Vault of the Void News

Hey all! So it occurred to me over the weekend that I haven’t updated the Steam Community page in sometime. My previous post eluded to the fact that I’ll be weekly patching. However, that was a lie, as it very quickly turned into daily builds (sometimes multiple a day!).

With 97% of the users in Closed Beta currently in the Discord channel, it felt a little like double handling to be posting patch notes every day to Steam. Since my last post on Steam, I have posted exactly 71 updates to the game - some were quick hotfixes for silly mistakes, some major system overhauls, some included new content, and some were a little of all 3!

The bug and feedback reporting systems on Discord have been working really well, and it provides me a checklist to crunch through all day. So far, over 190 !bug and !feedback reports have been resolved!

In the near future I’ll be cycling back to lengthier build cycles, probably looking at every couple of days - so I should be able to start double handling patch notes and posting reports on both sides of the community (Discord and Steam).

Preparations are underway for the new class - cards are currently being tested by overall theme and mechanics are pretty much locked down. Some new UI work is going in to help make things look super smooth, and the updated framerate to support 144hz has been well received! Overall, there's been so much testing it’s been amazing to see, and the feedback keeps making the game better. Here's what the data currently looks like!



Still no final word on Early Access, although my goal still stands as sometime in the next few months! Once the 3rd class is set up and tested, I’ll start gearing things up for something more public!

Thanks all!
Josh

Big week! Lots of this has been on the Beta channel for some time, I've finally just bundled it all together and pushed it to the live build (which is still a Beta build - I understand how confusing this system is haha!).

Just a note, there is a big meeting this weekend in regards to a full card balance. Lots of changes will be pushed forward in terms of making all cards feel good and balanced. I expect this patch to go live around Sunday evening, and will make a note when it does!

[h3]Fast Play[/h3]
Fast Play has been introduced! There will still be a few bugs with this I'm sure, but please let me know how you feel ! So far:
- Enemy Animations sped up
- Enemy delays sped up
- Purging cards faster
- Drawing cards is faster
- Text overlays are faster
- Upgrades screen is faster

[h3]Disable Parallaxing[/h3]
A new option has been adding to disable parallaxing of characters.

[h3]Classes[/h3]
- Hidden Blade removed from Blade spec, replaced with Jab.
- New deck setup's for the Daughter and her builds.

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]
- Rebound has been changed to: Rebound: The first time this card is played in a turn, it will be returned to your hand. The Void Stone will trigger both times.
- I've changed the timing on checking for buffs such as "+1 Strength for each Swift card played". This will now check and trigger after the card is PLAYED and is being DISCARDED. I won't change my mind on this again. Promise. Maybe.
- There has been a major refactoring of the way cards were processed, all scripts gutted and moved over to a much more elegant system. This allows for cool stuff like pre-processing abilities. Not much effect to the front end user, but a major backend change!
- Fixed an issue with rewards getting jumbled.
- More tweaks to the way card processing orders

[h3]Cards[/h3]
- "Gutted" is now correctly labelled as an Ability card.
- Have updated the text on Quickness's buff, as it does carry over turns
- Caltrops text updated
- Defensive Attack's start of turn block has been fixed.
- Void's Kiss - gained Rigged on upgrade.
- Unleash Darkness - have added gain 1 Corruption.
- Added Sever Soul.
- My Father's Curse changed to trigger off Weak.
- Power Draw: Upped to 3 Strength.
- Teamwork, changed to : "Add your current Vulnerability to your Strength." Changed to Uncommon. Changed to Exploit.
- Cursed Blade: Inflict 1 damage. If your Strength is higher than 5, trigger +3 times. (added swift)
- Spirit Shield: Block equal to your Corruption. (Block equal to your Corruption. If Purged, gain Block 5.)
- Masochist changed to Common
- Chasing In: reduced cost and added Void gain.
- Knife in the Dark: added Swift, Slow and Vulnerable.
- Separated Soul - changed to : Inflict damage to all enemies equal to Corruption (x2). Reset Corruption to 0.
- Removed Swift from Backpedal.
- Fixed Footwork to take Strength in Aggressive Stance. Get it together Footwork.
- Meteor has gained the Purge effect: Deal 10 Damage to a random creature
- Overwhelm has been bumped to 14 Block.
- Power Strike upgraded to 12 damage on upgrade.
- Made Opening Move better
- Flank attack accounts for Vulnerable
- Have fixed Sever Soul "severing" it's card container
- Have fixed Exploit
- Turn the Tide will now count Weakness cards in your Deck from the Deck Manager
- Quick Escape + Duck and Weave now works
- Sever Soul has been reduced to 1 cost, 1 Weak and gained Rebound.
- Power Draw will now Rebound, as it should.
- Defensive Attack has been fixed.
- Knife in the Dark upgrade now cost 2 Energy

