The Last Spell News

[h2]Summer is over :’([/h2]


Hello everyone! We hope you’re okay! It’s September already, and we’re seeing Autumn in the air! (Not that it was a very hot summer anyway, but we had some days of sun. I think...)
As we told you in the last blogpost, we’ve been working hard on the next update! It will be the biggest update yet for the game, so we’re a bit nervous.^^ This is why the update took us a little more time than we anticipated. At first, the new map was not supposed to be so different from the previous one. But we kinda went all out with it. It’s quite different from the first map, but we hope you’ll like it.
Today, the update is pretty much “finished”. All the features are implemented and working, and we’re putting the last touches on the balancing.

We'll kick off the tests by next week and if everything goes well (fingers crossed!) we should be able to launch the update right after that. It's just a matter of week and we'll give a release date very soon.

We are currently working on optimizing our internal process to deliver the upcoming updates faster but without neglecting their quality.

But let’s move to the exciting topic of the day: new features that will be available in the next update!

[h2]A new Haven?[/h2]
The new map is THE biggest new thing in this update. It was quite a challenge for us, because all the work that we made for the past 3 years was from the level design of Lakeburg. So, when we decided to create a new map, we had to go back to the start and ask ourselves one question: how ambitious do we want to be for this new map?
Spoiler: more ambitious than we anticipated ^^

Since you’re all so awesome


As you can see, the main theme around this new map is the forest. And in a forest, there are trees… And trees often block the view… Which may be an issue for the line of sight!

By the way, the new map will be accessible for the players who already beat Lakeburg once.

And now you may wonder: what the enemy waves will look like? I can tell you that they will be quite different from what they are in Lakeburg. We wanted the map to be harder than Lakeburg, and we did something a little "crazy" to give players a harder challenge...

[h2]Other exciting new stuff for our players![/h2]
Of course there are many surprises coming in this update! Here are a few examples:

• New Apocalypses: We know there are some very dedicated players who already beat the Apocalypse 4! This is why, as promised, we’ve been working on new apocalypses! We thought of something “pretty cool” for the most hardcore players 😉 (Hint: it has something to do with the mist)
  
• We also designed a new enemy for the new map! It won’t be a boss, but we’re pretty sure that it will give you a hard time!
  
• We’ve reworked how the consumables work in the game.
  
• We also took into account the players feedback that you’ve been giving us, as we've been adding some requested quality of life features! Thank you again for that, and keep sending us your feedback, we read them all! 😊
  
• Our programmers have been working on the Performance optimization for the game. This is an issue that we're aware of, and we'll keep working on it.
  

Here's one of the "Community Requests" QoL we've added in the next update!


[h2]Apocalypse Progression Reset[/h2]
Alright, now on to the most important announcement of this update. For this update, we're going to do an "Apocalypse Progression Reset". Since we fiddled with the apocalypse values, order and behaviour, it was a bit somewhat needed to reset the progression"
Don't worry, ONLY the APOCALYPSES COMPLETION will be reset. For the next update, your apocalypses progressions will be partly reset.

• The “meta unlock” will NOT be reset for this update!
  
• What will be reset will be the fact that you COMPLETED the apocalypses. However, you will still have access to the other apocalypses.
  
• One example: you completed apocalypses 1, 2 and 3. After the update, the fact that you completed them will be reset. However, you will still be able to do the Apocalypse 4, without completing 1/2/3 again 😊
  

[h2]New branch Opening[/h2]

For players who are in the middle of a run, we thought of something! Basically, the update will “break” your current run. If you want to finish your current run safely, we’re going to create a new branch on Steam with the current version of the game. When your run is finished, you’ll be able to update your game without being scared of losing your current run.

So, if you fear for your run when the game gets updated, you can choose to opt-in for the previous branch. To do that, you need to right-clic on the game in Steam, "Properties", "Betas" and then clic on "v0.92.2.3 - "We can be heroes" update".

