The Slormancer News

Hello everyone!



We said January, and we delivered, so yay!
The Patch Notes below looks a lot like Slormite Chronicles #20 since it was a preview of what we were working on. Let's get to it!

[h2]New Mission[/h2]
8 new missions have been added to the game, followed by a glorious boss fight!

In the Luxuriant Gardens, we tried to build a few missions around the maze and the possibilities that it offers without, hopefully, creating tedious missions.

We also introduced a few riddles and small brainteasers throughouth the act.

We are also adding a new Quality of Life -sort of- mechanic: When you complete a mission, you will now be able to move on to the next mission without having to come back to the village everytime.

Once you clear Act IV, you will get your usual Ancestral Stone from Adam Nostrus which leads me to our next part.


This new Ancestral Stone will give you access to 32 new Ancestral Skills.

Here are a few examples of the new Skills you will have access to:




And finally, the Level Cap has been increased to 70.

Quick Quality of Life for The Slorm Temple:
Goldus and Materials are now automatically drawn to you when you clear a Room.

Slorm Reapers:

• Pure Reaper of Temple Keeper is no longer adding its % Pure Slorm bonus twice.
  
• Reaper of Necromancy: Squires should now properly benefit from your stats.
  

The Fierce Huntress:

• Arrow Shot should now be cast properly when using Prime Totems.
  

The Mischievous Mage:

• Switching to a Tier 5 Upgrade after casting Orb of the Temporal Master should no longer crash the game.
  

The Slorm Temple:

• Pure Slorm Reward is now calculated when the Temple Shrine rises up, not when you pick up Pure Slorm.
  

Various:

• You should no longer be able to knock Obelisks back inside The Great Forge.
  
• You should no longer be stuck on Result Screen with a Tutorial Tooltip being shown.
  

That's about it for today.
We didn't have the time to add everything that we wanted in that update (such as reworking the controller or balancing various things) but we believe these can be done in a later update.

And as always, please report any bug that you may find.
Have fun!

Happy New Year everyone!

For this Chronicle, we wanted to do a recap of the year 2022 for The Slormancer and take a moment to appreciate what's been done and how things have changed.

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 21 months old. \o/


https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3142949576403601336
Slormite Chronicles #9 (January 2022)
For our first Slormite Chronicles of the year, we had quite a bit of an announcement to make. The Slormancer sold 100 000 units which was definitely unexpected for the two of us.
So again, thanks a lot to everyone that made it possible.

We also briefly mentioned the work we were doing on the 19 upcoming Slorm Reapers by revealing the now notorious "Pure Reaper of the Temple Keeper".

This Chronicle led to the first Update of 2022: The Mage Academy Update Part 1 on January 31, adding:

• 19 New Slorm Reapers
  
• 5 New Enemies
  
• A New Environment: The Mage Academy
  
• The Material Tabs for your Inventory
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3127189423521555236
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3133947359552796548
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3222896627768113666

Slormite Chronicles #10, #11 and #12 (February, March & April 2022)
During this timeframe, we were mostly working on Part II of The Mage Academy Update which included Act III of the Story, an increased Level Cap, 30 new Ancestral Skills but also 5 new Cataclysms and 2 new Exaltations.

At this point, we were also reworking Act I by reducing the number of mandatory missions, adding Exalted Breaches, and adding diversity to the enemy pool. We also increased the number of Slorm Reaper drops during the Story while increasing the pathing of the early game in various ways.

These 3 Slormite Chronicles led to The Mage Academy Update Part 2 being released on April 18, adding:

• Act 3 and a new Boss
  
• A rework of Act 1
  
• 30 New Ancestral Skills
  
• 7 New Cataclyms & 2 New Exalted Breaches
  
• Chaos Breaches
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3218395575733114513
Slormite Chronicles #13 (May 2022)
This is where we started brainstorming an upcoming endgame mode called The Great Forge, while doing so, I felt like adding a couple of highly requested Quality of Life features to the Ancestral Legacy Tree: a search bar and a zoom function.

