Seedborne Soldiers News

Hope everyone has rustled up an apetite for some summoning because we've got some changes this patch we think you'll really enjoy!

[h2]In-game codex[/h2]
We've finally added the feature everyone's been asking for: an in-game codex so you can browse all the units in the game and plan ahead. You can access this at any time during a run by clicking on this button in the top right


or by pressing C. And then you should see this:


A couple notes on this feature:

• You'll need to have beaten at least one run before you get access to this. We didn't want to spoil new players on all the units ahead of time nor overwhelm them with a ton of information.
  
• To get info on a unit, just click (or right-click) on their portrait. A panel will pop up on the left just as if you had right-clicked on their model on the board (or on their portrait in the crop or left team display).
  
• With Trait Variations enabled, all units that don't already have three traits by default have a secret third trait that rarely shows up. A unit will only show up under the section for their secret trait if you've seen them with that trait (after updating, sorry).
  
• The codex has a tab for items so you can see what certain equipment trades for at the Item Trader. However, not all possible trades you can make at the Item Trader are listed on this tab.
  

Please let us know what you think of this: is there something missing that you'd want to see here? Is there something that's confusing? Is it easy to navigate and find the information you need?

[h2]Quality of life upgrades[/h2]
Also as part of this patch, we've added some smaller features that should make your life just a little bit easier when working your way through the Dreamworld.

• Auto-buy to level up: If you have enough water and there are enough copies of a unit in the crop to level one up, you can buy multiple units from a crop with a single click. You can do this even if your bench and board are full, so no longer do you need to recycle a unit just to make room.
  
• Smarter level-up position selection: When leveling up units, especially with a full bench, players would often find that the combined unit wouldn't appear in the spot they'd expect it to. Now, auto-combine selection prefers placing the leveled-up unit in the spot where the unit who had the most equipment was. If that's not an option, or if there's a tie, then it'll prefer positions on the arena to positions on the bench (as it did before).
  
• Ties prefer the player: This is pretty small and a pretty rare occurrence, but if the player team and the enemy team die on the same frame, the player is now awarded a victory instead of a defeat.
  

[h2]Bug fixes and other small changes[/h2]
As is usual, there are still a bunch of bugs and small issues that were fixed up:

• Fixed a crash when using Torrent Bomb while having the Bomb Bag trinket. Special thanks to a player on the Steam Discussion Boards for pointing this one out.
  
• Using a Clone Bomb on a unit while having the Bomb Bag trinket will now always generate a second clone 5 seconds later, even if the original is dead.
  
• Old-World Jar's spell now matches its description. Hallowed tiles used to deal damage to an enemy as soon as they spawned, and they never gave player units the on-hit buff in the description. Now they no longer deal damage to enemies they touch and instead provide the on-hit buff to player units.
  
• Item Trader, Rest Site, and Trinket Chest icons on the map have been given a soft glow to make them slightly more visible at a glance.
  
• Changed the tooltip on Sign of Lazarus to now correctly note that the resurrected unit still has all of its equipment.
  
• Removed more AI-generated art. Most of these were old placeholder assets that were shipped with the executable but never shown to the player. The one exception is the background on the Credits screen, which has been removed.
  

[h2]What's next?[/h2]
This is really the last of the new features we were hoping to add (other than Steam Cloud Saves) before 1.0. The remaining patches will (hopefully) be focusing on balance, QoL improvements, and bug fixes.

A lot of the recent updates were not necessarily planned, but they're there because players raised their voices and gave us feedback. And the game is much better for it!

So, please let us know your thoughts on the state of the game either on the Steam Discussion Boards or Discord—we are listening. Are there other features you think we're missing? What are your thoughts on the game's balance? We'd love to hear what you think!

[h2]Steam achievements are here![/h2][p]The bulk of this update is to add Steam achievements to the game. While most of these are straightforward, some of them will hopefully have you reaching just a little outside the box to construct interesting teams, discovering strategies you've never thought of before!

If you have beaten any Challenge Levels, you should immediately get any associated achievements upon starting up the game.

Hope everyone has a great time with these; I had a ton of fun building them!

