Across the Obelisk News

Hello everyone, this patch balances the newly released Act 4, and adds some extra features.

IMPORTANT: due to the long list of changes that this patch brings to the balance of the game, ongoing games from version 0.8.01 are incompatible with this patch so if you want to continue playing your old games you will need to use the early version of the game (v0.8.01) that's available through the Steam client. We are sorry, but it is a change that had to be made and we could not avoid it.

Last week we released Act 4 of the game and in general we are very happy with the result. We have been collecting all the feedback you have been giving us and we have been working quickly to improve and balance Act 4 as fast as possible.

So, we agree that Act 4 came out a bit Overtuned, especially in normal mode and the last boss.

During the Act 4 beta we got a lot of good feedback from very committed and experienced players (we are very grateful to all of you). Most of the feedback was about high madness levels and more advanced aspects, so we probably understimate the difficulty of the game in normal mode.

But well, that's what Early Access is for, to correct and improve the game whenever possible, so here's a summary of what we've done.

We have lowered the general difficulty of Act 4, especially in normal mode and a little less in madness mode. We have reduced the life of all enemies by 10-15% and revised their enchantments. Lord Hanshek's shadows will take much more health when using their cosume card, heal/area dispel (effectively reducing their health with each use). Archon Nhir has been lowered several values and damage based on auras/curses, plus he will no longer evade. There are many more changes (full list of changes at the end).

We have made some visual improvements to the Act 4 map, now that we know exactly what events are in each node and to give it more personality. We wanted to say that the Act 4 map was created before the random mode, when we had the map done we decided to create many more islands so we could create maps for the random mode "Obelisk Challenge". As the community (and us too) had a lot of desire to have a random mode in the game, we decided to advance it and release it before, so now it seems that Act 4 comes from the obelisk mode, when it is exactly the other way around. Even so, we have decided to improve it graphically and little by little we will add some more content.

Also four new cardbacks have been added to the game, which will be unlocked by passing various game modes, some of them (adventure complete in madness 14) will have to be replayed for the unlock to take effect. We have also improved the cardback display in several places in the game.

Talking about madness, we have given an overview of the corruptors in madness mode and sorted them by difficulty, to make it clearer for everyone.

The "Elite Champions" corruptor has been merged with the "Random Combats" corruptor, now there will always be a champion in each combat, with a random immunity but without the powerful bonus at the start of the combat.

Now, in the adventure, even with the Random combats corruptor you will be able to see which enemies are in each combat on the path, so you can plan your route. This is only for the adventure mode.

New corruptor "Despair", due to the balance and lower difficulty of the enemies in madness, we have created this corruptor to put certain enemies/champions/bosses at a higher difficulty level (nearly the same before the patch) by improving their cards and enchantment. At the moment this corruptor only affects act 4 enemies, but with time we will apply changes to the other enemies/bosses.

Thanks to this new optional corruptor, it allows us to have a new level of difficulty. Being in practice 3 base levels: normal, madness and madness+despair. So, for all those who still want more challenge or think that the changes have been excessive, we have a new difficulty level where we can create really difficult encounters.

Full list of changes and fixes.

Talents
Voltaic Arc: Added +1 spark charges.

Enchantments
World in Flames: this enchant caused soem problems as the card was casted when the enchant triggered and was an aoe card, changed to add the special emberstorm in you hand at cost 0 and vanish.
The Chosen One: Reduced sight and vulnerable charges by 1.

Cards
Meditate: (yellow) reduced energy to 1(from 2) added 1 energyze.
Meteorite: (Blue) increased damage a bit. (Yellow) removed random monster, increased cost and damage.
Ice comet: (Blue) increased chill. (Yellow) removed random monster, increased cost, added blunt damage and crack.
Ball lightning: (Blue) increased cost to 9, increased damage and spark charges.
Vampiric Tutor: (Blue) reduced cost to 1, increased hp lost.
Living Flame: (Blue) increased cost to 3, added 1 more jump and increased burn to 3.
Mind Visions: (Yellow) added vanish.
Pandemonium: (Blue) removed vanish. (Yellow) increased cost to 6, reduced damage, removed slow, added repeat 1.
Death's Reach: (Blue) increased cost to 8, added repeat 1. (Yellow) increased damage a bit.

Items
Scryer Staff: reduced the sight:burn conversion to 1:2(from 1:3)
Spider Queen Eye: reduced the sight:poison conversion to 1:2(from 1:3)

Act 4 changes
Reduced the hit points of all normal enemies in Act 4 (normal & madness) by 10%-15%.
All changes to Act 4 enemies also apply to those enemies in obelisk mode.

