Relic Hunters Legend News

Hey Hunters, how have you been?

During Q2 we’ve continued to do a lot of polish, improvements, and to develop new features for Relic Hunters Legend. You can check all of that below!

These months were a little bit harsh here at Rogue Snail. A significant part of our team got Covid and because of that, we had to manage efforts to continue developing and delivering everything we planned for this quarter. Fortunately, Gearbox has been an amazing partner and has helped us organize and plan the due efforts and everything is going smoothly now!

And our team continues to grow: we hired more people and everyone is working very efficiently and passionately. We hope you enjoy what we're showing you here today - we're excited for what's to come!





In this new feature, Teena is going to reward you with a Legendary Gear piece and a Legendary Weapon, selected randomly from a limited pool, if you reach Rebel Rank 1.

This is also the first time we’re using a whole new feature called “Events” in the game that we can explore to make new things in the future. Teena Rank 1 Rewards still need some polish but are pretty much done.





All of the regular Enemies and Champions that you’ll face at launch are implemented and playable in-game. The regular Champions are the ones that are not on Delve and Dungeons, and they’re going to have a dedicated drop (a Legendary Weapon or Gear).

We still have to develop all the special Story Enemies, but the most important part is done and we’re very excited to see what you’ll think about it.



We’re finishing developing and implementing all the levels on the mission areas of planet Cradle. There are a few visual things missing, such as the map nodes and some set dressing, but soon we’ll have everything ready and close to what we aimed for launch! We hope all of you enjoy your stay on the planet.

[h2]Coldstone Peaks Missions[/h2]



Now Coldstone Peaks have all the 6 levels coded and done with the Set Dressing complete: Kami Peaks (Distraction), Pilgrimage Trail (Payload), Peaks Hideout (Defense), Broken Lake (Scavenge), Peaks Blockade (Skirmish), and Coldstone Peaks (Exploration) that is the most vertical map that we have on the game!

[h2]The Crater[/h2]

This new area also has all 8 levels implemented with Skirmish, Scavenge, Rift, Distraction, Payload, Defense, and Exploration game modes.

[h2]The Trash Sea[/h2]



We implemented the 10 levels on the Trash Sea with all the Story Missions and faction quests running smoothly so you can enjoy a “vacation” there and learn a lot about these “paradisiacal” places.

[h2]Kami Cave[/h2]



This mission is the end of Act 01 of the Relic Hunters Legend story and is a new Delve that we implemented very differently from the previous one (The Shadow Valley Prison). The design of the space is much more in tune with what we need for a Delve mission in Legend, with a very different and cool Boss fight at the end.





We already explained how the Faction System will work in the previous Dev Blog update, but now the feature is done. It has all the tracking icons and you can track up to 5 Quests at the same time, regardless if they are Adventure Quests or Faction Quests.





Every hunter has their own unique Skill Tree icons set. No more placeholder here, yeey!





We still have a long way to have everything we wanted for launch and we’re excited about how many cool things we can do with our characters. We’re investing a lot of time into these cosmetics and now we have a few hairstyles, new color palettes, scarfs, accessories, jackets, sneakers, etc so you can create your own unique style.

We hope that selling Cosmetics will be our main source of revenue when the game is out, and allow us to keep supporting the game for years without any predatory monetization, so we want to make it really cool, fun, and cute so our community gets excited to customize their Hunters!





Now, when you drop a Memory for the first time, the game will notify and guide you to the inventory, explaining how the Memory system works. Also, when you unlock Pinkyy or Jimmy, you’ll gain a few Memories and the game will teach you how to use them to level up these Hunters.



The third and final act of the Relic Hunters Legend is playable but in a bare-bones state. There's a lot of polish to do, and we’re also working on the script for a new fully-animated cutscene!





We finished implementing all the Tier 4 Epic Weapons and Gear. Now you can drop a lot of unique weapons with different styles and elements and Epic gear to complement your builds with better stats. Hope you enjoy it!





We developed two new songs and reworked some sound effects, especially the gunshots. Hopefully you'll find that shooting our guns will sound a lot juicier and even cooler than before!





