Rift Wizard 2 News

Another beta update, probably the last one before we merge to master:

General Mechanics

You can no longer be silenced while stunned. This prevents overlapping stun/silence lockouts.
A cap of 100 damage instances per turn per unit has been added to prevent infinite damage loops.
Rerolling (R) now performs a sanity check to ensure you can navigate to spawned portals. If no valid option is available, a path will be cleared and a portal will be spawned nearby.
Enemies and Spawns

Spawn rates for Giant Mind Maggot Queen and Shrapnel Beast have been adjusted.
Fixed an issue where creatures with player spells still attacked invulnerable liches.
Siege Golem’s death explosion radius is now set to 3, as described in its tooltip.
Spells and Abilities

Pain Mirror now triggers off Lumbriogenesis’ HP cost.
Fixed a bug with the Blizzard Snow Feathers upgrade that previously granted only up to 3 charges of Ice Phoenix; it now works as described.
Magic Missile Ricochet now bounces from its last target rather than staying near the first.
Word of Madness Selective Madness upgrade now heals your minions before causing them to go berserk.
Word spell upgrades that grant boss modifiers will no longer attempt to apply those modifiers to units that already have them.
In the Wild Magic trial, spells in your spellbook are now arranged by spell level.
Dreamwalk upgrades have been reinstated (these may be overhauled in the next major patch).
Dream Form now grants 75% resistance to arcane, dark, physical, and holy damage while the buff is active.
Memory Walk resets your other spell counts to what they were when you cast the spell after the buff ends.
Relevant stats have been added to Lifespark Lantern.


UI and Visuals
Focused Channeler Skill now has its asset.
Exotic pet previews now correctly display their units’ resistances in the realm preview and on the level.
A navigable Equipment list has been added to the Character Screen (C); it can be accessed with the left/right keys or by moving down the skill menu.
Various tooltips have had typos fixed and been clarified to better reflect spell functionality.

More updates to the beta branch today-

Interface & UI:

Trials descriptions were cut off on some resolutions. They are now fully visible.
The challenge name now appears in the character panel. Mousing over it displays details about the challenges and mutators.
The “Slimy” modifier and its description should now appear correctly in exotic pet previews.
Various typos and inaccurate descriptions have been fixed or updated.
Heaven’s Vengeance Staff now has VFX for its retaliation damage.
Summon Simulacrum spell and its upgrades now have associated assets.

New Rare Monsters:
Shrapnel Beast: Living Fire Metal 3x3, that will harass you with Shrapnel Blasts, destroy melee units with AOE spikes, and throw molten spears at you. Oh yeah, and physical->fire damage conversion for its enemies.
Animikii: The OG 3x3 thunderbird, fires off huge blasts of lightning, summons more thunderbirds, and has a retribution mechanic if you kill its allies.
Mothman : A 3x3 butterfly demon with regenerating shields and huge blasts of arcane and lightning damage.
Ultimate Troubler: A 3x3 troubler, that shoots a barrage of teleporting bolts, sending units randomly across the map.
Crystal Golem: A golem creature made of living crystal, its color changes to reflect its spells' current damage type and its own vulnerability.

Spells & Skills:

Lightning Form only expires if you fail to cast a lightning spell on your turn.
Chaos Casting only triggers on chaos spells cast by the wizard, not by allies.
Starfire Gate behavior now matches that of Flame Gate.
Plague of Undeath only targets valid creatures, and its upgrade creates zombies even on creatures with other respawn methods.
The Dark Clouds upgrade for Darkness is now functional.
Soul Tax can now target allies, as per the original description.
Iceball’s Cloud Combustion upgrade correctly shows affected tiles when targeting a blizzard.
Armageddon Blade is only castable on allies, and the Mass Armaments upgrade shows which allies are in the linked group.
Rain of Thunderbolts now prioritizes clouds containing enemies over clouds without, and wont target tiles occupied by the wizard or their allies.
Fixed a Wheel of Death crash that could occur with the Cheat Fate upgrade if only targets with 100% or greater Dark resistance were available.
Natural Vigor is no longer duplicated on reincarnated allies.
Summon Simulacrum name changed to: Wizard Replica.
Wizard Replica Colossus upgrade cost decreased (6->5) and now shows base HP and damage if the wizard has no items rather than 0.
Wizard Replica Blood Reclamation upgrade cost increased (3->5) functionality changed to, restores charge on Wizard Replica's death.


Wild Magic Changes:
Grants a random cantrip at game start.
Gives a random number of spells and skills each level within set bounds (rather than a fixed amount)
Won't give you blood spells you can’t afford to cast.
Rerolls your spells/skills when you reroll rifts.

Items:

Crisis Charm now protects the player from all damage for one turn and only consumes one charm at a time, even if you own multiple.
Codex of Sacrifice was now removes a flat 25 of your max health at the end of each level, and teaches a new Word spell each time, even if you can't pay the full cost. It stops functioning once all Word spells are known.
Fixed a bug with Terracotta Legion's Banner where the regeneration buff wasn't being applied to the Claytouched summons.
Fixed a bug with Death Legion's Banner where the teleporting buff wasn't being applied to the Ghostly summons.