Vanguard & Dark Vanguard
Sacred Rancor / Dark Rancor (enchants): reduced the damage back done when damaged.
Holy Slash / Shadow Slash: reduced damage and sanctify/dark charges respectively.
Desvastate: reduced damage.
Bloody Retaliation: Damage based from bleed reduced to x0.5(from 1) in normal and x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.
Toxic Retaliation: Damage based from poison reduced to x0.5(from 1) in normal and x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.

Gunner & Dark Gunner
Heavy Artillery (enchant): reduced damage bonus and mark charges to 1(from 2), reduced uses to 10(from 12), in madness reduced uses to 10 too.
Sacred Shot / Dark Shot: reduced damage and sanctify/dark charges respectively.
Holy Barrage / Shadow Barrage: reduced damage.
Radiant Burst / Gloomy Burst: significantly reduced base damage, keep the x1(x2 in madness) damge based on cards in the discard pile.
Luminous Beam: Reduced the sharp to bleed conversion to 0.5(from 1) in normal and 0.8(from 1) in madness, also reduced the vulnerable charges by 1.
Caustic Beam: Reduced the sharp to poison conversion to 0.5(from 1) in normal and 0.8(from 1) in madness, also reduced the vulnerable charges by 1.

Oddball
Shield Generator (enchant): Reduced a bit the shield and block generated, charges reduced to 2(from 3) in normal mode.
Shield Jammer: Shield reducction reduced to x0.5(from 0.7), reduced vulnerable charges by 1.

Lancer & Dark Lancer
Pulsing Vigor (enchant): Reduced the vitality charges granted to 2(from 3) in normal and to 3(from 4) in madness mode.
Vitality Drain: Vitality gained equals x0.5(from 1) your vitality in normal mode, in madness keeps the x1 your vitality but removed the extra +X damage based on the vitality stolen.
Piercing Strike, holy & shadow versions: reduced the damage and charges (vulnerable, sanctify, dark) by 1 in all the versions.
Oppression, holy & shadow versions: reduced the damage based on hero thorns to x0.5(from 1) in normal mode.
Holy Lance / Shadow Lance: reduced the base damage a bit, damage based on monster vitality reduced to x0.5(from 1) in normal mode.

Champion Lancelot was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Monk & Dark Monk
Yang Mantra / Yin Mantra (enchants): Reduced the sanctify/dark charges applied by 1 in normal mode.
Payback: increased damage a bit, reduced the curses transfered to 1(from 3) in normal and to 2(from 4) in madness mode.
Radiance / Gravity Well: Greatly reduced the area damage based on block to x0.20(from 0.4) in normal and to x0.25(from 0.45) in madness, increased the burn/dark charges applied a bit respectively.
Transcendence: Removed dispel in normal and reduced the dispel to 1(from 2) in madness mode.
Celestial Toll / Death's Toll: Reduced base damage a bit, in madness the card added (Deadly Chime, Divine Chime) now has vanish.

Champion Graham was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Psychic
Silent Backlash (enchant): Reduced uses to 1(from 2) in normal mode, also reduced the damage a bit. Madness stays with 2 uses.
Dementia: Reduced damage a bit, and Amnesia (added card) has vanish.
Mass Hysteria: reduced damage and charges applied.
Phantom Echoes: Reduced jumps to 1(from 2) in normal mode.
Enfeeble: Reduced charges applied.

Knight / Dark Knight
Perfect Parry (enchant): Reduced uses to 1(from 3) in normal and to 2 (from 3) in madness mode.
Knights's Pride: Reduced damage and damage based on evasion charges.
Grand Cross, holy & shadow versions: Reduced the damage and damgesides a bit 1 in all the versions.
Godly Strength: Gain bless based on the monster sanctify charges x0.5 in normal and x0.8 in madness mode, also reduced the power charges by 1.
UnGodly Stength: Changed to be like Godly Strenght but it works with monster dark charges.
Stronghold: Reduced block to 70(from 80) in normal and to 85(from 90) in madness mode.

Champion Guts was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Angel / Dark Angel
Divine Protection (enchant): Now triggers at 10%(from 15%) in normal and at 15%(from 20%) in madness, also reduced the bless charges to 7(from 9).
Celestial Wrath (enchant): Now grants powerful instead of bless when triggered, reduced damage to 28(from 36) in normal and sanctify charges applied by 2.
Abyssal Wrath (enchant): Reduced damage to 28(from 36) in normal and dark charges applied by 2.
Blasphemy / Heresy: Reduced the base damage.
Purify: Reduced dispel to 2(from 3) in normal and to 3(from 4) at madness mode.
Sacred Ceremony: reduce the bless granted to 2(from 3) in normal.
Sanctuary: reduced the vitality granted to 2(from 3) in normal and to 3(from 4) in madness mode.