We have migrated from Amazon's GameSparks to Gearbox's SHiFT! The reason why we migrated from GameSparks (our previous backend system, powered by Amazon) to SHiFT was that after almost a year and a half of work to make our game stable on GameSparks, Amazon will be closing down the service for good soon. This forced us to switch to a different service, so it was helpful to have Gearbox offering us their SHiFT solution so we wouldn't start completely from scratch.

So we just pretty much had to rewire the entire game to work on a completely different backend system. This was the first time we had to do such a major rework in Legend, and hopefully will be the last.






We kept polishing the UI to make everything up to the same standards. The NPCs on the Secret Market have an icon above them and there’s a complete tooltip for the Reputation system with some lore and an explanation of what Reputation is. We also improved feedback for level up and quest completion.





We polished up the feature and now it has a nice, cohesive, and easy-to-understand Bug report tool, with all the elements we need to understand the problem you’re reporting.



QA team keeps doing their best to track down all the bugs and find a solution to fix them. We also kept improving some experiences on our game modes. Some bugs and improvements that we have already tracked and fixed these months are:

• Exploit fix: We remove the possibility to fake the faction quest events, this exploit made the quests"repeatable" and the player could win constant rank
  
• Remember that horrible bug where you'd sometimes fall through random spots in the game world and die? We refactored all the movement systems and now this bug is fixed.
  
• Blocked Map Nodes on Trash Sea fixed
  
• Fixed some random missions at ADN that changed if the player reset their progress.
  
• Fixed ADN rewards that were delivered at every level, even if the player already gained that reward.
  
• Reset progress appeared on ADN as a null red when you clicked on a node.
  
• Fixed the check system related to the number of hunters allowed to enter a mission in the ADN
  
• Hover description at ADN when the level is blocked
  
• Item Drops fixed
  
• Fixed Help/tutorial messages that appear on the HUD not being hidden during cutscenes
  
• Fixed the Secret Chest sound effect so that it only triggers if you haven't opened the chest yet
  

ADN still need some balancing, technical and visual polish, but all the of Tier 1 and 2 missions are playable now. We made a major change to how the Character Selection screen works: You no longer hover and change characters automatically - you need to click on the Hunter to change it. This change prevents the screen from freezing when you hovered over the Hunters quickly.

Also, the whole party gets a warning now if someone is using a Hunter that was already used on previous Floors. When that happens, the game automatically opens the selection screenso the player can easily select a valid Hunter instead.





Exploration Missions are getting better, with puzzles, mini-bosses, secret areas, and new Daily Goals for players to get some awesome rewards every day.

–

That's it for today, but there are many more things to come! Keep following us on social media, join our Discord Channel to hang out with us, and ask your questions about Relic Hunters! We’re always there to assist you, and our community loves to make new friends!

Cheers,
Rogue Snail Team ~

Loots out of the bag!

PAX East 2022 came out swinging with the Gearbox Main Theater Show with the exciting announcement for the collaboration between Rogue Snail and Gearbox Publishing.

We can't wait to jump in and share more info with you all.

THE HYPE IS REAL 🔥

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hey Hunters, how have you been?

During these couple of months, we worked on several new features that will improve your overall experience with Relic Hunters Legend.

Also, as some of you already know, we had great news a couple of weeks ago: Relic Hunters Rebels, our mobile game for the franchise, will be launched this month on Netflix! So if you have a Netflix subscription, soon you’ll be able to enjoy a very new and unique story with a lot of action and weapon collection!

But don’t worry, we didn’t take any effort from the Legend development team to make this project. We hired new people specifically to develop Relic Hunters Rebels and after the game is launched, they will join the Legend team to improve our biggest game!

Let’s check out the new features that we develop in Relic Hunters Legend these last months:







Memories are a new way to level up your Hunters. They are consumable books that you can drop after you unlock your first hunter and will give you several amounts of XP. There are three rarity types for now: The Ascendant Memory, the Greater Memory, and Timelocked Memory. Each one of them will help you to level up the character you want to master and allow you to equip better armor and weapons.

