Update #8 - Bugs and Balance Fixes

Hi everyone -

I want to thank you for the 103 steam reviews we've received so far and the 90% Very Positive Rating! This is a wonderful accomplishment. I'm so grateful that you are enjoying Summoners Fate and I really appreciate the feedback and continuous growth I've seen to our community as a result. Truly - thank you!

Today, I bring you update #8 on 8/8 with Bugs and Balance fixes (don't you just love alliterations?). In addition to the improvements here, I've also been working to address our overall adventure difficulty curve and bolster up the content. I aiming to deliver these major balance changes next week with a large content update including new bosses for each biome as well as new elite and minion encounters.

New cards added in this update

[h2]Here’s the full list of changes for this update:[/h2]
[h3]*This update is also applied to our free demo version.[/h3]

• New Card: Bigbeard's Helmet - This card is the first of our "boss specific" artifact cards suggested by players in one of our Discord discussions. This artifact is also an equipment (so it has a permanent aesthetic effect as well) and allows you to mind control marauders injured by your attack.
  
• New Card: Katana - Two handed weapon that grants +2 power and Pierce.
  
• New Card: Ironclad Sword - Single hand weapon that grants +1 power and Pierce.
  
• Improvement: Vastly improved our Parallel Animation system. This is the feature that allows enemies to animate movement and attacks of their units simultaneously to speed up gameplay flow. The system is designed such that any triggered effects will automatically switch the system seamlessly to serial animations so players can still follow the event sequence. Previously, any kind of applied VFX (for example, snakes inflicting poison) would unnecessarily interrupt the parallel flow. The improvement fixes this so that the parallel flow is not interrupted unless it initiates a new unit action (for example, a unit who casts or sets off a new event flow in response to a trigger).
  
• Improvement: Discarding a card to trigger its "Discard" ability can now be undone. Previously, it shared the same behavior as a surprise being triggered and could only be replayed, not undone. (Thanks mr.kitty)
  
• Improvement: Made lunge attacks easier to execute. When drawing movement path, units with lunge now have extra padding along the edges of tiles to make selection of diagonal targets while moving easier. Selected movement path is now tinted green so it’s clear whether or not the space will be moved to regardless of the directional arrow length.
  
• Balance: In addition to having unlimited counter attacks, Vigil units now combo attack at full power rather than half power like other units.
  
• Balance: Reduced the cost of the spell Vigilant from 2 to 1
  
• Balance: Reduced the cost of Tactician from 2 to 1
  
• Balance: Added Pierce ability to Dreamstealer (Thanks Frosty the Pyro)
  
• Fixed bug where lore inside barrels/crates would fail to drop after defeating Cho'Tuk the Wanderer in bear form until after entering another battle. (Thanks oneofmany and Marvin)
  
• Fixed bug where lore would fail to drop if a bandit blockade encounter is swapped with a battle encounter containing lore (Thanks mr.kitty)
  
• Fixed bug where player would Error #1009 at view.ui::HM_CardView/updateUnitScale() when customizing their starting deck with specific cards in specific slots (ex: placing Disintegrate in the 3rd slot containing Fire Elemental would always trigger this bug). (Thanks mr.kitty)
  
• Fixed bug where walking into a battle after being transformed into a beetle by the Beetle Juice encounter would cause the game to freeze. (Thanks mrwaffles31) Additionally, when transformed into a beetle by the Beetle Juice encounter, the effect now lasts until the end of battle (or until resting at camp) instead of start of your turn (which removed the effect before it had any chance to challenge the player).
  
• Fixed bug where casting Arcane Insight with Zenon when remaining cards in deck are below 3 would throw a backworker error. (Thanks Tabos, Nightler)
  
• Fixed bug where spells with "closest targets" such as Lightning Storm could choose different targets than those indicated by the highlight based on which direction you chose to face the Summoner during the cast. The "closest target" sort type will no longer factor the Summoners facing (Thanks mr.kitty)
  
• Fixed bug where satchel cards chosen as starting cards could be placed in your deck at campsites (Thanks This is Fine).
  
• Fixed bug where retreating from the Golden Dragon while it was standing on a stone statue tile would result in its rewards being dropped and available on the map upon returning. (Thanks Verox)
  
• Fixed bug where picking up a satchel card during battle would throw RangeError: DataProvider index (-1) is not in acceptable range (0 - 1) and then prevent mouse interaction until restarting the game. (Thanks [rQ]Tabris10, KhardMaster, Gottes Sohn)
  
• Fixed bug where walking onto a map containing units in fixed positions (ex: Tutorial level 2) by clicking on a space where one of these units is standing would result in the group of units being reposition in a manner that might make the map impossible to win.(Thanks Rianith)
  
• Fixed bug where retreating from maps with noReposition (ex: tutorial levels dependent on a specific solution and map positioning) could have the setup changed if player retreats from the map after units have moved. We now force putting everything back to the original state. (Thanks Rianith)
  
• Fixed bug where hero could become stuck on top of shopkeeper if player clicked the space in the mist where shopkeeper spawns.
  

[h2]Coming Next Week[/h2]
Since I've extended our major balance update until next week, I'd still love to get your input in the following topics:

1. Balancing Minion, Elite and Boss Encounters
2. OP and UP cards

Once the balance update is complete, I plan to shift gears to address remaining QoL issues (such as keyboard mapping and gamepad support) before the end of the month so I can put all focus towards new content going into September (per our roadmap goals).

Join the Discussion:
- Steam discussion board: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/
- Discord: https://discord.gg/d20studios (RossD20Studios#2359)

Thanks so much!

~Ross