This led to a small Quality of Life Update released on May 16, adding:

• A Search Bar to the Ancestral Legacy
  
• A Zoom Function to the Ancestral Legacy
  

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3330988087699527445
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3325361215008126727
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3362518992740887891
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3342255406639516854

Slormite Chronicles #14, #15, #16, #17 (June to September 2022)
From June to September, we've worked on The Great Forge and all the elements had to fit in such a mode. This was the HEAVY work of this year and we didn't anticipate for it to take us that long. We also really wanted to create something interesting and unique out of a basic "waves" mode, which led to what's currently in the game. And although The Great Forge has its flaws (we're working on those), it seems like players are having fun.
To build this mode, we've had about 1 month of Brainstorm only which led to dozens of (extremely complex) ideas that we eventually rejected. Then a month working on the Reaper Runes, which were the "Progression system" tied to The Great Forge itself followed by a couple of months to build The Great Forge itself.

All of this came down to The Great Forge Update that was released on September 27, adding:

• A New Endgame Mode: The Great Forge
  
  • A Challenges System
    
  • The War Chest Mechanic & 32 Unique War Chest Effects
    
  • A New Boss
    
  • A New Environment
    
  • The Addition of Obelisks
    
• 28 Reaper Runes:
  
  • 7 Runes of Activation
    
  • 14 Runes of Effect
    
  • 7 Runes of Enhancement
    
• New Currency: The Reapersmith Spirits
  
• New Mechanic: Slorm Reaper Affinity
  
• The Slorm Reaper Forge
  
• A New Slorm Reaper: Fate-Crusher
  
• 4 New Cataclysms
  
• a New Balance to Slorm Reapers Base Damage
  
• Reworks on The Mighty Knight:
  
  • Ascension
    
  • Crest Shield
    
  • Whirlwind
    

So this was definitely a HUGE update. With a little hindsight, 4 months to build all of this seems pretty good. It just didn't feel this way while working on it. :)

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3314110913448715507
Slormite Chronicles #18 (October 2022)

Because of how big The Great Forge Update was and how very little progress it represented, the release was bittersweet and not so satisfying. We were proud of the content that we released but the cost felt too high. Basically, these 4 month represented roughly about 5% of the Road Map.

This left us a bit burnt out, so we decided to focus on basic and easy stuff for a while, and release smaller yet impactful updates at a faster pace.

This is why we posted a new Road Map during Slormite Chronicles #18.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3427829445185536662
Slormite Chronicles #19 (November 2022)
In this Slormite Chronicles, we talked about the Luxuriant Update Part I that was coming up.

This led to The Luxuriant Update Part I being released on November 14, adding:

• 5 New Enemies
  
• A New Environment: The Luxurious Gardens
  
• 5 New Cataclysms
  
• "Super" Elites & Elite Affixes
  
• Reworking Life & Mana Leech
  
• Reworking the pool of Epic Stats
  
• Adding Alternate Slormeline Recipes
  

This took us 6 weeks to get done, which is much more satisfying for us.
And this is a pace we'd like to keep up.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3601220554059111339
Slormite Chronicles #20 (December 2022)
This is our latest Slormite Chronicles, in which we talked about our progress on The Luxuriant Update Part II and the various reworks we'd like to get done.

Which is where we are right now.



Right now our goal is to get The Luxuriant Update Part II done before the end of January.

And as we mentioned it in the last Chronicle, it will introduce Act IV, 32 new Ancestral Skills and a new Level Cap (to 70) but "that's about it". Shortly after, we'd like to make an Update focused on various reworks: Controller, Armor & Resistances, Reaper Runes, etc...



As for the rest of year, the goal will be to finish a few sections of the game such as the Story, Environments and Enemies so if we look at the Road Map, this would mean completing:

• The Luxuriant Update II
  
• The Royal Update Part I
  
• The Royal Update Part II
  
• Enemies & Environments
  
• (The Warlords Update on top of that would be extra nice)
  

I'd say this is the core plan, and depending on our mood and the needs of The Slormancer, we will work on other aspects of the game in-between core Updates.