Champion Martina was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Dawn / Dusk
Dawn Punishment / Dusk Punisher (enchants): Reduced damage, Sanctify/Burn and Dark/Chill charges reduced to 3(from 4) in normal mode.
Law of Light (enchant): Removed the suffer sanctify when using a card.
Law of Darkness (enchant): Reduced the shield applied when using a card.
Ivory Tower / Obsidian Towe: Reduced the Area block granted. Also reduced the bless and powerful charges in madness mode.
Herald of Dawn / Herald of Dusk: Reduced the vitality charges gained.
Shield Slam: Reduced the base damage.
Armored Steel: Block gain reduced to double the boss block(from Tripe) in normal, reduced the mitigate and reinforced charges gained.

Lord Hanshek
Shadow clones, Wither: Reduced damage a bit, Reduced the heal received per damage done for 200%(from 300%) in normal and for 250%( from 300%) in madness, reduced vulnerable charges applied.
Shadow clones, Consume: Increased the fire damage taken by the shadow to 160(from 120) in normal and to 200(from 160).
Dark Cremation: Reduced the base damage.
Disintegrate: reduced the base damage.

Lord Hanshek was affected by changes in other cards shared with other monsters, like Wither or Gravity Well.

Archon Nhir
Apotheosis (enchant): Reduced the resist bonus to 35%(from 50%) in normal and to 40%(from 50%) in madness, reduced the shield gained on damaged to 8(from 16) in normal and to 13(from 16) in madness mode.
Anathema (enchant): Reduced the resist bonus to 35%(from 50%) in normal and to 40%(from 50%) in madness.
Abstraction (enchant): Reduced the resist bonus to 35%(from 50%) in normal and to 40%(from 50%) in madness. Removed the evasion gained on damaged.
Divine Punishement: Reduced the base damage, in madness increased the damage bassed on bless to x1.5(from x1).
Crushing Darkness: Reduced the damage based on block to x0.3(from 0.5) in normal and to x0.4(from 0.6) in madness, also reduced the dark charges applied by 2.
Corruption: Reduced the damge and poison application based on regeneration to x0.5(from 1) in madness and to x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.
Lethargy: Reduced the damage and insane charges application based on vitality to x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.
Ethereal: Curse charges redcution changed to 40%(from 50%) in normal and to 50%(from 60%) in madness, also reduced the buffer charges gained by 2.
Shadow Clone: Removed Consume card (now the add won't heal or dispel the boss) added a new card to the shadow, Dark Constraint.
Shadow Clone: Dark Outburst explosion card moved to round 6(from 5) in normal mode.


Bug fixes

- Fixed the interaction between the enchantment "Phoenix" and the item "Scroll of Resurrection" activating both at the same time. Now, the enchantment will have priority and the Scroll will not be consumed on the same death.

- Fixed the "Endless bag" item that was not working properly when some specific cards were used last.

- Fixed the "Mirror of Kalandra" not duplicating some of the enchantments casted.

- Fixed the "Restart combat on defeat" settings option, not saving its state between game sessions.

- Modified the autoend function to ensure the game waits for cards that are drawn before passing the turn.

- And much more minor fixes that have been reported.

That's all for now.

if you like the game and you haven't done it yet. Remember to leave a review on steam, it helps us a lot.

As always, thanks to all of you for your support, feedback and understanding.

Hey everybody! This is a hotfix to solve some of the problems that have been reported with the latest patch.

Fixes

- Fixed the trait "Tireless" that stopped working after a primary stat was modified because the character gained new perks in the middle of the game (f.e. Obelisk stairs).
- Fixed a bug that modified character primary stats on a "new game" based on previous games actions (f.e. Pay HP for higher chance in a corruption altar).
- Fixed a bug that reduced the HP of monsters, on the last map of the Obelisk Challenge, when a desync happened in the game.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Weekly Challenge to launch in coop games.
- Fixed a problem with the game settings not saving the "Full screen" check between sessions.
Hotfix v.0.7.6
- Fixed a bug with injuries (that use energy, f.e. Sad) being casted right after casting an enchantment that uses energy as catalizer (f.e. Wild Hunt) and not activating it.