That way, when the game gets updated, you'll still be able to finish your current run. You can opt-in for this previous branch NOW, so don't hesitate to do it! :) Just know that if you wish to update your game, you'll need to go back to the normal branch.


[h2]Last but not least, it’s our studio anniversary![/h2]

One other exiting thing that I should mention is that next week, we'll be celebrating our "sort of" 15th anniversary! For those of you who knew us before The Last Spell, you may know that we used to be called “CCCP”, and that it was created in 2005, so…16 years ago! Actually, we wanted to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the company last year, but then 2020 happened...

So yeah, we wanted to do something to celebrate that, and we’re happy to announce an anniversary giveaway on Twitter and Discord! Since the creation of our indie games branch, we released 3 games… so what about winning a pack with all of them?! 😊 The pack includes steam keys for Dead in Bermuda + Dead in Vinland + The Last Spell!



How to enter?

• On Twitter - All you need to do is RT the contest tweet here and follow us!
  
• On Discord – Join our community if you haven’t done so already and react to the giveaway message in General #announcements
  

You can participate until September 17th at 2PM GMT+2. Winners will be picked randomly on the same day at 4PM GMT+2. Good luck!!

Aaand that's all for today! We can't wait for you all to enjoy the latest update that we've been working on! Thank you all for the love and support you've been giving us

Take care, warriors!

Join our Discord server

Hello everyone!

Wow, is it already mid August? This means that today is time for a new blogpost!
We'll have some news about the next big patch in September! But to keep you up to date:

• We're VERY excited by the new map! It's a LOT of work, but we think it will be worth the wait!
  
• As usual, we kinda went all out with this new map, so we needed a bit more time than anticipated to be completely happy with it. This means that at this moment, the "End of Summer" deadline may be very slightly delayed by a few days.
  
• In a few weeks, we'll have a blogpost with more info about the new map and the new features!
  

Today, we wanted to highlight our amazing community! Since the release, we saw how passionate about the game each and everyone of you are!
Not only do you create amazing guides and strategies for the game, but everytime there's a new player who asks for help, you all try to help them the best you can with great tips and advice!

As a Community Manager, it's always a pleasure to see such a positive and wholesome community
This is why today, we asked some of you on Discord some questions about the game!

[h2]Dran Kuo[/h2]

Where are you from?

I am from Wisconsin, US!

What’s your favourite build?

My favorite build is a bruiser melee, preferably with a 2H axe for packs and any other weapon to clean up stragglers. It may not be a popular pick, but a quick armory means I've got plenty of gear that everyone can use no matter what stats are on it -- whatever's not getting sold for more cash, anyway -- and more than enough defense (block and resistance specifically!) to not worry about getting hit.


Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time?

If they're just discovering it for the first time, just have fun. There's a lot of discussion on "optimal" or "best" ways to play that are totally overkill and shouldn't dissuade people from playing their own way. Even if the run doesn't go so well, you can go into the next one with new ideas and a few extra unlocks to ensure steady progress.
If they're struggling to get further -- pay close attention to the wound system. In a lot of games, a nearly dead unit is still as dangerous as a full health one, but in this game, a nearly dead enemy can barely move, deals about half damage, and most importantly, can get in the way of other enemies. If you're holding a gap in the wall, you can let the weak one hit you instead of letting a fresh one take its place..

Which night is the hardest for new players?

The nights have shifted around recently, with Bulkies showing up earlier than before, but I think the difficult nights are always going to be the one they aren't prepared for.
Whether its suddenly dealing with an additional side coming under attack, or a larger wave hitting a weaker side, or a new enemy they haven't seen before, it can usually set them back enough to make the next night unrecoverable.

To anyone going into something unknown -- line of sight can work for and against you, but even a single tile of stone wall can let you assess the situation without getting pinned down by archers or other ranged attacks. If you start behind that for the first turn of the night, you can decide whether its safe to run out in the open or if you need to retreat back to it at the end of each turn.


What’s your favourite thing in TLS?

