Weekly Pupdate (11/3/20) -- Patch #48 (New gear, sidequest, balance changes)

Sup guys & gals? Wow, what a patch we have this week! Our first "living quest," Sabrina's juice patrol, is finally completed! If you've met the required level (30), you can talk to her to start the process of finishing that quest and gain the ability to turn your junk into epic gear.

Additionally, we've got some new loot for you to chase, and a bunch of balance changes, plus some bug fixes to round things out. Let's jump into the changelog!

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.31.4 Changelog[/h2]

• Sabrina, the Middle-Aged Witch calls on you to find another vat of THE JUICE
  
• Added a new helmet: the Swifthorn Mask!
  
• The Swifthorn Mask can be acquired from Spidare, in the Bayou Bog
  
• Adjusted the HP pool of Psychopomp Empress, from base amount of 3000 to base amount of 3500
  
• Lowered the Power yielded from bosses by ~40%
  
• Lowered the Power yielded from mini-bosses by ~15%
  
• Lowered the amount of non-random Mimics in the Sunken Summit
  
• Increased the HP scaling of all enemies, mini-bosses, and bosses
  
• Increased the difficulty of bosses when re-issuing a challenge to them
  
• Added additional text to the Occluded Oasis and Corrupted Castle to help inform the player of their acquisition of the Blessings
  
• Fixed an issue where Autosave would not autosave (yup, that happened)
  
• Fixed an issue where the chest containing the Shell of the Summit could clip into a wall

I'd like to take this Pupdate and talk about these balance changes; the goals of them, why these numbers-- that sort of thing. For me, transparency in the development process continues to be a goal that I strive for. So let's talk about it!

The boss of the Corrupted Castle, the Psychopomp Empress, has been a tricky one to find the right balance for. See, something that I've never shared with you guys is exactly how the boss operates: for each skull you collect and put back into it's pedestal inside of the Corrupted Castle causes her to be unable to absorb an essence. Since she can't absorb it, she forces it through using some of her own essence instead, hurting her for a large portion of her HP.

Unfortunately, her base HP pool has never been large enough for this to be posed as a mechanical option, nor has her buff ever been powerful enough to pose a serious threat to players trying to keep her at bay. These changes, along with some others I'm cooking up, should help remedy that!

You might also notice that the Power yielded from fighting bosses has been reduced a fair amount-- this is also to combat a few unintended side-effects of the scaling system working the way that it does. While bosses still reward a significant portion of Power, it should be lessened enough now that players don't find themselves repeatedly grinding the same encounter to power level their character. Plus, now that bosses are more challenging on subsequent challenges, this should hopefully allow for players who absolutely wailed on a boss to see all of the mechanics shine. Mini-bosses Power yield was changed for a similar reason.

I decided as well to increase the HP scaling of all enemies, be they bosses or not by a small amount. This choice stems mostly from the fact that a previous revision to the gear system changed how HP and MP are distributed into gear-- if you get points in those categories, you get more points than if they weren't. Because of this, there's been a growing discrepancy between damage done and damage taken. The goal of this change is to bring this more in line without drastically cranking up the amount of damage that you need to do. In terms of numbers, this is a simple one: instead of getting 1 additional HP per level, enemies now get 2. Like I said, this shouldn't drastically change things-- my goal is to get there over time rather than through massive, sweeping efforts.

I hope that this insight helps you guys understand my approach to balance in Ephemeral Tale, and until next time, stay safe and have fun!
-- Ryan
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