The Slormancer News

Hello everyone!


It's been a chaotic release for us, due to various bugs, performance issues and balance problems.
We've already taken care of some of it and I do still have quite a list of bugs ahead but I can only fix them one at a time. That being said, we have one (hopefully) final patch regarding The Great Forge coming in the next few days. It will fix Performance issues for the most intensive builds such as Ray of Obliteration + Arcane Clones or any build using Vindictive Slam, along with the vast majority of bugs and issues regarding Runes.

On a positive note, we're pretty happy with The Great Forge. And from what we've seen from our Discord, players seem to be having fun building massive War Chests, which is nice.

Once the final Great Forge patch has been released, we will be able to move on to new horizons.


Now feels like a good time to release the new Roadmap. Nothing has been added or removed from the old one, this is basically us taking a fresh start in our Early Access.

With this new Roadmap also comes the intention of deploying Updates much more often, even if it means releasing less content at a time.

I have to say that working for 5 months on the last update has been pretty hard. Despite the amount of content that was added, we've made almost no progress on the roadmap itself and it feels bad.
So right now, we want to go for the exact opposite: Making smaller yet impactful updates, and ticking things off the Roadmap.

And after so much time working on the same thing, we're super excited to work on new content.

Now Behold!



This new Milestones / Features gives us a bit more freedom regarding what we add and when we add it. The Milestones row is what we plan to follow, meaning that the next update is "The Luxuriant Update I", while the Features row is what we plan to add at any given point in-between updates.

We are also done with adding new layers of customization or new mechanics for a while. Our goal is to focus on what we currently have and work on it. This means reworking what needs to be reworked and grow on existing layers such as adding Environments, Enemies, Slorm Reapers, Ancestral Skills and Legendary Items.

We actually plan on finishing all these layers before even considering adding something entirely new. As for the last 2 endgame modes mentioned in the Road Map, both are based on existing mechanics that simply needs to be polished and fleshed out.

In the near future, for the next 5 to 6 months, it should all be about building content for what we already have. This usually requires very little brainstorm or tests, which was the most time-consuming thing for our Slorm Temple and Great Forge updates.


Half our team (so 1 person) is already working full time on the new update, while I'm still here fixing bugs, writing devlogs and stuff. And while we have nothing absolutely new to offer, here are a few (fairly old) screenshots of what's coming: The Luxurious Gardens.




That's about it for now!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!

Here's the list of changes that were made over the yesterday's and today's patches.

We've been monitoring what was achievable in The Great Forge and we've decided to make a first round of changes as some interractions with Greater Rewards were out of control.

• The chance to get Greater Rewards inside The Great Forge diminishes every time you pick a Greater Reward. The Greater Reward from Well-Deserved Rest remains guaranteed.
  
• You can no longer get an Obelisk as a Challenge Choice if you already have that same Obelisk active, Allied or Hostile.
  
• The Chance to have Obelisks as Challenge Choices has been reduced by 30%.
  
• War Chest Quality and War Chest Quantity base rates have been halved.
  
• Rewards with a "Rest of the Run" duration have been increased by +100%.
  
• Rewards for "Attrition Battle" have been increased by 300%.
  
• The Greater Reward: "You immediately gain +15% Slorm Quantity to your War Chest for every Reapersmith Spirit inside your War Chest." now reads "You immediately add +10 Slorm to your War Chest for every Reapersmith Spirit inside your War Chest."
  
• The Greater Reward: "For the rest of the Expedition, you add +1 of a random type of Reapersmith Spirit to your War Chest everytime you kill an enemy." now reads "For the rest of the Expedition, you have 35% Chance to add +1 of a random type of Reapersmith Spirit to your War Chest everytime you kill an enemy." and is no longer affected by Wrath Rewards Multiplier since Wrath Level already increases the number of enemies per Wave.
  
• The Obelisk Reward that adds +4% War Chest Quality every Wave now adds 2% instead.
  
