Soulstone Survivors News

Hi everyone!

We have just released minor update v0.9.028e, which above everything else, comes to fix the Steam Achievements! With this update, most of your existing in-game achievements will be automatically replicated onto Steam when you start the game, however, there is one thing to note: at this time, we are limited to creating only 100 Steam Achievements, therefore, not all achievements exist on Steam yet!

This is a Steam limitation to avoid shady games creating tons of fake achievements just to boost profiles up. We expect that as the days and weeks go by, we will be allowed to create more achievements and will continue expanding this list untill all of the existing (and future!) achievements exist both in-game and on Steam!

This patch also brings some other fixes to annoying problems, as you can see in the full list of changes below!

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.028e:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- Steam Achievements working as intended, existing achievements and stats will be uploaded to Steam on the first time you load the game;
- Fixed the visibility of attacks of all enemy Void Hunters, which are now mostly unaffected by visual effect opacity setting;
- Fixed an issue where the enemy Paladin would not attack you with all of his skills;
- Fixed an issue with multiple enemy Void Hunter skills, which were possibly firing skills in the wrong direction;
- Increased the size of the area indicator for a few more boss skills which were slightly undersized;
- Made the Void Presence attack not be affected by effect opacity settings;
- Made it so the elite Troll shockwave skill is affected only partially by effect opacity;
- Small change so that achievement percentages avoid being rounded up from 99.9999% to 100% in very specific cases;
- Added Area tag to Arcane Power to be inline with other buffs;
- Changed totem skills and ballista to no longer have Duration power ups, but instead have Damage power ups, which are more beneficial given the recently introduced summon limit;
- To access Overlord Mode (the red portal) you now need to finish the match in less then 13 minutes, up from 12 (which was the intended value);
- Added code to prevent a few seemingly harmless exceptions in the game;
- Minor UI adjustments that could cause problems in a few languages;

We hope that this patch will be welcome by those of you that love a little achievement hunting, and as mentioned above, rest assured that as soon as we are allowed to, we will create the remaining achievements on Steam.

I also want to add that updates are not going to be just fixes and improvements! We are working in the background on new content that will be landing very very soon! We still have a little bit more to do, but we continue working day and night to create new stuff! We really appreciate the patience, and we hope that at least for now, these past updates have made the game experience smoother and more enjoyable for everyone!

And as always, we would like to thank you all very much for all the help, support, testing and feedback! It is incredible to be able to count on this amazing community be it on Steam forums, Twitter, Discord... it really does make all the difference in the world!

We hope you enjoy this little update,
Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hello everyone!

We have just yesterday completed a week of Early Access, and today we are coming to our third, and this time MAJOR update! Patch v0.9.028c brings with it tons of fixes all around the game, but most importantly, it is all about performance and Endless mode which is now split into two, Endless and Overlord modes!

Before talking in more detail about those, let's jump right into the list of changes for this patch, and as always we will talk a bit more about what is going on in the game down below!

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.028c:[/h2]
[h3]Main changes:[/h3]
- Endless Mode is now split into two separate game modes, both of which have been extensively reworked in their functionality:
-- Endless Mode: Level up quickly and fight across multiple scenarios with increasing difficulty with every cycle. Enemies will become tougher and more resistant and you can go on for as long as you manage!
-- Overlord Mode: Face an increasing number of powerful Lords of the Void, which require less and less enemies per cycle until you are facing Lords all day long! Difficulty increases with every cycle, and so does the number of bosses.
- Achievements that required Endless Cycles are now split between both modes. If you completed the achievements previously, they will still be completed (this may cause a small glitch with the switched achievement rewards);
- Major performance improvements in all areas of the game, especially in very high intensity scenarios;
- Overhead combat text has been changed to be incremental, so multiple hits on the same target will refresh and increase the number instead of generating a new text. You can switch between the previous and new styles in the General Settings, however, the previous style will lead to performance issues in high-intensity scenarios;
- If Special effect visibility slider is all the way down, some visual effects will not be used at all which should improve performance considerably in certain scenarios;

