Slormite Chronicles #41
Hello everyone!
Today is Chronicles' day!
[h2]The Balance Update[/h2]
We've been talking about releasing The Balance Update from the Experimental Branch to the Live Branch for a while now, but this is happening on Thursday, September 12th.
Update: I've found a critical issue that needs to be fixed before the release so I've delayed the release until Thursday, September 12th. Sorry about it!
The Balance Update introduced a lot of changes (that you can read in the Patch Notes) and it is now ready to be played by everyone. Since its release on the Experimental Branch, we've made at least a couple of rounds of changes that can be found under the Changelog part.
Altough, we're pretty happy with the changes introduced in this update, especially all the changes regarding New Player Experience, we will continue working on changes and balance during the last months of development prior to the 1.0 Release, and probably long after that.
[h2]Price Chance[/h2]
We've mentioned this once, in our previous Slormite Chronicles: The price of The Slormancer will be increased within the next week (around September 11) and will be changed from $14,99 to $19.99.
Prices all around the world will be adjusted accordingly (with a 33% increase roughly).
Considering how the game has grown over the last few years and the amount of playtime that it offers, we feel like it is a fair adjustment. That being said, we intend to push more aggressive discounts during Sales once the game leaves Early Access, so you should always be able to pick it up at a more than reasonable price.
[h2]The Warlods Update[/h2]
It is now time to talk about The Warlords Update.
We've been hard at work these past few weeks to finish the preproduction / brainstorm phase of development. Once the Balance Update hits the Live Branch, we will move on to production, and even if we have quite some work to do, we feel like we got better at preproduction and anticipation so it should be a smooth ride (it never is, but hey).
As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, we have 120 new Legendary Effects ready to go. Including Legendary Effects for Slorm Reapers.
We've also been working on 20 new Cataclysms that will be available in Battlefield, The Great Forge and in The Warlords (more on that later). And as we will discuss below, Cataclysms will be an important part of The Warlord, so we will need to make sure that they all are fun and interesting to play around (looking at you Invulnerability shield).
We're also reworking and clarifying Boss Affixes. They will now have a tooltip available during a Boss Fight so that players have a clue of what's going on. We will also be adjusting some of their effects (looking at you, Regeneration Affix creating invulnerable Bosses).
The Warlords
The Warlords is our fourth Endgame mode and will be unlocked once you reach the endgame and defeat Pasltrang. And although, the Third Part of the Adam Nostrus' Trials will be linked to your progression there, it will be available much sooner for players to explore.
The Warlords is an endgame mode that has a progression system and various objectives to complete and bosses (The Warlords) to defeat.
We have numerous sketches of what the menu will look like but nothing final to be shown right now but here's a brief recap:
The goal of this game mode will be to travel to the Kingdom of Ohm Agad (codename "Netherworld") in order to defeat its legions directly on-site and stop its progression into the Kingdom of Adreart. Once there, players will have to defeat the usual enemies as well as their captains, the Warlords.
Progression will take place on a "conquest-type" map with various points to capture and Warlords to defeat. There will be a total of 45 points to conquer and 25 Warlords to defeat (subject to change).
Everything will have a set difficulty (Enemy Level and Wrath Level) so that you should be able to explore the first few areas relatively soon (around Wrath 4) but the latest Warlords will be Level 100 - Wrath 10 beasts.
To attempt to defeat a Warlord, players will need to possess keys and have activated Cataclysms in other areas of the map. Once the conditions are met, the player can access the Warlord. There, they will have to defeat enough enemies to trigger the Warlord and attempt to defeat him.
As mentioned earlier, Cataclysms play a significant role in this game mode. In fact, each Cataclysm will have a new level of difficulty (Warlord Difficulty), and each Warlord will be tied to several Cataclysms that will remain active, at Warlord difficulty, throughout the run.
Moreover, the enemy compositions will always be perfectly synergized with the selected Cataclysms.
For example, a "Multiplication" Cataclysm that adds +1 Projectile to enemies will add +4 in Warlord difficulty, and all enemies in the run will be projectile-throwing enemies, benefiting from this effect.
Players will therefore need to strategize around the Cataclysms and potentially adjust certain parameters of their builds in order to successfully complete these runs.
Basically, everything is a placeholder BUT it can give a rough idea of what's going on.And although we do not have enough time and resources to recreate multiple environments, we're trying to create "alternative - Netherworld-like" versions of the current Environments.
This is one of our numerous tests for The Graveyard.Legendary Items
Now, since we're adding a lot of Legendary Effects, we're aware that it may become tedious to craft the proper Legendary Effect on an Item, and we would like to offer some form of target farming for Legendaries.
Besides defeating a Warlord, you will be able to fight them again (and again) to loot specific Legendary Effects. Every time you defeat a Warlord, all 25 Warlords will be randomly given 8 Legendary Effets that they will be able to loot.
Once you defeat a Warlord, you will get to choose between 3 Legendary Items with 3 of these effects (you will also be able to reroll each item once). So by the time you reach the endgame and are able to kill every Warlord in the game, you should be able to target farm specific Legendary Effects with relative ease.
"Nether Items"
For seasoned players, we know that looting Legendary Effects is not the best option and that they'd rather have a Normal or Magic Item with top Pure Stats on which to craft the correct Legendary Effect.
So here's a twist!
We're introducing a new type of Legendary Item (see the purple icon on the Warlord screen above) available only against Warlords.
The name is still subject to change but we call them "Nether Items".
To loot a Nether Item, you will have to defeat a Warlord and hope for one (or more) of its 3 Legendary Items to be turned into a Nether Item (This chance will be tied to your Influence in that environment).
A Nether Item is:
- An Item with an Item Level of at least 101, and up to 120. If looted at Level 101, it can be reforged using Slormandrites of True Potential up to Level 120.
- An Item with all Stats already available (Epic Item, with a Legendary Effect, Slorm Reaper, Mastery and Trait stats)
- An Item with a greater chance to roll Pure Stats.
- An Item with 3 Grafts possibilities.
Yes! A Nether Item can be grafted up to 3 Stats (it will replace a stat of your choosing of the same rarity). So first, you will be able to graft Pure Stats from other items directly to a Nether Item (destroying the other item in the process). It means that a Nether Item will be able to hold up to 6 Pure Stats, 3 from its original roll and 3 from the various Grafts.
On top of that, players will be able to graft stats that are not accessible to the Nether Item onto it, such as Grafting Critical Strike Chance from Bracers onto a Nether Helm.
On top-top of that, players will also be able to graft Legendary Effects that are not accessible to the Nether Item either, such as Grafting "Brightsteel Warden" from a Legendary Chest to a Nether Helm.
That's about it for now.
We should have much more screenshots of all these mechanics and effects for our next Slormite Chronicles!
Cheers!
