The Slormancer News

Hello everyone!

First and foremost, the Mage Academy Update Part.2 will be released on April 18, 2022.
We're pretty much done with what we wanted to add for this update. We'll try to sneak in a couple more changes and reworks during the remaining days of this week and use one additional week to polish things out and remove as many bugs as possible.
Since we've been reworking the early part of the game, we want to be extra cautious with what we offer to brand new players and make sure there are absolutely no bugs or unintended behaviours.



Now that all dialogues and missions have been written, we can talk about the details of The Mage Academy, without revealing too much of course.



The next part of the story will take place in the Mage Academy, where you will have to find the Destroyer of Indestructible and Unbreakable Seals that Olorin, the Archmage, uses as a paperweight.

To get to it, you will have to face students, teachers and other weird creatures now under the control of Ohm Agad.

Students in the Mage Academy are divided into 4 Houses: Arcaiman, Temppopotamus, Oblitelican and Necromanchovy (you might be familiar with the idea).



We tried to add diversity by recoloring clothes and other parts of enemies (even from older ones) depending on where you are in the Academy.
If you are in a common room such as the Great Hall, then you will meet students from all houses, but if you are in say, the Arcaiman dormitory, then you will only encounter Arcaiman students.
We've also tried to work on a different ambiant lighting for every house so you can feel different ambiances.

The Great Hall

Arcaiman's Dormitory

The Mage Academy includes a boss fight against Alarin, Olorin's Evil Twin!





You can also read our previous Slormite Chronicle to get more information about The Mage Academy.


The Slormancer slowly reveals its features and richness over the course of the first dozen of hours. Unfortunately, a significant number of players simply does not get to this point and simply stops in the middle of Act 1. To most, Act 1 is boring and repetitive, which is a big issue for us.

So we've been taking the time to rework most missions and the overall pace of the early game:
We've greatly increased the diversity of enemies that you can find in Act 1 (from 4 to 12), we've reduced the size of the larger maps while increasing the density of enemies when possible. We also tried to create more interesting yet approachable fights and compositions.
We've also added Named Elites and Exalted Breaches throughout Act 1.

Regarding pacing, we've reduced the evolution level of Adam Nostrus' Reaper (the base reaper), from level 36 to level 8, so players are introduced to the evolution mechanic much sooner.
We've also forced the loot of specific Slorm Reapers at key points during the history. These are different based on the class you are playing. Again, we want to make sure the "Slorm Reaper loot" mechanic is properly introduced to new players, in an exciting fashion.

We've also changed the 2 missions in Act 1 that let you unlock new classes: These can now be accessed much sooner (after the second mission), and are no longer mandatory, so you can unlock missing classes whenever you feel like it.

All these changes should make Act 1 more dense and interesting.

We also plan to keep improving new player experience and pacing of new mechanics over the duration of Early Access.

That's about it for now!


Oh, and in case you didn't read the very first line and jumped to the end of the article: The Mage Academy Update Part.2 will be released on April 18, 2022.

Cheers!

Hello everyone!

We've pretty much revealed everything that is planned for the upcoming update in the previous Slormite Chronicle. There are a few things that we've implemented and that we haven't (or barely) mentionned so I'll try to cover that instead today, starting with a couple of informations about The Mage Academy itself.


The next part of the story will take place in the Mage Academy, where you will have to find the Destroyer of Indestructible and Unbreakable Seals that Olorin, the Archmage, uses as a paperweight.

There, you will have to fight dead yet deadly students of the four houses of the Mage Academy which is now under the control of no other than Olorin's evil twin... Alarin.

Witches from the 4 houses.

The Mage Academy can now be visited.

Alarin, signing out.


We're introducing a new NPC called Cory Ironbender, the last living Reapersmith, that you will be able to unlock throughout Act III. Unfortunately, he is retired.

He will probably have a role to play in The Great Forge, The Slormancer's upcoming endgame mode.
Who knows?

Cory Ironbender, retired Reapersmith.


