Archmage Rises News

I’m a little tardy in writing this post because I’ve spent the last 2 days in meetings figuring out what we focus on next. Combat was all-hands-on-deck to get it out, then everyone and everything to patch it last week.

[h2]The Future is Bright[/h2]



Combat represents a new foundation from which we can build. And build we shall. The rest of the game to be exact!

[h2]Rival Mages Update[/h2]

Our next formal release I call Rival Mages to add the ability to fight mages, starting with rival mages. The new combat system makes this pretty easy to do.

Why are we doing this? There were a couple of outstanding tasks I want to address from when we did the mini-update or Rivals.

• Hunt down your rival mages in the world and kill em.
  
  
  • We’ll add in the ability to befriend them with benefits later, right now we’re getting the fighting part working.
• Make rivals appropriately respond to you (instead of being clueless when you talk to them)
  
• Add a showdown mage battle to the end of the Mabren’s Tower Quest
  
• Add a better reward to the Mabren’s Tower for completing the quest
  
• Add in a new NPC reaction system. This is prep for the next big update.
  

This update is only going to take a few weeks to make. Will surprise everyone with a date once it is done.

(Man! We really need to stop doing all these unplanned releases and get to work on the roadmap!)

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

Almost a year ago I had to put together a roadmap so people could generally know what I’m trying to make with this game. One of the challenges of publishing a bullet pointed list of features is it doesn’t allow room to listen to the game and see if a feature is just a neat idea or really what the game needs.

So for exploration we’re going to focus on these core features:

1. Dynamic quests - having the game generate quests based on local data. Starting with two types:
   
   
   • Kill Named Monster quest
     
   • Find Named object quest
2. Create our first faction: The Conclave. A simple version of it.
   
   
   • Ability to climb up some ranks with some rewards
     
   • Hands out quests using the Dynamic Quest engine
3. Update the map generation
   
   
   • It’s way too mountain heavy in the middle
     
   • Have better more meaningful biomes
     
   • Better distribution of lairs for where the player starts
4. Improve interacting with Points of Interest on the map
   
   
   • Finding lairs
     
   • Seeing and encountering patrols
     
   • Finding resources
5. A new UI with new HUD
   
   
6. Get rid of dumb stuff that bothers us
   
   
   • All the stupid tracks everywhere
     
   • Stamina -> replace with Fatigue system
     
   • Nourishment bar -> replace with Hunger system
     
   • Pick axes being the only way to get a resource instead of something magical
     
   • Exploration rolls and the “Hex View” screen entirely, it’ll be replaced above with better points of interest

You will notice Weather and Seasons didn’t make that list. I’ve decided it isn’t important right now. The Conclave faction functionality will provide way more engagement than the seasons changing. Seasons isn’t necessarily cut, I’m just pushing it down the roadmap somewhere else.

[h2]Thursday Patch[/h2]

Last week’s patch was massive. It was so massive we were testing late into Thursday night still trying to get it out, but found some serious problems. In total it contained some 40+ fixes, of which the release notes covered the highlights.

This week we are working on these issues:

• Ability to use items you sold - hard crash
  
• Weaponsmith dialogue breaking
  
• Dialogue underline click handling issues
  
• Quest giver changing based on conversation (Ashpeef)
  
• Trap click options not working (Mumzhar)
  
• Healer not treating injuries (You had one job!)
  
• Healer not accepting relationship discounts
  
• Innkeeper losing quest options
  
• Weapon stats issues
  
• Skeleton corpses not reforming twice
  

You had one job!

Big thanks to you all for the feedback and bug reporting bugs with the Combat update.
We combed through over 160 bug reports + Discord + Steam Forum posts. This is what we able to address this week:

1. Fixed a lot of the lag issues in combat. It was a combination of factors: memory leak, logging, errors. It's much improved. We're still working on it.
   
2. Generally, the feedback is new combat is unfairly too hard. We have improved the Conclave graduation ring you begin the game with from protection 50->70. We also removed rings from sale in shops, that wasn't supposed to be there. One of the troubles of a data driven game is sometimes data gets read in and used in places we don't intend. There WILL be ways to get additional rings and improve upon the one you start with, but it's super valuable and core to the game so you aren't supposed to be able to go to a shop and just buy a second one for 200g.
   
3. Skeletons are back in the game! And their resurrection ability is super annoying! Skeletons will appear in existing worlds and saves.
   
   
   
4. Skeletons are a mid tier enemy created ages ago and left roaming the earth. If you are a young new mage straight outta school, and find yourself up against a skeleton: RUN! We made it so they don't appear around your starter town. Better distribution of monster lairs is coming in the Exploration #3 update.
   
