The Last Spell News

Hello Heroes!

New changelog for the Open Beta, you can see all the changes below. As always, thank you for your reports!

[h2]QOL OF THE ORACULUM[/h2]

The favors are now ordered in a more coherent manner, and this order should remain more consistent.

In addition to that, we’ve also added some tabs to allow for some filtering, which should help navigate the Oraculum and its countless favors.

Depending on its effect(s), a given favor can possibly be found in several tabs: we’d rather have duplicates but allow for a favor to be found easily when looking for it than the opposite. (e.g. a favor unlocking an Omen increasing Heroes’ attributes can be found in “Omens” as well as “Heroes”.)



[h2]BUG FIX[/h2]

• Fixed a bug on the drop rates of level up attributes (too many rare attributes were picked)
  
• Fixed a softlock when saving during the boss night
  
• Fixed a softlock caused by the "Omen of Mercenary Training" and "Omen of Restraint”
  
• Fixed Spiky Counter Perk not displayed in HUD
  
• Fixed the meta upgrades More Rare Level Up 1,2 and 3 displayed at the same time instead of one after another.
  
• Fixed the Adamantium Sword using the image of the Mythril Sword
  
• Fixed Corpses not being jumpable
  
• Fixed some Soul Vessel not being jumpable
  
• Fixed some Soul Vessel blocking sight
  
• Fixed the Archer enemy displaying the wrong skill in their HUD
  
• Fixed Vestige Walls, Corpses and some Soul Vessels not activating Back Protection
  
• Mist censers cannot spawn on Corpses anymore
  
• Corpses can no longer spawn on Warp Gate
  
• The experience is now correctly saved with the saving of the night
  
• Fixed night report assets for elites enemies
  
• Omen of lone scavenger can no longer be reset by reloading the game
  
• Fixed the Apocalypse level 4 not changing the prices at all
  
• Omen of scavenging is now correctly increasing gold and material when scavenging a ruin
  
• Fixed the catapult reloads
  
• Fixed the Omens interface for screens with 2k resolution
  
• Fixed Adamantium Great Axe and Mystic Elven Boots attributes
  
• Fixed unintended high amount of enemies on Lakeburg nights 9 & 10
  
• Fixed unintended high amount of strong enemies on Elderlicht night 6
  
• Fixed Corpses not displaying the good amount of item rewards
  
• Fixed enemies tooltip displayed in the fog
  

[h2]BALANCING[/h2]

[h3]Enemies[/h3]

Enemy Waves & Difficulty

• Changed Elite enemy spawning nights in Lakeburg
  
• Adjusted number of strong enemies in Gildenberg nights 5 to 7 (smoother progression)
  
• Reduced number of strong enemies in Glenwald and Elderlicht early nights
  
• Reduced amount of “Bulky” enemies in Lakeburg
  
• Adjusted Elderlicht night 11 enemy quantities (now more on par with other nights)
  

Corrupted Harpy (boss unit)

• Health: 2160 -> 1680
  

Archer

• Decreased overall Armor
  

Hunter

• Removed Armor
  
• Increased overall Health
  
• Increased overall Dodge
  

Ripper

• Removed Armor
  
• Increased overall Health
  

Accursed

• Removed Armor
  
• Increased overall Health
  

Bulky

• Decreased overall Block
  
• Increased overall Health
  

Twisted

• Removed Armor
  
• Decreased overall Dodge
  
• Increased overall Health
  

Elite enemies

• Some Elites’ Health and Armor have been tweaked
  
• Regeneration Affix: 30% -> 20% Max Health
  

[h3]Corpses[/h3]

Global

• Tweaked Spawn % chance values: corpses (any size) should appear slightly more often on average
  

Corpses (smallest pile)

• Health: 25 -> 50
  
• Scavenge (Resources focus) has been replaced by 2 new actions
  

NEW: Scavenge (Gold focus)

• Cost: 1 worker
  
• +18 Gold
  
• +10 Tainted Essence
  

NEW: Scavenge (Materials focus)