• The Obelisk Reward that adds +2% Equipment Quality every Wave now adds 4% instead.
  
• Curse based on your Goldus now reads "Enemies have +X% Max Life. Max Life is equal to your current Goldus Quantity."
  

• The War Chest now drops Loot much faster.
  
• Goldus and Fragments from Items looted by the War Chest that are being filtered and converted are now immediately added to your Inventory instead of being looted.
  
• The War Chest can no longer be opened while in Combat.
  
• Obelisks are no longer affected by Cataclysms.
  

• Reaper of Necromancy should now properly grant the correct amount of Life to your Squire.
  
• Enhancement Rune of Hagan and Enhancement Rune of Beigarth should now properly work.
  
• Reaper Effect should now properly be increased by your Slorm Reaper Affinity.
  
• The Greater Reward: "The total of every loot inside your War Chest is immediately increased by your current War Chest Quality." now properly only increases flat values, and not % Quality or Quantity.
  

• Multiplie Memory Leaks and FPS-related issues were found and fixed. This includes issues with Rain of Arrows and various Cataclysms such as Floor is Lava or Replicant. Various parts were changed along the way that should result in FPS improvements everywhere in the game.
  
• The "Low FX" setting hides new resource-heavy effects that were previously ignored.
  

About Performance:
Due to the high density of enemies inside The Great Forge, lag is currently to be expected in high Wrath Levels. Here are some changes in your Gameplay Settings that you can make to improve your experience:

- Hide Gathered Slorm: Disabled
- Display Enemy Life Bar: Never
- Disable Hero Damage: Never
- Display Combo Meter: Never
- Display Goldus/XP/Mana/Life/State Texts: Disabled
- Display Debuff Icons: Disabled
- In Settings: Low FX: Enabled

This should reduce the lag you may experience.



That's about it for today.
We'll have another round of fixes next week, focusing on non-gamebreaking and again, on performance.

May your War Chest be filled with shiny Legendaries!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!

This patch is mostly about fixing the biggest Performance issues occuring inside The Great Forge.
There are a couple of things that were fixed along the way such as Slorm Reaper Affinity and Enhancement Runes not working.

Once I've dealt with the most important issues, I'll upload anohter patch and write a proper Patch Notes listing all the changes.
Tomorrow most likely.

I hope you're all having a good time!
Cheers!

Hello everyone!


[h2]New Endgame mode[/h2]
The Great Forge has been added into the game. Simply talk to Cory Ironbender to unlock the new mode then to Palstrang to get there.

The Great Forge is a wave-based mode in which you have to defend yourself from hundreds of enemies. It also adds a different type of challenge to The Slormancer, heavily based on greed.



Various loot you usually get from enemies are added to your War Chest which you can loot at any point between waves. Once you do, The Great Forge ends.

Every Wave, you get to choose between various Challenges that each offer a different type of Reward, ranging from the new Reapersmith Spirit Currency, to % Equipment Quality or % Goldus Quantity applied to loot in your War Chest. The key is to stack as many Rewards as you can, well... without dying.



Challenges: There is about 60 unique Challenges. They often come with multiple difficulty settings based on their Rarity (from Normal to Legendary) so the actual number of different Challenges is quite higher. About half the Challenges comes from Cataclysms.

Greater Rewards: On top of regular Rewards, we've added 32 Greater Rewards to the game. They are almost always tied to Epic or Legendary Challenges and often change the configuration of your War Chest, such as converting your Slorm into Goldus.




[h2]New Currency[/h2]
A new kind of Currency called Reapersmith Spirits has been added into the game. They can only be looted through Challenges inside The Great Forge and allow you to upgrade your Reaper Runes, your Slorm Reaper Affinity or to forge Slorm Reapers.

