Road to 1.0, Week 5 - Level Up!
Full Patch Notes - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U9XYMBIo1E5GyqQrrrnwevb2N4uMsug-Bbw4D5Yysrs/edit
Level Up Perk Refresh
The Level Up perk pools have been WIDELY expanded, tweaked and reworked - ideally resulting in a much improved experience when Leveling Up!
Many of the new Perks listed below have been moved into Unlock bundles. There are now 6 Perk unlock bundles in total - be sure to check the Unlocks screen for new additions!
Level 2 Perk Adjustments:
Team Building now grants 2 Gold instead of 2 Star Points for having an entire team of the same Trait.
Dragon Cannon no longer feeds on Gold and deals more damage - 30% max health split across three shots.
The Gauntlet now grants Attack Damage (from Mana Regen).
The Spear of Fate is now the Witch's Broomstick and grants Mana Regen instead of Attack Speed to the wearer and adjacent allies.
All Perks that grant an item have a blurb describing their effect (in addition to the existing icon which completely displays the effect).
NEW Level 2 Perks:
Pivot Potential - Gain a random Rare unit and 2 Lucky Clovers.
Armed and Ready - Units with at least one equipped Item gain +15% Attack Damage.
Battle Promotion - The first Unit on your team to score a kill gains a 50% health Shield and 50 Spell Power.
Winterveil - Gain the Unique Equipment Winterveil, which can Shield allies and Hobble foes.
Cloning Capsule - Gain the Unique Equipment Cloning Capsule, which grants copies of the wearer when they survive combat.
Warp Gem - Gain the Unique Equipment Warp Gem, which can warp an ally into the enemy's backline.
Level 3 Perk Adjustments:
The Impervious hex now grants +15 Armor (from 10).
The Knifestorm hex now grants +25 Attack Speed (in addition to its current effect).
NEW Level 3 Perks:
Giganto - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier Giganto, which Grows a unit and increases maximum Health.
Minimizer - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier Minimizer, which Shrinks a unit and increases Attack Damage.
Level 5 Perk Adjustments:
The Rarely Seen perk is now known as Regal Rarity and grants more stats, a total of 20 Armor, 50 Starting Mana and 50 Attack Speed.
The Black Die, Common Secrets and Uncommon Luck perks have been removed.
NEW Level 5 Perks:
Triple Wielding - Units with at least three equipped items gain +10% Damage Amp and Damage Reduction.
Immediate Improvement - Obtain 3 Divination Dusts.
Mastermind - Obtain the Mastermind Helm, a powerful item that can only be equipped to Tier 4 units.
Strong Start - For the first 8 seconds of combat, your units are immune to Crowd Control and gain +15% Damage Reduction.
Rhapsodic Learner - When your units cast for the third time each combat, they gain a 30% health Shield.
Reaper - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier 'Reaper' in a random hex. A Unit placed there gains Attack Speed and immense Lifesteal.
Titan - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier 'Titan' in a frontline hex. A Unit placed there gains an immense amount of Maximum Health.
For The People! - +1 Army Size. Enemies gain +10% Damage Reduction and Damage Amp.
Challenge Climb & Game Difficulty
The very first combat in the Training Yard now rewards a random Component Item. (If skipping the Training Yard, the run begins with this random Component Item.)
For a long time now, we've disliked how the first Component obtained in a run isn't able to combine for some time. In addition, we've been looking for just one more way to add initial direction to a run. Together, giving a Component early will open up options in gameplay, and allow for more direction - maybe that starting Staff makes those Mages in the unit store a little more interesting.
Challenge Level 15 has been completely reworked, removing the second -Max Hearts and third stage of Shadow Strike hexes. Two new Challenge Modifiers will cap off the difficulty climb:
Market Crash: Receive one fewer free Unit Store Rolls each combat.
Weaponless: You no longer start the run with a Component Item.
Road Tale Updates
We’ve received a handful of reports about the events feeling a little too random since the BNG update. After lots of discussion with players, we believe the main cause of this to be the Risk Cards game found in Road Tales. There are times when one wrong click in these games can sail you into Curse during a time when you weren’t planning to do so, and can feel pretty bad as a result.
From this feedback, we’re adding more to Road Tales:
When visiting a Road Tale, you are now presented with two other options you can choose from besides drawing the Risk Cards.
The first option will be something roughly “5 points” of Risk value in the card game, with no other cost to it - a safe, small, guaranteed reward.
The second option will be one of the unique, high-point rewards in the card game, but come with a unique bespoke downside.
The Risk Cards remain as the best “value proposition” in most cases to keep it having a strong incentive, but this gives options for players who prefer a more consistent event choice.
Legends
There’s been a few comments, both from players and our own observations, that since the BNG update, Legends have fallen a little out of favor. Even though Legends were an overall part of the pass, one thing we didn’t adjust was the numbers of the Legend trait itself, and since the average overall power of Traits increased, the stat boost from Legend has started to feel not quite as worthwhile.