[/p][h2]Bug fixes and minor updates[/h2][p]Also part of the update are a couple of small changes, mostly bug fixes:[/p]

• [p]Upon beating Challenge Level 15, a message stating that Challenge Level 16 is unlocked no longer appears. (15 is the highest Challenge Level. There is no Challenge Level 16). [/p]
• [p]Fog of Rejuvenation no longer causes severe frame rate dips after being on your team for a while. [/p]
• [p]Units with secret traits active no longer sometimes show up with two copies of the trait. [/p]
• [p]Added some Easter eggs for everyone's favorite unit 😉. [/p][p][/p]

[h2]What's next?[/h2][p]That's all for this update. For the next one, the plan is to implement one of the most requested features we've heard from players: an in-game codex, where you'll be able to see a list of all the units, inspect their abilities, and also be able to group them by trait. As always, we're continuing to improve game balance and fix bugs as they crop up. Please feel free to leave any feedback on the Steam discussion boards or the Discord.[/p]

[p]Hope everyone had a great holiday! Ours has been relatively productive, and as a result we've got a whole slate of new content and features in this update. Let's dive right in. [/p][p][/p][h2]New Trinkets[/h2][p]We've added over 20 new trinkets, of both the Lesser (found on Trinket Chest tiles) and Greater (gotten from bosses) varieties. The goal here is both to introduce more run variety as well as enable more team compositions. I'll let you discover them all for yourselves, but here are just a few samples to pique your curiosity:[/p]

• [p]Irrigation Reservoir: Once per round, you can refresh your active Crop.[/p]
• [p]Talking Rose: Trait Grafts have a 50% chance to replace Bombs and other Consumables as rewards. [/p]
• [p]Towering Scythe: Against large bosses and minibosses, Reap abilities trigger automatically every 6 seconds. Whenever an ally's Reap ability triggers, they get 2% stronger for the rest of combat. [/p]
• [p]Black Dagger: Whenever your unit performs an Initiative, your team deals 4% more damage for 4 seconds (this applies during future initiatives this combat). [/p][p][/p]

[h2]New Ruins[/h2][p]We've also added two new Ruins that can appear in ? tiles. They are:[/p]

• [p]Universe Dice: Gives the player an opportunity to replace all of their units with new ones a tier higher. This can help players turn around runs where they don't feel like they have strong enough teams and make for some really crazy risky plays. [/p]
• [p]Heroism Anomaly: Presents a choice between 1 of 3 Lv1 Tier 4 units, a Lv1 Tier 5 unit, or some water. Allows you to hopefully get that high tier unit you've been looking for.
  [/p]

[h2]Trait Variations[/h2][p]This is a new opt-out feature that gives runs a little more variety and a lot more skill expression. Having this on will do two things:[/p]

• [p]Certain units will have their traits vary from run to run. There are 7 such units, and their traits are picked from a small pool, enabling different lines of play each run. [/p]
• [p]Every unit that has two traits has a secret third trait that very rarely shows up. These secret traits might not be lore-appropriate, but when they show up they'll open up exciting new build opportunities for the unit and your team.[/p]

[p]The option to play with Trait Variations is unlocked once you've beaten the game once, along with Challenge levels.[/p][p][/p][h2]Recaps and Run History[/h2][p]When a run ends in either victory or defeat, you'll now see a recap of the run with your team, equipment, and trinkets. These are saved to your computer, and you'll be able to see them on the title screen from a new "Run History" option.

Please note that this does not retroactively apply to any runs you've played before this version. Also, if you continue a run from before you downloaded this update, the play time shown at the end of that run won't be correct. All subsequent runs, though, should have the correct play time.

[/p][h2]All AI-generated Art Replaced[/h2][p]In v0.7.3, almost all of the AI-generated assets had been replaced with hand-drawn art. There were a small handful that took a little extra time because they were contracted out to a studio. I'm happy to announce that, as of this v0.7.4, there are no more AI-generated assets in Seedborne Soldiers.[/p][p]
As of writing this post, the Steam page still has some screenshots and gifs from older builds that still have the AI-sourced art in them. These will be replaced soon.[/p][p] [/p][h2]What's next?[/h2][p]We've done our best to make sure that the average run is balanced, fun, and free of glitches and crashes. With that said, we added a lot of new content to this patch, and I'm sure there are things we missed or didn't think of.

