The Slormancer News

Happy New Year everyone!

Same as last year (and the year before that), this Chronicle will be a recap of the past year. We actually really wanted for 2024 to be the year of our release in 1.0 but as always, everything took more time than anticipated and we knew early on that we weren't going to make it.

If the Final Update wasn't leading to the 1.0 Release, we could have managed to sneak it in 2024 since it is mostly done, but preparing for our release requires much more than just being done with development, so we had to delay it.

[h2]A Year of Chronicles: 2024 Edition[/h2]
Fun fact: You may not know this but we publish the Slormite Chronicles devlog every 6th of the month, which is the day The Slormancer was released (on April 6, 2021). Everytime we publish a Slormite Chronicles, the game gets one month older, and it is currently 3 years and 9 months old.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3991945238789013200
We started the year with The Slorm Reapers Update, introducing 68 new Slorm Reapers, and getting the number of available Slorm Reapers to our target of 120. This was definitely no easy task.

Fun fact 2: 6 or 7 years ago, a friend of us (the composer, actually) was playtesting an early version of the game, that had about 10 to 15 Slorm Reapers (in a very rough form), and he told us that Slorm Reapers were super fun to find, collect and upgrade and that we should have more. And for some reason, I said "Ok cool, let's go with 120" without giving it a second thought.
Considering how big of a task creating a single one often, and how small our team is, it was slightly too much. No regrets though, it's actually one of the aspects of the game we're the most proud of.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4031353167277495724
Then, we introduced our 2024 Roadmap, leading to The Final Update. We anticipated 3 Updates to get to The Final Update, and it turned out to be accurate (still missing that last Update though).

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4127057033609582819
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4111295701206975069

The Slormite Chronicles #35 led to The Encyclopedia Update (0.8), introducing a few key elements: Achievements, a Codex and proper tutorials, and MASSIVE Performance enhancements.

During this Update, we've also prepared a few things that are still not available: Steam Cards, Profile Frames and Steam Achievements. Everything will be available for the 1.0 launch though.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4174347995207375133
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4201372129457513908
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4154087504281943121

Slormite Chronicles #36, #37 and #38 mostly talk about Balance since it was a very important focus of the year 2024. We actually started brainstorming around March and quickly started talking about upcoming changes in Slormite Chronicles. The feedback we got has helped us getting in the right direction tremendously.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4170974735564951689

We eventually published a Patch Notes a month before the actual Update, and made a bunch of changes based on the feedback we again got.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4264427597934140423
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4264427597952925408

We then published The Balance Update on The Experimental Branch to further polish it.
I've said it then, and I'll say it again here: Going through Experimental was a great experience, it involves much less stress than going straight to the Live Branch.

Everything gets to be properly tested, and if something is not working properly, players can always go back to Live Branch so I'm never in a stressful emergency situation, having to quickly debug and patch something preventing most players to play.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4354502761456383826
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4592070813181408319

The Balance Update was released a couple of months later on the Live Branch and everything went smoothly!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4592070813170478317
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4686648941185573051
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4463723296443073307
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/4480614335784159155

Finally, the last 4 Slormite Chronicles of the year were about me talking about our work on The Final Update: creating a new endgame mode called The Warlords, Legendary Items, Nether Items, an epic Boss Fight, among other things. You should read them if you haven't.

Next month, we should be able to talk about our Roadmap for 2025 and beyond the release. There's unfortunately not much more to announce today since there are still a few blurry things to figure out.

That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Welcome to The Slormite Chronicles #44!

If you've missed the last Slormite Chronicles, here's a brief recap of where we're at: We're almost done with the development part of The Slormancer. Last month, we had the missing 120 Legendary Effects to deal with, along with the final boss fight. As of last week, we're done with Legendary Effects and we are about a week away from being done with the final fight.

So we're making solid progress.

Once we're done with this, we'll have a bunch of testing and debugging to do until everything feels good enough to go into 1.0. At the same time, we're working on verifying texts and get going on the various translations we want for The Slormancer, along with reworking the Chinese translation whose flaws are no longer in doubt.

"Ok kewl, release date wen ?"

Releasing The Slormancer and making sure that it catches as much attention as we think it deserves will be a real challenge, and it will require time and preparation. This is something that we cannot afford to rush.

On top of that, we're working with various partners to release the game on different platforms and in as many languages as we can, so we have to get a green light from everyone.

If everything goes our way, and given what needs to be done, we should be able to release the game around late-Q1 2025.

[h2]New Legendary Items[/h2]
Back to what we've been working on: Legendary Effects!
We've added 120 Effects to get to a total of 200.

We now have about 20 Legendary Effects for each slot so it should introduce more options to some of the weakest slots. And as you may have read in a previous Slormite Chronicles, the new Nether rarity will allow you to Graft Effects from a slot to another, so you can get that sweet Indomitable Mountain effect on Boots if you want to.

