Stoneshard News

Hello!

There was a period of silence recently, but for a good reason – we are very busy adding and calibrating new skills. There’re still some tweaks to be done, so in meanwhile we decided to show another important aspect – equipment. So let's not protract the introduction any longer and jump right to the interesting stuff.

Press F for Fashion

All this time our game’s setting was smoothly drifting towards a rather realistic and gritty low fantasy – which of course affected the equipment. Over the past weeks we have added a huge number of new items (100+!) – and most of the old ones you’ve encountered during your Prologue runs were reworked from scratch. Now we try to rely mostly on historical sources for references and inspiration: specialized literature, museum exhibits or some historical re-enactment. Of course, there are exceptions too – this is especially true for various legendary and set items, which will feature a more fantasy-ish design.



Chestpieces are, of course, the most important part of your armor. We gave up the idea of independent light, medium and heavy armor rosters, and instead decided to take a more logical approach, redistributing all armor by the defense level in a single roster. Thus, the high-level Royal Ranger’s Gambeson won’t protect your better than some starter tier heavy armor – it will be superior to the rest of the light armor but won’t match even mediocre chain mails or brigandines.



In addition, different armor will differently protect against various types of damage – for example, chain mail is very resistant to slashing blows, but is almost useless against spears; while plate armor offers well-balanced protection against most physical weapons. But be wary: plate armor is incredibly expensive, so maintaining it in good condition will cost a pretty penny too.

There are some other disadvantages as well: hostile pyromancers and electromancers will possess much more danger to you. Heavy secondary equipment will also have some drawbacks: visoreal helmets reduce visibility (though you’ll be able to lift the visor up), the sabatons are significantly noisier, and plate gloves make fencing a bit more difficult.



The same applies for weapons. Swords, for instance: home-made blades and cheap falchions will be your starting point, but in the endgame you’ll have a possibility to wield some mighty arming swords. We’ve also created a whole bunch of so-called Exotic items – equipment of non-Aldor origin in other words. The idea is to encourage world exploration: randomly met elven merchant may offer you some famous Jibean scimitars, and a group of dwarven hirelings may be armed with some well-crafted nordic swords. Such items are usually slightly superior to their Aldor counterparts stat-wise.



And now something for all you shield-lovers – shields initial roaster is represented by unpretentious wooden samples, but at high levels there will be more choices: from elaborate bucklers and heater shields to pavises and kalkans.

Could you guess the magic schools these staves belong to?

And, of course, mages. At the game’s start their equipment progression isn’t very diverse; however, everything changes during endgame, when you will be able to purchase more expensive garments. A wizard dressed in his Circle’s mantle and wielding an appropriate staff will receive a significant boost to his school’s spell power.

From left to right: apprentice, arcanist, pyromancer, electromancer, geomancer, psimancer, cryomancer

That’s all for today! Well, not quite: here comes this sweet little GIF, demonstrating swords skill rotation in action (WIP). By the way, what weapons skills would you like to see next? Let us know in the comment section!



See you soon!

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Hello!

In this devlog we will talk about the health system changes – since the Prologue’s release, we’ve made lots of fundamental changes.

Almost from the very start, the health system was one of the main features of Stoneshard. Its main purpose isn’t about realism and difficulty for the sake of realism and difficulty, but to help you immerse in your character. It's one thing to watch your hero being a potion-consuming damage sponge, and the other – to watch your hero getting gameplay-affecting injuries, while also suffering from pain and nasty side effects. We wanted even survival outside the battle to require well-considered and thought-out decisions, since it drastically changes the general gamefeel.

In the Prologue, the injury system was almost entirely based on randomness. You took damage; the injury chance depended on its amount; after receiving a trauma there was a chance for it to worsen or stabilize. Such an approach left little of planning – you could only stock up as many consumables as possible, and hope you wouldn’t need them too often.

Since then, the health system has gone through many iterations, changing drastically during the process. Let’s start with the recently added health tab, showing all aspects of your character’s health:



Each body part now has its own health pool, decreasing upon receiving damage. If the bodypart condition falls to half or less, you will receive an injury that reduces some stats. Upon reaching 25%, this injury will turn into a wound with increased effect, and upon reaching 0% you will receive a maim with a special property. Maimed head makes it impossible to cast spells, and maimed hand means you can’t wield weapons with it anymore. Maims still can be reverted though, but it’s much harder.

Attacks now also inflict damage not only to your health pool in general, but also damage specific body parts. The damaged body parts, in turn, reduce the Health Threshold – the stat responsible for the maximum limit of your current health. Thus, a character with multiple injuries won’t be able to restore health to the maximum, even after using some healing potion – first he will have to treat all damaged body parts. Also, being low on health increases the maximum Pain Limit – so being badly battered means you’ll suffer from stronger pain as well. Because of these changes, injuries, health points and pain began to work as a coherent and consistent system.



Passive injury healing now depends on any healing your character receives, including natural regeneration. If your character has restored health to the maximum threshold, all the excess healing will be evenly distributed between all damaged body parts. This makes it possible to survive, even if you run out of medicines – for example, by huddling in a safe corner to rest and recover. Also this change Vitality builds more viable, since boosted Health Restoration and Received Healing stats allows to heal injuries much faster.

The bleeding mechanic was also reworked. First of all, it isn’t some abstract status effect caused by skills anymore – now bleeding is tied to body parts. If your injured limb takes some damage, there’s a chance it’ll start bleeding – thanks to this, bandages aren’t situational vampire dungeon consumables anymore.



Some aspects of the health system are still to be implemented (like maladies), but most part of it is already working the way we like it.