I ask that you please report any bugs or balance issues. You can do this in the Steam discussion boards or in our Discord. I'll be focusing heavily on balance and bugs for the next patch.

Thanks again to everyone who's been playing and to those who've provided their opinions, experiences, and feature requests thus far. You've helped shape this game more than you know![/p]

[h2]Replacing AI-generated art[/h2]

As you may know and as our Steam page notes, the current version of the game has AI-generated art in it. We jumped on the hype train right when it was taking off and it seemed like AI was inevitable. To put it bluntly, this was a mistake.

I'm happy to say that we've spent a ton of time replacing these assets with good old-fashioned human-generated art. The overwhelming majority of the assets in the game are now hand-drawn, and we're working with a studio to finish up what's remaining. The assets that are still AI-generated are:

• Map tile sprites (the hexes the player clicks on to go to different locations on the map)
  
• Illustrations in Run Start, Ruins, Rest Sites, and Item Traders
  
• 7 UI textures, including the big wavy crop vine and some other smaller UI accents
  

As a reminder, at the time we launched in Early Access, a lot of art was already handcrafted, including all 3D assets, character portraits, and battle backgrounds. Probably the most visible changes you'll notice are the item and trinket graphics.

As a result of the new art, a couple of items and trinkets in the game have changed names:

• Heavy Pauldrons has been renamed to Trusty Spear.
  
• Godblade Shoulderpads has been renamed to Godblade Glaive.
  
• Balcony has been renamed to Participation Trophy.
  
• Animal Farm has been renamed to Animal Spirit.
  

[h2]Balance updates and bug fixes[/h2]

Huge shoutout to all the folks on the Steam Discussion Boards calling out balance issues, bugs, and other things that aren't quite working the way you might expect. I've hopefully addressed most of them with this patch.

[h3]Spellcaster buffs[/h3]
We've gotten feedback from players that spellcasters are weak relative to physical damage dealers. We've balanced this by focusing mostly on the Wizard trait and its units. The patch buffs its raw damage output and speeds up some spell animations. It does not change MP totals because there are a ton of ways in the game already to lower MP.

Generally, it still takes a little more effort to put together a team with a caster carry than with a physical damage carry, as players will need to find ways to lower MP. However, Wizards can now hold their own better in the early stages of the game, and the Wizard vertical is now about on par with the Sage vertical in terms of strength. When properly assembled, these can be some of the strongest teams in the game.

• Wizard trait magic damage increase buffed from 20/40/70/120 to 25/55/90/130
  
• Kincaid's Meteor base damage increased from 220/396/713 to 264/475/855
  
• Zilch's Fireball rising animation shorted from 1s to 0.6s
  
• Unceasing Rain's (Lv2 Fog of Rejuvenation) Hydrobubble projectile lob shortened from 2s to 1.2s
  
• Baal's Flame Shield duration increased from 3/4/5s to 7/8/10s (While Baal is not a spellcaster, he is a tank unit that is commonly paired with Wizards.)
  
• Vleeli's Deep Experience charge up animation shortened from 3s to 2s
  
• Old-World Jar's Spill Over charge up animation shortened from 3s to 2s
  
• Vicilicar Necklace of Cunning now reduces Crit by 15% instead of Attack Spd by 10%. (Attack Spd is also a pretty important stat for casters, and this trinket is supposed to reduce your physical damage effectiveness. Crit is still sometimes useful for spellcasters but less frequently than it is for physical damage dealers.)

[h3]Challenge Level nerfs[/h3]
It seems like folks have generally been enjoying the new Challenge Levels. There are a couple of changes, though, needed to make them feel a little more fair.

• Challenge Level 2's boss spell effectiveness increase reduced from 25% to 20%
  
• Challenge Level 11's boss spell effectiveness increase reduced from 50% to 40%
  
• Deadwater bonus Magic scaling reduced from 2 to 0.5 (This enemy only gets bonus Magic on higher Challenge Levels, and with the previous value it was just wiping out backlines in one cast. It typically casts ~2 times in a combat.)

