The Slormancer News

Hello everyone!

The Encyclopedia Update (v.0.8.0) is now available!

[h2]Codex[/h2]

• A Codex has been added to the game and should answer the most frequently asked questions regarding most mechanics.
  
• Stats Tooltips have been added, displaying current value and valuable informations to all the stats that may appear on Skills or Upgrades.
  

If you feel like an entry is missing an important information, please let us know. After working on the game for so long, we lost track of what is easy to understand and what is not.

[h2]Achievements[/h2]

• A little over 200 Achievements have been added to The Slormancer.
  
• Steam Achievements will be added later (for the 1.0 release).
  

There are quite a few values that were not tracked before adding Achievements so there are a few Achievements that will be starting at 0.

[h2]Profile Menu[/h2]

• The Profile Menu has been reworked to look more modern and better reflect the actual content of the game.
  

[h2]Click to Move[/h2]

• Click to Move has been reworked and should feel more natural to use.
  
• The Click to Move key can now be rebind.
  
• Aiming should be more precise and now come with visual feedback.
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]
We've done numerous changes that should drastically improve the performances of the game. That being said, new issues might arise from all these changes (basically, we might have broken something).
If so, please let us know.

And since we've made changes to how the game compiles and executes, there is a small possibility that it just no longer works on your setup. If so, let us know as soon as possible so we'll be able to work things out.

We've done a great deal of changes yet there are some things remaining that may cause the game to slow down, if you happen to find one, please let me know (such as when equipping this X Legendary Item or that Y Upgrade).

Even though everything should work much faster, the game can still be quite demanding for the more modest configs. On your side, you can disable Damage Numbers and / or Lifebars, both of these can take a toll on performance when many enemies are being displayed. Enabling the "Low FX" option from the Settings menu also helps a lot.

[h2]Bugs[/h2]
Slorm Reaper

• Fixed a crash with Primordial Reaper of Time and Space.
  
• Changed the lore of Reaper of the Spider Nest to match its Reapersmith.
  
• Relevant Projectiles should now properly rebound when hitting the edges of the screen when Reaper of the Spider Nest is equipped.
  
• Changed the lore of Reaper of Support to match its Reapersmith.
  
• In The Great Forge, Imps should no longer be locked outside the Area when using Slasha.
  

Various

• Using "Sort Inventory" should no longer mess with Loadouts.
  
• Blazing Fireball now add the correct amount of stacks.
  
• Opening Random Boxes with Jemma with a Controller should no longer lock you out of the menu under specific circumstances.
  
• In The Great Forge, the "War Chest Quantity is equal to War Chest Quality" reward should now work properly.
  
• You should no longer be able to use an exploit allowing you to unlock all Slorm Reapers through the campaign.
  
• Imps should now behave properly when Slowed or Chilled.
  

That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Hello Everyone!

If you've missed the last Slormite Chronicles then here's a quick recap: We are currently working on Update 0.8 that will introduce Achievements, a Codex and various quality of life features regarding stats and mechanics to The Slormancer,

[h2]Update 0.8: Achievements and Codex[/h2]
You can read more about Achievements and Codex in our previous Slormite Chronicles. Quickly put, we're introducing over 200 Achievements and a Codex, detailing most mechanics, stats and game modes of The Slormancer.




[h2]Working on Performance[/h2]
Besides the Codex and Achievements, we wanted to work on one last thing for this Update before calling it ready: Since the beginning of our Early Access, The Slormancer has struggled with performance toward the endgame when using heavy builds against lots of enemies. And this has only gone worse since the release of The Great Forge and then even worse when we allowed to fight multiple waves at once, coming from multiple directions. So you guessed it, we've been working on Performance.

We're trying to get rid of any sort of slowdown or freeze and to maintain FPS at a good enough rate regardless of the situation you're in. Hopefully, this is our final work on performance, and once we're done, The Slormancer will be ready for 1.0 performance-wise.

I've recorded a Before / After using a VERY intensive build in which I have about 100% Critical Strike Chance and 50% Ancestral Strike Chance, resulting in lots of Ancestral Effects triggering on top of constant Burn ticks everywhere. I'm also using Echoes of Vilinis, which can be quite demanding (to say the least) when lots of Crits are occuring. It's quite a messy build yet it's much cleaner when it stops being a slideshow.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We've done incredible improvements by reworking pretty much every script that are heavily used in combat, whether by your own Character and Skills or by Enemies. We've also changed the way the game is compiled, again gaining quite a bit of speed.