• Cost: 1 worker
  
• +32 Materials
  
• +10 Tainted Essence
  

Pile of Corpses (medium pile)

• Health: 40 -> 125
  

Scavenge (Resources focus)

• Materials gain: +38 -> +36
  

Scavenge (Item focus)

• Tainted Essence gain: +50 -> +25
  

Mountain of Corpses (largest pile)

• Health: 50 -> 250
  

Scavenge (Resource focus)

• Gold gain: +48 -> +40
  
• Materials gain: +91 -> +72
  

Scavenge (Item focus)

• Tainted Essence gain: +100 -> +50
  

Elite Carrion (elite pile)

• Health: 25 -> 125
  
• “Scavenge (Resources focus)” and “Scavenge (Item focus)” have been merged and rebalanced into a single action
  

NEW: Scavenge

• Cost: 1 worker
  
• +1 EPIC Item
  
• +20 Gold
  
• +36 Materials
  
• +100 Tainted Essence
  

[h3]Buildings[/h3]

Temple

• Health: 150 -> 270
  
• Removed the "Blessing" upgrade: “Blessing” action is now unlocked from the start
  
• “Blessing+” upgrade cost: 100 -> 80 Gold
  

Mana Well

• Health: 100 -> 90
  
• Restore Mana mana restoration: 10 -> 8
  
• Restore+ upgrade restored mana increase: 10 to 15 -> 8 to 12
  
• Removed the Gift upgrade: Gift action is now unlocked from the start
  
• Gift worker cost: 2 -> 1
  
• Gift max mana bonus: 5 -> 3
  
• Gift+ upgrade cost: 100 -> 50 Gold
  
• Gift+ upgrade max mana bonus increase: 5 to 8 -> 3 to 5
  

Ballista

• Health: 40 -> 75
  
• Damage: 70-100 -> 120-140
  

Mounted Ballista

• Health: 50 -> 115
  
• Damage: 90-120 -> 140-170
  

Catapult

• Health: 50 -> 115
  
• Damage: 50-130 -> 90-170
  

Traps

• Stun Trap damage: 10-25 -> 20-30
  
• Slow Trap damage: 25-50 -> 40-60
  
• Damage Trap damage: 35-100 -> 80-130
  

Other Health tweaks

• House: 100 ->165
  
• Gold Mine: 100 ->165
  
• Scavengers Camp: 100 ->165
  
• Shop: 150 ->270
  
• Armor Maker: 150 ->225
  
• Blacksmith: 150 -> 225
  
• Bowyer: 150 -> 225
  
• Magic Shop: 150 -> 225
  
• Jeweler: 150 -> 225
  
• Alchemist: 150 -> 225
  
• Inn: 150 -> 270
  
• Seer: 150 -> 225
  
• Watchtower: 60 -> 100
  

[h3]Meta progression[/h3]

Global

• Some light-side unlocks have been tweaked to become visible (before completion) at a slower rate (only applies if these unlocks are not already visible)
  
• Early permanent upgrades’ Tainted Essence prices were increased slightly
  

Weapon unlocks

There will be more weapons to purchase more quickly on your first Gildenberg run when you manage to beat half of the nights on your first try

[h3]Perk balancing[/h3]

Spiky Counter

• Base value: 20 -> 30
  

Bully

• Damage malus: -20% -> -30%
  

Critical Master

• Base Critical Power bonus: +20% -> +25%
  
• Bonus for each 5 crits: +10% -> +5%
  

Big Game Hunter

• Minimum Health threshold: 300 -> 600
  
• % of Health added as bonus damage: 6% -> 3%
  
• Note: This perk will be subject to deeper balancing changes in a later patch
  

Join us on Discord, Twitter & Instagram to discuss with the team and other players!

Hello Heroes!

Here is the first changelog for this Open Beta. Again, thank you so much for your feedback and support, feel free to join us on Discord so we can react quicker to your reports!

