Archmage Rises News

[h2]Legacy Update 2a Out Now![/h2]

We got the Legacy mini-update out yesterday by end of day!

Thanks to those who tried out the beta branch on the weekend to uncover issues like these. It was corrupting save files and glad it didn’t get out into the wild!

[h2]Priority Fixes[/h2]
We’re watching closely any issues coming out of Legacy. Zach and Thomas are heading up this effort.

• After reaching a certain point in the Tower Quest the game gets locked into thinking it is in combat, preventing the use of items like torches and tents. Saving the game, quitting, and returning will let you continue but obviously this needs to be fully fixed.
  
• Some other minor things, like audio issues, still need to be cleaned up.
  

Patch is coming out Thursday.

[h2]Update 2b: Combat Rewrite[/h2]



We’ve been working on this since March and I’m trying to figure out what it will take to get it out in October.

On the one hand, I don’t want to rush it. What you are playing now is my half-baked rushing to get it out for Early Access launch.

On the other hand, it has dragged on forever and maybe an 80% version is good enough. We don’t need to invent a sentient AI when it can only move between 15 grid spaces. :-p

Combat is now our primary focus with 4 of our 5 full time programmers working on it: Tyler, Jonathan, Josh, Michel. Mark is designing and directing it, with James assisting. Jessi is reworking UI.

[h2]Update #3: Exploration[/h2]



We are in the very preliminary stages of designing out what will be included in this update.

Some of the things we are looking at:

• Totally revamping resources: how they are found and harvested
  
• Elimination of Stamina, addition of Fatigue system
  
• More places to interact with on the map
  
• Weather & Seasons that matter
  
• Updated UI
  
• Other stuff we read on the forums from you guys!
  

[h2]Other[/h2]

• Nolan is working on world building with the Great Mages
  

Sadly, Rubi is no longer working full time at Defiance. She is moving to contract as she has wanted to make a video game with her (now) husband for about 18 months and decided now is the time to do it. She’s off on her honeymoon for the next month and upon returning will start her game and work as a contractor. What she saw in me that convinces her making your own game is a good idea, I’ll never know! But we wish her well. And secretly joke she’ll make Archmage 2 before we finish Archmage 1 :-)

The whole premise of this game is: You have one life to live? What will you do with it?
I love sandbox games. But I also want to feel clear progress towards a goal.

[h2]Mini-update 2a[/h2]
What is a mini update? Well it's a significant update that I kinda didn't plan to do. I thought we could wait on some of these features, but it turns out we need to do it now to prepare for future features. Plus, it enhances the play experience right now.


We have enhanced our quest tools and technology and so are proud to announce the culmination of what Nolan and team can do with a new major quest: Mabren's Tower.

The quest is a race against a rival to make a major discovery. We think it will show off some of the power of our tech and we hope you enjoy it!

“All that matters are the things that remain.”
The simulator tracks a lot of things about the player and the world. We're distilling all this data into one stat easily compared against rivals and historical mages in the world.

The core design of the game is along three core paths: Renown, Wealth, and Power. We are now displaying these as stats in game and on your save files. Legacy is derived from how well you perform in the three paths. Each is weighted differently and we will likely change the weighting as we go along. The design allows you to pursue all three, or just focus on one. It's your choice how you spend your life.

You can directly increase your Legacy with new items and actions. These are in addition to the 3 new stats. Things like:

• Purchasing property for a Mage Tower
  
• Displaying rare items like Art or Books in your mage tower
  
• Clearing out a Monster Lair
  
• Eradicating a Monster Race
  

Renown represents your popularity and respect in the world.
Renown is based on a new Town stat Esteem. Esteem measures citizen's thoughts towards you. It currently doesn't affect NPC dialogue text, but it will in the future.
Completing quests for townsfolk will build your reptuation the fastest, but establishing long term relationships will as well. It takes a lot more deeds to get noticed in a city than in a hamlet.

Esteem can and will gate certain features in a town. What people think of you matters.


Wealth is made up of two stats:

Prestige - Prestige is wealth people can see. It's on display for all to see.

Net Worth - the more you invest in the world, the higher your net worth and so your Wealth stat will grow. Grow your legacy by hording and investing every gold coin like Scrooge McDuck!


Power is how learned you are at life, magic, and manipulating the forces of the universe.
Every point of Spell School XP earned contributes to your Power stat.
Every point in skills (like Athletics, Persuasion, Scholarship) contributes to your power.

XP spent learning new spells and upgrades still counts, don't save em!


These are NPCs competing with you in the world in Renown, Wealth, and Power.

You meet three NPCs in school during character creation and they are set loose in the world along with you at the same time, becoming your Rivals.

We are starting with the basics with them for now, they are not fully featured yet, but we will continue to build from here.

We simulate rivals in the background. Every month you will get an updated notification of how your rivals are doing.

If you don't care for this, there is an option to turn off the notification. Happily ignore them.

