Castle Of Alchemists News

Hello good folk!

We have updated our crafting system for weapons, with new abilities and conditions and brought several UI/UX updates and reworks to some existing systems.

Here are the patch notes:


We have reworked some of the mechanics for a better experience.

• [h3]Poison Clouds[/h3]
  Now coloured green. Explodes when contacted with fire.
  
• [h3]Heavy Poison[/h3]
  Works exactly like Poison. We kept this in the game for prevent corrupted save files. Will be removed in future updates.
  
• [h3]Explosive Gas[/h3]
  Increased its damage to distinguish from poison clouds.
  
• [h3]Acid Puddles[/h3]
  Now deals acid damage to enemies passing. Hitting an acid puddle with electricity releases a 3x3 Poison Cloud.
  
• [h3]Hydro Puddles[/h3]
  No longer applies wet, still conducts electricity. When hit by chill, freezes and no longer conducts but slows enemies instead.
  
• [h3]Sprinkler Trap[/h3]
  No longer slows. Instead applies a condition to enemies within radius for its active duration (10 seconds) and leaves a 3x3 puddle on the ground. Variants as follows
  
  • Default : Sprinkler Trap - Oil => Applies Oiled to enemies and leaves an Oil Puddle.
    
  • Upgrade 1: Sprinkler Trap - Hydro => Applies Wet to enemies and leaves a Hydro Puddle.
    
  • Upgrade 2: Sprinkler Trap - Acid => Applies Acid to enemies and leaves an Acid Puddle.
    
• [h3]Rage[/h3]
  A new buff type for main character. Rage allows you to ignore stamina cost, take half damage and have 20 percent life steal on melee attacks for its duration.
• [h3]Adrenal Pump Mutation[/h3]
  Now enters you in a Rage for 15 seconds when you kill 10 enemies with a melee weapon within 3 seconds.
• [h3]Shoulder Cannon[/h3]
  Shoulder Cannon now works with a cooldown rather than being once per wave.
  

As per feedback, we realised melee weapons were not getting enough love. With these craft updates, we aimed to make them more viable with new conditions and abilities.

Here are new "Melee Only" abilities that you can get :

[h3]Life Steal[/h3]
Heals you for a percentage of the damage you are dealing. Hitting multiple enemies do not increase the life steal amount.
[h3]Deadly Blow[/h3]
Deals damage equal to 25 percent of enemy's current health on given chance.
[h3]Culling Blow[/h3]
Directly kills enemies who are below 35 percent of their total health on a given chance.
[h3]Absorption [/h3]
Blocks a given flat amount from each physical attack after reductions.

[h2]Triggers for several abilities[/h2]
Aside from those new abilities, we have added new triggers for some new abilities we have added to "all" weapons, as listed below:

• [h3]On Charge[/h3]
  Triggers when you activate your melee weapon's charge.
  
• [h3]On Reload[/h3]
  Triggers when you reload your ranged weapon. For Crank Gun, you need to fully reload your weapon to trigger.
  
• [h3]On Dodge[/h3]
  Triggers on landing after a dodge.
  
• [h3]On Hoop[/h3]
  Triggers when you initiate a hoop back.
  
• [h3]On Acrobatics[/h3]
  Triggers on landing after an acrobatic (climbing up & down, jumping across gaps).
  

These triggers can occur only once per pre-determined cooldowns. When a trigger happens, you will see a cooldown icon on the left side of your Health Bar. Cooldowns are different for each trigger.

Triggers except "On Acrobatics", only occur if you are using the weapon (Melee/Range). On Acrobatics always occur regardless of your current weapon.

Effects that can occur after these triggers are:

• [h3]Guaranteed Crit[/h3]
  Your next attack within 5 seconds is a guaranteed critical hit.
  
• [h3]Melee Buff[/h3]
  Melee damage is increased by 35%
  
• [h3]Ranged Buff[/h3]
  Range damage is increased by 35%
  
• [h3]Fire Explosion[/h3]
  Releases a small fire explosion dealing 200 fire damage which can ignite.
  
• [h3]Chill Explosion[/h3]
  Releases a small chill explosion that applies Chill which can freeze.
  
• [h3]Release Oil/Acid/Hydro Puddle[/h3]
  Releases an oil/acid/hydro puddle sized at 3x3, which can interact with other abilities.
  
• [h3]Shield[/h3]
  Blocks a certain amount of damage, for 10 seconds or till depleted.
  
• [h3]Release Bomb[/h3]
  Releases an explosive bomb on the spot.
  
• [h3]Release Cluster Bombs[/h3]
  Releases small cluster bombs near the spot.
  

Combination of these creates a large number of abilities you can get on the weapons. Weapons are not overloaded with all combinations possible, but rather with a theme. While Core Hammer type weapons would have more defensive oriented abilities, Alchemical Greatsword types would have more aggressive ones with higher chances.



We have added a consumable item and a shoulder cannon to the game. We have added small separate menus for both shoulder cannon and consumable which can be accessed from Arma by clicking on the consumable and shoulder cannon.