There is a Reapersmith Spirit for each Reapersmith, so a total of 7.
You get a 200% Reapersmith Spirit bonus from the Reapersmith of your current Slorm Reaper. On top of that, Reapersmith Spirits are guaranteed, whether you loot your War Chest or die in The Great Forge, so choosing the proper Slorm Reaper to get these currencies is a top priority.

[h2]New Mechanic: Slorm Reaper Affinity[/h2]
With Reapersmith Spirits, you can purchase Slorm Reaper Affinity to Cory Ironbender. And just like Spirits, there are 7 different Slorm Reaper Affinites to upgrade.
You can get up to 100 points in each Slorm Reaper Affinity. Each point grants:
+0.5% Reaper Damage
+0.5 Effect Multiplier
+1% Slorm Reaper Experience Gain
+0.5% Reduced Primordial Cap
These bonuses are applied to every Slorm Reaper wrought by the upgraded Affinity.
So if you choose to upgrade Fulgurorn's Affinity, then every Slorm Reaper wrought by Fulgurorn will benefit from these bonuses, on every class.



[h2]New Mechanic: Forging Slorm Reapers[/h2]
Reapersmith Spirits also allow you to forge Slorm Reapers for your other classes.
The prerequisite is to own the Slorm Reaper with at least one of your characters.
So if you own Sword of the Nimble Warrior, you will be able to craft Bow of the Nimble Warrior or Staff of the Nimble Warrior for your Huntress or your Mage.
This works on Primordial Slorm Reapers as well.



[h2]New Slorm Reaper: Fate-Crusher[/h2]
A new Slorm Reaper has been added into the game. It is sold by Cory Ironbender and cannot be looted.

[h2]New Boss: The Siege Leader[/h2]
A new Boss, exclusive to The Great Forge, has been added into the game.
It has multiple Challenges tied to it and can spawn at (almost) any time during an Expedition in The Great Forge. Spawning and defeating The Siege Leader gives you access to the new Reaper Runes, and later on, to Greater Rewards.



[h2]New Mechanic: Reaper Runes[/h2]
Reaper Runes have been added into the game. They are unlocked by defeating The Siege Leader inside The Great Forge.
There are 28 Reaper Runes:

• 7 Runes of Activation
  
• 14 Runes of Effect
  
• 7 Runes of Enhancement
  

Runes of Effects are based on Slorm Reaper Effects, so you will get to find Rune of the Nimble Warrior, or The Most Powerful Rune etc...
An Effect Rune is triggered when you fill the condition of the associated Rune of Activation. So the default setting to get Runes to work is to have at least 1 Rune of Activation linked to 1 Rune of Effect.
Runes of Enhancement adds a bonus to the configuration.




4 New Cataclysms have been added into the game.

1. Hermetic: grants resistance to Damage over Time (25% to 100%).
   
2. Double Down: grants Recast Chance (up to 100%).
   
3. Multiplication: grants Additional Projectiles (up to 2).
   
4. Proliferation: grants Increased Area Size (up to 100%).
   

The Base Damage of a great number of Slorm Reapers has been buffed while the Base Damage of The Most Powerful Reaper has been reduced. The complete list of changes can be found here.


We've been working on improving the overall feeling of some of The Mighty Knight's skills: Ascension, Crest Shield and Whirlwind have been reworked to feel more natural and less clunky.


There are various changes and other minor additions that can be found in the complete Patch Notes, right here!

As always, the first few days of an Update are a bit unstable. Despite our best effort, we might have missed a few bugs here and there. So if you find one, please report it here, on the Steam forums, or on our Discord.
We try to fix them as soon as possible.

Same goes for balance, we try our best to build something that is balanced and fair but we probably forgot about this build or that build, or forgot that this effect was completely broken with another.
The truth is 200 players playing 2 hours each are faster to discover these issues than the both us playtesting for a 100 hours. So we expect balance issues aswell.

We really hope that you have fun in The Great Forge!
If so, let us know! Leaving a Review on Steam is a great way to do so. :)

That's about it!

Hello everyone!