[h3]General changes and fixes:[/h3]
- Multiple fixes related to the error where you would not be able to pick any skill when levelling up. This is a rare issue and we have made multiple changes that should prevent it entirely, but let us know if you still see this error;
- Implemented some changes to the saving system to try and make the system more resistant to corrupted files;
- Added visual improvements to the Runes screen so it is easier to locate/remember where runes are placed;
- Fixed issue where the Curse Intensity tooltip could stay on screen indefinitely;
- Fixed issue where the currently selected rune would persist as selected even when you switched characters;
- Fixed multiple minor localization issues;
- Fixed minor visual issues on ultra-wide monitors;
- Fixed issue where Prestige Stars would show incorrectly from level 100 to 110 (and other higher levels);
- In any endless mode, certain visual effects will not play to help with performance;
- When a target takes damage and is immune to damage, a Immune label will appear;
- Objective notifications now will only show the latest notification, instead of building an endless queue;
- Fixed an issue where FPS limit was resetting to the screen refresh rate with every start-up;
- FPS limit slider is now capped at 120% of your monitor refresh rate;
- Fixed issue where enemies would eventually have blue health bars if you had enough summons;
- Removed "invisible pillars" in the Dungeon of Despair;
- Fixed multiple "invisible exceptions" that would consume performance;
- Fixed Overlord Mode tooltip displaying "5% extra bosses" instead of "5" extra bosses;
- Fixed Curse Intensity tooltip showing big decimal numbers;

[h3]Enemy changes:[/h3]
- Extended the damage area indicator of a few boss skills to better reflect the range of their skills;
- Fixed issue where the Paladin Void Hunter (enemy) would not be targetable by minions;
- Snake's poison bomb is no longer affected by Opacity settings;
- Reduced health of Pillars of Despair by 30%;
- Increased the cooldown of the Pillars of Despair skills by 100%;
- Removed Stun effects from the attacks of all enemies;
- Fixed an issue where enemies that should be immune to pushback were not immune;
- Endless cycles now also reduce the effectiveness of Absorption shields (Arcane Shield);
- Small spider attacks are now not affected by Effect Opacity options;
- Fixed issue where the Void Presence would receive negative effects;

[h3]Skills and Runes changes:[/h3]
- Fixed issue where the skill Disengage would not appear for the Sentinel's second bow;
- Changed the tag from Spread Shot from Blast to Projectile;
- Pending skill points during a match will now be kept if you go through an endless portal;
- Fixed an issue where Call Lightning was applying Disoriented instead of Dazed;
- Chromatic Bolt now fires in the direction you are aiming, as stated in the tooltip;
- Holy Fire now has the Frontal tag;
- Exorcism tooltip will now show 0.5 correctly instead of rounding up to 1;
- Fixed issue where certain skills such as Mine Field and Explosive trap may not remove the objects from the world when the skill is removed;
- Totems and Ballistas now have a proper summon quantity limit, but have had their damage increased;
- Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas were not dealing the intended damage when they caused a critical strike;
- Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas would block the movement of your minions;
- Fixed issue where Totems and Ballistas would not apply on-hit effects;
- Fixed issue where Purity rune would use the incorrect value to determine how many effects are in the target, yielding inconsistent results;
- Fixed issue where Bladestorm and Flurry would not be used if there were no enemies nearby;
- Fixed an issue where Shadow Nova would apply Exposed, which was not intended;
- Shadow Step now grants 0.5 seconds of immunity after a teleport;
- Surefooted rune now reduces the damage you take by 15% to replace the Stun immunity bonus;


Now, with that huge list out of the way, to mention a little about the differences between Endless and Overlord modes, while they share a lot of similarities, Endless is more relaxed and allows for more free experimentation and scaling, while Overlord mode is intended as a more challenging mode so you can test your skills to see how far you will go. Both modes are different from the current implementation of Endless and have tons of tweaks in multiple areas, so we recommend you give them both a try and see what you think.

To talk a little bit about performance, the changes in this update should be noticeable all around the game and involve major refactoring and changes in all major areas of the game. There are still a few places where we can squeeze in some more performance, but those will come in the following weeks.

And speaking of the next steps, as expected, this first week was focused on fixes, improvements and adjustments, and not on new content. There is one major bug that is getting addressed next which is the link with Steam Achievements, which is not currently working. We expect to have a new patch shortly addressing that, and in the background, we have already started work on some new content that we expect will be coming to the game very soon as well which we hope you will enjoy!

And with all of that said, I just wanted to once again thank you all for the amazing support so far! We have been working day and night to make sure that the game is as good as it can be, and a lot of the fixes in this update come from reports from the community! So thank you for helping us improve the game and for all the feedback so far! As mentioned before, this is just the beginning, we literally just completed the first week of Early Access, and there is still A LOT to come, both in terms of improvements AND new content!

Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hello everyone!

