Talented News

Greetings Talented Gamers!

I'm very happy to announce we've bundled with a personal favourite of mine - Shape Shifter: Formations

I've been following this gem of a game for quite some time, it's a brilliant cross-over between Twin-stick Shooter combat and Action Roguelike systems. There's tons of meta-progression, achievements and unlockable content to get your teeth into as well. It has kept me hooked for 47 hours and counting!

You can grab the Talented Formations bundle with an additional 10% off right now -

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/52188/Talented_Formations/

Time for me to get back to work on our brand new Challenges (I'll be announcing those in the next Devlog!). For now, shoot some shapes and...

Stay Talented

Greetings Talented Gamers!

Thank you for all of the feedback on Discord and the Steam Discussion Forums. We've taken some time to address two of the most common requests.

[h2]Bandit[/h2]

There has been quite a bit of discussion about Bandit's power level, particularly in the early game. We've given him some substantial early game buffs and also powered up some of the underperforming Talent Packages. In local playtests this has given him a lot more potential routes to power, without needing to rely entierly on Reload Speed Up.

• Starting Gold increased to 50 (up from 20)
  
• Base Reload time to 1.75s (from 1.9s)
  
• Base Time between attacks to 0.6s (from 0.75s)
  
• Helping Hands to 15% Activation Chance (up from 7% chance)
  
• Healing Hands, Mystic Hands and Rapid Hands talents to 10% Activation Chance (up from 7%)
  
• Fortunate Spree grants 20% Luck (up from 12%)
  
• Bargain Hunt now increases chance of Legendaries appearing in the shop if you have Black Market
  
• Notorious Spree grants 30 kills on the combo meter (up from 20)
  
• Work for Hire grants 15% Luck per combo Level (up from 10%)
  
• Pick Pocket has 20% Activation Chance (up from 5%)
  
• Smoke Trap now deals 8 damage (up from 3)
  
• Smoke Trap cooldown reduced to 10s (down from 20s)
  

[h2]Talent Tree Vision[/h2]

We firmly believe in the Talent Tree Fog of War as a mechanic that's both fun and solves the problem of getting overwhelmed at the start of every run.

Having said that, the current Vision Distance was very limited and often made running into dead ends/unexpected disconnects easier than we would like. We've made some substantial changes here, so we're definitely interested in your thoughts!

• Increased the light generated by all Talented by 33%
  
• Increased the light generated by special revealed Talented (e.g. Epic Talents within 10 connections) by 100%
  

Keep the feedback rolling in and..

Stay Talented

Greetings Talented Gamers!

We move ever closer to the fabled 1.1 update and after all this talk of DLC, I think it's worth returning to some of the new features we're adding to the core Talented experience.

[h2]Key Rebinding[/h2]



We're openning things up a bit with the new Input Menu. Not only is this a convinient place to see the default key bindings for all of those lesser known hotkeys, this should allow for better key combinations when playing on regional keyboards or with accessibility requirements.



This menu should continue to fill up as we add additional Quality of Life features that require hotkeys in the future... It's also possible to see a full list of Input Bindings when using a Gamepad, we had a lot of questions about these over the years!



Note: This first version of this menu won't allow you to rebind the Gamepad Inputs, but it's certainly something we could look at in the future as we continue to support the game.

[h2]Mastery 30[/h2]

Next up we have our new highest difficulty level of Standard Runs!



Between Mastery 26 and 30 you'll be uncovering a combination of usual suspects and new offenders!

At Mastery 26 the enemies will be wising up and recruiting some healers to the party...



At Mastery 28 their defenses will improve even more as we introduce barricades that protect enemies from projectiles, as the run progresses more and more barricades will appear!



We'll leave Mastery 30 for you to discover yourself, but rest assured it won't be bossed around by anyway!



That should just about wrap it up for this installment. I'm very excited to say that next devlog will see the reveal of our new environments!

Stay Talented

Hello Talented Gamers!

Now the Alchemist Rework is live and our new Supporter Pack is available (including 6 Shiny Colour skins!), we can continue chatting about the upcoming Wave of Shadows DLC!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3423250/Talented__Wave_of_Shadows/

The second major feature added with the DLC is the brand new Waves Mode - this is intended to be a different way to play Talented with all of your favourite classes... Let's take a look...

[h2]Waves Mode[/h2]



Rather than the purely random spawns you're used to in Talented's Standard Run, this mode faces you against a sequence of Enemy Packs that are hand designed to test your build as you play.

These waves can be anything from a Googly spawning from each direction to an entire forest of Tronks and Treedle Twins each with random Elite Traits ploughing through the lane.

Each Wave consists of 5 Enemy Packs - only when you've survived all 5 are you able to progress to the Talent Tree and spend your hard earned Talent Points. After that it's off to another Wave...



Fans of Talented's truly crazy builds will be happy to hear that Waves Mode is fully Endless from release, with difficulty scaling designed to test even maxed out builds. Additionally, whereas builds with an extremely high number of projectiles tend to shine in Standard Runs, many waves are designed to test other things such as damage with a single hit or even how much crowd control you have!

[h3]Special Enemy Packs[/h3]

As you progress through Waves Mode you will start to see Rare, then Epic, then Legendary... and even more types of Enemy Pack.



Each increase in Rarity is not only a significant increase in raw difficulty, but also how specialised the challenge becomes. As the run heats up you'll start to see uniquely modified enemies and if you survive long enough you might even recieve and unwanted visit from a Boss Enemy!

[h3]Hexes[/h3]

In addition to the scaling difficulty of Enemy Packs, each run will apply up to 5 Hexes...



These are permanent modifiers that will apply to all future encounters. As they appear less often than Curses in Standard runs they can afford to be far more impactful, they might even force you to adapt your build.

...And don't be caught off guard by that simple example... As the run progresses, later Hexes will be much more devilish.



[h3]Experience and Combo[/h3]

Particularly insightful gamers may have already identified that Experience and Combo cannot work in quite the same way in Waves Mode due to the varying number of enemies per Wave.

We're currently experimenting with solutions, but the one that appears to be coming out on top is giving each Enemy Pack a budget of Experience and Combo Points that is split evenly between each enemy in that Pack.

This means you'll get a consistent amount of experience whether you're fighting a horde of 100 Lil' Blobs or a giant boss.

Note: All Experience Bonuses will apply to the Experience Budget, so they'll definitely still be worth picking up!



Hopefully you like the direction we're moving in! There's still lots of surprises in store as we continue to expand both Ninja and Waves Mode so we may drop a few hints in future devlogs...

Next time I'll be showing an early version of the heavily requested Key Rebinding feature and we'll be dipping our toe into lava pool that is Mastery 30!

Stay tuned and...

Stay Talented