I'm happy to say that improvements are satisfying enough to the point that we now feel confident with the performances of the game. That being said, some very specific builds may still be slowing the game down, but these will now be easy to target and work on.

[h2]Release when?![/h2]
That's where we're at. At this point, it is safe to say that the 0.8 Update should be available before the end of March, unless we run into some big issues during our final tests.

We've been working on mostly technical stuff for the past month so this is not the most exciting Chronicle, and we don't have much to share. But we believe it's for the best!

Cheers!

Hello Everyone!

Today, I'd like to talk about our plan for 2024. We've layed down the last steps that should allow us to hopefully leave Early Access this year! Without further ado, let's break it down.

[h2]The 2024 Roadmap[/h2]


Here is our latest (and last) Early Access Roadmap.

Some steps have been removed while others have been changed:
We've removed "Enemies & Environment" along with the "5th Endgame Mode" that were in our previous Roadmap. The truth is that it does not feel necessary to consider the game as complete. Of course, we could keep adding stuff to The Slormancer but we feel that we have enough enemy diversity and enough environments for now. As for the 5th Endgame Mode, we believe that our 4th Endgame Mode called "The Warlords" will be more than enough to complete the gameplay loop we want for the game.

We believe that these additions would benefit the game so we may very well add them after the release in 1.0 but our current priority is to polish our game and get it out of Early Access.

As you may have noticed on the Roadmap, there should be 3 Major Updates leading to the release.

• Update: 0.8: Will introduce the Codex and the Achievements.
  
• Update: 0.9: Will introduce a lot of changes regarding Balance and Player's Experience based on all the feedback we've gathered this past few years.
  
• Update: 1.0: Will introduce the end to the Story, the fight against The Slormancer, The Warlords Endgame Mode, the Influence that will be tied to it along with a big batch of Legendary Items.
  

At first, we wanted The Warlords to come earlier but we decided that we needed to drop something big along with the 1.0 Release so The Warlords Update will actually sign the end of Early Access.
We will playtest it in Closed Beta just to make sure that everything works properly before the release.

There are a few key elements that will be worked on along with Update 0.8 and Update 0.9 such as:

• Performance.
  
• Massive Debugging.
  
• Translation.
  

We have a bunch of deadlines set up along the year and we'll quickly know whether we can make it for 2024 or not. Now that we're so close, better not mess up.

[h2]Update 0.8: The Encyclopedia Update[/h2]
[h3]The Codex[/h3]


We've been working pretty hard on this Update already: We're done with the Codex (see above) but we've also added a pretty neat little feature: Since some new players were lost when reading their Skills and Upgrades for the first time as to what stat does what, we've added an extra tooltip that explains all stats that are mentioned in said Skill or Upgrade. AND for seasoned players, it also displays the current value of the stat so that you don't have to move back and forth your inventory.

This should be really useful for everyone that doesn't quite understand how some of our stats work.



[h3]Achievements[/h3]
As for Achievements, we're almost done as well. The menu and most achievements are complete and we're currently sitting at more than 200 Achievements divided in about 700 steps.



About Steam Achievements: They will be available for the release of The Slormancer (for the 1.0 release). There should be around 50 to 70 Steam Achievements chosen among all the ingame Achievements. We believe that Achievements are a powerful tool to encourage players to return to the game and we would like for this to happen at the best time for the game which is when it leaves Early Access.

That being said, everything you unlock now with ingame Achievements will be synchronized with Steam Achievements as soon as they become available (you won't have to do them twice).

Regarding Steam, we will also introduce Badges, Emoticons, Cards, Wallpapers etc... with the release of the 1.0 release. These are ready aswell so we can give you a small preview.



As you can see, the "Big Features" of the update are almost complete and it is now time to work on some of the invisible stuff such as Performance and Bugs. I really want to take the time to take care of most of our Performance issues in the next couple of weeks.
So, no release date just yet for Update 0.8. It'll depend on how fast I'm able to fix Performance issues.