AI & Pathing:

Fixed a bug where units only checked their first spell’s ability to harm an enemy when choosing pathing targets.
Fixed a bug where units would not use self-targeted abilities if they were immune to their own damage type.
The wizard once again avoids portals and shops during auto-pathing.

First of all, please join me in welcoming OpportunityDrive to the Rift Wizard development team! Going forward, he will be the main developer in charge of patches and maintenance for Rift Wizard, and I'll be stepping back a bit to work on prototyping new projects and figuring out what my next game will be. This patch is primarily his work.

As for the contents of said patch, so far we've got 31 new items, 5 new Trials, 2 new Spells, 1 Skill, and 1 new Boss Modifier, alongside balance changes, tooltip updates, and typo fixes. This stuff is all very much new, and probably a bit buggy and perhaps imbalanced- hop onto the beta branch and give it a test, and leave any feedback you might have on #rw2-beta-discussion on the discord.

New Items:

Earthquake Boots: Casts your Earthquake every 8 steps.
Rift Key Staff: Creates a Rift at the wizard's location upon level victory.
Fanged Amulet: Each turn, an adjacent unit takes 3 physical damage and you are healed for the damage dealt.
Stoneeater Amulet: Each turn, eat an adjacent wall. Gain 1 HP if you do.
Stormeater Amulet: Each turn, consume all adjacent lightning storms. When you do, you regain a charge of your highest level lightning spell of level equal to or less than the number of storms eaten.
Talking Hat: Your enchantment spells gain quickcast (the first one cast each turn does not conclude the turn).
Blizzard Beacon: Each turn, summons a random number of blizzards. The maximum number summoned each turn is the sum of all SP spent on ice magic.
Raiment of Eyes: Grants your allies your eye enchantment spells that they have matching tags for. Each level, a number of allies may be granted these spells equal to the sum of all SP spent on eye magic.
Draco Antiphony Scepter: When you cast a level 4 or lower sorcery spell, your dragon allies with matching types will attempt to cast that spell also.
Annihilator Staff: Deals 1 physical, 1 fire, and 1 lightning damage to creatures before they would be damaged by your sorcery spells.
Crisis Charm: Restores all life if you would die. Broken after use.
Codex of Sacrifice: For every 100 HP spent casting blood spells, learn a word spell. The HP required doubles each time the Codex is activated. If you know every word spell, instead restores all charges of your word spells.
Chalice of Light : Whenever you pick up an SP orb, each of your holy spells regains one charge.
Chalice of Iron : Whenever you pick up an SP orb, each of your metallic spells regains one charge.
Chalice of Warp : Whenever you pick up an SP orb, each of your translocation spells regains one charge.
Chalice of Dragons : Whenever you pick up an SP orb, each of your dragon spells regains one charge.
Volcanic Lance: When you cast a fire spell targeting an enemy, send out a destructive beam toward the target, destroying walls and dealing fire damage equal to the sum of all SP spent on fire magic.
Erebus Lance: When you cast a dark spell targeting an enemy, send out a destructive beam toward the target, destroying walls and dealing dark damage equal to the sum of all SP spent on dark magic.
Crown of Ragnarok: Nine turns after you enter a realm, cast Earthquake, Flameburst, Stormburst, and Word of Chaos.
Blood Shield: When you cast a spell, lose 1 HP and gain 1 SH.
Heavenrender: Whenever you cast a holy spell, deal fire and lightning damage to all enemies in a 2 tile burst around the target. The damage dealt is equal to the sum of all SP spent on fire and lightning magics, respectively.
Storm Legion's Banner: Whenever an ally is summoned, if it is on or adjacent to a Storm Cloud, the summon consumes it, and gains the stormtouched modifier.
Blizzard Legion's Banner: Whenever an ally is summoned, if it is on or adjacent to a Blizzard, the summon consumes it, and gains the icy modifier.
Death Legion's Banner: Whenever an ally is summoned, if it is on or adjacent to a chasm, the summon consumes it, and gains the ghostly modifier.
Terracotta Legion's Banner: Whenever an ally is summoned, if it is on or adjacent to a wall, the summon consumes it, and gains the claytouched modifier.
Blood Legion's Banner: Whenever you summon a unit with a spell or skill, if it is summoned adjacent to the yourself or another Fleshbound unit, the summon gains the Fleshbound modifier.
Boots of Imminent Doom: Upon entering a rift, immediately cast your Seal Fate on all enemies in a four tile radius.
Boots of Heaven's Assault: Upon entering a rift, immediately cast your Heavenly Blast on all demons and undead in line of sight.
Staff of Heaven's Vengeance: When one of your living or holy allies takes damage from an enemy, this staff deals 7 holy damage to the source of that damage.
Ring of Magnetic Charisma: When you enter a level, turns the nearest enemy lair or construct into an ally
Hallucinogenic Spore Staff: Whenever poison is inflicted on an enemy, they are berserked for three turns.