You can also view the last information you got about rivals on the new character sheet tab:


Eventually we’ll add a way to get more frequent updates by talking to NPCs or having spies watch them, etc.

You can find and meet your Rivals in game, just like any other NPC.
You cannot kill them yet. We're working on that.


The world of Vaelun has many historically significant mages spread across different eras. We've assembled a list of the top 20 famous (or infamous) mages from which to compare yourself. Each one of these mages has a back story and in future updates you will be able to hunt down their unique artifacts. Again, this is stubbing in something that will be filled out more.

A new tab on the character sheet shows the rank of the mages and where you stand:

• Dates now show the age from the 5 eras
  
• Added more historical figures to the Conversation Picker
  
• Relationship gains are slower with people you barely know, and then speed up for people you start to know well
  
• Major fixes to buying and selling. Eliminated a duplication item bug.
  
• Fixed selling things back to vendor for more than purchased. Items are now 50% of base value when sold back.
  

The new features will just start working on an old save file. It's a little better from a new fresh start, but you are not forced to do so.

• The new major quest will begin immediately in a preexisting world. You can ignore it if you'd like.
  
• Items which now bestow prestige or legacy stats, previously collected ones won't have it but new ones that are supposed to will.
  
• An old save won't have rivals from school, but we will generate you 3 new ones and the system will start from there.
  

I hope you enjoy playing as much as we have enjoyed making this for you. Thank you for spending your time in Vaelun with us!

Every week the game gets better. Here's what is better this week!

• When using a tower portal the list of destinations includes the name of the nearest town. Name your towers something interesting now!
  
• The relationship discount for town vendors is now capped at 25%. It was ridiculous getting 85% off just because they liked you. Medieval margins weren't that high folks!
  
• Removed damage from miscasting spells in combat. It is enough that the spell didn't work and you lose resources, it doesn't need to kill you too!
  

• Fixed an issue with buffs that was causing game loading failures
  
• Skill bars on the character sheet now properly show progress to next skill point!
  
• Fixed cases in which Dungeon keys failed on their assigned doors
  
• Resources will no longer generate beneath towns. This was messing with getting directions to resources.
  
• Fixed a combat issue where a spell could double-cast
  
• Fixed text not scaling on World Settings screen
  
• Fixed text wrapping issue on transfer/gifting slider
  

• We introduced a weird UI issue on the character sheet equipping last week. It will be fixed on Monday when the Legacy Update comes out
  

A lot more fixes are coming in the Legacy Update next week Monday.

[h2]First: Oops![/h2]

Last week we put out a patch 0.2.7 on Friday. It was also our first week doing Mac releases in a long while. When we published the Mac build through the Steam back end, we accidentally blew away the PC patch which reverted people to 0.2.6 over the weekend.



Only triple facepalm can communicate how I feel.

Good news is we saw exactly what we did wrong and it won’t happen again.

[h2]Priority Fixes[/h2]
For this week's patch we're focusing on:

1. Reports of crashing when loading a save game. We are looking through the error logs right now to try and figure it out. This has been dragging on because we haven’t been able to reproduce it yet. Appreciate all those reporting it, eventually we’ll find the commonality and fix it!
   
2. Adding Town Name at the end of tower when teleporting. This is much requested.
   
3. The Skill progress bars to actually work!
   

Patch is coming out Thursday.

[h2]Legacy is coming in Sep 25![/h2]
It’s mostly working, so we have announced the details of it and the release date of next week Monday!

See the features coming in this post

It’s all hands on deck testing and polishing this mini-update to get it out in time: Zach, Tyler, Jessi, Phil, Mark, Nolan, Thomas.

[h2]Combat Rewrite[/h2]
New combat with better design, balance, and more spells, will be releasing sometime after Legacy update.

Josh and Jonathan are leading the programming, with Michel, James, and Mark assisting.

Rubi, working on the VFX, is off this week because… (see below)

The combat rewrite includes many adjacent updates including spell progression. Here is a WIP mockup of the new Spell Research tab.



[h2]Double Weddings[/h2]

Our tiny team of 11 has two weddings and they are this coming Sat Sep 23! I don’t know how they both chose the same day, but both Rubi (VFX) and Zach (programming) are getting married. No, not to each other, to different people in different states.

Rubi will be off for a month while Zach is back to work next week.

Thank you for your time and attention to our little game. We are 11 people passionate about independent game development who hope Unity doesn’t end up crushing us! :-p

I've had a few questions in the forums, the Discord server, on YouTube, etc, asking how to unlock the spell slider, which allows you to adjust the power of your spells by consuming more Ara to increase the potency of your spells, or decrease the Ara consumed to conserve Ara if a lower strength spell will suffice.

We've published a quick walkthrough on our wiki, but for those of you who are also visual learners like me, we've just released a new visual guide for you:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If there's any other visual guides we can make for you (or you think will be helpful for others), feel free to let me know in the comments below!