[h3]Enemy nerfs[/h3]
There's one enemy in the game that seems to have evoked the ire of the player base more than any other: the Bubblefly, the one healer enemy. We've nerfed this enemy by making its healing projectile move more slowly. This will hopefully make it more common to kill an enemy before it gets healed.

• Bubblefly's Nectar Bubble bounce lengthened from 0.8s to 1.5s
  

[h3]Boss buffs[/h3]
A couple of the bosses on Map 2 had some issues with their design whose resolutions ultimately buffed them. These are expected to be slight tweaks and not huge buffs.

• Ilm was moved up to the front row to get Red Phaisy's initiative shield.
  
• Florya's Whirlwind of Gaffa now decreases the Defense of those it damages each second. (Florya was basically a tank check, and if you passed, she dealt zero damage. Now she can do damage, but the fight is still ultimately a tank check.)

[h3]Bug fixes[/h3]
A couple of players helpfully pointed out some bugs, and we found a few more during testing. We've fixed up the following for this patch.

• Having multiple Participation Trophy (previously Balcony) trinkets now gives the player additional Participation bench tiles from which units can contribute traits.
  
• Changed Amalia's spell text to no longer improperly mention that it spawns summons near the target.
  
• Removed the markup in Vessian's crop tooltip.
  
• Right-clicking while dragging a bomb no longer leaves that bombs area of effect indicators on the arena.
  
• Loading a run while in a challenge level now shows the challenge level info at the top.
  
• After abandoning a run, "Continue" option no longer shows up on the Title Screen until a new run is started.
  

[h2]What's next in store?[/h2]
The next update planned is all new content, specifically new trinkets. This will hopefully make Trinket Chests more appealing and add more variety to runs and viable builds.

If you're interested in seeing what's coming up in future updates, I made a broader post about Path to 1.0 on the Steam Discussion Boards: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3039930/discussions/0/685240346634957543/

That's all for now! Please continue to let us know your thoughts on the game either in the Steam Discussion Boards or on Discord, and a huge thanks to everyone who's done so already. This is how we can continue to make this game better for everyone.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday break!

[p]We've implemented a system here similar to how Ascension levels work in Slay the Spire. Upon beating a run at the base difficulty level, you unlock the first Challenge Level, which, when opted in, adds a difficulty modifier to runs. Beating a Challenge Level unlocks the next one, and each Challenge Level adds its own unique twist to ramp up the difficulty. There are 15 Challenge Levels in total.[/p][p][/p][p]Since this feature is pretty new, we'd love to hear your feedback on the balance and difficulty of these new levels. Please let us know what you think either on the Steam discussion boards or Discord![/p][p][/p][h2]Bug Fixes[/h2][p]Along with the new Challenge Levels feature, we also took the time to fix up the following issues:[/p]

• [p]Fixed a bug where sometimes units couldn't be sold by clicking on the recycle portal.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where returning to the title screen during end-of-combat bullet time would result in the whole game slowing down.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the Reactor doesn't deal damage if it dies during initiatives.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where inspecting an inventory item could show strange names.[/p]
• [p]Vicilicar Painseeker and Surrelior Soothsayer team-wide buffs now go away when they die.[/p]
• [p]Vicilicar Painseeker and Surreliior Soothsayer on-deaths now correctly benefit the player's team instead of the enemy team.[/p]
• [p]The black info tag that hovers above a unit while the mouse is over them no longer stays there if the player happens to be hovering over a unit while they die.[/p]
• [p]The small equipment view below unit HP and MP bars no longer blocks mouse input on the formation.[/p]
• [p]Dreamwreck tiles can no longer stack for massive Magic Def debuffs.[/p]
• [p]Jar enemies can now buff player units if they're moved (e.g. via False God) before they perform their initiative.[/p]
• [p]Fog of Rejuvenation can no longer be equipped.[/p]

[h2]Best of luck in Dreamworld![/h2][p]As always, if you have feedback for us--a bug, a feature request, something confusing, a question--please let us know. We're trying as hard as we can to make Seedborne Soldiers the best game it can be.[/p]