Another thing about the memories system is when you reach the level cap of a Hunter, you’ll be able to generate a new Greater Memory every time you gather 20.000 XP with this character, so you can use these memory books in other Hunters, even if you aren’t playing with them.





We kept designing and implementing new missions for the Planet Cradle. The missions in the Galyno Desert, Coldstone Peaks, and The Trash Sea are all done, just missing some visual feedback and set dressing. Hilltown and Semilla City missions are still under development, but we already have a few of them implemented. Soon all the regions on Planet Cradle will be completed!





The Faction and Reputation system will be very important to your progression in Relic Hunters Legend. You can now improve your reputation within the four factions present in the game (Secret Market, Abapotim, Trash Surfers, and the Mysterious Faction) by completing quests that will give you rewards and increase your faction rank score. As you rank up, you will be able to purchase unique weapons and equipment and unlock new rarities in the faction stores.

This is a very flexible system that power-up the grind and rewards that you can get. The main system is implemented but we still have a lot of polishing and feedback to do before we finish this feature.





The Asteroid Dungeon Nemesis is the first-tier dungeon in Relic Hunters Legend. The ADN will be unlocked after you complete the main campaign and it’s going to reset every week. The dungeon will have an Epic difficulty, which has some effects on the rules of the gameplay, such as restricted revivals, bonus damage on enemies, and many others. Each floor in ADN gets harder and with better rewards and if you use a Hunter on one floor, you can't use it on the next ones, so you need to use your entire party! It also has two types of balance: Regular, designed for two players, and Greater, designed for a full party;

Each time you complete the missions, you’ll be rewarded with the best materials and equipment in the game - there’ll be a chance to drop some unique and ADN exclusive legendary items.





We created this tool to make it easier to collect report bugs and feedback from our community. Now, if you press F3, the system is triggered and automatically creates a screenshot. It also has the title tab, priority, and description box to help our team find what the reported problem might be. This visual is a WIP, the final result will be slightly different (and better looking).





The final act of the Relic Hunters Legend story is being developed. We finished the script and the main cutscenes! We believe that we wrapped up the story nicely and we’re pretty happy with how it ends, it’s super emotional and beautiful as it also delivers everything that is expected as you play the game, we are sure you will love it!



In our last update, we said that we're not done with the new enemies yet, so we kept developing, even more, the variety of foes for you to face in the game. We won’t showcase every single one of them because we want you to have a unique experience when you face them for the first time in the game, but here’s a sneak peek.

[h2]Trash Sea Kamis[/h2]



The Great Trash Sea is an enormous sea of destroyed cities and years of accumulated junk that covers most of the planet — including Semilla City, responsible for depositing large amounts of trash in the sea coming from its uppermost floors. The local fauna adapted to this environment and acquired unique behaviors.

[h2]New Ducan Champion[/h2]



A new Ducan Champion that you’ll face in the Trash Sea! This big-ass guy has been pumping iron every day in this ocean of trash and is ready to take you down at any moment, so be prepared before you face this beast.

[h2]New enemy skins[/h2]



Since we have different environments with different climates and textures it's only fair that our enemies have skins that match this scenario, so now all the enemies have variations according to the region where they are located.

[h2]New Weapons[/h2]



We've implemented new epic and legendary weapons to give you a variety of guns with different playstyles. With so many amazing and extremely stylish weapons, it will be difficult to choose your favorite.

[h2]New Cosmetics[/h2]



We have developed some cosmetic items for the players to buy. They’ll be one of the main sources we’ll have to monetize Relic Hunters Legend, as the game will be Free to Play when it launches, so we are putting a lot of effort into creating the most amazing skins for each hunter while giving players the possibility to have a unique style.






We’re implementing new mechanics on the Exploration Game Mode such as puzzles and Minibosses that drop unique loots to make this game mode more interesting and fun. Each region will have at least one Exploration site for you to grab some incredible materials and gears for your characters.