We're feeling good about the future of The Slormancer. We just need to keep working, add content, fix stuff and we'll eventually see the end of it. But it may take more time than anticipated.

That's about it for now!
And again, Happy New Year!

Cheers!

Hello everyone! It's Chronicle Time!

If you've been following The Slormancer, you know that our last update was "The Luxuriant Update Part I" so naturally, our next update will be "The Luxuriant Update Part II".

As mentioned on the Road Map, "The Luxuriant Update Part II" will include:

• A New Act: New Missions and a new Boss fight.
  
• A New Ancestral Legacy Tree Tier.
  
• An Increased Level Cap.
  

Act IV is in progress. 8 new missions are being added to the game, followed by a glorious boss fight!

When we create new missions, our goal is to build something that cannot be found in regular procedurally generated Expeditions, so we try to toy with the possibilites of the environment. So you can expect gardens filled of fountains or ponds or anything we could think of.

In the Luxuriant Gardess, we tried to build a few missions around the maze and the possibilities that it offers without, hopefully, creating tedious missions.

We are adding a new Quality of Life -sort of- mechanic: When you complete a mission, you will now be able to move on to the next mission without having to come back to the village everytime.

Unless an event has to trigger in the village to forward the story, in which case, this won't be an option.
We will add this mechanic for Act IV missions for now, and add it to previous acts at some point as well.








Once you clear Act IV, you will get your usual Ancestral Stone from Adam Nostrus which leads me to our next part.


This new Ancestral Stone will give you access to 32 new Ancestral Skills.

Here are a few examples of the new Skills you will have access to:





And finally, the Level Cap will go up to 70.
After that, there will be another increase going up to Level 80 during The Royal Update Part II and a final increase to Level 100 for The Final Update and the end of Early Access.




We are also working on various reworks.
These may or may not make it to the next Update depending on how much time we have left, but they are on top of our to-do list:

• Controller Rework: We want to improve the overall experience in gameplay by allowing players to have control over the auto-targetting system and improve the feeling as much as possible.
  We also want to almost entirely rework how menus are being handled with a controller. We don't want to make a separate interface for controller users but I have quite a bit of room for improvement. And probably switch to cursor-based menus.
  
• Armor / Elemental Resistance / Evasion: We want to rework the system so that these stats become a bit more central to most builds and try to make them as useful as Life, or even more depending on your playstyle. Basically we want them to be stronger. :)
  Armor and Elemental Resistance Penetration should be impacted by the changes we intend to make as well and will most likely become much more useful stats.
  
• Balance: We are currently looking at balancing game-breaking effects and effects that allow you to completely bypass the intended difficulty, and these should be adressed in the next Update.
  

I believe this is the shortest Slormite Chronicles to this day. Our previous update is 3 weeks old, and since we are currently focusing on short and frequent updates, there's nothing super big or fancy coming up that we can share.


That's about it.
Have a nice day everyone!

Hello everyone!

Don't mind me, I'm just fixing a few things I broke in yesterday's update.

[h2]Bugs:[/h2]

• Super Elite Enemies should no longer appear without a proper name (Colossus and Necromancer)
  
• Unstable Imps AoE's should now properly follow them when being pulled.
  
• The Alternate Recipe of Slormelines should no longer mess with the Craft of Slormandrites.
  
• The List of Epic Rolls should no longer be offsetted while reforging an Epic Item.
  
• Primordial Aiondee should now properly work again.
  
• Bryan's "In The Circle" protection should now properly disappear.
  

[h2]Performance:[/h2]
Fixed a memory leak causing the FPS to slow down in The Great Forge (eventually leading to crashes).

That's about it!

Hello everyone!



To be clear (before anyone asks): This Update does introduce a new Environment: "The Luxuriant Gardens", but does not introduce a new Act or new Missions.

