Update #5 - Improved Character Unlocks and New Card Recovery Options

Hi everyone -

In case it hasn't been blatantly obvious by now, I care a lot about player feedback :)

I can't speak for the early access experience of other games on Steam, but here with Summoners Fate, I sincerely want to "shock" players with how responsive I can be to your suggestions on how to improve this game. I'm committed to this because I believe our players have a really astute understanding of what works/doesn't work. You have really great ideas and your ideas have already had a dramatic impact on improving our game experience.

[h2]Improved Character Unlocks[/h2]
This weeks update focused on "Character Unlocks", a topic we opened up for discussion and received a lot of feedback on. Many great ideas were suggested and I took your feedback to heart to make the following changes:



Full write-up, explanation and details on these changes here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/0/3417685271704370191/
But TLDR is that these changes should enable most players to unlock all the characters in rapid succession by trying out each character for a run (completion of run not required) or a playing a few battles.

[h2]New Cards[/h2]
I'm also reading and considering everyone's in-game feedback as well as our other ongoing Steam discussions. I created the following new cards to address one of the other areas of concern (the ability to recover discarded cards without relying on campsites):



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

• Improved Character Unlocks Character unlock requirements have been made easier and reassigned to enable you to acquire each new character with a quick try-out run of the previous character unlocked.
  
• New Card: Rejuvenate - Nature spell that allows you to Draw your last 3 discarded cards
  
• New Card: Rejuvenation Vial - Satchel card that allows you to recover 5 discarded cards.
  
• New Card: Rejuvenation Potion - Satchel card that allows you to recover all discarded decks (full deck restoration)
  
• New Card: Bag of Marshmallows - Satchel card that Provides 5 marshmallows (basically an extra campsite) that you can take at the beginning of successive runs to have an edge.
  
• Balance Change: Antarus, Battle Mage now has Knockback (1) to address player feedback that he was previously difficult to play as a straight melee character.
  
• Text Change: Changed Orc Shaman card text from "closest ally" to "closest visible ally" is healed which is how the ability actually works. (Thanks mr.kitty)
  
• Loot Finder Improvement: Received another report of "Missing Boss Key". This time it turns out the boss key did drop, but was left behind in a pile of debris. So I decided to add the Boss Key to the loot finder. Keep in mind that on early levels, when the player protection mechanism is in place, the boss key may get moved if the game swaps out the elite encounter holding it for an easier fight while your character is still gaining levels. Thanks 彷徨 for the report.
  
• Fixed bug where unit card descriptions for bosses and elites were showing variable names (Ex: [Object def_statusEffect] or [Object def_equipment]) (Thanks Thomas Hirsch, RyuSage, Gryllz, Nat20s, and MaKo)
  
• Fixed bug where some players would get a RangeError: Invalid child index when attempting to start a battle with a custom deck.
  
• Fixed bug where AI turn timer was not formatting minutes and seconds correctly.
  
• Fixed bug where status effect icon could remain persistent on all future status effects.
  
• Fixed bug where repeatedly spamming the "M" key on map would cause it to scale larger or shrink indefinitely.
  
• Fixed bug with Window Resizing: When manually resizing the window by dragging with the mouse, it now saves the custom dimensions. Previously, the window size would revert to the stored window dimensions each time the player opened and closed the settings menu or restarted the game. Also made it so that while changing the width of a window it will now draw the new grid area visible.
  
• Fixed bug with positioning of retreat and stat toggle buttons for ultra-wide desktop windows so they now rest correctly on the lower hud bar.
  
• Fixed bug where resource numbers in the upper HUD and unit stat numbers were not displaying when running the game in windowed mode at certain window sizes. (Thanks andouLog and dryheat)
  
• Fixed bug where Error 3013 bug in RasterJobList.writeInfo would appear when resizing the game window. This fix should also resolve the rasterizer "hangs" bug we saw reports for. (Thanks strongsad42 for the many reports on this issue)
  
• Fixed bug where a skeleton key attached to an enemy on a map that has been explored and retreated from would no longer show on the world map.
  

[h2]Coming Next Week[/h2]
For next week's update, I'll be focusing more on user-reported issues including the following popular issues:

• Bugs with the Arena event (such as being forced to fight multiple times in arena after beating, not being able to escape arena, etc.)
  
• Suspicious tomb event (not being able to open the tomb)
  
• Player feedback on retreat/save scum issues
  

[h2]Help us Grow Summoners Fate with your Steam Review[/h2]
I had aimed to hit 100 reviews by our 4th week after launch and we came pretty close at 81 reviews (still Very Positive at 86%).

If you haven't had a chance yet, please consider writing us a Steam review. Reviews are very important for helping us reach more players on Steam, which in turn helps us gather more feedback on the game and make more improvements for you. It's a win-win so please help us out :)

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

Thanks so much!

~Ross