We noticed that Jimmy's Spine animations weren't working as fluidly as we'd like. So we reformulated his animations to fit better in-game and fixed all of his skins.



We finished implementing this game mode with all the feedback and systems needed. It will be only available in Act 2, so we’re not going to spoil the new faction and their behaviors that you’ll encounter on Rift. You’ll have to face them for the first time by yourself!





We implemented new icons and improved our UI. Some icons and other tweaks are still being developed, but we are working hard to improve your overall game experience.



As you already know, developing a game is HARD. With all the new features that we made, a lot of new (and some old) bugs showed up. Our QA team is doing their best to track down all the bugs and find a solution to fix them. Some bugs that we have already tracked and fixed these months are:

• Precision in the new aiming algorithm.
  
• Visual bugs, especially when some skins or assets disappear in-game.
  
• AI Fix - adjusted their behaviors in all the game modes.
  
• Stabilization of Asteroid Dungeon Nemesis features for first-pass delivery.
  
• Enemy spawner editor: We fixed some performance, random area selection, batch selection issues, and overlapping areas.
  
• Minimap teleport icon working properly after teleport round mode.
  
• Distraction: Enemies weren't getting eliminated when time ran out.
  
• Skirmish and Scavenge: Penalty Announcement appeared on normal difficulty.
  
• Revive area appears during drop-in around a character that is not dead.
  
• The ammo Box minimap icon did not appear after the second level.
  
• Payload cart walked alone after the second level
  
• After playing the first round of a Skirmish or Payload Game Mode, the Fog of war stopped working.
  
• Debuff fix.
  
• Delve: Boss Portal appears only after the fight is over; Boss health UI now disappears after changing levels; edge-tracking was wrong the first time we entered the round; beacon now has a minimap icon.
  
• Distraction: Megaphone icon rotated wrong; enemy threw everyone away.
  

That’s it for today, there's a lot of news to come and we'll keep you updated on all of our channels. Join our Discord channel to share your thoughts on everything we shared today and spend some quality time with our amazing community!

Cheers ~

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hi Hunters,

Lucy here! We’re doing this video today to recap everything we've done during 2021 for the development of Relic Hunters Legend and talk about what you can expect from the franchise for 2022!

2021 was really great for Rogue Snail. We grew as a studio, got new partners, hired more people and now we’re an independent Brazilian remote studio with almost 40 people in our team!

We developed and implemented a LOT of new features for Relic Hunters Legend last year. The game today has two full Story acts and the third and final one is almost done, with a total of 30 hours of gameplay until you finish the main campaign (or much more if you are a completionist!). We’ve created many new features, tested and got a lot of feedback from you - our community - as we kept making the game better and better.

So, without further ado, let’s check out everything we’ve done for Relic Hunters Legend in 2021







Relic Hunters Legend now has three Story acts with a total of 30 hours of Main Story Adventures. The final act is in development and will mark the end of the first season of our Relic Hunters' adventure, and the definitive end of the story of Seven, the time traveler. We’ve poured our hearts and souls into this story and these characters, and we hope you love it as much as we do!



We’ve also made a lot of improvements to how Story works in the context of the game, with a big re-do that we called “Story 2.0”. The overall user experience with navigating, starting and completing Quests is now MUCH better, and we have also improved the flow of the missions (drastically reducing how many loading screens you encounter) and made it a lot easier to coordinate with your Party when you have to do a solo Story mission.





You told us how much you LOVED the intro cutscene, so we’re doing more of them! Expect a few more fully animated goodness as you progress through the Main Story.





Last year we created the Journal screen, where you can track all of your Adventures and Quests. We kept improving the user experience of this screen throughout the year, but the main thing is this: you can now track multiple Adventures and Quests at the same time!



We’ve also implemented track icons in the Map Screen, so you can easily find where you need to go for a specific Quest.





New Adventures being created means new Adventure Covers in the Journal screen. We've created almost every card that will appear in the Journal for the three Acts. As a bonus, we've got some amazing wallpapers to share with all of you in the future!





