hundreds. This should no longer be possible, making Endless runs a more interesting late-game activity.
• After a certain in-game event, all Mournfolk begin to utilise more advanced AI & tactics. Watch out!
  
• Similarly, all undead enemies get a stat boost after another event.
  Dev note: These changes let the game catch up with the power of late-game heroes. Mournfolk AI boost in particular should make the battles against them much more challenging and tactical.
• Unassuming Undead's Multi Slash attack is now less random.
  
• Slightly increased the stats of Wight and Wight Berserker.
  
• All summoned creatures (both enemy and party-controlled) now have 50 HP instead of 70.
  
• Summoning, as well as actions taken by the summons, now grant Motivation XP to the summoner.
  
• Likwise, abilities that manipulate turn order also grant XP now.
  

[h3]GAMEPLAY TWEAKS & MINOR ADDITIONS:[/h3]

• Story quests no longer disappear from the map upon loss. You can retry them right away.
  
• Quest Log can now be viewed during gameplay through the options menu.
  
• Numbers shown when using healing abilities now show the actual amount of HP restored.
  
• Levitating heroes and monsters now actually float!
  Dev note: This is clearly the most important update in the entire patch.
• Piercing attacks now take negative Armor values into account when calculating damage.
  
• Coins are now more shiny-sparkly!
  
• Kill Events won't happen in the very early game now.
  
• Several early tutorials were added to explain some basic but critical mechanics and concepts.
  
• Hero descriptions on the character customisation screen have been updated.
  
• Replaced some ability sound effects with nicer ones.
  
• Timing on several attack animations has been adjusted.
  
• A few shockwave effects have been given way more oomph.
  
• Summon HP bars no longer displays over heroes.
  

[h3]BUG FIXES:[/h3]

• Heavily optimised the amount of texture swaps, especially on the quest summary screen.
  
• Fixed a pretty nasty memory leak related to ambient sounds.
  Dev note: These two changes could lead to a significant performance increase on some low-end systems.
• Wight Berserker is now correctly classified as a mini-boss.
  
• Mandatory encounters with Erzsie are no longer missable.
  
• Inspiration tooltips now show the correct next level data.
  
• Earshot buff no longer produces an attack sound if the user got killed before its activation.
  
• Some important menu chatter on the quest screen is no longer missable.
  
• Several wording issues and typos were fixed.
  
• Fixed a rare crash related to quests with bonus item drops.
  
• Gold counter could sometimes get stuck on sceen for the entire quest. Not anymore.
  
• Corrected some erroneous sprite positions.
  
• Fixed a few more potential crashes related to The Hunter.
  
• Hunter now also displays sportsmanship by actually staying dead when killed.
  
• Mournfolk Knights won't protect other protecting Mournfolk Knights, no matter how hilarious that was.
  
• Fixed some errors in the item collecting sequence at the end of a quest when many items are present.
  
• Corrected some transparency issues on the hero upgrade screen.
  

We hope you like these changes. As always -- if you encounter any problems, would like to check our current development roadmap, or share your suggestions, feel free to drop by our community forums or MoaCube's Discord server.

-Tom