That’s all for today. Stay tuned!

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Hello!

Finally, we’ve polished our first abilities branch well enough, so this devlog will be completely devoted to the mighty fire magic – Pyromancy. Beware though: many heavy GIFs!

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First we’d like to tell you how the ability system has changed in general in a recent year. As you remember, the Prologue used a so-called Tier-system – all ability branches were divided into 4 tiers, with each including one active and one passive ability. By investing a single SP you could unlock both skills at once.

Before & Now

However, the feedback was mixed, so it became clear for us it wasn’t our best idea: many players wanted more flexible system of levelling. Perhaps the old system would be just great if we were making short-sessional dungeon-crawler of some sort... But we aren’t, therefore we decided to take a more traditional approach.

Thanks to this, we made trees more diverse and interesting, since we were no longer strictly limited by rigid linear progression of exactly 8 abilities. Now each Sorcery branch contains 14 abilities – 7 active and 7 passive ones. Weapon and Utility abilities branches have fewer abilities: around 8-10.

And now let us explain the design philosophy behind the abilities branches – especially magical ones. There were lots of heated arguments over the general vision, but in the end we concluded that we should aim to make all magic branches as tactically different as possible. After all, it’s very boring if every magic school uses the same pattern of 2 AoEs, 2 nukes and some occasional debuffs, or something like that. So we tried to diversify magic branches in terms of intended playstyle.



For instance, Pyromancy is all about powerful AoE-spells, dealing tremendous damage when used at the right time in right combinations. If you love killing crowds of enemies with just several skillful casts, look no further – this’s the branch for you.

So, the most interesting part – the actual abilities! Also, unbelievable truth: we managed to do just great without even a single fireball.

Fire Barrage



Fire Barrage is the only non-AoE pyromantic ability. It consequentially launches three firebolts at the target, each dealing some minor damage. However bolts do increased damage, if the target is already on fire – so if you’re lucky to have your target set aflame by the first bolt, the other two will deal much more damage. Or maybe you’d set the target on fire with some other spell. It’s up to you, really.

Hellbreath (aka Firewave – RIP 2018-2019)



Prologue’s not so silent workhorse, the Firewave, has been reworked. This spell still deals decent area damage, but the shape of the zone was changed. We’ve also improved it with an interesting property: each target damaged by Hellbreath reduces active cooldowns of other pyromantic spells by 1 (including Hellbreath itself). An irreplaceable spell for keeping your spell rotation always ready for action.

Flame Ring



Doomsday weapon of some sort. This spell sets all neighboring cells aflame– along with the enemies, of course. Enemies affected by Flame Ring also have their Fire Resistance significantly reduced. You need to use this spell wisely – the pyromancers aren’t fully immune to fire, so an unthoughtful cast could lock you between the raging flames and cut off all possible retreat routes.

Melting Ray



This spell releases a fiery ray into the target tile, igniting and damaging everything on its trajectory. At the end point the beam explodes –the more targets were hit during the ray phase, the more damage the explosion would cause.

Incineration



Incineration is quite an interesting spell. It allows you to extinguish the selected enemy ... and then use the released thermal energy to cause an explosion of terrible power. The longer the extinguished burning lasted, the stronger the explosion – and the higher the chance that it will set aflame all affected enemies.

Magma Rain



Fiery rain covers the chosen area, leaving a magma puddle afterwards. Each turn enemies caught in the magma take minor damage and have their Fire Resistance slowly reduced – with a chance to be set aflame.

Inferno



Finally, the apex spell of Pyromancy – a terrifying Inferno. It creates a fire storm in the large area, dealing great damage each turn – what’s even better, the more enemies are trapped within Inferno, the hotter are the flames.

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And, of course, some passive abilities insight:

• Feed the Flames – if the enemy’s on fire, each Fire Barrage’s bolt increases burning duration for 1 turn.
  
• Flame Saturation – restores some energy each time an enemy is set aflame within the vision range.
  
• Scorch – causes Hellbreath to debuff Fire Resistance of all damaged targets.
  
• Excess Heat – each enemy killed with Pyromancy restores some energy.
  
• Safe Distance - increases casting range of pyromantic spells by 1 tile.
  
• Baptism of Fire – taking fire damage reduces the duration of all active pyromantic cooldowns.
  
• Pyromania – increases Magic Power and Crit Chance for every burning enemy in sight (yes, casts can also become critical).
  

Well, that’s all for today. Can’t wait to show you the other branches and some other progress we’ve made. So stay tuned, and until the next time!

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Through pain, blood and broken bones — prevail and become a legend deciding the fate of Aldor! Stoneshard is coming to Steam on November 7th for $14.99!
(price may differ depending on the region)

To accompany the announcement we’ve also made a new trailer. Take a look!
https://youtu.be/VTeNIyVCsPo

https://store.steampowered.com/app/625960/Stoneshard

Feel like you could've forgotten some aspects of these games? We're glad to help you with a quick rundown!



Stoneshard is an immersive hybrid of roguelike and RPG. In it you travel through procedurally generated world of Aldor as an opportunistic adventurer with his caravan. On your journey you will manage your own needs and those of your followers, fight relentless enemies while trying to preserve your own life and sanity. All while creating your own unique hero and shaping the fate of the whole country.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/625960/Stoneshard/



Police Stories is a top-down tactical shooter, in which you play as on-duty police officers — John Rimes and Rick Jones. Create a unique loadout out of multiple equipment choices and carefully coordinate your actions with your partner to fulfill your task. Just remember that you don't have permission to shoot on sight — less-lethal approach is preferred.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/539470/Police_Stories/

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