My favorite thing from a design point of view has to be the art and sound direction. The skills look great, feel great, and taking out a large pack of enemies is incredibly satisfying.
From a gameplay point of view, I've been having fun testing the limits. The experiment to see how much damage I could deal in a single hit was hilarious, and there's other challenges to try beyond just surviving once you've got the game "figured out". Try new weapons you ignored or different city development plans -- it might prepare you for new stuff that comes out in the future.
and if anyone doubts me on the 2H axe, I even have this!



[h2]Eevlupix[/h2]

Where are you from?

New Jersey, USA

What's your favourite build?

Critical builds, definitely
Infinite mana and big yellow numbers are very fun, especially when combined with multi-hit, aoe, and propogation abilities

Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time?

Besides focusing on getting a resource income early, I think new players should just experiment with all the build options this game has to offer. This game gives you a lot of freedom when crafting a team for fending off an apocalypse and it's great. Finding what you like to do can often be a lot more fun than just skipping everything in favor of the "best" options, and that's what games are all about.

What's THE weapon that can get you out of dangerous situations?

I think the hand crossbow is probably my favorite weapon, since it can do a little bit of everything, and really well. Being able to burn down a horde in a few actions is really satisfying and if everything is dead, then there are less dangerous situations to get out of.

Do you think TLS is challenging? Why?

While I haven't yet played on the highest difficulty, I feel that the difficulty is pretty well managed, requiring you to plan ahead if you want to survive as long as possible. There's some room for mistakes but not so much that you don't have to think, and I think that's very good for a strategy game, and it's really fun to me.

[h2]Firens[/h2]



Where are you from?
I'm from north of France. A few km away from Ishtar Games studio actually!

What's your favourite build?
Tough one! Even if I abuse 1h-crossbow (most powerful weapon right now), the build I actually prefer playing is what I call "Propagator", which is a mage with Druid Staff and Tome of Secrets. I optimize it around propagation bounce/dmg, poison, opportunistic, and obviously critical hits. It can debuff armies of monster, deals insane poison dmg over a few turns, and burst a few dozens monsters if needed.
I find it the most fun, because you have to think about how your spells will actually bounce from one enemy to another to maximise your dmg.

Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time?
Don't be afraid to die! Be bold with placement, and try every type of weapon.
Also, don't neglect accuracy! This stat is much more important than it seems!

THE perk that helped you the most?
During prologue, I would have said Mana Collector, which gives you mana every time you get a critical hit. But it comes a bit late in the game, and you need a lot of Crit% to actually use it. So in the current state of the game, I would say First Blood is the most helpful (+15% critical hit against enemies with full health). Partly because it helps you doing a lot of dmg (and killing most enemies in one spell), but also because it allows you to trigger Mana Collector consistently, even if you don't have much Crit%.

What’s the biggest mistake you made in TLS?
I make a lot of mistakes around base building. But if I stay around battles, my biggest mistake was to use a propagation spell while having a hero in melee range of a monster... Which ended in my hero being poisoned and killed... I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to have done it!

[h2]Topgun[/h2]

Where are you from?
I’m from the province of Quebec in Canada.

What’s your favourite build?
Anything with mass crowd control and poison, debuff the horde and watch it slowly die by itself. Combine with automated defenses and a big wall to really get that tower defense kinda feel.

Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time?
Progress might seem slow, but really it’s just to the pace of the game, since combat is turn based, there’s no rush, take your time, both in combat and just while playing in general. I know the music really makes the adrenaline flow,

What’s your personal accomplishment in the game?
I like doing challenge runs, of those, beating the game without dealing damage was the most interesting and fun.