We could’ve just updated their stats a bit, but wanted to try to also address some players just plain not finding Legends fun due to their difficulty in synergizing. They often require a specific army build focused around the Legends, so you have to disregard Traits in favor of more Skill-oriented compositions. We still wanted to preserve that intent, but also open up Legends as more suitable for more Trait-based army comps by way of giving them the capacity to both play a support role, as well as steal the spotlight and become the stars of specific army compositions.
Legend trait has been renamed to Mythic.
There are genre connotations with Legend/Legendary that may confuse new players, so we’ve decided to do a quick rename here.
Mythic units no longer cost an extra Star Point
Mythic Trait has been reworked: Now grants ‘Valor’ to the Mythic Unit, which grants Damage Amp and Damage Reduction instead of flat stats. At the start of combat, Mythic Units also grant Valor to one random adjacent ally.
In addition, there is now a 2nd stage to the Mythic Trait! The 2nd stage reads “Mythic Units who receive Valor from another Mythic gain 5 Mana Regen. You cannot use more than 2 Legends.”
Ifreyes’ Privileged Position Specialization now grants increased Attack Damage and Spell Power to Mythics rather than reducing their Star Point cost.
Custom Lobby PVP (Alpha)
You can now play custom PVP lobbies with premade groups! In Custom Lobby, players will only be playing in a pool by themselves, and all players have to wait for everyone to advance to the next step (such as everyone confirming their army loadout before everyone is moved to the combat step).
This feature is still very much in an alpha state and we are running regular playtests in Discord. Expect to see some issues if you try it out.
A new UI has been added to support Custom Lobbies, which includes the ability to look at the perks, combatant choice, and Units of the other players in the lobby (as well as giving the host of the lobby the ability to remove players after the lobby has begun)
Once started, a Custom Lobby must be finished in a single session - it does not currently support saving/loading/rejoining a lobby.
The Custom Lobby joining UI fully supports any potential streamers or other hosted live events, with the ability to copy codes to clipboard without showing them on screen, and to hide codes being typed in as if it were a password.
Item Power Tuning
We have reduced the power of some of the Component Items’ stat boosts. In turn, this also means Completed Items, Enemy Leader Items and Runes will all grant slightly less stats.
Over time, the power of Items has moved more and more into the special effects of Completed or Special equipment, and for good reason - they’re the exciting abilities that units can actually build around. However, we never reduced the power of Components in turn, meaning that endgame units often had a little more pure statistical offensive power than we intend by the end of the game - particularly in the cases of carries. The changes are as follows (and other items granting the same stats have changed by the same general amount):
Staff 25 -> 20 Spell Power
Sword 20% -> 15% Attack Damage
Gloves 15 -> 12 Attack Speed
Level Up Perk Refresh
The Level Up perk pools have been WIDELY expanded, tweaked and reworked - ideally resulting in a much improved experience when Leveling Up!
Many of the new Perks listed below have been moved into Unlock bundles. There are now 6 Perk unlock bundles in total - be sure to check the Unlocks screen for new additions!
Level 2 Perk Adjustments:
Team Building now grants 2 Gold instead of 2 Star Points for having an entire team of the same Trait.
Dragon Cannon no longer feeds on Gold and deals more damage - 30% max health split across three shots.
The Gauntlet now grants Attack Damage (from Mana Regen).
The Spear of Fate is now the Witch's Broomstick and grants Mana Regen instead of Attack Speed to the wearer and adjacent allies.
All Perks that grant an item have a blurb describing their effect (in addition to the existing icon which completely displays the effect).
NEW Level 2 Perks:
Pivot Potential - Gain a random Rare unit and 2 Lucky Clovers.
Armed and Ready - Units with at least one equipped Item gain +15% Attack Damage.
Battle Promotion - The first Unit on your team to score a kill gains a 50% health Shield and 50 Spell Power.
Winterveil - Gain the Unique Equipment Winterveil, which can Shield allies and Hobble foes.
Cloning Capsule - Gain the Unique Equipment Cloning Capsule, which grants copies of the wearer when they survive combat.
Warp Gem - Gain the Unique Equipment Warp Gem, which can warp an ally into the enemy's backline.
Level 3 Perk Adjustments:
The Impervious hex now grants +15 Armor (from 10).
The Knifestorm hex now grants +25 Attack Speed (in addition to its current effect).
NEW Level 3 Perks:
Giganto - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier Giganto, which Grows a unit and increases maximum Health.
Minimizer - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier Minimizer, which Shrinks a unit and increases Attack Damage.
Level 5 Perk Adjustments:
The Rarely Seen perk is now known as Regal Rarity and grants more stats, a total of 20 Armor, 50 Starting Mana and 50 Attack Speed.
The Black Die, Common Secrets and Uncommon Luck perks have been removed.
NEW Level 5 Perks:
Triple Wielding - Units with at least three equipped items gain +10% Damage Amp and Damage Reduction.
Immediate Improvement - Obtain 3 Divination Dusts.
Mastermind - Obtain the Mastermind Helm, a powerful item that can only be equipped to Tier 4 units.
Strong Start - For the first 8 seconds of combat, your units are immune to Crowd Control and gain +15% Damage Reduction.