We're introducing 7 new Cataclysms and 2 new Exaltations.
The complete list will be revealed later. For now, here are a couple of examples:
- "Replicant": Enemies summon a copy of themselves when they reach 50% Life.
- "Gargantuan": Enemies are bigger and deal 200% Increased Damage until they receive damage.
- "Assimilation": Enemies receive 15% Decreased Damage for each yard between them and the damage's source.

Gargantuan effect (I died taking that screenshot).


We've added a new way for Breaches to spawn enemies (so this is INSTEAD of getting 1, 2 or 3 waves of enemies) called the Chaos Wave.
When triggered, the Chaos Wave spawns a few dozens of enemies, at an accelerating pace and with random compositions.
The description doesn't do justice to this event, it's quite fun if I do say so myself. :)




We still have quite a bit of stuff we want to get done for this update (a skill to rework, a couple of mechanics to improve, Act I to rework and a few more things), and each element could take longer than anticipated so we feel like it's still too soon to give a precise timeframe. On top of that, adding elements to the story and new missions require a bit more testing that the usual.
I'm pretty sure we unfortunately won't make it in time for march, so we'll rather try to get it out before the 1 year anniversary of the game (on April 6), but again, easier said than done.
At the very least, you'll have a new Chronicle on that day with a release date. :x

That's about it for this Chronicle.
Have a nice sunday everyone!

Hello everyone!

0% Pure Stats
- The issue with 0% Pure Stats on equipment has been resolved and should no longer occur.
- This also includes stats that were Locked on your equipment after loading the game.

Items with this issue have been restored:
- Unless I missed something, 0% Pure Stats were not Pure Stat from the start, and only became Pure Stat (at 0%) because of said bug, so your stat should be restored to its Non-Pure Stat version.
- Stats that were Locked to your item should also be unlocked.

If you're still having issues, please let me know.

Major Bugs:
- Fixed a crash occuring when being hit by a trap with Emergency Nova equipped.

Slorm Reapers:
- Reaper of Concentrated Inner Strength should now deal the proper amount of damage.
- Concentration should now work properly and display the correct icon.
- Totem from Slormandrite Reaper of the Shaman should no longer benefit from additional projectiles.
- Inner Fires should no longer trigger the sound of Wall of Omen

Extras
- Treasure Chests should now properly spawn in The Mage Academy.
- Minions should no longer benefit from Cataclysms (this time it's for real).
- Max Slormite, Slormeline and Fragments Stack size has been increased to almost infinity.
- Skill behavior change: You now have to release the button used to cast a Skill inherited from a Reaper or a Legendary before being able to cast it again. This was made to prevent multiple and accidental casts with high Attack Speed.

Enemies
- Elite Witchs should cast slower, so that the seal remains avoidable.
- Witches' Seals should now properly appear in The Slorm Temple.

That's it for now!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!

Today will be a pretty light Slormite Chronicles since we've just released the content we've been working on lately, so we don't have much left to show.
We will instead talk about our short term plans and what's to come in the next update.

First thing first, we have one (hopefully) last patch coming up on Monday that should fix the most important bugs that arose with The Mage Academy update, including the notorious "0% Pure Stat" bug some of you may have.
Our entire Art department (being one person) is already working on the upcoming update while the whole Tech department (being me) is making sure that Monday's patch doesn't add more bugs than it fixes.

That being said, here's the updated Road Map.



We still have 2 updates planned to complete the second part of the Road Map. The first one will be centered around Act III and the second one around what we call The Great Forge, which is an upcoming endgame mode.


This is what we're currently working on. Here's what to expect:

• Act III:
  Act III should include around 10 new missions, a new Boss, new mission mechanics and new silly dialogues, all taking place in the Mage Academy.
  
  
• New Ancestral Skills:
  A new Act also means a new Ancestral Stone and new Ancestral Skills. The 4th Ancestral Stone will grant you access to 30 new Skills. This includes 10 new Active Skills and a new category of Ancestral Skills called "Imbue Skills".
  Imbue Skills lets you permanently imbue your Primary and Secondary Skill with an element (FIre, Ice, Light, Lightning or Shadow) of your choosing. Each element has its own mechanic.
  For example, Fire applies Burn to enemies hit (dealing Elemental Damage to them every second) while Ice applies Chill (slow) to enemies hit.
  Inside each part of the Ancestral Tree, you will then find new nodes to upgrade these mechanics. At some point, Ice will then have a chance to Freeze Chilled enemies, and later on to trigger Icicles from Frozen enemies.
  