Balance

- Archon Nhir: Normal mode, Reduced the charges of Sanctify applied by Celestial Brillance and Crucifixion(white). Also reduced the Insane charges applied by Lethargy and Missery. So, the players will have a bit less sanctify charges and the Total Eclipse(Sanctify-> Dark) spell will be less punishing. In madness +1 reduced the charges of those spells, but way less, and increased just a bit the base damage of the spells to compensate.
- Champion Guts: Reduced 1 Fury charge of his devastate card 2 (from 3) it should gain a bit less fury and do just a bit less damage in the first turns, also bloody retaliation reduced the damage based on his bleed to 150% (from 200%).
- Champion Martina: Reduced to 6(from 7) the bless charges gained with divine intervention enchantment.
- Madness Ring: Changed to be only mind -> Sight. Added a new ring, Terror Ring, that does the mind -> Dark version.
Note, all the other rings of the game did 1:1 curse conversions and madness ring was the only case that did 1:2 curses types.

We have added an option in the gameplay settings to enable or disable the warning to replay a fight in case of defeat, the option is disabled by default.

We want to thank you for the warm welcome of the Act 4 patch. Bear in mind that the game is Early Access and we will keep balancing and polishing a lot of things, so if you have suggestions, bug reports, looking for people to play coop, whatever... feel free to write a post or join our discord and tell us about it!

As usual, thank you so much for your help, reports and suggestions!

Hello everyone, finally Act 4 has arrived, here are the patch notes.

First of all we would like to thank you all for your patience and understanding. This patch has taken longer than expected, Christmas, family reunions, adding new features, reworks that were not foreseen and checking that everything went well has taken its time. Besides the simple fact that we are a very small team and there are always unforeseen events, we hope that from now on the following patches will have a faster cadence. Without further ado, here are the patch notes.


Final Act of the game.

Act 4 is the end point of your adventure, the pursuit of Lord Hanshek and the rescue of the princess takes you to a destroyed world. Where the ruins of an ancient civilization float in the void, unimaginable dangers and incredible relics await you.

New enemies, bosses, events and a whole new area to discover.

Act 4 enemies have their own enchantments, just like the players. These enchantments will challenge your gameplay and your knowledge of the game. Our intention is to add more enchantments to other enemies and bosses in the game before Act 4, so that the player is more familiar with them.

Although act 4 is the final act, it does not mean that it is the last map/biome of the game, we will be adding more content and areas you can choose to go to besides the swamp or the volcano.


Nezglekt and Wilbur join the fray.

Two new heroes available for unlocking, each with their own play style and opening up new group combinations.

Nezglekt, the Prophet, is the fourth healer in the game and specializes in card control and mind spells.

Wilbur, the Loremaster, is the third mage in the game and specializes in lightning spells and books.


Cardbacks, Ranks & Perks.

With this patch we introduce cardbacks in the game, at the moment each hero has three cardbacks available that are unlocked with the hero's rank. But this is just the beginning, soon we will add more cardbacks available by completing the main story, a certain madness level, an obelisk challenge or other achievements in the game. Also, we want to add some special cardbacks for completing the new weekly challenges that we will make soon.

Each hero has its own rank, as heroes rank up they will not only unlock cosmetics like skins or cardbacks, now there are also 2 upgrade levels (blue and yellow) for the special cards of each hero (unique card, initial item and enchantemts) that will be unlocked with the hero rank.

The number of perks available for each hero is now based on the highest rank of your heroes, so now you don't need to rank up all heroes one by one to have perks available for them. Why we changed this system? Well, when we design certain aspects of the game we always try to prioritize the fun side of it, and we saw that unlocking a new character and not being able to continue escaling madness levels because new characters were so low compared to your current roster of heroes, wasn't very funny and gave players a bad sense of grinding to play the game, which is something really far from our game perspective. Although the perk system is fine, we feel that once you have unlocked all 36 perks, the system is a bit bland and could be improved making it a bit more customizable for each hero. Our intention is to tweak it so that each hero has something special to choose from, so expect an overhaul of it within the next patches.


Graphical improvements and stability.

We have redone and improved all the combat backgrounds of the game, of all the acts!

We have changed the graphics of the game's knowledge tome and event book. Also, now all menus are more consistent and have the same type of buttons.

New effects, for the cards and enchantments of the enemies in Act 4.

Game performance has been greatly improved, especially in multiplayer.


Auras and Curses.

Removed the "Haste" aura and "Daze" curse from the game to reduce the number of auras and curses in the game.

Now the Fast/Slow aura/curse modifies the speed by 2 per charge, and each charge is nullified between them. Fast/Slow are still unstackable so cards that used to have Haste/Daze have been replaced by high values of Fast/Slow charges.

From now on to facilitate the understanding of auras and curses, auras will always be executed before curses, so auras/curses will always be ordered below the heroes health bar, first the auras and then the curses (Regeneration will now always go before Bleed but also before the Decay, so be careful).