Creating a good Chat system in-game is a LOT more work than you probably think (unless you are an experienced game developer, and in that case stay tuned for our job postings!).

Last year we’ve put in a lot of hours to improve the Chat experience, creatings tabs for different channels, the ability to send direct messages, and implementing spam protection measures. You can now chat in Public, Private with your friends and LFG (Looking For Group) channels, and in the near future we’ll also have the Trade channel.





You can customize your favorite Hunters with your own build! There are 30 Skill Nodes divided into 3 different Skill Trees for each Hunter, and we can’t wait to see the crazy build you’ll come up with.



We’ve also implemented the Ultimate Skills - one for each Hunter -, so you can punch Ducans with Pinkyy’s Gauntlets, freeze enemies with Seven’s vortex, Shoot them like a crazy hurricane with Jimmy, aim from the skies with Ace’s jetpack or enjoy some beats and blast everything with Raff’s Keytar!





We made a TON of new Gear pieces including Legendaries, Exotics, Augmented, and Set items, creating an even wider range of possibilities for your builds. Our backers have played around with a few of them in Act 1, but we have a LOT more items that we are saving for Acts 2 and 3!





We also improved the systems inside the backpack with features suggested by the community. The first one is “Item Favorite”: you can mark your Gear or Weapons as “Favorite”, protecting them from being Recycled.






Another addition was the ability to Compare your equipped loot with the new ones that you just got in your Backpack! Pretty handy to check the rolls on all those randomized affixes.





We’ve added an inventory screen for all your currencies, consumables, and materials. There are still more features to be added, but the screen is already working in-game.





The most requested features from our community are now in the game! With Mass Recycle, you can configure filters to choose which items you want to recycle. Then you just press a big green button to dispose of them all, quick and easy!

Using a similar set of filters, you can also set up your Auto-Recycle: any items meeting your criteria will be automatically converted to Materials when you pick them up!

Currently, the filters for Mass Recycle and Auto Recycle are very simple (just Rarity and Type), but after the game is released we plan to add more options. Hopefully one day they’ll resemble the complex “Loot Filters” that you can find in ARPG games such as Path of Exile.





We implemented the Secret Market, the main Social Hub in Relic Hunters Legend in 2021. This is where you’ll find Quests, friends, events, buy new equipment at Shops, and pick up some items in your Storage.





Now you can invite your friends and party up! In the future, we’ll allow you to invite people from inside the game, without needing to add them to your Steam Friends list.





We’ve also created a Lobby system in the Dropship, where your party will gather and prepare for battle. Now it’s easier to manage the party and to wait for everyone to set up their loadouts!





We have a brand new Scoreboard at the end of the Missions! Now you can finally find out who’s the MVP of your gaming group (and who is the “Moral Support”), along with many other stats. You can also endorse your favorite teammates with hearts and super hearts!





We’ve finally added the Customization Screen and Cosmetic Items to the game! You can choose your favorite hats, hair, clothes, and accessories in many different colors to style your Hunters the way you want.





You can now choose between many different animated Emotes and cute Emoji, and you can combine them to express yourselves in multiplayer!





We also wanted to make player progression more fun and visually exciting! We implemented Gear Score Rank Outfits: whenever you reach a new Gear Score Rank (such as Common I or Rare I) you will get a visual upgrade for that Hunter! The cool thing about this is that you are not locked into a specific look - you can mix and match pieces, change their colors individually, and have your Hunters always look the way you want them to.





Now you can find more materials and rewards during your Missions with Chests and Resource Nodes. Regular chests (the blue ones) and resources respawn every 24 hours, so you can come back to areas that you previously explored and farm some more resources!

And if you like looking for hidden things, we’ve placed some Red Chests in secret spots all across planet Cradle. Can you find them all?





Most of your adventures at the time of release will take place at Planet Cradle, where you can find places such as Galyno Desert, the Secret Market, and etc. In the future, we hope to expand our universe even further, and the Galaxy Screen is where you’ll choose where your spaceship will take you next!