The Great Forge Update will be available on September 27, so by Tuesday!
The Update will go live around 10AM CEST (European Time) or 4AM EDT (Eastern Time).

Here is the complete list of changes and additions.


[h2]New Endgame mode[/h2]
The Great Forge has been added into the game. Simply talk to Cory Ironbender to unlock the new mode then to Palstrang to get there.

The Great Forge is a wave-based mode in which you have to defend yourself from hundreds of enemies. It also adds a different type of challenge to The Slormancer, heavily based on greed.

Various loot you usually get from enemies are added to your War Chest which you can loot at any point between waves. Once you do, The Great Forge ends.

Every Wave, you get to choose between various Challenges that each offer a different type of Reward, ranging from the new Reapersmith Spirit Currency, to % Equipment Quality or % Goldus Quantity applied to loot in your War Chest. The key is to stack as many Rewards as you can, well... without dying.

Challenges: There is about 60 unique Challenges. They often come with multiple difficulty settings based on their Rarity (from Normal to Legendary) so the actual number of different Challenges is quite higher. About half the Challenges comes from Cataclysms.

Greater Rewards: On top of regular Rewards, we've added 32 Greater Rewards to the game. They are almost always tied to Epic or Legendary Challenges and often change the configuration of your War Chest, such as converting your Slorm into Goldus.


[h2]New Currency[/h2]
A new kind of Currency called Reapersmith Spirits has been added into the game. They can only be looted through Challenges inside The Great Forge and allow you to upgrade your Reaper Runes, your Slorm Reaper Affinity or to forge Slorm Reapers.

There is a Reapersmith Spirit for each Reapersmith, so a total of 7.
You get a 200% Reapersmith Spirit bonus from the Reapersmith of your current Slorm Reaper. On top of that, Reapersmith Spirits are guaranteed, whether you loot your War Chest or die in The Great Forge, so choosing the proper Slorm Reaper to get these currencies is a top priority.

[h2]New Mechanic: Slorm Reaper Affinity[/h2]
With Reapersmith Spirits, you can purchase Slorm Reaper Affinity to Cory Ironbender. And just like Spirits, there are 7 different Slorm Reaper Affinites to upgrade.
You can get up to 100 points in each Slorm Reaper Affinity. Each point grants:
+0.5% Reaper Damage
+0.5 Effect Multiplier
+1% Slorm Reaper Experience Gain
+0.5% Reduced Primordial Cap
These bonuses are applied to every Slorm Reaper wrought by the upgraded Affinity.
So if you choose to upgrade Fulgurorn's Affinity, then every Slorm Reaper wrought by Fulgurorn will benefit from these bonuses, on every class.

[h2]New Mechanic: Forging Slorm Reapers[/h2]
Reapersmith Spirits also allow you to forge Slorm Reapers for your other classes.
The prerequisite is to own the Slorm Reaper with at least one of your characters.
So if you own Sword of the Nimble Warrior, you will be able to craft Bow of the Nimble Warrior or Staff of the Nimble Warrior for your Huntress or your Mage.
This works on Primordial Slorm Reapers as well.

[h2]New Slorm Reaper: Fate-Crusher[/h2]
A new Slorm Reaper has been added into the game. It is sold by Cory Ironbender and cannot be looted.

[h2]New Boss: The Siege Leader[/h2]
A new Boss, exclusive to The Great Forge, has been added into the game.
It has multiple Challenges tied to it and can spawn at (almost) any time during an Expedition in The Great Forge. Spawning and defeating The Siege Leader gives you access to the new Reaper Runes, and later on, to Greater Rewards.