New Trials:
Cryomancer: Ice magic only.
Amnesiac: Your spells, spell upgrades, and skills, are removed and no longer available after you complete a level. Spent SP is refunded.
Wild Magic: After you complete a level, your spells and skills are randomly rerolled. Levels have no SP.
Blood Rites: Each time you cast a spell, increase its HP cost by its spell level. If it doesn't have an HP cost, it gains one. Resets as the end of each level
Flawless: You have 1 HP.


New Boss Modifier:
Slimy: 50% chance to gain 10% hp and max hp per turn. Upon reaching double original HP, splits, releasing 5 slimes. When this creature is damaged, a slime is spawned nearby.


New Spells:
Rain of Thunderbolts: Casts your thunderstrike spell targeting 12 random Storm Clouds each turn. This spell can be channeled for up to 12 turns. The effect is repeated each turn the spell is channeled. Can be upgraded to summon storm drakes, cast Iceball on Blizzards, or summon Storm Clouds.

Summon Simulacrum: Forges a living replica of the wizard and their equipment. Can be upgraded to heal the wizard for the spell's HP cost on Simulacrum's death, summon a giant immovable statue of the wizard instead, or teach it up to three of your cantrips.


New Skills:
Focused Channeler : Gain 4 turns of Clarity when you cast a channeled spell.


Fixed Bugs:
Attempted summoning with a full level should no longer crash the game.
Upgraded Gold Drake's Healing Light can now heal the wizard.
Pope The Frog's damage gating can no longer be subverted with poison.
Upgraded Rain of Fire should no longer mistakenly cast your Mega Annihilate instead of Annihilate.
Orb's threat indicators should now match their capabilities.
Goblin Wizard's Ignite Poison now uses its appropriate range stat.
Reincarnation no longer duplicates thorn buffs, and it does carry over equipment granted via Armorer.
Multicolor Rage Rod buffs can now be regained if they are removed (typically via Faerie Arcanist)
Spells that target connected enemies should now work appropriately with large enemies.
Reincarnation won't trigger while a unit is Soul Jarred.
Treants no longer threaten the entire level.
Teleport and Teleporters can now successfully target and take you to chasm tiles if you have flying.
Hatebolts pathing no longer blocked by shops and portals.
Earthquake no longer turns chasms into floors, as per its description.
Silkshifter no longer triggers off of minion teleports.

Misc. Changes:
Dragon's breath damage stat removed. Breath weapons now use minion damage.
Added a mercy portal spawn. If you complete a level and there are no portals, one will spawn for you.
Burning Idol no longer sacrifices friendlies if there are no enemies left.
Blood Anima summons at the end of the turn, rather than on cast, so you should be less likely to kill your own bloodghasts.
Seal Fate's Genocide upgrade now does exactly what it says.
Silent Specter and Banshee now communicate their abilities clearly.
Added Soaked, Fear, and Silence status effects to the (H)elp screen.
AI no longer attempts to attack or move toward Soul Jarred creatures with 1 HP.
Players can now mouse over the Challenges Button to see their current challenge modifiers in the examine screen.
Pain Mirror now counts HP spent casting spells as damage.
Geometer Staff radius bonus increased (1->2)

Hello Wizards!

I'm proud to say today, that Rift Wizard 2 is officially and fully launched.

Firstly, thanks to all the beta testers and friends who made this possible. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs, argued about balance, or suggested changes on the discord. I'm a very lucky game developer, to have such a passionate and intelligent audience to draw feedback from. Thanks also, of course, to KHoops and AdamC for their work on the game.

RW2 has been in early access for a little less than a year, and I think its quite ready for general consumption now. We've iterated on a bunch of different ideas and systems, both during the EA period and the private beta before this. Some were awesome and ended up in the final game, some had horrible problems and were discarded. I'm quite happy with the RW2 experience as it is now. Its new and fresh, but also quite reminiscent of RW1, and very much a roguelike, perhaps even more so than its' predecessor.

So... whats next for RW2? Well, now that all the systems are finalized in place, the thing to do is to simply add more stuff: equipment, trials, monsters, spells, and skills. The first 3 especially- adding options to randomness pools is always less disruptive to balance than adding options the player can use at any time with SP- but I'd guess we will be adding one or two tags to the spell shop at some point in 2025 as well.

And of course, we will make some small balance changes when people find absolutely soul crushingly good builds that make wizards wonder why other builds even exist.

On pricing: I'd always said that the price will increase slightly after EA. It hasn't yet- in fact there's a small launch discount- but it will soon. So if you haven't picked up the game yet, now is a good time.

Anyways thanks once again, bringing RW and RW2 to market has been one of the craziest and most rewarding experiences of my life.

-Dylan

A few small fixes today as we move towards full launch:

Fixed a crash that could occur on victory
Fixed death cleave crash
Clarified lightning/fire form tooltips
Fixed a bug that could various spells and effects to not properly see 3x3 monsters
Scourge now freezes animation just like stun and freeze
Fixed starwhale tooltips