Also, a new and polished Map Screen has been made with a lot more detail - and even more beautiful! Now we have over 50 locations for you to explore in several different Regions!






You were already familiar with Skirmish and Scavenge - this year we’ve added Payload, Exploration, Defense, Delve, and Distraction! We are now developing the sixth new game mode, Rift, for a total of eight Game Modes at release!





With new Game Modes, main Adventures, Missions, and etc, we needed to create a wider range of enemies and bosses for our players to face even greater challenges. We created 12 new bosses such as The Riotbreakers, Lt Susan, Cobran Captain, Ducan Flamebeak, and the Kami Queen. We also developed new Kami Species, like the Kami Nari and the Kami Spit, The Gatecrashers for the Defense Game Mode… plus a “Mysterious Faction” that we won’t spoil, because you will meet them (and fight them!) in Acts 2 and 3!





One of the core features of your progression in the game is now done! Rebel Rank is your account level, and is constant across all of your Hunters - similar to “Mastery Rank” in Warframe or “Adventure Rank” in Genshin Impact.

What’s unique about Rebel Rank is that you progress it solely by completing Achievements! These are divided into Chapters that unlock as you progress, making it also a cool way to guide your progression in the game!

The main benefit of increasing your Rebel Rank is that it raises the Level Cap of your Hunters, allowing you to level them up even further! But that’s not all - you also gain increased Storage space, Gear pieces (including Legendaries), Materials, and more! You also get a Rebel Rank indicator on your profile, to show all Hunters how much of a legend you are.





One piece of feedback that we got loud and clear from our early access players was that they hated running back through empty levels if they happened to die at the very end. We have implemented a smarter Checkpoint system that will reduce the amount of running after the party wipes.





We also created a Pause Function for single player activities! Now if you are playing solo, you can check your Backpack, complete an Achievement, or take a quick bathroom break without worrying about enemies attacking you! This feature is disabled in multiplayer, naturally.





We’ve added a lot of visual bells and whistles to the game this year! There’s new visual feedback for the capture point in Scavenge, new vegetation shaders, better Ambient Profile setups that change shadows, daylight, and nightlight, as well as cool new water shaders.




With all the new maps and stories being implemented, of course, we’ll have new Music and Sound Effects too! We hope everyone will enjoy the Relic Hunters Legend soundtrack when the game is fully released!



It’s been over four years since we started this journey with you.

To think it all began with pretty much just Mark and Betu; then we put our own savings into the project and grew to a team of 7; then we had a Kickstarter campaign and the Founders program and grew to a team of 12; and now we have the support of our Mysterious Strangers, and we are now proud to be 36 people at Rogue, building this dream together.

We couldn’t be happier and more grateful! But there’s still one thing left to do…

…we have to release the game, right?

We are almost finished with the main Story. We still have some endgame systems to finalize (Asteroid Dungeon Nemesis, wooooh), and a lot of boring backend, maintenance, performance and bug fixes to do. But we are very close.

So I know we’ve been, uh, kinda bad with dates up until this point. But for 2022, we promise you this: we will announce who our Mysterious Strangers are (they’re awesome!)...

…and we WILL release the game publicly on Steam!

We can’t give you the exact dates yet, but… SOON™.

It’s been a long journey, but for us, it really is just the beginning. Releasing this game just means we have more friends to play with and to give us ideas and feedback to keep improving the game. We want to be able to keep working on Relic Hunters for many years, and with your support we have no doubts that we’re going to achieve this dream!


Thank you for everything in 2021. See you on the other side…


Cheers
~Lucy, Mark, Betu and The Relic Hunters Team

Hey Hunters, how you have been?

To celebrate all we've accomplished this year and all the support we've been given by our community, tomorrow we'll be hosting the last livestream of the year, with a giveaway of 20 Relic Hunters Legend's early access keys!

LucyG, our Community Manager, will be with you showing everything we've done this year for the game and will tell you about our plans for its development in 2022.

The livestream starts tomorrow at 6PM BRT (GMT -3) at our Twitch Channel!

We'll wait you all there,



Cheers ~