There is now at least one Legendary Effect for each Class Skill, Support Skill and Class Mechanic, so that's about 15 Legendary Items that are specific to a class. Then about 27 Legendary Effects for the Ancestral Legacy tree. And finally, we've added 12 Legendary Effects for Slorm Reapers.

Without further ado, here are some teasers!
(Right-Click to enlarge, otherwise it's unreadable sorry)



[h2]Ohm Agad, The Slormancer[/h2]
I can't share a lot right now. But let's just say that he too is waiting for the final release.




That's about it for today!
Merry Christmas everyone and see you in 2025!

Cheers!

Welcome to The Slormite Chronicles #43!

Since our last Slormite Chronicles, we've been working on the remaining features that we want to have in The Slormancer for the 1.0 release. Here's our monthly recap of our current progress with The Warlords Update (The 1.0 Update!).

[h2]What's Done[/h2]

The Warlords endgame mode is now complete and playable from start to finish. We've added about 20 new Cataclysms to The Slormancer, 25 Warlords Bosses for the player to challenge and a fancy new map to navigate the mode.

Since the last Slormite Chronicles, we've added unique skins to each Warlord. And even though, each Warlord is based on an enemy that's already in the game, we wanted to add that unique "filled with raw slorm strength" look to each of them.



We've also been working on Environments and tried to offer a different experience than the regular Battlefield Expeditions. The goal is to create a "Nether / Parallel Universe" kind of feeling, and it looks like this:



The Menu has also been finalized and we've added various info and tooltips regarding Loot during Warlords Expeditions.



About Warlords Drops: As mentioned in a previous Slormite Chronicles, you will be able to target-farm specific Legendary Items by defeating the corresponding Warlord. With 200 Legendary Items in The Slormancer, and 25 Warlords, each Warlord will be attributed 8 Legendary Items that it will be elligible to drop once you defeat him.

The attribution changes everytime you defeat a Warlord, so you will have to fight a different Warlord if you didn't get the Legendary Item that you wanted.

Once you defeat a Warlord, you will get to open a Chest with a Choice:



On the screenshot above, you can see that the player has a choice between 3 different Legendary Items that were elligible to loot on this Warlord. The player will also be able to reroll each slot (once) for a copious amount of Slorm (that we will adjust if necessary).

This means that once a player has cleared The Netherworld and is able to defeat every Warlord, it should be relatively easy to target-farm specific Legendary Effects.

Now onto Nether Equipment!
As you may have noticed on the screenshot above, there is a new Equipment Rarity called Nether, that we've talked about in a previous Slormite Chronicles.

Nether Equipment can only be found when defeating a Primordial Warlord (A Level 100, Wrath 10 Warlord). On the screenshot above, the Chance to get a Nether Equipment is displayed and is currently about 25% and is be increased by your Influence in the current Environment.

Nether Equipment can be increased up to Level 120 and can be Grafted Stats and Legendary Effects from other Equipments. This means that you will be able to add Stats and Legendary Effects that were not available in this slot.



As you can see in the screenshot above, I have a Nether Amulet with a Legendary Cloak Effect.

You will be able to Graft up to 3 Stats and / or Legendary Effects to a Nether Item, and all of this will be available with Friedrich, the Blacksmith, as usual.



Miscellaneous (yet important) stuff
We've added our final Achievements regarding The Warlords Expeditions before the 1.0, we've also added all the missing tutorials and wrote the final dialogues leading to an epic conclusion!
We've also added Part III of the Trials and unlocked the remaining Slorm Reapers and these are preeetty strong.

The 1.0 is getting closer and closer!

[h2]What's Missing[/h2]

We're now only missing exactly two elements to get to the end of development:

1. The Final Boss Fight agains Ohm Agad, that I will continue working on as soon as I post this Chronicle.
   
2. The 120 Legendary Effects that are missing to get to 200. It is not so dauting as it seems because, we already have everything layed out and planned, I have the texts, names and tooltips ready, so we're just talking about coding the Effects.
   

So we're definitely getting closer than ever to our 1.0 release. Now, I've mentioned before and I'll say it again: once we get to the end of development, we won't be immediately releasing The Slormancer out of Early Access. We will work on translating the game, playtesting it, refining it, along with trying to catch as much attention as we can before the release.

So we're almost done, but not quite there yet.

That's about it for today!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!
Welcome to The Slormite Chronicles #42!

Since the last Slormite Chronicles, we've published The Balance Update on the Live Branch and it got a great reception considering the huge amount of changes that's been made.

Taking the time to polish the Balance Update on the Experimental Branch for a couple of months to fix and balance a bunch of things that we've missed or overlooked was definitely the way to go, and a much smoother release experience for us. And this is something that we will want to reproduce.