[h2]New Mechanic: Reaper Runes[/h2]
Reaper Runes have been added into the game. They are unlocked by defeating The Siege Leader inside The Great Forge.
There are 28 Reaper Runes:

• 7 Runes of Activation
  
• 14 Runes of Effect
  
• 7 Runes of Enhancement
  

Runes of Effects are based on Slorm Reaper Effects, so you will get to find Rune of the Nimble Warrior, or The Most Powerful Rune etc...
An Effect Rune is triggered when you fill the condition of the associated Rune of Activation. So the default setting to get Runes to work is to have at least 1 Rune of Activation linked to 1 Rune of Effect.
Runes of Enhancement adds a bonus to the configuration.


[h2]Cataclysm Changes[/h2]
Since Cataclysms are part of the Challenges inside The Great Forge, and that we needed them to have multiple difficulty settings, we've had to change some of them that didn't have a proper value to be played on:

• Tenacious: Instead of granting complete Immunity to Crowd Control, it now grants % Tenacity (up to 100%). Which is exactly the same, except that the default version of Tenacious, found in Expeditions only grants 75% Tenacity, which makes it easier to play around.
  
• Reincarnation: Now grants a Chance to be revived upon dying. The default version is 100% Chance, but lesser versions (down to 25% Chance) can also be found inside The Great Forge.
  

[h2]New Cataclysms[/h2]
4 New Cataclysms have been added into the game.

1. Hermetic: grants resistance to Damage over Time (up to 100%).
   
2. Double Down: grants Recast Chance (up to 100%).
   
3. Multiplication: grants Additional Projectiles (up to 2).
   
4. Proliferation: grants Increased Area Size (up to 100%).
   

[h2]Slorm Reaper Damage[/h2]
We've noticed that a significant amount of Slorm Reaper were ignored by players simply because they lacked proper base damage to be considered. We've also noticed that The Most Powerful Reaper was present in numerous builds despite its lack of interesting mechanics.
Right now, we've only made change to Reaper Damage. Mechanics and effects were not modified.

Nerfed Reapers:
The Most Powerful Reaper: -45% Reaper Damage.
Reaper of deadly Accuracy: -15%
Big Fury Reaper: -10%

Buffed Reapers:
Overdriving Reaper: +25% Reaper Damage.
Reaper of the Manabender: +50%
Reaper of Vindictive Slam: +50%
Reaper of the Sharpshooter: +75%
Reaper of the Untouchable One: +75%
Aïondee, The Reaper of the Rising Sun: +100%
Reaper of Inner Fireworks: +100%
Mana Harvesting Reaper: +100%
The Ancestral Legacy Reaper: +100%
Reaper of the Lifebender: +200%
Reaper of Necromancy: +200%
Reaper of Retaliating Foresight: +200%
Slormandrite Reaper of the Shaman: +200%
Gold-Plated Reaper: +500%
Thornbite Reaper of Idleness: +500%
Reaper of the Trainee: +1000% (Base Damage only)

[h2]Slorm Reaper Bonus Level[/h2]
Bonus Levels found on Equipment has been replaced by Slorm Reaper Affinity Bonus.

The Bonus Level was heavily favoring Slorm Reapers with a high Level Multiplier such as The Most Powerful Reaper (almost quadrupling its damage between Level 100 and Level 155).
The new Slorm Reaper Affinity should be equally helpful for all Slorm Reapers.

The Most Powerful Reaper was:
At Level 100, Damage range is 3524 - 5502.
At Level 155, Damage range is 13228 - 20686.

The Most Powerful Reaper now is:
At Level 100: 1866 - 3058
At Level 100 + Max Affinity: 3265 - 5351

The idea behind these changes is to bring all Slorm Reapers into roughly the same damage range.
The Most Powerful Reaper still is the most powerful damage-wise, simply not by THAT much anymore.



[h2]Slorm Reaper Loot[/h2]
Slorm Reapers will now drop at specific points during the Story so that new players are given various options to choose from early on instead of having to wait for Expeditions to get them. This change was made because Breaches do not appear on most missions, preventing players to loot Slorm Reapers.
Slorm Reapers can only drop this way when you're doing a Mission for the first time.