Now onto the Patch Notes:

[h2]New Enemies[/h2]
5 new foes will strengthen the armies of The Slormancer:

• The Pudding Hermit.
  
• The Zombie Peasant.
  
• The Shepherd.
  
• The Unstable Imp.
  
• The Plague Doctor.
  

[h2]New Environment[/h2]
A new environment: The Luxuriant Gardens will be available in Battlefield Expeditions.

[h2]Superior Elites[/h2]

• Superior Elites have been added into the game. These Elites will have a chance to spawn in Battlefield Expeditions. They have a superior Life pool and come with up to 4 Elite Affixes.
  
• 20 Elite Affixes have been added.
  

[h2]New Cataclysms[/h2]
5 new Cataclysms have been added into the game:

• Fire Strike: Granting Fire Damage to attacks and a Chance to Burn.
  
• Ice Strike: Granting Ice Damage to attacks and a Chance to Chill.
  
• Lightning Strike: Granting Lightning Damage to attacks and a Chance to Shock.
  
• Light Strike: Granting Light Damage to attacks and a Chance to apply Daze, Broken Armor, Broken Elemental Resistance or Slow.
  
• Shadow Strike: Granting Shadow Damage to attacks and a Chance to apply Shadow Confusion.
  

[h2]Cataclysm Changes[/h2]

• Assimilation: The wording of "Assimilation" has been changed to "Enemies receive X% Decreased Damage for each yard between you and them." (instead of the "damage's source").
  
• Assimilation: Regardless of the distance, enemies affected by "Assimilation" will now always receive at least 10% of the Damage dealt.
  
• Reincarnation: In Battlefield Expeditions, enemies now have 25% Chance to be revived (instead of 100%).
  
• Shadow Curse: After receiving Shadow Curse Damage, you become immune to Shadow Curses for 1 seconds.
  
• Replicant: Enemies now have 30% Chance to summon a copy of themselves (instead of 100%).
  
• Jetlag: Has been reworked and now reads: Every second, enemies have 10% Chance to become Invulnerable for 0.5 to 2 seconds.
  
• Explosive: Enemies now explode after 3 seconds, instead of 1.5 seconds. And the explosion now deals damage based on Base Max Life instead of actual Max Life.
  We talked about a 5 second delay in The Slormite Chronicles but changed it back to something a little more challenging after further testing.

[h2]Life / Mana Leech Reworks[/h2]

• Life & Mana are now Leeched over a 5 second duration.
  
• Life & Mana stored over time cannot exceed your missing Life. The excess is not stored.
  
• There is also a Leech cap of 1% of your Max Life per second per Leech instance (excepted for Primordial Aiondee) but no instance limit.
  

[h2]Craft Reworks[/h2]
Life/Mana On Hit/Kill

• Life Regeneration rolls (on a Level 60 Epic Item) have been increased from 11-23 to 23-46.
  
• Life on Hit / Mana on Hit rolls (on a Level 60 Epic Item) have been increased from 2-4 to 11-23.
  
• Life on Kill / Mana on Kill rolls (on a Level 60 Epic Item) have been increased from 15-30 to 30-61.
  

Alternate Slormeline Recipes
We've added alternate Recipes for Magic, Rare, Epic and Legendary Slormelines: Slormelines can now be crafted using 10 Slormelines of the previous tier.

Epic Stats

• Epic Stats are now chosen from a pool of 38 Stats instead of 78.
  
• These Stats differ depending on the current Equipment you're trying to craft.
  

[h2]Slorm Reaper Changes[/h2]

• Primordial Reaper of Vindictive Slam: Holy Ground can no longer stack above each other.
  If a Holy Ground area was supposed to stack on top of another, it refreshes the duration of the other instead and increases its damage.
  

This change was done to drastically reduce the noise onscreen and improve performance.