Tell us about traps! How useful are they?
Traps are... in a weird place in the game currently, and they will probably always be a bit weird by the simple nature that they need to be used up to provide value, walls block pathing even when not targeted, catapults and ballistas can provide value at no cost after the purchase as long as they are kept alive, traps need to loose durability to do anything. Basically, traps are the material equivalent to choosing between buying equipment in the shop or building a mine with gold. Catapults are expensive but can reasonably be expected to provide long term value, traps help just now... unless they aren’t activated (with semi-random spawn locations, that just sometimes happens). Anyways, so the 2 situations were short term benefits should be considered is when long term isn’t a concern, this is mostly the case when you aren’t sure to survive the next night, or for the last few nights in general. Already this kinda eliminates traps before night 6 ish. Now all you need to do is pick the right trap for the job, damage traps are best for desperate situations with unreliable but potentially massive group damage, slow traps are a cost effective way to give you more time great for late game, and stun traps can effectively grant you one free turn if placed right beside your wall if your going for a more defensive playstyle. One last tip, remember that traps activate after monsters move, but before they act, this means that stun traps effectively stun for 2 turns, and that any traps placed next to a wall has higher chance of getting activated since they’ll move bunched up ready to attack but will get shutdown before the wall get pummeled. That was a much longer response then the others, but don’t you try and pretend you didn’t know what would happen by asking that, devs.


[h2]Def_Metal[/h2]



Where are you from?
I am from West Sussex, England UK.

What’s your favourite build?
Tough question, i want to provide my optimal build and secondly my 'favourite' build that is more focused on fun.

Build One:
1H Xbow (preferably with multi hit, crit or propagation bounces)
Teleport Crystal offhand
All armor and trinkets geared towards: Multi-Hit, Crit, Propagation Bounces, Propagation Damage, Ranged Damage or Damage increases.

Perks:

• Specialist, unless i find another 1H Xbow with important stats to hold as i want two charges of the Blaze attack at all times.
  
• Mana collector and first blood, to complement the crit chance increases I will take on levels. This ensures I effectively have 'free' mana.
  
• Energized, as with Blaze there will be so many kills that I can generate additional AP.
  
• Swift as the wind, for movement points to offset the low range on the weapon.
  
• Initiator - for the additional multi-hit
  
• Avid Learner - for the XP boost
  
• Steady Aim
  
• Cherry Picking + Confident - Increase reliability to 100% against isolated enemies when at full health, an important early game DPS increase.
  

Build Two: (Fun Build)
Druidic Staff (with damage, poison damage, propagation bounces or magic damage increase or isolation)
All armor and trinkets geared towards: Poison, Propagation, Magic Damage or Damage increases

Perks:

• Mana Collector and First Blood
  
• Potent Toxins
  
• Swift as the wind
  
• Initiator
  
• Avid Learner
  
• Magic Fuel (as this is a big DPS increase, and gives incentive to collect armor with +Mana as this gives additional damage and can make some unusable armors usable)
  
• Steady Aim
  
• Energized
  
• Cherry Picking + Confident
  
• Mark (as a free debuff to proc opportunistic against key targets)
  

Levelling upgrades focus on magic, propagation, poison and opportunistic. This build can output huge

This build is fun because you can entrap enemies with vines, poison them with bees and with enough Opportunistic bonus you can one shot almost every enemy in the game. A very powerful but fun build.


Do I have any advice for new players?

Yes - you must treat your AP like the ultimate resource. Do not waste it on enemies that are (a) out of range from causing city panic or damage to heroes unless no other choice and (b) focus your AP on priority targets. Learning what is a priority will come with successive playthroughs.

Drakenkin's Steam guide on the game is superb and remains relevant, I used this a lot.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2523369507

Otherwise, my guide series on my Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/c/defmetal1/videos) has a beginner's guide video that gives some focus on how to progress. In honesty though, i would recommend a few blind runs before turning to a guide as you want to experience every aspect of this brilliant game yourselves!

What buildings do you make first?

This is highly debated in the endgame community right now. However, I am very firmly of the view that the first two buildings should be gold mines, upgraded to Production 3 and Mine 2 before moving onto anything else. This can be achieved quite quickly, and produces a very strong foundation for an economy that will generate enough gold to see you through to Night 12. There is no need for 3 gold mines. This remains true until potentially you have full meta unlocks through repeated playthroughs, and at that point it may be better to go straight for production buildings but this remains RNG dependent. Consequently, even in my Apoc 4 runs, I still run two gold mines as the output is steady and dependable.