In this sense, we have added a blue background to the auras and a red background to the curses to help new players to identify them. This option is turned on by default but can be disabled in the options menu.

The "Dark" curse now does damage only to single target, but this damage now takes into account the negative resistances and we have added items that modify the number of charges in which it explodes.

"Evasion" and "Shackle" are incompatible with each other and are mutually eliminated when one of them is gained or applied.

The "Doom" curse has been moved in front of the heroes' health bar. This curse can not be prevented or removed in any way.


Gameplay & Other changes.

This patch has changed many fundamental aspects of the game such as the change in the speed system, upgradeable enchantments and balance. So we won't go into particular details of what cards have been changed/modified. Also don't worry, when the game is released we will document every little change we make to the cards, but now that everything is changing and evolving, writing down every little change takes a lot of time and resources that we can't afford.

Balance changes on most cards, increased damage on higher cost cards and also improved damage on overcharge cards.

Overhealing has been removed, when a hero is at 100% hp he is not healed and therefore the items that are triggered when healing are not activated.

The obelisk challenge has been improved, a third floor has been added. When going up a floor you have the option to choose between several random bonuses and also an option to customize your deck a little bit.

50 new items have been added to the game.

4 new warrior cards and a new healer card.

New achivments and achivements icons added to Steam.

Added 8 new Champions that appear in rng mode, and improved some of the old ones with new enchatments.

New heroes mean new responses and interactions throughout the game.

Many QoL features have been added here and there.

The stability of multiplayer games has been greatly improved.

A gazilion bugs and minor issues have been fixed.


Due to the huge amount of changes in this patch, ongoing games from previous versions (v.0.7.52) are not supported. If you want to finish them you can always load the previous version.


What's next?
As we said at the beginning we hope that the patching frequency will return to what it was, here is what we plan to do in continuation:

- New enchantments for Bosses and Champion monsters. Also improvements & balance for Act 4.
- New cardbacks, with game and knowledge tome unlocks.
- Monsterpedia in the tome.
- Heropedia in the tome, with some surprises.
- Improvement of the Weekly Challenges, each challenge will be different from the others and will include modifications that will change the way to play it.
- Perk system overhaul (may take a bit more time).
- Also, there are many more things in the pipeline (heroes and biomes) but they will be coming during the Early Access.


Along with this patch there will be a Weeklong deal of 20% discount, so it's the perfect opportunity if you were still hesitating to buy it or wanted to give it to a friend!

Remember to leave a review on steam if you like the game, it really helps us a lot. As always, thanks to all of you for your support, feedback and understanding.

We really hope you enjoy this patch and Act 4 as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Adam & Javier.

Hey everybody! This is a hotfix to solve a problem with the upcoming Weekly challenges.

Just be aware that this is not the Act IV patch. Regarding this, we have it almost ready. During the following weeks we will be doing some community tests to check that everything goes good and balance the new mechanics, etc.

As usual, thank you so much for your help, reports and suggestions!

Hello everyone, here is an update about the two new heroes that will come in the next patch.

First of all we are still working hard on the next patch of the game, but we will need some more time, it's a big patch that includes a whole new act, with its enemies, events and more than 30 new items, plus 2 new heroes and many improvements in several aspects of the game. So we hope to have it ready around February, in the meantime here is a preview of the two new heroes.

Wilbur, the Loremaster.

Wilbur is the third mage in the game and specializes in lightning spells and books. His special card allows you to copy a spell from your hand and give a copy to any other hero (the copy is exact, so if the card has a cost reduction, it is also copied).

His talents include the ability to make the Spark on enemies do damage not only to side enemies but also to the enemy that has the Spark charges. Another of his talents will allow you to reduce the cost of the highest cards in your hand permanently when using books.

You will find Wilbur in Velkarath trying to make his flying platform work.

Nezglekt, the Prophet.

Nezglekt is the fourth healer in the game and specializes in card control and mind spells. His special card allows him to look at up to ten cards from any hero deck and vanish two of them (especially useful for removing injuries or cards added by monsters).

Nezglekt has the default ability to heal the entire party at the start of his turn based on the number of insane charges in play (regardless of who has them or who has placed them). With his talents, you can boost this ability or specialize him more in Sight and energy return when using Skills, to have a perfect control of the battle.

You can find Nezglekt also in Velkarath, but only if you visit someone first in Senenthia.


This has been a very good year for us with the release of the game in Early Access and we are looking forward to continue working on it for many years to come.

As always thank you all for your support, feedback and understanding.

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!