The Slormancer News

Hello everyone!

It's Chronicle time!

[h2]Slorm Reapers, again![/h2]
I feel like I'm only talking about Slorm Reapers lately in these Slormite Chronicles, but that's pretty much what this is what our daily lives are like. Slorm Reapers everyday, and night.

For those of you that have missed our latest Slormites Chronicles, we are currently working on finishing the whole Slorm Reapers Collection. As of now, there are currently 52 Slorm Reapers available in The Slormancer for a total of 120 wanted. This means 68 new Slorm Reapers to deliver.

The good news is that everything is coming along. We are slightly late on schedule but not by a big margin. This could have taken much more time than previously anticipated, so we're happy with how things are going. As for our current progress, at the time of writing this Chronicle, we are at:
- Pre-production and Brainstorm : 100% Complete
- Production (Actual Code) : 80% Complete
- Assets (Icons and Visual FX): 70% Complete
- Tests: Debug & Balance: 0% Complete

This means that we should be done relatively soon but I'm still reluctant to give a release window right now, mostly because Christmas holidays are coming up. And we want to make sure that we are fully available to fix bugs for at least a week once the update releases. We also don't want to release an update that may introduce gamebreaking bugs while the holiday sales is going on, since this would be a pretty bad experience for new players.

Basically, this means that we will probably aim for a release of this update slightly after Christmas, and possibly even slightly after the holidays, depending on how comfortable we are with our update.

That being said, we're close to finish quite a big milestone for The Slormancer, and for us. And we're pretty happy with how things are going. We're not sure about the impact of adding so many Slorm Reapers for our Early Access players, since most of you already have totally broken very viable builds with the weapons that already are in the game. But we're pretty confident that having so many different and unique weapons to choose from, level up, and discover will eventually pay off and hopefully be an important salespoint for the game.

[h2]Slorm Reapers, again![/h2]
Since we now have quite a bit of Slorm Reapers ready, I can finally show a bunch of screenshots of actual gameplay. It's not as efficient as videos but it's much faster to make, and it means that I will be able to return to coding Slorm Reapers soon enough.


The first screenshot is based on the notorious Vegetable Reaper. Tyler, the rabbit is there with you, eating vegetables.


This is the Slorm Reaper of the Desecrated Unholy Sepulcher: When killing enemies, they will drop a small sepulcher. You will then be able to either cast Tomb Explosion or Tomb Profanation on them.


Slorm Reaper of the Spider Nest, turning you into ... a spider knight.
On top of that, this Slorm Reaper makes your projectiles bounce off the edges of the camera instead of physical walls!

That's about it for today!
If you've missed the last Slormite Chronicles about Slorm Reapers, you can find them here, and there!

Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

It's Chronicle time!

As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, we are currently working on building the last Slorm Reapers for The Slormancer. This is a long and quite difficult process but we're making good progress.

We've now moved to production and I believe this part should take about a month. There are a lot of original (and hopefully fun) new concepts that require quite a bit of assets and resources, but we believe it's for the best.

We don't have much gameplay to show yet, or at least nothing visually interesting, so we will instead continue to reveal upcoming Slorm Reapers. (As always, everything is subject to change).



The Slormancer being The Slormancer, we have a couple of circumvoluted and absurd concepts that we want to share with you, such as a Vegetable as a Slorm Reaper.

Go Tyler, Go!

The Primordial Version has an effect called "Miscalculation" that reduces Critical Strike Chance or Ancestral Strike Chance to 0% before Probability occurs. It gets fun.

We also came up with a bunch of asymmetrical Slorm Reapers.
Here's Legion, Reaper of Unity!



This Slorm Reaper gets stronger based on the number of Slorm Reapers you own called Legion.
It has a total of 5 Evolutions, plus its base form, so adding up the Primordial Versions, it adds up to a total of 36 Slorm Reapers.

On top of that, each evolution starts at level 1 and can be leveled up to 100.

[h2]Complete Collection[/h2]
And here's a small preview of what a Slorm Reapers Collection looks like when complete!




If you want to read more about how we came up with Slorm Reapers and how the concept evolved, you can read our previous Slormite Chronicles.

That's about it for today!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

It's Chronicle time!

We're currently working on the upcoming Slorm Reapers, and since we're still on preproduction, we don't have that much to share with you guys, so I figured I might tell you a bit more about Slorm Reapers and how we came up with the concept.

[h2]The Origins[/h2]
At first, Slorm Reapers were supposed to be much more basic than what they are now.
The core was the same: Collectible Weapons that would always at least slightly alter the way you would play. But the result was very different back then. We came up with about 40 Slorm Reapers, with various effects. Most of them worked in a similar way: You get a nice bonus that could enable a build, but you get a malus that you have to play around.

And we also liked that it was a collectible, instead of a basic piece of Equipment. We wanted a "Weapon-o-Dex" that you could complete and that would also allow players to quickly change their builds on the go.