That's about it for now.
Cheers!

Hello everyone!

The Slorm Reapers Update (v.0.7.5) is now available!

[h2]New Slorm Reapers[/h2]

68 Slorm Reapers have been added into The Slormancer!
That's pretty much it.

Of the 68 Slorm Reapers, there are 40 Unique Slorm Reapers and 28 Evolutions.

This means that the Slorm Reapers Collection is now complete.
However, 2 of the new Slorm Reapers are currently locked behing unavailable content right now:

• Vengeance will be acquired once you defeat Ohm Agad.
  
• Altior will be acquired once you complete Adam Nostrus' Trials.
  

Some Advices to hunt Slorm Reapers:

1. Slorm Reapers are looted on Breaches (not enemies) so clearing Breaches is the way to go.
   
2. Rooms in The Slorm Temple count as Breaches.
   
3. Breaches from Story Missions can loot Slorm Reapers.
   
4. There are no Breaches in The Great Forge so you won't find Slorm Reapers there.
   
5. There is a hidden pity timer that guarantees a Slorm Reaper every 150 Breaches.
   

[h2]Various Additions[/h2]
We've added a couple of things that felt mandatory when working on this Update:

• Whenever a Skill resets its Cooldown Time due to a triggered effect, an animation will be played on its icon to clearly deliver the information.
  
• Legendary Items and Slorm Reapers tooltips can now be scrolled up / down.
  

[h2]Bugs & Performance[/h2]
[h3]Performance:[/h3]

• Crafting lots of Slormites / Slormelines will compute instantaneously and will no longer cause the game to crash / freeze.
  
• Opening FAT War Chests should no longer cause the game to crash / freeze.
  
  • Goldus can now drop in stacks of 100 000.
    
  • Slormite, Slormelines and Slormandrites will be packed based on their Tier / Rarity.
    
  • In the absence of a Loot Filter, Items will be gradually filtered out to prevent 100s+ of Items displayed on screen (granting Goldus instead). This will literally only activate if more than 100 Items of a specific rarity are about to spawn, and will never filter out Epic or Legendary Items.
    
  • Item Names will be shown once the War Chest has done distributing all its content to prevent unnecessary performance constraints.
    
  • Looting all the content of a FAT War Chest should be much faster overall.
    

[h3]Bugs Fixed:[/h3]

• Having the Primal Ancestral Stone in a Tier 1 Ancestral Legacy Slot should no longer cause a crash.
  
• Duplicating a currency should no longer be possible in the Material Tabs.
  

That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Happy New Year everyone!

Same as last year, this Chronicle will be a recap of the year 2023 for The Slormancer and we will take a look back at what's been done.

But first and foremost, let's talk about the Slorm Reaper Update that was supposed to be done (damn you, devs!). It turns out that verifying and debugging a hefty amount of 68 Slorm Reapers took us longer than anticipated. We also took some time off during the holidays, and were busy eating raclette for a few days.

There's still a degree of uncertainty regarding the release date. We have a few things to polish here and there, a few sound FX to add and still some Slorm Reapers that do not work the way we want. We're almost there but not quite. We're almost always regretting giving a release date too soon so I'm not giving any right now. Coming Soon is the best I can say.

Now onto the Recap.

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 2 years and 9 months old.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3648510249383787904
We started the year with Slormite Chronicles #21. A Chronicle similar to this one, with a roadmap for 2023, and it turns out that we did everything that we had planned. Yay! Moving to Slorm Reapers by the end of year was not planned but it is one of the most challenging part of the roadmap for us so we're happy to be (almost) done with it.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3677786821873442436
We then went on with Update #1: The Luxuriant Update Part II on January 30.
This Update introduced :

• 8 New Missions (Act 4)
  
• A New Ancestral Legacy Tier, adding 32 Ancestral Skills.
  
• An Increased Level cap to 70.
  