  On top of that, Imbue Skills also change the design of your Skills.
  Some Exalted Breaches have a similar effect, so if you've ever activated an Exalted Breach granting you a Fire or an Ice buff, it's basically the same, except it's permanent. \o/
  
  
• Increased Level Cap:
  We will increase the Level Cap to 60 with this update.
  
  
• New Cataclysms and Exaltations:
  We will also introduce 5 new Cataclysms and 2 new Exaltations. We've yet to determine which one are going to get into the game, so I can't tell your more about it right now.
  
  
• Act I Rework:
  We will also take the time to rework Act I. We've mentioned this before but the first couple of hours in a game are crucial, and new players tend to get bored by the low amount of diversity and the lack of interesting mechanics at this point in the game.
  We do not plan to rework the whole Act from the ground up but we believe that we can provide a much better flow content-wise. For instance, we'd like to introduce enemies at a much faster pace to new players, and new Reapers as well as Exalted and Cataclysmic Breaches. We also think that introducing a couple of missions outside of the Graveyard, in a different environment would make a huge difference. Introducing named Elites, shortening the larger maps and creating more interesting enemy squads are also on the table.
  Basically, we want to make Act I flashy and fun so new players can get a better idea of what to expect later on.
  
  
• Other Reworks:
  Since our reworks list is getting bigger everyday, we will probably introduce the rework of a couple of mechanics or Skills, depending on the time we have left.
  We know that some Skills like Crest Shield or some mechanics such as "pulling" enemies need a bit of attention from us to make a healthier game so we will try to introduce reworks every now and then while trying to maintain a good pace of new content.
  
  
• WHEN?
  We will do our best to deliver the update as soon as possible and I don't want to make promises but we expect to get the update done in about 2 months.
  

We're thrilled by the latest reviews The Slormancer is getting on Steam, and it seems like players were pleased by the latest additions. This makes a big difference for us: we feel like we're making the right choices and we are happy to work on the game, and I also feel like I'm always having fun when I'm interacting with the community. All in all, this is a huge boost of motivation for us!

So thanks for playing the game and being there with us, you awesome people!


That's it for now!
Have a nice day everyone!

Hello everyone!

Bug Fixes:
- Players that couldn't start The Slormancer due to compatibility issues with Windows 7 should now be able to. Please let me know if this is working properly as I have no way to test this myself.

- Fixed a crash when entering the Slorm Temple with the Elder Reaper of the Slorm Temple.
- Fixed a rare crash occuring when entering Expeditions.

Pure Reaper of the Temple Keeper:
- The Mini-Keeper now properly disappears when you unequip the Reaper.
- Now properly scales on Minion Increased Damage and Totem Increased Effect.
- Now also properly scale with Aura Increased Effect.
- Primordial Increased Effect now also properly work.
- Balance Change: Now deals Elemental Damage equal to 5% of the enemy's Max Life (instead of 20%).
Because we're reintroducing proper scaling to the Slorm Reaper, you should get back to the same result as you used to by simply leveling up the Reaper since the Mini-Keeper now benefits from Minion Increased Damage and Totem Increased Effect while in a Totem form.
Basically, it's no longer 20% from the start, which was a bit too much of a gift, but you can easily get back to it, and go beyond with the proper build.
That being said, this Slorm Reaper is probably still a bit too strong. We just want to see how things go now that all of its effects are working.

Other Reapers:
- Arcane Phalanx and Arcane Sovereign should no longer affect the Totem from the Slormandrite Staff of the Shaman.

Extras:
- Your own Minions should no longer be affected by Cataclysms.
- Slormite & Slormandrite can now stack up to 999 999.
- Fixed a couple of typos.

Enemies:
- Witches now cast their seal 75% faster and have about 30% more Life as they felt a bit underwhelming and easy to dodge.


That's it for now!
Cheers!