Here's an example of a very early prototype:



Slorm Reapers had rarities back then, and as you can see, one very simple bonus, and one very simple malus.

[h2]Slorm Reaper Hunting[/h2]
As you can see on the screenshot above, we had a mechanic in place called "Focused Thoughts Elixir" that would allow players to try to loot a very specific Slorm Reaper he wanted.
Basically, you would loot Scrolls that would give you informations on a random Slorm Reaper, including where you could find it, then you could decide to use Focused Thoughts Elixir on that Reaper, greatly increasing the chances to find it.

We called this "The Hunt".

Slorm Reapers were much harder to drop without these Elixirs and the process felt tedious and not so fun. So instead of having to loot a Scroll, then spend a few Elixirs, then farm in the correct Environment, we removed these steps, increased the droprate and went full random.

[h2]From 40 to 120[/h2]
At this point, we've only had one playtester beside us two (which is the composer), and when he played the first prototypes, he told us that he loved collecting Slorm Reapers, and that he thought we should go for more, and that 40 was not a big enough number.

So we went with 120.
This would lead to a LOT more work than anticipated, especially given the numerous reworks we've had to make.

[h2]Reworking Slorm Reapers[/h2]
We then went on and built 120 Slorm Reapers. Then moved on to other mechanics of the game, eventually reworking Class Skills, The Ancestral Legacy, addind Character Traits etc... And even though Slorm Reapers were "good to go", The Slormancer got much bigger and much more complex than we anticipated, and all of a sudden Slorm Reapers were very underwhelming for what they were supposed to accomplish.

So we decided to rework them all. This would lead to a very important change:

We felt that granting a bonus and a malus was a very nice idea but that most players would be so annoyed by the malus that they would not give the Slorm Reaper a try.

So we first decided to split things up. Let's offer a regular version of the Slorm Reaper, with a fun and interesting concept, and then, if players show great commitment to it, they would unlock an even stronger version, but with a Malediction they would have to overcome.

This would lead to the Primordial Version that it's in the game.

So it meant that we could discard almost all the work we've done on the first iteration of our 120 Slorm Reapers. And coming up with new effects turned out to be both long and challenging, so we decided that instead of having 120 Slorm Reapers from the beginning of Early Access, we would start with 32, and add more along the way.

At this point, we also removed Rarities, because we knew players would often disregard Non-Legendary Reapers simply because... they are not Legendaries.

Here's a Before / After of Aïondee :



This new version is a LOT more work. Now instead of having a simple Bonus / Malus, we also have to come up with an interesting base, with a few scalable stats and exciting things to build around. Usually, our goal when designing a Slorm Reaper is to create something that is good on its own, but that can also trigger the theorycraft part of a player. Basically, when you loot a Slorm Reaper, you should always think: "Oh, I want to build something around this."

[h2]Early Access[/h2]
During Early Access, as Pepperidge Farm remembers, we added a first batch of about 20 Slorm Reapers pretty early on, but it felt too early for most players, since the game was still lacking most of its content, so we decided to postpone the rest of the Slorm Reapers until further notice.

Early Access also saw the apparition of Slorm Reaper Affinity, a mechanic that would enhance the effects of your Slorm Reaper, reduce the difficulty to unlock Primordial Slorm Reapers and the addition of Cory Ironbender, an NPC that can craft Slorm Reapers you've unlocked with another class.

[h2]Now[/h2]
And this leads us to now.
With 68 Slorm Reapers left to go.

Since the last Slormite Chronicles, we've made good progress and are almost done with preproduction. We have all the 68 Slorm Reapers ready to go, and are currently validating every single one of them one last time so we won't regret anything during or after production.

Here are a couple of new concepts that we can share:
At this stage of development, things are heavily subject to change.







That's about it for today!
Cheers everyone!

Hello everyone!

The Ancestral Update (v.0.7) is now available!


Part I and II of the Adam Nostrus' Trials have been added to The Slormancer.

As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, they are an introduction to the endgame content of The Slormancer.



The Slormancer is now tracking the following data:

• The number of Bosses defeated during Expeditions.
  
• The highest Reinforcement among your Items.
  
• The highest Great Forge at Wrath 3+
  

This means that somes objectives of the Trials will be validated retroactively, while others (listed above) will not.


Have been added to the game:

• The 7th Ancestral Stone.
  
• The Primal Ancestral Stone.
  
• The last 5 remaining Ancestral Skill.
  

With this update, the Ancestral Legacy is now feature complete.


Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion, our first Endgame boss has been added to the game.

He has fixed stats and will not scale to your Character Level or Wrath Level.
He will be fairly easy to defeat for seasoned players but should be quite challenging for players running Wrath 5 to 7 Expeditions.