[h2]The Mighty Knight Changes:[/h2]
For these changes, we were mostly looking to change the feeling of the following skills because they felt clunky to use. An in-depth rework is probably still necessary.

Ascension
Has been reworked to be a much faster jump that no longer "interrupts" your movement flow.

• Fast Rebound now has 5 Upgrades instead of 10. Fast Rebound also reduced the Cooldown by 0.5% instead of 1%.
  

Crest Shield
Has been reworked and no longer locks you in a "cast" state, meaning you can move normally AND cast while Crest Shield has been casted.

• Inner Journey has been removed and has been replaced by Independance Day.
  
• Independance Day: Crest Shield now rotates where it has been casted before coming back to you.
  

Whirlwind
Has been reworked to, well... feel better.

• Size is 30% larger.
  
• Knockback has been set to 0.
  
• Cooldown has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
  
• Whirlwind used to deal damage to every enemy within its range every 15 frames (called a Rotation), which didn't offer the best feeling overall.
  Instead, Whirlwind now deals damage to an enemy as soon as it gets within its range then every 15 frames. This timer is handled separately for every enemy.
  

[h2]Enemies Weight[/h2]
The weight of Enemies is now taken into account when trying to pull them. So when you use a skill like Rain of Arrows' Hunting Net, a light Soldier will be easily pulled toward the center while a heavier enemy like a Fallen Knight will slightly move. Same goes for Elite enemies. Weight is also more effective on the edges of a pulling area.

Affected Skills are:

• Knight: Grappling Hook - Captain Hook
  
• Knight: Whirlwind - Static Vortex
  
• Knight: Ascension - Gravity Force
  
• Huntress: Rain of Arrows - Hunting Net
  
• Huntress: Traps with the Legendary item Gravity Belt
  
• Huntress: Daggers - Daggers of Polarization
  
• Mage: Arcane Breach - Gravitational Force
  
• Mage: Orb of the Arcane Master - Orb of the Obliteration Master
  

[h2]Story[/h2]

• The Prison 10 - The Ghost of the Prison: Olorin will now always wait for you before moving on.
  
• The Prison 11 - The Dungeons: Removed a room that was not accessible.
  
• The Prison 12 - Grotagrom:
  
  • Max Life has been reduced by 30%.
    
  • The duration of Stuns on the player has been halved.
    
• The Mage Academy 9 - Alarin: Damage from Massive Projectiles has been reduced by 40%.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Savagery 45: now grants Raw Damage based on your Missing Life instead of your Missing Mana.
  
• Reaper of Necromancy: Squires now have Life equal to 100% of your Max Mana instead of 30%.
  

[h2]Bugs Fixed[/h2]
Classes

• The Fierce Huntress: Rain of Arrows - Hunting Net now has an Area of Effect tag and is properly affected by Increased Area of Effect
  
• The Mighty Knight: Crest Shield - Original Use should now display the correct amount of Increased Damage.
  

Slorm Reapers

• Reaper of Deadly Accuracy: Tooltip has been changed to reflect that Exposed Armor can be triggered by Support Skills.
  
• Reaper of Mana Harvest: Mana Harvest & Mana Harvest explosion should be properly inherit from Area Increased Effect.
  

Various

• Mastery acquired from Equipment should now be properly displayed on Skills.
  
• Overdrive's FX is now properly triggered from the enemy that triggered it and no longer from us.
  
• The Slorm Temple: Rays from Containment Field should now be properly destroyed as soon as the room has been cleared.
  
• Cataclysms Rewards should now properly scale with Wrath Level.
  
• Suffering Souls should no longer get stuck in random parts of the environment.
  
• Fixed a few typos.
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]
I've made quite a bit of changes on enemy's AI that should significantly increase the performance when many enemies are on screen.
These changes should not improve the issue causing the game to freeze when enemies are being hit by large or numerous AoEs. But it should definitely increase your FPS when many enemies are on screen.

That's about it!