Rift Wizard 2 News

Beta Branch Build:

Armorer- armors one unit per turn instead of requiring metallic spell casting.

Starfire- now redeals 100% of arcane damage to up to 4 adjacent enemies
Holy Fire - redeal 50%->100%
Holy Thunder - redeal 50%->100%

Hatebolts - now shoots bolts of either fire or dark damage, dealing only one damage type and no longer getting double scaling bonuses. Corrected max channel duration to 5 from 7 (tooltip said 5 all along).

Toxic Hatred upgrade reworked, poisons instead of dealing poison damage now.

Reworked spell upgrades for:

Underworld Passage
Dragon Roar
Ritual Of Revelation
Spikeball Factory
Spider Queen
Mystic Memory (spell reworked as well)
Lightning Storm
Floating Eye
Wyrm Eggs
Gates of Helheim
Horde of Halfmen
Searing Orb
Word of Undeath
Word of Chaos
Word of Beauty
Word of Madness
Word of Ice

Thunderblink upgrade- now targets nearest enemies in LOS as per tooltip instead of random enemies in LOS (as per tooltip)

Cleaned up some variant boss naming and tag stuff. Removed some restrictions on spawning somewhat redundant variants (ie burning fire imps can now spawn.) The name changes make it less silly.

Rift Rerolls are now cleared on entering a level

Equipment now shows extra tooltips like spells and passives

(This patch is a beta branch patch- it might be less stable than the patches that go to master. Balance may be questionable as well.
If you want to try it out and give feedback, right click Rift Wizard 2 in your steam library and go to properties-> betas and select 'beta - beta branch'.)

Todays build is a small one, mostly consisting of bugfixes and small QoL fixes. Thanks to all those active on the discord reporting these and other issues. Still lots of stuff on the todo list but I wanted to make a build with the lowest hanging fruit:

HP spent on blood magic is now mentioned in the combat log
Tile sprites now properly refresh when terrain changes
Allied summons have a 20% chance to dissapear each turn after a level is over, up from 10% (RE: Brain Trees)
Healing is now capped at the difference between a unit's current and max hp
3x3 monsters can no longer be swapped (which crashed the game)
Treants no longer spend a turn trying to heal themselves at full hp

Fixed a bug where the rift preview sometimes showed two copies of same monsters
Fixed a bug where moving the mouse even 1 pixel would reset the pgdn/pgup index
Fixed a bug where immortal units could gain hunger multiple times
Fixed similtaneous win/loss scenarios leading to infinite loop
Fixed a bug where a spell could appear multiple times in the end of level summary
Fixed Volcanic Eruption flow range upgrade doing nothing
Fixed Heaven Call upgrade not returning charges between natural and buffed max charges
Fixed Prince of Ruin not getting damage bonuses
Fixed many, many tooltip/help/intro text typos, ty to all who reported these!

Rift Wizard 2 hit Steam this week, calling itself a "tough as nails traditional roguelike wizard simulator" and sporting the colorful graphics and complex pile of character builds to back that claim up...
Read more.

The game is live.

I hope you enjoy it :)

Either way be sure to head over to the discord and let me know what you think.

-Dylan

I'm happy to announce that early access for Rift Wizard 2 will begin March 25th.

It has been a long road with many twists and turns. Ive tried a lot of wacky stuff including progression overhauls and multi-tile snake tails, but in the end I settled on equipment, spell upgrades, and procedurally generated bosses as being the main features for RW2.

Going from RW1 to RW2, there are three main design goals:

1. Increase run variety. Make each run feel special. In RW1 about 80% of your power came from player decisions, and was independent of the current run. RW2, through the equipment system, brings it closer to 50%, which I think is the ideal for a roguelike. The open SP system still gives the player quite a few options for how to develop their character, but the variety of potential equipment drops also dramatically shape what builds might work in a given run.
   
   
2. Increase tactical depth. RW1 highly incentivized pouring resources into one spell, and once a player has done this, it becomes a no-brainer to use that spell each turn. I think the game is more fun when you have a few more options of what to do each turn. The upgrade changes, and the transition from shrines to equipment, are aimed at reducing how much the player ends up investing into any one spell. Actually, I think I still have a ways to go for this goal, and it'll be something I think about quite a bit during early access. I've got a few ideas that I'd love to try out here over the coming months.
   
   
3. Preserve the magic of RW1. RW1 was really fun... and quite a few players, I think, just want more. More spells, more upgrades, new monsters, new levelgen patterns. I want to make sure the game doesn't stray too far from the original formula and remains familiar to fans of the first, and I want to make sure the game has plenty of new toys to play with and challenges to face.

Satisfying all of these goals at the same time isn't easy, but I feel like the game is on a very good path right now.

I want to remind everyone that the game is by no means finished. That's not what early access is!

I consider the current build to be a beta. It requires feedback and testing so that I can hone it into something polished and finished. But it is stable enough- both technically speaking and balance wise- that I'm comfortable opening up to feedback and testing from a wider audience.

My expectation is that early access will last for 1 year, but that is certainly subject to change. Ultimately, it will last until I feel the game is ready.

I'm really excited to launch, and can't wait to share the game with ya'll. In the mean time, heres a beautiful screenshot of khoops blowing and everything else up:



-Dylan