[h2]The Great Forge[/h2]

• Obelisk of Transmutation now reads: "While Obelisk of Transmutation is active, everytime an enemy dies, it restores Life equal to its Max Life to another random enemy." instead of "to all other enemies within a 5 yard radius."
  

[h2]The Slorm Temple[/h2]

• The Temple Keeper and his Traps should be slower overall on Floor 100 and Floor 150.
  
• Bridges from The Slorm Temple should rise faster.
  
• The size of each floor has been reduced by about 30 to 40%.
  
• Pure Slorm rewards for each floor remain about the same, so Pure Slorm should be 30 to 40% faster to acquire.
  
• The value of random Pure Slorm drops have been multiplied by 6 and now properly scale with the Floor Level.
  
• The Pure Slorm rewards of Floor 50, 100 and 150 are now properly displayed.
  
• The Pure Slorm rewards from Floor 50, 100 and 150 have been reduced by 40%.
  

[h2]Bugs Fixed[/h2]
The Mighty Knight:
- Critical Retribution should now properly increase Critical Strike Chance.
- Porcupine should now properly increase Critical Strike Chance.
- Effects affecting your "next Skill" such as Exposed Armor will now properly end when Whirlwind ends.

The Fierce Huntress:
- Fairy Dust should now properly avoid Shadow Seal Damage from the Shadow Curse Cataclysm.
- Wandering Arrow should now trigger properly after changing rooms.

Slorm Reapers:
- Reaper of the Untouchable: Untouchable Dash should no longer allow you to move outside the map.
- Reaper of Retaliating Foresight should no longer trigger on friendlies.
- Primordial Reaper of the Trainee should now properly scale with Affinity.
- Fixed a crash with Reaper of Alpha and Omega.
- Reaper of Necromancy / Reaper of the Temple Keeper: Summons will now spawn properly after changing rooms.

Legendaries:
- Young Phoenix Feather should now properly work with Primordial Aiondee.

Runes:
- Thornbite Rune should now display the proper Shield value.
We are aware that some runes are currently overpowered. We were short on time to fix them in this Update but a fix is coming.

Various:
- Storing then retrieving Spirits in your Stash should no longer cause them to stack in the Fragments slots.
- Player's Area of Effects are now slightly more discrete and create less noise on screen.
- Great Forge Challenges should no longer appear blurry.
- Codex Menu should no longer move out of window.
- Fixed a couple of crashes.

Synergy Loops:
- Added a global system to help prevent Loops.

- Armor of Illusion (Armor -> Evasion)
+ Indomitable Mountain (Evasion -> Armor):
Armor of Illusion doesn't benefit from Armor gained with Indomitable Mountain.

- Evasive Magic (Evasion -> Max Mana)
+ Elemental Lock (Mana Lock (so Max Mana) -> Elemental Damage)
+ Primordial Reaper of the Untouchable One (Elemental Damage -> Evasion):
Evasive Magic doesn't benefit from Evasion gained with the SYNERGY of Primordial Reaper of the Untouchable One IF Elemental Lock is equipped.

- Toughness 15 (Armor -> Elemental Resistance)
+ Elemental Sorcerer (Elemental Resistance -> Elemental Damage)
+ Primordial Reaper of the Untouchable One (Elemental Damage -> Evasion)
+ Indomitable Mountain (Evasion -> Armor):
Toughness 15 doesn't benefit from Armor gained with Indomitable Mountain IF Elemental Sorcerer and Primordial Untouchable One are equipped

- Good Crop (Deals Damage based on Reaper Damage + Increase Raw Damage based on Damage dealt)
+ Savagery 60 (Raw Damage -> Reaper Damage basically)
Savagery 60 doesn't benefit from Raw Damage gained through Good Crop.

Performance:
- Improved performance when Area of Effects are hitting lots of enemies at once.
- Improved performance when lots of Goldus coins are being displayed on screen.
- Also improved performance everywhere else. :o

As always, if you find a bug, post it on our Steam Forums or on Discord.
Cheers!