First, important message for ongoing runs: if you have built a Seer with all the upgrades, your run will be unplayable with this update and you might have to start over. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed a Softlock happening when a ballista was destroyed by the player or an enemy
  
• Fixed the catapult staying visually when destroyed
  
• Fixed heroes stuck on corpses. When a corpse is spawning on a tile occupied by a hero, the later is moved to an adjacent tile
  
• Fixed a world map cities selection issue
  
• Fixed Mana Well skill Restore Mana+ affecting only one target
  
• Fixed Offhand Wand and Offhand Hammer being wrongly locked behind variation unlocks. They are now available from the start
  
• Fixed Omen of Death Denial being wrongly priced
  

[h2]BALANCING[/h2]

• Seer Repel skill now costs 2 workers when the fog is at its closest position, 4 workers when it is at its furthest position and 3 workers in other cases
  
• Seer Guess Who action has been removed : buying the upgrade now grants enemy list and quantities passively
  
• Seer Guess Who first upgrade cost : 25 -> 60 gold
  
• Seer Guess Who second upgrade has been removed
  
• Seer Guess Again worker cost : 2 -> 1
  
• Seer Guess Again max uses per night : 1 -> 2
  
• Added a "Very Big" version to the Seer Guess Where arrows
  
• Level Up values for Phys+, Mag+ and Rang+ : 4/6/7 -> 5/7/8
  
• Phys+, Mag+, Rang+, Isolation & Opportunism will appear more often in level ups
  
• Increased the values of Phys+, Mag+ and Rang+ attributes in items and traits
  
• Tweaked the generation parameters of traits : good/bad trait repartition should be a bit more balanced between starting heroes
  
• Added icon variations for bad traits
  
• Slight tweaks to enemy numbers in Gildenberg and Glenwald
  
• Reduced Elite Winged Health
  
• Changed unlock condition for new mage upgrades
  

Join us on Discord, Twitter & Instagram to discuss with the team and other players!

Hello Heroes!

Last month we made an announcement concerning a progression wipe happening alongside our next Major Update.

Since the Meta Rework is changing (almost) everything for the player's progression in the game, we decided to launch an Open Beta so we can gather your feedback and properly adjust the changes we made. Your comments, posts and strategies are all very helpful to us.

[h2]SUMMARY:[/h2]

• Progression Wipe
  
• New Mechanic: Omens
  
• Meta progression Rework
  
• Temple and Mana Well Rework
  
• New Mechanic: Corpses
  
• Seer Rework
  
• Night Save
  
• QoL Update
  
• Sound Design Rework
  
• Balancing
  

[h2]PROGRESSION WIPE[/h2]

As we explained in our previous post, this update will wipe the progress of Beta players. It will be effective to all players once the Major Update is officially out. You can read this article to have the answers for the most frequent questions:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3282583269800175534
[h2]NEW MECHANIC: OMENS[/h2]

Let’s introduce the Omens! Omens can be selected at the start of each run. Each Omen gives a specific bonus while selected, ranging from simple attribute bonuses to very unique effects. Omens are meant to replace some of the strong permanent upgrades that players used to get, coupled with brand new effects. This allow us to have better control over the intended power level and difficulty for each map, while also introducing strategic choices at the beginning of each run.

Here are some examples of Omens you will be able unlock:







To be entirely clear: Omens are not meant to erase all permanent upgrades. They still exist and we even added new ones, but Omens are a way for us to introduce more upgrades and more interesting effects, while keeping the balance of the game interesting.

[h3]Starting a run with omens[/h3]

Before starting a run, you will be able to select Omens for this map. Obviously, you won’t be able to select all of your Omens for every run: each city has a set number of slots, and every Omen takes up one, two or three slots, depending on its strength. The harder the map is, the more Omens you will be able to use.





This means that the hardest maps also allow for the most interesting starting strategies and combos: will you focus your Omen choices on making your heroes stronger? On boosting your defenses? On setting up your economy? Or maybe a balance between all of these things?

[h3]Unlocking Omens[/h3]

After completing the tutorial, players will only be able to choose between a few starting Omens with simple effects. However, additional Omens can be unlocked in the Oraculum. Currently, there are around 70 Omens to unlock.