This is a first for us, and its first iteration, so feel free to let us know how you are doing against Adam Nostrus and if a mechanic is difficult to overcome.

• The Necromancer and The Dreadful Colossus, enemies you've defeated as Story Bosses, can now appear as regular enemies during Expeditions.
  
• Bosses will trigger more often during Battlefield Expeditions.
  
• Loadouts are now saving Character Traits.
  
• Story Missions from Act 1 to Act 3 can now be chained without returning to the Village when possible.
  

• Fate-Crusher, Reaper of the Seven & The Great Forge:
  
  • Fate-Crusher no longer grants an unknown and unusable Reapersmith Spirit.
    
  • Fate-Crusher now has a bonus Reapersmith Spirit reward with every Reapersmith Spirit.
    
  • As such, a defeat in The Great Forge equipped with Fate-Crusher will result in you keeping every Reapersmith Spirit in your War Chest.
    

The Might Knight:

• Grappling Hook should now behave and animate properly.
  
• Grappling Hook should no longer teleport you around.
  

The Great Forge:

• Light Beam and Ice Bomb should no longer stop as soon as the "Next Wave" Button is enabled.
  

(Bugs were definitely not a priority lately)

That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!

Today is Chronicles day! So let's jump into it!
We've mentioned this in our previous Chronicle but we have a short term plan in mind for the rest of 2023. Ideally, we would like to release 3 Updates:

• The Ancestral Update
  It's the one we are currently working and I'll detail all about its content right down below.
  
• The Slorm Reapers Update
  Is the one where we want to release all the Slorm Reapers that are left to be introduced. That's a whopping 68 new Slorm Reapers!
  
• The Warlords Update
  Is the update that will introduce the big Endgame content that we have in mind for The Slormancer.
  

Best case scenario is that we manage to release all of that content before the end of the year. But depending on how things may turn out when developping Slorm Reapers or The Warlords endgame mode, it may take longer than that.

Once we're done with these 3 Updates, the vast majority of the content will be in The Slormancer so we would like to move on to balancing the game.


Now let's talk about the upcoming Ancestral Update.
The idea here is to tie the end of the Story to the beginning of the Endgame via a few objectives to complete that will give the players a good idea of what's left to be done when reaching this point.

On top of that, we will introduce the last 2 Ancestral Stones for the Ancestral Legacy tree, along with our very first non-scaled Endgame Boss.

[h2]Adam Nostrus' Trials[/h2]


Once you reach the end of the Story and defeat the Boss in Act 5, Adam Nostrus will give you a few tasks to complete to make sure that you are indeed ready to fight The Slormancer itself.

His Trials are divided in 3 Parts. You will have to complete each part to unlock the next one, and everytime you complete a part, you will unlock a reward.

The first part grants the seventh Ancestral Stone, while the second part grants The Primal Ancestral Stone which is a unique Ancestral Stone that can be enshrined into any slot of your Ancestral Legacy.
As for the third part, as you can see, it is currently waiting for "The Warlords" content to be available but it will reward you with a unique Slorm Reaper (only available through the Trials).



Adam Nostrus' Trials are designed to encourage new players reaching Endgame for the first time to explore all their options.

For seasoned players looking for harder goals, we will instead use Achievements to create interesting challenges.

Regarding the tracking of all these Objectives, the game is already tracking most of them, and this is also true for Achievements. However, some of them are currently not being tracked, such as Defeating Expeditions Bosses, so you will start from scratch once the Update comes out.


[h2]Ancestral Legacy[/h2]


One of the most important goals of this update is to unlock the full potential of the Ancestral Legacy.
So for those of you that have been playing The Slormancer since Day 1, where you only had 2 Ancestral Stones at your disposal, this is the end of a very long journey.

With this update, we introduce the seventh Ancestral Stone that will allow you to reach the very last Skills that were not reachable yet. And with the new Primal Ancestral Stone, we hope to provide an interesting option to enhance previously impossible combinations, and hopefully break the linearity of the Ancestral Legacy a bit.

[h2]Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion[/h2]
We do not consider this to be a spoiler since this is a friendly challenge (some sort of a final test) and not a major plot twist making Adam Nostrus the big villain. And since you've been giving this poor old fella a bunch of the most powerful artifacts known to man, it is now time to face him.

Adam Nostrus is our first Boss with fixed stats which means he will not adapt to your level or your current Wrath Level. He will represent the same challenge for everyone and a good way for us to have a non-scaled way to measure the strength of the various classes and builds.

We've yet to determine his actual strength but he is meant to give players a reachable goal and a first taste of an Endgame fight so he will probably land around something similar to Level 100 + Wrath 7. So if you're alreay crushing Wrath 10, besides understanding his mechanics, he will not be particularly challenging. For that, we will have The Slormancer itself.


That's about it for today!
We have no release date for this update but it should be around September.

Cheers everyone!