How many runs did it take you to make through the end of TLS?

I can't quite remember now! I ended up doing multiple runs that I quit half way through because I was filming content etc so wasn't focused on completions. However, I think if i started a clean save right now, I'd like to think I could complete standard difficult on possibly Lakeburg 1 and certainly at Lakeburg 2. Apoc 4 I'm less certain on, but I'd hope for a completion on Lakeburg 7. Watch this space soon!


Thank you very much for answering our questions! We feel very lucky to have such great players
Don't forget to join our Discord server!

Take care, warriors!

Hello warriors !

[h2]Some news![/h2]

We hope you’re okay and that you’re staying safe! Here, summer is… kinda cold! It never stops raining, but at least we don’t need to turn on the AC. (Yes, we try to see the good side of things!)

It’s been one month since the “We can be heroes” update. We hope you’re liking the character customization feature! If you have cool characters to share, please feel free to do so in the comments or in our Discord server!

Since it’s summer, several people in the team are taking a well deserved vacation after the craziness of the launch 😉 Rumor has it that some of them got to see this strange thing called the “sun”! Weird, huh?

On the dev side, we’ve been mostly focused on the next big update! In this update, we’ll have the new map, which is taking more time than we anticipated. One of the reasons is that there are lot of game designs questions that come up with this new map.

We also have some new features for this update that we’ll tell you more about in another blogpost 😉
In the meantime, we thought some of you all might like to see some skecthes and concept arts for The Last Spell 😉 We started to work on these in… 2017! So yes, that goes way back (we were young back then!).

[h2]The VERY FIRST sketch![/h2]



This one is VERY old! Last weekend, Jacques, our Art Director, found the VERY FIRST skecth that he ever did for The Last Spell! Long story short, Matthieu, our creative director, started to talk about the first ideas for The Last Spell and Jacques did this “very first rough sketch” thinking “ah yes that could be fun to work on a game like that”.

Then, when we started to talk about the game internally and with external partners, Jacques did those to give a more precise idea of the general atmosphere of the game.



As for the inspirations, we could mention 3 main ones for the pixel art of the game:

• Into The Breach for the readability aspect
  
• Stoneshard for the very nice high res sprites!
  
• Obviously, Final Fantasy Tactics!
  

In terms of “mood/atmosphere”, Darkest Dungeon definitely comes to mind! However, Jacques was also influenced by the many movies/comics/games where you have hundreds of “things” trying to eat you!

[h2]Implementation of gameplay ideas[/h2]
As you probably know, at first, The Last Spell was not supposed to be a pixel-art game! If you didn’t already, I invite you all to read this fascinating piece that Jacques wrote last year!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1105670/announcements/detail/3334295484309121885



Very early in the production, we had this idea of “a town being attacked by hordes of enemies”! It’s in French, so I’ll make the translation:

• “Murs en piteux état” = “Walls in a pitiful state »
  
• « Magiciens tentant de sauver l’humanité » = « Mages trying to save humankind »
  
• « Piéges explosifs magiques » = « Magical explosive traps »
  
• « Autre structures » = « Other structures »
  
• « Autre glorieux héros défendant la porte » = « Other glorious hero defending the door »
  
• « Tour de guet » = « Watchtower »
  
• « Glorieux héros faisant barrage de son corps » = « Glorious hero using his body standing in the way with its body”
  
• “Brèche” = “Breach”
  
• “Mur” = “Wall”
  
• “Brume” = “Mist”
  

As you can see, there already were quite a lot of things that are still present to this day. One of the big concept that were there from the start was this asymmetric battle between a handful of strong heroes and countless hordes of enemies, in a city you needed to defend.