[h3]Freezing Blast Cannon[/h3]
Applies Chill condition and possibly freezes enemies and other freezable objects, such as hydro puddles.

[h3]Rage Pellets[/h3]
Small pellets that allows you to enter Rage for 15 seconds.

• New cooldown icons have been added for each of the buffs you can get via items or skills above your skill bar.
  
• New cooldown icons have been added for the new ability triggers mentioned above.
  
• Visual effects on the main character has been added for the buffs.
  
• When you heal from a source aside from Life Steal, now your HP bar briefly flashes.
  
• When you enter an effect that allows you to ignore stamina, your Stamina bar freezes visually.
  
• When you get a Shield buff, a shield buffer appears on your HP bar.
  
• Your character flashes white when you are hit while having shield.
  
• Visuals of the puddles have been updated.
  
• Armored Arctic Swordsman has been given a visual uplift.
  
• New sound effects added for Crushing Blow, Deadly Blow and Culling Blow.
  

As we mentioned in earlier updates, localization for new updates are not present yet.
As these abilities are not finalised and may be subject to change with new updates and feedback, applying localization now will cost us as a small indie company. Also translating into 13 languages takes time which delays these updates further.

We hope you understand.


Have a blasting weekend and have fun scorching your enemies with new abilities !

Hello people!

Steam Awards are here along with the Autumn Sale and we need your help with nominations!

You can support us by nominating "Castle Of Alchemists" for the "Best Soundtrack" category from the widget above. We're very proud of our awesome OST created by the one man army, Mehmet Can Güler, and we hope you also enjoy our soundtrack enough to nominate us for this category.



If you'd like to support us further, you can do so by purchasing the OST!

steam://openurl/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2483020/Castle_Of_Alchemists_Soundtrack/?snr=1_5_1100__1100&utm_source=steamwidget

We have patched a couple of small bugs and added some forgotten stuff.

• A bug where interaction with breakable objects causing game to crash has been fixed.
  
• Oil Barrel booby trap and Oil Spider-mine now applies oiled conditions to enemies. Oil puddles do not auto burn anymore with the latest patch.
  
• Ballista Tower's projectile now interacts with breakable objects.
  
• Mortar Tower's projectile now interacts with breakable objects.
  
• Mortat Tower's projectile now leaves a more lasting visual effect with added small camera shake.
  

Have nice weekend people! ːBellatorː

Gameplay Changes

[h2]New Enemy Debuff Indicators[/h2]
Visual effects on enemies for these effects are added to the game:

• Blind
  
• Bleed
  
• Burn (New Condition)
  
• Corraded
  
• Oiled (New Condition)
  
• Poisoned
  
• Marked
  
• Wet
  

[h2]Breakables and Interactables Objects[/h2]
We have added several new breakable objects to levels, as well as some interactable objects which react to melee attacks or explosions when appropriate. While this items do not change the gameplay in anyway on mechanical terms, they add a sense of *satisfaction*.

[h2]New Conditions[/h2]
We have added 2 new conditions to game; Oiled and Burn

• Oiled
  Oiled enemies catch fire when they take any fire damage unless they are immune to burn (fire) damage.
  
• Burn
  Burning enemies take around 50 fire damage per second.
  

In combination with these effects, Liquid Flask (Oil) has been rebalanced as follows:
Liquid Flask = Applies Oiled condition to enemies and leaves a burnable oil puddle on the ground.

A rework for "Sprinkler Trap" is also in the works.

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

• Selling your traps now always refund full price.
  
• Attack speed animation of Alchemical Greatsword is increased about 15 percent at the last attack.
  
• Hit box colliders of Alchemical Greatsword is increased in size and made into a cone shape.
  
• Bolt Gun Reload Speed decreased from 2 seconds to 1.25 second.
  

Bug Fixes and QoL Updates

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

• Several bugs on craft and respec has been resolved.
  
• Bolt Gun Reload sound bug fixed.
  
• A bug that prevents Melee Attack Stamina consumption to be effected from upgrades (such as skill or item abilities) has been fixed. Stamina consumption for melee weapons now works as intended.
  
• A bug that prevents "Increased Lung Capacity" to work properly now fixed. Previously it directly set your stamina to 120 in game no matter your skill level. Now it works as intended and your stamina in game is same as shown in level up screen.
  
• This 2 fixes greatly fixed stamina consumption and the number of melee attacks you can make.
  

[h3]Quality of Life Changes[/h3]

• Small Enemy bars now include enemy armor as well.
  
  

Stay tuned for further updates, cheers !!

Hello people!

We are happy to announce that Castle of Alchemists will be available in a bundle with Dwerve, an epic action-adventure with tower defense combat!

Dwerve was one of the games that we watched closely as we developed CoA as it was another title in pixel art focusing on a different approach for tower defense genre, and we are thrilled to go into a bundle with them!

Also, Castle of Alchemists will be on sale for 35% off during SHMUP festival!!


Enjoy !