[h3]UI[/h3]
- Cards shown on tooltips should now sit at the right height
- Fixed potions doubling up.
- Pre-fight should now show the correct AP for your difficulty.
- Eldritch Blessing won't show up in the Deck Manager
- Fixed gem on Rebound, will no longer go dark.
- Ability Cards now have sound effects again
- Have fixed an issue on how Strength was been added to cards with multipliers (Turn the Tide, Sneak Attack, Caltrops etc)
- Fixed an issue with cards going underneath the deckview when holding shift
- The little "Alert" will show on the Deck Manager when you get a new Void Stone.
- Mimic fight has had a change. There was an issue with how it interacted with "Turn 1", turn 1 abilities triggering etc. Now, the fight starts at Turn 0 - where he gets to act first. It then proceeds as normal.
- Upped the size of the font for enemy passive on card
- Added (Passive) to the tooltip for enemy passives
- Upgrade is a click and short hold now.
- Fastplay at the end of battle sync's up with fight end screen
- Clockwork on AoE cards will now work
- Fixed an issue with Rounds not counting down and player abilities not trigger on right turn
- Caltrops should now account for strength.
- Vulnerable on multi trigger works properly now
- Fixed an issue with Void Dice
- Quickness now flushes correctly


[h3]Merchant Rework [/h3]
- Reduced the number of cards merchants have to 6
- Added an ability to buy upgraded versions right at the Merchant for a higher price
- 2 shops per floor, spaced apart to have one front loaded, one rear loaded.

[h3]Creatures[/h3]
- Obsidian Golem's "Black Void Stone" now works correctly
- Fixed text on "My Creations"

[h3]Items[/h3]
- Boots of Quickness :If you start your turn with 2 energy or less, add a Volatile Side Step to your hand.
- Changed Barbed Gauntlets to Rare from Uncommon
- Pickled Hand: The 3rd card you Purge each turn increases your Energy by 2, instead of 1.
- Rotten Egg: upped healing to 10.
- Corrputed Heart is now only buyable on the Hidden.
- Trusty Fishhook : At the start of your turn, add 1 Volatile Slash with a Red Void Stone hand. (oh stop it, you knew it was getting nerfed).
- The Watcher has changed to: Every 5th card you Purge will also Block 8.

Lots more stuff that I've lost track of. As usual, theres a mountain of spelling and grammar errors getting fixed up as I go !

Another night, another patch!

So, whilst I'd love to keep sinking my teeth into getting the Bloodsworn playable, I had another wave of excellent feedback re: usability/gammar/UI come through so wanted to spend another patch night tightening things up again. I'm hoping we're nearing the point where most of the stuff can drop from high to medium priority so I can start providing everyone with some new content!

That said, I appreciate all this feedback so much, so trying to act on all of it as quickly as possible ! (especially with new players joining everyday!)


- Lots of spelling/grammar corrections !
- Pressing ESC on the Main Menu will now show a confirm dialog
- Have started adding ESC as an option to exit menu screens, ingame screens etc. If you notice anywhere I've missed just let me know!
- "Easy" mode has been renamed to "Introduction"
- Have sped up the colour morph on the border of tutorials when "Clicking and holding"
- Have added a "progress bar" to click and hold tutorials
- You can now press Esc to exit the Deckviewer
- For some reason, Item cards had lost all their tooltips. These are now back!
- Cursed Items and Events will now show the Tooltips for cards they'll give you
- Several events have had their flavour text updated (yay for proper writers!)
- As part of the changes to the UI, I have decreased the width of Tooltips when using Large Font mode. Let me know if this causes any issues with spacing and information listinings.
- Enemy Debuff tooltips will now show the associated icon next to it. The goal is to have the tooltips show when hovering the icon itself, however that will require a little refactoring. Have made this change for now.
- Have made the Void Stone tutorial pop a little more "in your face"
- Have made it so that items that trigger once during a turn (such as Pickled Hand etc) will show as ready if they're good to go. (if there are some I've missed, just let me know!)
- Fixed a bug with Deck Cards staying on item popup
- You can no longer sneak into the Vault by manipulating your Map. (SNEAKY!)
- Prey on the Weak now has added information in the Tooltip
- Angering the Vault through a certain event no longer is as nasty


- Updated text on "Underhanded Tactics" to state "Attack Action".
- Fixed Sleight of Hand so it's not OUT OF CONTROL
- Smoke Bomb will now show the right card on hover
- Ice Wall now has the Block keyword.


- Strength will no longer be removed when taking damage.