[h3]A new Boundless Mode[/h3]



We also took the opportunity to merge the old “Easy Mode” into the Omen system. Now renamed to Boundless Mode (because let’s be honest, the game never goes “Easy” on you), it can be activated in the Omen selection screen.

Activating Boundless Mode allows you to exceed the slot limit on Omens by however much you want, but also unlocks Boundless Mode-specific Omens which have the same effects as the old Easy Mode modifiers.



Use this new Boundless Mode to play the game at your own pace, or test some overpowered combos!

[h2]META PROGRESSION REWORK[/h2]

[h3]Oraculum unlocks[/h3]

All Oraculum unlocks have been redesigned: some have been removed, some have been added, and pretty much all existing ones have had their unlock conditions and prices changed. This is one of the main reasons why we had to wipe the saves, and the goal is to make the meta progression way smoother than before.

A lot of the important unlocks now come earlier than before, like the Inn building or some weapon unlocks. We also added new conditions in the Freude side of the Oraculum, in order to make the challenges a bit more varied.



[h3]Trophies[/h3]

End of night trophies have been rebalanced and some new ones have been added. The most important addition is a “You won the night” trophy, that gives a hefty chunk of essence if you manage to beat a night.



[h3]Soul gains for lost nights[/h3]

This feature has been requested for a long time now, but it is finally here: now you will also gain Tainted Essence for lost nights! However, even if the situation looks desperat, we encourage you to always try and win your Nights. Who knows, maybe you will get this juicy "Won the night" trophy after all...



[h3]Apocalypse Multipliers[/h3]

Playing on Apocalypse mode will now grant you a boost on the number of Essence you get each night. The higher the Apocalypse, the higher the boost!



[h2]TEMPLE AND MANA WELL REWORK[/h2]

While the Temple and the Mana Well had a use until now, we weren’t satisfied with their dynamic: building one often felt like a punishment more than an investment, compared to other buildings.

This is why we decided to rework both buildings a bit, in order to make these buildings relevant economy-wise. In addition to their health or mana restorating actions, the Temple and Mana Well are now able to grant permanent attribute increase to your heroes, which can be pretty strong!



[h3]Temple[/h3]
Gold cost: 55 -> 70
Build limit: 1

New passive production effect: Permanently grants +8 Max Health to all current heroes.

Production rate: 1x per day

Changed all Actions. New list:

Action: Offering Base action
Cost: 0 Workers
Max uses: 1
Effect: Restore 40 Health to one hero.

Action: Heal Base action
Cost: 1 Worker
Max uses: 1
Effect: Restore 40 Health to all heroes.

Action: Blessing Available after upgrade
Cost: 2 Workers
Effect: Permanently grants +24 Max Health to one hero

All upgrades have also changed to match these new actions.

[h3]Mana well[/h3]
Gold cost: 55 -> 35
Build limit: 2

New passive production effect: Permanently grants +1 Max Mana to all current heroes.

Production rate: 1x per day

Changed all actions. New list:

Action: Benediction Base action
Cost: 0 Workers
Max uses: 1
Effect: Restores 6 Mana to one hero.

Action: Restore Mana Base action
Cost: 1 Worker
Max uses: 1
Effect: Restore 10 Mana to all heroes.

Action: Blessing Available after upgrade
Cost: 2 Workers
Effect: Permanently grants +5 Max Mana to one hero

All upgrades have also changed to match these new actions.

[h2]NEW MECHANIC: CORPSES[/h2]

We're introducing a new mechanic to spice up the combat and economy of the game: Corpses.



Corpses may appear at the end of each night, and can be scavenged during the day, just like ruins. Piles of Corpses can appear in multiple sizes: the bigger the pile, the greater the reward.

But how do you make them appear? Corpses and their bigger variants have higher chances of appearing when:

• Enemies are killed close to the Haven
  
• Many enemies are killed on the same tile

This means that some of the most dire situations may now lead to greater rewards...

[h3]Scavenging Corpses[/h3]

Corpses can be scavenged with two different focuses: one gives you Gold, Materials and Tainted Essence, while the other gives you Items and even more Tainted Essence. These scavenge actions have a fixed cost of 1 Worker: this makes the bigger variants very interesting economy wise!