We have just completed our second full day of Early Access and to celebrate we bring to you our second patch, version v0.9.027h! The focus for this version has been on reviewing and reworking the Endless Mode. I will talk a little bit more about it at the end of this post but first, here is the full list of changes for this version:

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.027h:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- Endless Mode rework:
-- Entirely changed the scaling progression. You will level up slower, and enemies will have considerably less health, but be more dangerous;
-- Extra Lords of the Void will join the battle, which will pose a much bigger challenge than before;
-- Enemies are now more and more resistant to slowing effects, so you will have to stay alert;
-- Reduced quantity of enemies needed per objective, but more time for you to fight the Lords;
-- Overall we expect the new design to be more challenging, shorter, and a million times more performant;
- Adjusted Achievements to reflect the change in difficulty of Endless Mode, requiring less Cycles for the same rewards;
- Added slider in Graphics settings to control the FPS limit of the game;
- Changed Player Area indicators (blue circles) to be a lot less intrusive, but still help you identify where your skills are landing;
- Fixed issue where arrows pointing to towers or any other object would point in the wrong direction in certain cases;
- Fixed an issue where the Blacksmith was very generous and would not verify for achievement completion before crafting weapons;
- Fixed issue with Legionnaire and the Dogs becoming invisible in the menu;
- Fixed an issue where Totem skills were not adjusting their tooltips according to Buff Duration power-ups;
- Fixed issue where enemies would walk around destroyed objects in The Dungeon of Despair;
- Fixed (fore real this time) the visibility of Demolish not being affected by Effect opacity setting;
- Fixed issue where Piercing Shout would not appear as a skill for the Barbarian;
- Fixed error with certain projectiles when you replace the skill, causing an error;
- Fixed an issue where if you replaced Ice Vortex with another skill at certain point in time, its visual effect would stay forever;
- Fixed an issue where locked character names would show up in the Blacksmith;
- Small performance optimisations;

[h3]Balance changes:[/h3]
- Aelfraed will now use Bladestorm from further away from you, and move slightly faster;
- Reduced damage of Call Lightning from 120 to 80;
- Reduced initial damage of Chromatic Bolt from 70 to 50;
- Reduced damage of Ricochet Shot from 150 to 100;
- Reduced damage of Storm of Arrows from 300 to 200;
- Reduced damage of Chaos Golem from about 400 to about 250;
- Holy Fire now fires 3 light waves in the direction you are aiming, instead of one;

[h3]About Endless Mode:[/h3]
When you have a chance to try this new update, you will notice that it is very different from before, and I wanted to touch on what is our thought process for these changes.

First, the performance issues. The game certainly started getting extremely slow at higher Endless Cycle levels, but unfortunately there are no optimisations in the world that would fix the problem. The problem is that with you being able to reach extremely high levels, 200, 400, 600... you scale your powers SO SO much, that you are firing hundreds if not thousands of skills and projectiles every second, that are as large as the map itself. In practice, this means millions of calculations for physics effects hits damage and everything else every second. There ARE optimisations to do in the game and we will get to them very soon, however, nothing we could do would make this level of craziness scale correctly, it is just too much.

Second, while at first it is very cool to scale absurdly like before, seeing your skills covering the whole planet and all that haha, it leads to a stale gameplay loop. In the previous iteration it was very easy to become immortal, to hit the entire planet with every skill and then you are left watching as the numbers pop-up as in an idle game. It definitely has its charm (if it ran at a decent FPS), but it gets old really fast. Our intention for endless is that you eventually die from a very challenging scenario where YOU are pushed to the max together with your build, and not just your computer while you go have dinner and wait for the level to be over. We believe that with these changes and a more challenging gameplay, we are getting there.

Third, we don't like Endless being extremely long matches. Since the challenge was basically non-existant, you could push endless until your computer exploded, which is not great. We want endless to finish in any amount of time between 20 and 40 minutes. It can go longer than that, but now that is an actual show of skill, not of patience. At times, if your build is not very good, we expect you will have a very hard time defeating the Lords of the Void and may end earlier than that, but that is ok, you can always try a new setup, new skills, new runes, and see how that works out for you.

Finally, we are always open to change. We still want to make more adjustments to Endless mode and will continue working on it and all other features of the game, and hearing your opinion is critical for us. So please, do share what you think! Remember this is still Day 2 of Early Access haha (officially 3 I could say), so the road is just beginning, and we will continue working as hard as we ever have to make sure that the game continues getting better and better.

[h3]Whats next:[/h3]
Having said all that, the work is far from done! We got a lot of other fixes to make and the next big one are the Steam Achievements not syncing. This is an error on our side and will require an update, but we are working on it, alongside many other smaller fixes that will be coming shortly.

I wanted to thank you all very much for your support so far once again, we are blown away by the response to the game so far and I really, really hope we can make it as cool as possible for everyone! We will continue listening, continue working, and we still have A LOT to add to the game! This week we are focusing on these release issues but soon, very soon!

Thank you all for the attention,
Best wishes,
- The dev team