- Hammer of Weakness changed to stop Strength reducing at all.
- Updated text on Eldritch Blessing
- Fixed Mace of Skull Crushing double trigger + showing text

Hey all! I'll stop referring to updates as "Closed Beta", because at this point anyone is able to join in the testing.

It's been super busy last week or two, with over 2000 encounters happening over 100's of runs, and I've been doing my best to collect all feedback and react as best as possible. Easily, the most common and recurring piece of advice was “Love the game - but need to know more about what XYZ means!”

That was the basis for this patch, which is pretty big! I had to do a bit of refactoring to make it work, hence the time, however hopefully this helps people ease into the game a bit more. Now that this is mostly covered off, I’ll be focusing my time on the new Bloodsworn class, and will hopefully have that playable in a few days!!

Thanks to all who have been playing and providing feedback so far. As usual, please feel free to join the Discord if you want to speak directly to myself, or chat strategy with other players!


Based on player feedback, the number 1 thing people wanted by far, was more tooltips. I understand this, however I had to build a few new systems to allow for such things.
- Now, all spells should have a bit more feedback on what certain effects do. If they will add/effect a card, they'll also show that card.
- This isn't the case in battle. I've kept the in battle tooltip to be the limited version. However outside of battle, in your Spellbook, Spellchild menu etc, you'll gain full info.
- Cards now allow for scaling tooltips based on upgrades (meaning that effects may change when a card is upgraded, so we change tooltips to suit)
- Cards that effect/summon other cards will now show that card as part of the tooltip also.

Whilst this seems like a simple "just do it" change, it did require a little refactoring, hence the 24hr delay on the patch. Thank you for staying patient as I fixed this up!


One of the major lingering things surronded the order of opperations and how "played" was translated in relation to Items. Why this is important is as follows:
-Item grants +1 Strength for every SWIFT card played.
-Player plays a SWIFT card. Is the card played as its dropped on the board, or after its effects have been processed? The former would mean that the +1 strength would apply to the card

I've come to a uniform decision on this, and spent time combing through all istances to make this sure this is standarized. It works as follows:

Card is in hand
Card is pulled from hand, it is PLAYED
Card is then PROCESSED
Card is then DISCARDED


- Updated the wording on Jab
- Updated text on Now We Wait
- Fixed typo on Daze
- Fixed an issue with card Unholy Cleansing doing a bunch of things REALLY WRONG


- Tutor event now upgrades ALL Strikes / Parrys


- Cultist ward now awards +1 Strength for EACH Bane/Daze you suffer
- Fixed a bug with Clockwork item missing it's trigger
- Discarded keys should trigger with the Mimic fight now.


- Fixed an issue with the map opening sound repeating
- The Stance tutorial will no longer show even with Tutorials are off. HE WAS TOO KEEN A TUTORIAL!
- Have changed the mobroom distribution code a little to favour closer to the front of the Map, to avoid the black space
- Have made an effort to standised fade in/fade out. Please let me know of any areas I've missed!
- Postfight sound effect will now fade out the background music. It's a touch jaring, will work more on this system.
- Prefight screen will no longer flash up the deck size warning when clicking "Start Fight"
- Have toned down the max sound level for music
- If an upgrade effects a cards cost, it should now show in green.
- Have dropped the cost of cards (Rare and Uncommon) at the Merchant, just a tad. I want to do this in small steps, rather than a big, sudden drop, to see if we can strike a sweet spot.
- Contined work on the Card Name layout and artwork. New changes there, I like the direction its heading.
- Lots of typo corrections
- Have tweaked keyword filters to suit selected class.
- Bug with item positioning on left hand side fixed.
- Setup for the Bloodsworn (new class coming soon!)



- You can now right click a card in your Backpack to remove it from your deck.
- Shift + Left Click will remove all cards of that name from your deck.


- Fixed game crashing when Potions are played
- Fixed an issue with game crashes on Arkaos and post map choice
- Fixed upgrade cursor getting stuck
- Fixed a bug where miss clicking when removing weakness cards would close the Weakness removal
- Fixed issue with cursor getting stuck when unable to cast spell
- Added some tips to the Deck Manager screen

Patch Notes 0.2.9.3 Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where AoE cards being returned to your hand from Artifacts / Spells crashing the game.
- Removed Who's Next from the global Card Pool
- Evasive now has a tooltip added.

UI
- For monster abilities that add a Bane, Daze or similar cards, I've added a preview of the card to the tooltip
- Dropshadows added to certain cards
- There is now a Buff icon showing which stance you are in in your Buff area
- Spell page has been cleaned up a little, with more UI changes coming.
- ESC will now open the menu when inside The Vault.