However, Corpses can also act as obstacles, so you may even decide to let them be and use them as defenses, although they will rot away with time. However, if they are a hindrance to your strategy, you can also choose to destroy them during the day.

[h2]SEER REWORK[/h2]

Up until now, we only gave very limited information on incoming waves, which made it difficult for us to design interesting nights, especially early on, when players haven’t placed the Seer building yet. To let players make more strategic decisions and to make the overall enemy wave design more interesting, we decided to rework the Seer a bit.

[h3]Banners[/h3]

Prior this change, you could use the “Guess Where” skill of the Seer to know the proportion of incoming waves. Now, this information will ALWAYS be given to you, even if you haven’t placed down the Seer yet. Additionally, banners now indicate a very vague quantity of enemies, instead of just a proportion: a single side with a 4-Skull banner will have more enemies than a single side with a 2-Skull banner.



[h3]Precise Arrows[/h3]

Since its previous effect is now always given to the player, the “Guess Where” skill of the Seer is getting a new effect. When using the Guess Where skill, you will be able to see a very precise breakdown of where enemies will come from and in what proportions, thanks to arrows of varying sizes:



[h2]NIGHT SAVE[/h2]

You asked for it and here it is! Now you can quit a night without the fear of restarting it from the beginning: your progress will be saved, and you will be able to resume from where you quit.

We’ve been wanting to implement this for quite some time, as we know that nights can become quite long. We hope that players with less time on their hands will enjoy this feature, allowing them to complete nights in multiple gaming sessions.



[h2]QOL UPDATE[/h2]

We have developed a certain number of features which increase the global quality of life of the game!

[h3]Victory panel and Defeat panel[/h3]

Now when you finish a night, the first thing to appear on the panel is the animation of your number of souls gained with all the trophies acquired during the night. You can also skip the animation to present your heroes on the panel and go to the profile page by clicking on your heroes.

[h3]Item categories [/h3]

Some categories were implemented in game to classify protections so you can search and make some differentiation between heavy armors and light ones.



[h3]Enemies life gauge[/h3]

We changed the way big enemy health bars are displayed: you should now be able to clearly see how much health remain on a boss or an Elite.

[h2]SOUND DESIGN REWORK[/h2]

For this update, we introduce the first steps of our rework for the sound design, which will continue with the upcoming updates.

[h3]Introduction scene[/h3]

All the sound design of the introduction has been reworked so go enjoy it! You can watch it directly when you are on the main menu.

[h2]BALANCING[/h2]

[h3]Shared production building limit[/h3]

Production buildings now share a building limit of 5, meaning you can build a maximum of 5 production buildings but whichever ones you want. For example, you can place down 3 Bowyers and 2 Trinket makers in your haven.



[h3]Elderlicht Soul Vessels[/h3]

The Soul Vessels in Elderlicht will now become ignited after 2 turns: on the first turn of a night, they will warn the player that something is coming, and on the second turn of the night a Soulbound unit will spawn.



[h3]Traits[/h3]

All traits have been reworked & rebalanced to be more focused: on average, they will affect less different attributes, but give stronger bonuses.

[h3]Wounds[/h3]

Some time ago, we modified the wound system to make wounds unique for each enemy, because we wanted to allow for more tactical possibilities around this mechanic. However, they became too unique, making them bothersome to play around.

Wounds are now more harmonized: notably, enemies will all lose Move Points when wounded, but in proportion to their total Move Points.



A similar logic has also been applied to the Heroes.



[h3]Enemy attributes[/h3]

The defensive attributes of all enemies have been rebalanced to make them more focused. As an example, compared to before, less enemies will gain Block or Dodge over the course of the run, but enemies that gain some will gain more noticeable amounts.

We also wanted to reinforce the difference in strength between the different Tiers of enemies: common enemies will globally stay as weak as before but stronger enemies will become even stronger, meaning they can be more impactful without the need of spawning them in quantities as high as before.



[h3]Enemy waves[/h3]

Since the power level of the player has greatly changed with this update, enemy quantities in all cities have been rebalanced.