And as mentioned, we've also increased the price from $14.99 to $19.99. That being said, as soon as we reach the end of Early Access, we will move on to bigger sales than our usual 20%. So if you're waiting for a good opportunity to get into The Slormancer, just wait a little longer.

[h2]The Final Update and leaving Early Access[/h2]
I've seen a couple of questions regarding our next update, so I'll try to clarify it here:
The Warlords Update will be our Final Early Access Update and will actually be released as part of our 1.0 Release. This means that everything that is currently waiting on our Road Map will be added for this Update. This includes:

• The Final Boss
  
• A Level Cap increased to 100
  
• Part III of Adam Nostrus' Trials
  
• The Warlords Endgame Mode
  
• The Influence System
  
• A total of 200 Legendary Items
  

And of course, quite a bit of bug fixes and balance changes. And on top of that, a proper translation for about 8-10 additional languages along with completing the ones that are already in the game.

The downside is that we will also prepare our release with quite a bit of marketing so it will take some time to get everything done, but now that we're so close to the end, we really don't want to mess things up!

[h2]The Warlords[/h2]
As mentioned in our latest Slormite Chronicles, we've been working on The Warlords, our final endgame mode. We want it to be a mode with a great sense of progression, instead of the usual "Difficulty Climb" that we've offered.

So the first thing we had to craft was a nice and fancy menu to display said progression. In The Warlords mode, the player will actually move on to The Slormancer's realm and defeat its armies and Warlords right there. It's currently called "The Netherworld" as I've yet to find a funky word with "Slorm" in it for this place.

The Menu currently looks like this (as always, everything is subject to change):


Since we went for a map / conquest kind-of design, you will be able to open it in a larger window:


There currently are 45 Cataclysm Runs and 25 Warlords Runs.

You will only have to defeat Cataclysm Runs once to unlock said Cataclysm in its highest Difficulty setting (called "Warlord" difficulty). And to challenge a Warlord, you will have to unlock its Cataclysms to try and defeat him.

Every Run has a set Enemy Level and Wrath Difficulty, yet we want it to be accessible right after the end of the story so the difficulty will start quite slow and increase gradually. Once you've defeated the entire Netherworld, you will get access to The Primordial Netherworld.

In The Primordial Netherworld, everything is set on the highest difficulty (Enemy Level 100, Wrath 10), but this is where the loot table of The Warlords get really interesting.



About the loot tables: Warlords have a set loot table (displayed on the Warlords menu) that is randomized everytime the player completes a Warlord run, so you will never have to defeat the same Warlord 10 times in a row if you're looking for a particular item.

When defeating a Warlord, you will get to choose between 3 Legendary Items from its loot table. But if you've defeated a Primordial Warlord, you will have a chance to get Nether Items instead (more on that in our previous Slormite Chronicles).

[h2]New Cataclysms[/h2]
To get to 45 Cataclysm Runs, we've had to add 15 new Cataclysms to The Slormancer. They've been implemented and offer quite a fresh experience. As mentioned before, we've also been reworking the most unfun Cataclysms of the game.

For instance, Invulnerability now grants a great amount Shield every few seconds, instead of complete Invulnerability, so players have a chance to actively destroy it.

Here are a few screenshots of the new ones:
Endless Fire casts a neverending Fireball that is constantly following you.


Seals of Blindness reduce your Line of Sight when you walk over one.


Shadow Clones let enemies cast one or more attacks once they die.



That's about it for today!
Cheers everyone and see you in the next one!

Hello everyone!

The Balance Update (v.0.9.0) has been moved from the Experimental Branch to the Live Branch and is now available for everyone!

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]
Given the size of the Patch Notes, we couldn't upload it here on Steam so it is available
here on our website.

You can leave your feedback here on Steam, on our Forums or right below this post, but the best way to interact and chat with us about specific issues you're having is on our Discord, so feel free to join in!

[h2]About Balance[/h2]
We've made quite a lot of changes and I believe that it is safe to say that most builds will require at least a bit of adjustments to work properly. And if despite your best effort, you can no longer make your build work and that you feel that it is was unfairly nerfed, then open a topic or join our Discord and politely discuss it.

[h2]Migrating a Save File from Experimental to Live[/h2]
If you've been playing the Experimental Branch and would like to carry your progress over to the Live Branch, there is a small extra step that needs to be done:

1. Head over to C:/Users//AppData/Local/The_Slormancer and find the save_exp_0_9_1 file, copy it and rename it to save_1 (and erase the previous file).
   
2. When you launch The Slormancer, if Steam asks you to choose between the Local and the Cloud file, choose Local.
   
3. Profit!

This assumes that you are playing on the Save Slot 1.
if not, simply change the numbers accordingly (e.g: Rename save_exp_0_9_2 -> save_2 etc...)


Have fun!
Cheers!