Rhapsodic Learner - When your units cast for the third time each combat, they gain a 30% health Shield.
Reaper - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier 'Reaper' in a random hex. A Unit placed there gains Attack Speed and immense Lifesteal.
Titan - In combat rooms, gain the Hex Modifier 'Titan' in a frontline hex. A Unit placed there gains an immense amount of Maximum Health.
For The People! - +1 Army Size. Enemies gain +10% Damage Reduction and Damage Amp.
Challenge Climb & Game Difficulty
The very first combat in the Training Yard now rewards a random Component Item. (If skipping the Training Yard, the run begins with this random Component Item.)
For a long time now, we've disliked how the first Component obtained in a run isn't able to combine for some time. In addition, we've been looking for just one more way to add initial direction to a run. Together, giving a Component early will open up options in gameplay, and allow for more direction - maybe that starting Staff makes those Mages in the unit store a little more interesting.
Challenge Level 15 has been completely reworked, removing the second -Max Hearts and third stage of Shadow Strike hexes. Two new Challenge Modifiers will cap off the difficulty climb:
Market Crash: Receive one fewer free Unit Store Rolls each combat.
Weaponless: You no longer start the run with a Component Item.
Road Tale Updates
We’ve received a handful of reports about the events feeling a little too random since the BNG update. After lots of discussion with players, we believe the main cause of this to be the Risk Cards game found in Road Tales. There are times when one wrong click in these games can sail you into Curse during a time when you weren’t planning to do so, and can feel pretty bad as a result.
From this feedback, we’re adding more to Road Tales:
When visiting a Road Tale, you are now presented with two other options you can choose from besides drawing the Risk Cards.
The first option will be something roughly “5 points” of Risk value in the card game, with no other cost to it - a safe, small, guaranteed reward.
The second option will be one of the unique, high-point rewards in the card game, but come with a unique bespoke downside.
The Risk Cards remain as the best “value proposition” in most cases to keep it having a strong incentive, but this gives options for players who prefer a more consistent event choice.
Legends
There’s been a few comments, both from players and our own observations, that since the BNG update, Legends have fallen a little out of favor. Even though Legends were an overall part of the pass, one thing we didn’t adjust was the numbers of the Legend trait itself, and since the average overall power of Traits increased, the stat boost from Legend has started to feel not quite as worthwhile.
We could’ve just updated their stats a bit, but wanted to try to also address some players just plain not finding Legends fun due to their difficulty in synergizing. They often require a specific army build focused around the Legends, so you have to disregard Traits in favor of more Skill-oriented compositions. We still wanted to preserve that intent, but also open up Legends as more suitable for more Trait-based army comps by way of giving them the capacity to both play a support role, as well as steal the spotlight and become the stars of specific army compositions.
Legend trait has been renamed to Mythic.
There are genre connotations with Legend/Legendary that may confuse new players, so we’ve decided to do a quick rename here.
Mythic units no longer cost an extra Star Point
Mythic Trait has been reworked: Now grants ‘Valor’ to the Mythic Unit, which grants Damage Amp and Damage Reduction instead of flat stats. At the start of combat, Mythic Units also grant Valor to one random adjacent ally.
In addition, there is now a 2nd stage to the Mythic Trait! The 2nd stage reads “Mythic Units who receive Valor from another Mythic gain 5 Mana Regen. You cannot use more than 2 Legends.”
Ifreyes’ Privileged Position Specialization now grants increased Attack Damage and Spell Power to Mythics rather than reducing their Star Point cost.
Custom Lobby PVP (Alpha)
You can now play custom PVP lobbies with premade groups! In Custom Lobby, players will only be playing in a pool by themselves, and all players have to wait for everyone to advance to the next step (such as everyone confirming their army loadout before everyone is moved to the combat step).
This feature is still very much in an alpha state and we are running regular playtests in Discord. Expect to see some issues if you try it out.
A new UI has been added to support Custom Lobbies, which includes the ability to look at the perks, combatant choice, and Units of the other players in the lobby (as well as giving the host of the lobby the ability to remove players after the lobby has begun)
Once started, a Custom Lobby must be finished in a single session - it does not currently support saving/loading/rejoining a lobby.
The Custom Lobby joining UI fully supports any potential streamers or other hosted live events, with the ability to copy codes to clipboard without showing them on screen, and to hide codes being typed in as if it were a password.
Item Power Tuning
We have reduced the power of some of the Component Items’ stat boosts. In turn, this also means Completed Items, Enemy Leader Items and Runes will all grant slightly less stats.
Over time, the power of Items has moved more and more into the special effects of Completed or Special equipment, and for good reason - they’re the exciting abilities that units can actually build around. However, we never reduced the power of Components in turn, meaning that endgame units often had a little more pure statistical offensive power than we intend by the end of the game - particularly in the cases of carries. The changes are as follows (and other items granting the same stats have changed by the same general amount):
Staff 25 -> 20 Spell Power
Sword 20% -> 15% Attack Damage
Gloves 15 -> 12 Attack Speed