• Quality of Life for The Slorm Temple.
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3645136358946943138
In Slormite Chronicles #22, we talked about the (mixed) feedback we got for Act 4 and our plan to fix things, and then talked about the upcoming rework on Controller Support.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3655271993680980796
Slormite Chronicles #23 was again about Controller Support and the numerous technical changes that were coming to the game in The Technical Update. We also talked about the new Environment and Enemies that we were working on.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3645137816263933584
Update #2, called The Technical Update, introduced a complete rework of the Controller. We had a growing playerbase on Steam Deck, and an unexpected amount of players using a controller so it was most needed. We also added numerous technical changes:

• A new Aim-Assist for Controller users.
  
• A Toggle Option along with various Visual Feedbacks for the Aim-Assist.
  
• Many Interface and Menu Navigation changes for the Controller.
  
• New Font Sizes
  
• Search Bars for Skills, Attributes and Slorm Reapers.
  
• New Bindable Buttons
  
• Uncapped FPS.
  
• UltraWide Support
  
• An ingame Zoom.
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3696933459132056109
Slormite Chronicles #24 covered our upcoming Royal Wing environment along with 5 New Enemies.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/6754877058971340034
This led to Update #3: The Royal Wing Update Part I on April 11 that introduced:

• 5 New Enemies
  
• A New Environment (The Royal Wing)
  
• A New Legendary Chest to store Legendary Items.
  
• Changes to Battlefield Expeditions: Now separated in two slightly different modes.
  
  • Battlefield Journey. With Bosses on dedicated Floors.
    
  • Careful Examination. With the ability to farm in a chosen Environment.
    

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3719453992477321493
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3721708329664648030
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3644023772659391558

Slormite Chronicles #25, #26 and #27 were all about our biggest update of the year: The Royal Wing Update, Part II that would not only introduce new missions, story content but also loadouts and a rework of The Great Forge. The first iteration that we talked about in the Chronicles (#25) turned out to be something players didn't want so we went on with something simpler and funnier (#26) that seems to have pleased players.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/6027549530047881897
This led to Update #4: The Royal Wing Update Part II on July 10 introducing:

• Act 5: 6 New Missions and 1 Boss fight.
  
• A new Ancestral Legacy Tier adding 20 new Ancestral Skills.
  
• Increased Level Cap to 80.
  
• Loadouts
  
• Reworks to:
  
  • Armor and Elemental Resistances, making them more efficient.
    
  • The Great Forge, making it faster, greedier and with a better density by introducing "Multi-Waving" along with opening more Spawn Locations at once (from 2, up to 6).
    
  • Silence, toning it down and making it only affect spellcasters.
    
  • Legendary Reinforcement, by limiting it to 15.
    
• And various changes to Runes or new player experience.
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3685685238927988976
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3690191375767913128

Slormite Chronicles #28 and #29 were about the upcoming Ancestral Update that would introduce Adam Nostrus Trials, a series of endgame goals that would guide the player to the right direction along with setting nice objectives, along with our first endgame boss: Adam Nostrus.
On top of that, we would introduce the Primal Ancestral Stone, a unique stone that you can enshrine anywhere on your Ancestral Legacy that would increase build possibilities a lot.

In one of the Slormite Chronicles, we also talked about our ideal goal for the end of the year, which was to release: The Ancestral Update, The Slorm Reaper Update (the one we're currently working on) and The Warlords Update. It was very optimistic to say the least. I would have loved to release The Slorm Reapers Update before the end of the year, just to get 2 out of 3, but there was no way that we could have done this one faster.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/6819068581450405188
Update #5: The Ancestral Update was then released on September, 19th.
It introduced:

• Adam Nostrus' Trials.
  
• An endgame Boss: Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion.
  
• The last Tier of the Ancestral Legacy Tree adding 5 new Ancestral Skills.
  
• The Primal Ancestral Stone.
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3749867242861566445
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3774639576536488352
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3860210510760624428
Since then, we've been working on Slorm Reapers! So we pretty much only talked about Slorm Reapers in Slormite Chronicles #30, #31 and #32.

In 2023, we have released 5 Updates. A 6th before the end of the year would have been great but we had to settle for 5. It was a great year for us overall, we checked a lot of important boxes and made good progress.

Once The Slorm Reapers Update is out, we will post our plan for 2024 in an upcoming Slormite Chronicles. along with an updated Road Map. We have high hopes for the year to come, so please stick with us for the final push!

That's about it for now!
And again, Happy New Year! May you all loot fat War Chests.

Cheers!