Here’s one thing that you haven’t seen yet 😉 (Unless you’re in our Discord server!). This was one of the very first concepts of the game (this is all “fake” by the way, this was made by our artists ^^). I’m sure you can find a lot of elements that are still present in the current version of the game 😊



Maybe I should let you know about the upper right side of the screen. That’s right, in one of the very first game design documents for The Last Spell (that was actually called “The Last Stand” back then!), there was a “survival” component. There was a food safe, and one character had to “scavenge” for resources! Sounds familiar with another one of our games, right? 😉

Also, the concept of ammunition stayed a very long time in the game! We actually removed it just before our first public demo in june 2020.

[h2]The boss (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED A RUN YET!)[/h2]
This part is a bit of a spoiler, since it shows the boss of the game. So, if you haven’t met it just yet, you can skip to the next part!

Here, you can check out the research board for the boss! As you can see, Jacques first works in “classic” digital paining before making the pixel art version of his asset.





At first, the game designers and the creative director had in mind a sort of "artillery" that would fire cocoons. However, as Jacques was reading the Game Design Documents, he thought about the boss being still + would make some still elements randomly appear on the map. This is why he started to explore a totally new idea: the idea of a "plant".

[h2]The two beings of Light/Darkness[/h2]
This is BIG spoiler territory again! Only look at this if you have completed the shops !

We did a LOT of research for the goddesses. As a matter of fact, their concept was present very early in the production of the game.



However, Jacques only worked on their actual design a few months before we entered early-access!

Since it’s linked to the story, we wanted them to be one of the surprises that players would discover! We hope you liked them!

(CW: Nudity)



Alright, time for a fun fact: during the release period (around early June!), one dove made her nest right at one of the windows in the office. She had two babies, and guess how we called them? 😉







Aaaand that’s all for today, warriors!
Please let us know in the comments if you have questions! Or feel free to join our Discord server!

Take care!

Hello warriors!

There's a new hotfix online! :)

[h2]Hotfix 0.92.2.3[/h2]

• Fix softlock on night 12: If two boss parts die at the same time due to poison the game sotflocked.
  
• Heroes can now exit watchtower on walkable buildings such as traps or warp gates.
  
• Bug fix of the seasoned operators upgrade which could make the ballista shoot 3/4 shots at the same time.
  
• When hiring a new hero, you can now place them on top of a trap/warp gate, or gate.
  
• Bug fix on some audio in the character customization window.
  
• Bug fix on some controls in the character customization window.
  
• The reset button now resets the name in the character customization window.
  
• Bug Fix for the tab for the City stash that was locked when leaving character customization.
  
• Improvement on the save file backup system to prevent save loss in case of crash. Now, when the Appsave.bin doesn’t exist, the game tries to retrieve a Backup file in the Backup folder. Before the fix, it only did it when there was an existing AND corrupted Appsave.bin file.
  
• Bug fix on the size of the goddess, especially in resolution higher than 1080p.
  

Important note about resetting your progression:
A lot of players told us they liked resetting their progression, so here’s the new procedure:
If you want to fully reset your progression, you need to go to the folder %Appdata%/../LocalLow/Ishtar Games/The Last Spell/Save (you can copy/paste this in your explorer) and delete AppSave.bin, GameSave.bin, and the Backups folder, if it exists. Make sure to do it while the game is not launched. Also, you'll have to delete the steam_autocloud.vdf file and choose your local files when Steam Cloud will ask you whether you want to use local files or Cloud files (only if it is enabled).
Also, Make sure to store those files somewhere in case you want to go back to your current save !

Don't forget to update your game!

Hello warriors!

Summer is here! (Not so much here, it's always raining) We're working hard on the next big update planned for the end of summer!

As you all wait for this update, we've decided to host an AMA session on Reddit, which will happen... TOMORROW!

Chloé and Thomas, game designers on The Last Spell, will answer all your questions about the game tomorrow (July 27th) on Reddit at 4PM UTC+2!



🗓️ July 27th, from 4pm to 5.30pm (GMT +2)
👉 https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastspell/comments/osn7vw/ama_thomas_and_chlo%C3%A9_game_designers_on_the_last/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Don't forget to join us!

See you tomorrow, warriors!