5. We improved Character Creation to provide better rewards so you start with 3 spells instead of 1. Things are always obvious in hindsight. This should feel better now. This also affects some of spell progression.
   
6. Tuned down some weapon damage. Decreasing base damage per AP and the Quality-based damage multiplier. They weren't supposed to be much better than spells.
   
7. Character creation summary screen now shows spells learned rather than XP gained.
   
8. Protection now appears on the Character Sheet. We thought it was sufficient seeing in on the equipment, but clearly that was dumb.
   
9. Eating Foodstuff causing nausea. The first mistake we made is player's shouldn't start with foodstuff in inventory. Second is Foodstuff is a catch-all label for raw ingredients used in cooking. Like raw flour, a turnip, and bunches of Rosemary. If you ate a cup of raw flour and 6 sprigs of raw rosemary, you likely would have a tummy ache. Our bad for not properly explaining this resource designed for trading isn't intended for eating (you can in a pinch). So it still makes you nauseous but the tooltip explanation says why.
   

1. There were numerous issues leading to save file corruptions. We think we got them all.
   
2. We had a bad bug with quest quantities showing weird code. This was a problem with the highlight code, so we quickly hotfixed it by taking out the highlighting. It is now corrected and highlighting is back in.
   
3. Fixed an exploit where you could unequip your ring in combat, then re-equip it, and you'd be back to full protection. It's not THAT magical!
   
4. Fixed: players can't equip weapons they don't actually own. Sad, I know.
   
5. Swapping weapons no longer soft lock the game.
   
6. Magic progression screen no longer appears blank (thanks MIM_MC1, Fonz, and JAMESTHEANGRY07)
   
7. Sturdy and engraved pickaxes were wrecking game. Now they don't.
   
8. Healer no longer double charges. Healing is a far less lucrative field now.
   
9. Pyromaniac reported duplicated options in the Tumbleweed encounter. Fixed.
   
10. Combat soft-lock reported by Odynn after casting a spell
    
11. Lighting issue with dice in combat
    
12. Inventory issue in House Repair quest.
    
13. Missing combat backgrounds
    
14. Fixed an issue where sometimes players couldn't move on the map after combat
    
15. Fixed several other last minute bugs
    

1. We have multiple reports of "giant monster issue" where the monster sprite goes crazy large. We've invested significant time into investigating it and as of now we can't reproduce it. We finally think we may have found out what might be causing the issue, so it might be fixed, but might not...
   

[h2]NEW Combat Fixes[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It is a huge relief to get the new combat and spell progression system out. We have something solid to build upon.

This week’s focus is fixing priority combat issues and letting the dust settle.

Here is what we are working on for a Thursday patch:

• We’ve read every bug reported, these are current priorities:
  
  
  • Clicking lag and other performance issues
    
  • Giant monster sprites taking up the whole battlefield
    
  • Weapons breaking combat
    
  • Equipment re-equipping bug/exploit
    
• Based on the feedback combat is too hard, we’re revisiting the tuning
  
  
• We’re revisiting Character Creation to get you more starting spells. This will address some of the “Combat too hard” issue.
  
  
• I made a bad call that led to errors in the quest quantities. Separate from the combat branch we made some fixes to the dialogue highlighting code. Then we merged it in last minute and it created problems. We got a hotfix out on Sat evening.
  
  
• We’re finishing off the Skeletons race to get them back into the game
  

- Temporarily disabled the highlighting of keywords in NPC conversations to resolve the issue of weird characters appearing in the middle of dialog. The highlighting will return in the next patch.

Today we are very proud to release our BIGGEST UPDATE EVER with a NEW Combat system. It changes almost every aspect of the game.

• All new combat with FIVE unique, full featured, spell schools, totaling 52 new spells!
  
• All new weapons, equipment, and protection system. Even magically charge your weapons!
  
• All new spell progression and learning system. Get learning bonuses and affinities.
  
• All monsters completely revamped, with all new abilities and AI
  
• New monster race: Crocodons
  

• Previous worlds and save files are not compatible. We tried really hard but couldn't do it. Sorry! Read more on how to switch to the Legacy branch to maintain your progress and update when you choose to here.
  
• Combat is intentionally challenging. Don't expect you can take on some monsters with the one spell you learn in school! Go to a chapter house and do some research. More info in this post.
• Skeletons are temporarily disabled until next week. It's complicated. :winter2019happyyul:
  
• We're still working on Combat. Testing, tuning, playing, reading your feedback. We feel this is a good first step.
  

More info on the thinking behind the Spell Schools:

• Introducing Storm Magic
• Introducing - Earth Magic
• Introducing - Fire Magic
• Introducing - Ice Magic

With changes this massive there are bound to be issues. We think we solved the major ones today with a short Beta. We appreciate your help and support!