Thank you for reading! We will look at your comments and feedback with extreme interest.

Join us on Discord, Twitter & Instagram to discuss with the team and other players!

Hello Heroes!

We mentioned it before in 2021, and last month we finally announced the progression wipe for The Last Spell. Now, it is time to give you (almost) all the details! We hope this will help clarify some questions you may have.



For starters, the game has evolved a lot since the beginning of the Early Access and our vision has shifted from having only one map for the entire game to having 4 completely different maps.



The Last spell is a rogue-lite game and as pretty much every rogue-lite game, you acquire permanent upgrades that help you to progress in your runs. We call “meta progression” all those upgrades and the way they are dispatched during the campaign. To have a great rogue-lite game this meta progression needs to be carefully crafted and we have to consider the game in its whole.

With the early access, we are moving step by step. At each step, we added new meta upgrades and/or modified existing ones. The result of this is something currently clunky and inconsistent because as I mentioned earlier we needed to consider the whole game.

Since we are close to the end of the Early Access and we now have a clear view of the entire game, it’s time to fix our meta progression. To do so, we need to restart from scratch and we can’t technically keep your old save file because we are changing everything.

Another problem we want to address is the player's potency. With the current meta progression you earn a lot of permanent upgrades that empower your heroes. This creates some gates (upgrades that you need to have to progress) and it also completely annihilates the point to replay older maps since you have too many upgrades for the challenge.

Also, we are at a point where it’s difficult for us to create more challenging (and interesting) stuff because with the current system we are stacking up too many upgrades. Finally, this wipe is a great timing to include all the feedback you gave us about our meta progression and the Oraculum since the beginning. Those feedback helped us a lot so thank you!

So these are the reasons why we decided to implement a new system to solve this issue (more details in another section).



Basically: everything. You will start again from scratch, with only three heroes, 20 mana each, one wooden sword, no pants and your wit. Good luck! Also you will all start in Swampfurt, the tutorial map we created and added a few months back.



You will all still be able to play on an older branch of The Last Spell to keep your save. Unfortunately by playing on this older branch, you will not be able to get the updates and the new content of the game.



It’s time to reveal something that's been in our mind for several months, a totally new system called “Omens”.

Omens are bonuses for your run that you can equip before starting a run.



This system is our solution to our problem of having too many meta upgrades active at the same time, because each city will have a maximum Omens that you can equip. To sum up, you will be able to equip more Omens when playing in Glenwald than in Gildenberg.

With this system you will have to make strategic choices to compose the best combination of Omens that fits your gameplay style: we are excited to see what you will come up with!

New Omens will be unlockable in the Oraculum (both sides) all along the campaign. So you can have an idea of what's to come, here is a sneak peek of 3 Omens (names and effects are subject to changes):

• Omen of Early Wealth: The Haven starts with 40 gold and 80 materials.
  
• Omen of Talents: Heroes start with 1 Perk Point.
  
• Omen of the Siege: Ranged defense buildings and traps gain +25% damage.
  

And as you can see, we’ve converted some bonuses from our old meta into Omens. You probably have a lot of questions about this too, but you will have to wait a little more to find out all the details about the Omens!



In a few weeks! You know we love to have short gaps between our updates, and especially between our announcements. Since this Major Update will be a very important one, in addition to a devstream the following day, we will also carry out an AMA on Reddit. All of the information about these two events will be shared in the blogpost of the Meta Rework update.

Thank you for reading! Make sure to post your questions if you have some, we will gladly answer them.

Join us: Twitter / Instagram / Discord.

Hello Heroes!

Here is a new update for your favourite tactical game, enjoy!

• Fixed a softlock that happened when using a skill on the caster
  
• Fixed the poison tile feedback (the tile remained green after the death of the enemy)
  
• Fixed the animation for the Turbo Mode button
  
• Fixed the archer enemy not displaying the right skill information in their HUD
  
• Fixed The Archivist (boss) from Elderlicht not increasing his health points with the Apocalypse levels

Thank you for reading, and enjoy your fights!

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