Relic Hunters Legend News

Hey Hunters,

How's it going?

There are a lot of exciting things to talk about this week, so I'll get right to them!

Loot Drops!

Yes, it's finally time to farm for some rares!

That's a LOT of damage on a Medal! Guess it might need another balance pass...

If you have access to the Pre-Alpha, you've been able to see and interact with some items since the last Steam update. But so far it was meant just as a test for the Hunter screen (the inventory) and the item affixes / RPG stats.

Now we actually have a full-fledged drop system that will allow you to defeat enemies and get randomized loot from them!

Needless to say, this changes the entire game. Starting from the next Steam update, we are going to wipe your progress (again) and you will be able to experience a completely rebalanced (more like UNbalanced, amirite?) experience from level 1 to level 20!

How Do Loot Tables Work?

Uh, it's complicated. But long story short: we have a very scaleable and flexible system which will allow us to do all of the following very easily:

• Add new items automatically to the drop tables of regular enemies;
  
• Do special drops during Quests or Events;
  
• Segment enemies from Faction (Ducan, Kami, Timekeeper);
  
• Drop specific loot from specific enemies (yes, Bosses will have their own loot that you can focus-farm);
  
• ...and more!
  

If you want to get to the real nerd details of how loot works, you can check it out on our Dev Wiki.

But tl:dr for the normal human beings:

• item quality is based on content level, NOT Hunter level;
  
• regular enemies and containers will drop stuff at below their level;
  
• elite enemies, champions, bosses and chests can drop stuff above their level;
  
• this means that content that is of higher level and higher difficulty yields better loot;
  

How Many Items Are There?

Just a few, but considering how early we are in development, it's a TON!

Some new Rare Gear pieces that we worked on this week

This build will go live with 78 Gear Bases and 42 Weapon Bases. We call them "Bases" because when they drop they are randomized with different stats and affixes, and every affix has different rolls.

There are currently 30 Gear Affixes that can roll depending on the type of Gear. We are still working on Weapon affixes, so they will not be on this build.

All affixes are currently very simple and straightforward stat boosts, but we have a very powerful system that allows us to create more interesting and complex affixes - these will come as soon as we wrap up the basics of the RPG layer of the game!

Gear Score Might Surprise You

You will also notice that we have Gear Score on the Hunter Screen. You may have seen this in multiple other loot-based games in the past. But ours is a bit different. Here's why:

As you climb to higher Gear Score Ranks (you can check your progress by hovering your cursor on the Gear Score indicator), you actually unlock extremely important advantages for your Hunter.

Gear Score Rank borders: Crude, Common I, Common II, Uncommon I, Uncommon II, Uncommon III, Rare I, Rare II, Rare III, Rare VI

First of all, you get a massive bonus to all types of Attack and Defense;

Second of all, you get a character portrait border (pictured above) that indicates how much of a badass you really are;

Last but not least, you get a visual upgrade to your character to reflect that they are better equipped. Since we could not afford to make every single item change your visual appearance, we thought this would be a good way to still have your looks progressing as your gear gets more powerful! (Keep in mind that this feature is still not present on the current Steam build, ok?)


Exciting things, of course!

Our current focus in on making the game look prettier, because GDC is coming up and we need a new trailer. We love our Kickstarter trailer, but it's almost 18 months old now and the game is already looking much, much better!

But first, let's talk about something super, SUPER cool:

New Team Members!

The most attentive of you might have seen it announced on social networks last week, but our little family has grown! We have just hired five new team members and we are now 14!



But actually, this is the start of our vision for Live Ops in Relic Hunters Legend where we will have multiple different teams taking turns to deliver new content and features.

Rogue Snail is now actually TWO teams, a big one and a small one: Team Voyager (led by me) and Team Juno (led by Eli)!

Next year Team Juno will join us in Relic Hunters Legend, but in 2019 they are working a new, unannounced Relic Hunters project for mobile. We hope to talk about it (very) soon, but keep two things in mind: One, it's going to be awesome! And two, it is NOT taking any resources away from the Legend team - this is a government investment that we got to make a brand-new mobile game!



Wanna talk about loot? Have burning doubts that need to be answered? Wanna know how deep the item system will go? Endgame? Come hang out with me on today's Special Livestream, starting today at 11 AM PST. Don't miss it!

Cheers,

~Mark

Hey Hunters,

How's it going? Hope you're having a stellar 2019 so far!

We've been a bit quiet during the first couple of weeks of the year, so thank you for your patience. It was time for us to onboard our new team members, review the state of the project, and set new goals with a new strategy.

Let's Speed Things Up!

It is no secret to anyone that we are taking a lot longer than we originally planned to release the Alpha (and consequently the Beta as well!). When the game was funded in late 2017, we believed we would have the Alpha around August 2018 and the Beta at the start of 2019.



And here we are with still no Alpha! :O

We've been super busy though - just take a look at this extensive list of everything that we got done in 2018. What happened is just that we underestimated how much work was actually involved in making this sort of mini-MMORPG.

Thanks to our super fans that backed us on Kickstarter and are supporting us with the Founders program, we still have funds available to complete the Beta, so don't worry about that. We have to speed up, though!

Here are the new year resolutions that we made to speed up the development:

• Increase the team size significantly (from 9 to 15) in the following months;
  
  
• Focus on core features of the game such as loot, progression and skills;
  
  
• Hold back on quality-of-life features and overall polish until the core stuff is done;
  
  
• Don't worry too much about providing tutorials/information to players until the core stuff is done;
  
  
• Leave minor bugs such as visual issues and things that don't compromise gameplay until the core stuff is done;
  

The GDC Loot Build

The trial by fire of our new development mentality will be to deliver a great build of the game for the Game Developers Conference that will take place in San Francisco during the second half of March.

We're calling it the "GDC Loot Build". It will feature all of the loot mechanics that we planned for the Alpha: item drops from Crude, Common, Uncommon and Rare rarities, including gear and weapons, for a total of about 100 items (each with different random rolls when they are dropped)!

Raff is checking out her Crude shoes. Not terribly impressive.

This is by far the most anticipated and requested feature of the game, and it is bound to change how the game plays and feels, so we are focusing 100% on that.

We've been promising loot drops for a LONG time now, I know. But this time I am confident that we're going to deliver it. We have properly estimated and detailed the work involved, using charts and numbers like adults.

We know we haven't been delivering things at the dates we've estimated them, and it can be very frustrating for you, our supporters and most important costumers. We don't take this lightly, and we are actively trying to improve.

Thanks for the encouragement and understanding that you've shown so far - we want to be worthy of it!



So what is changing for our Beta plans?

With our (very) delayed Alpha, our proper Beta phase won't start until the end of 2019, with a significant risk of slipping to 2020!

Since there are people who have supported us on the Beta tier ($20) since 2017 and still haven't had a chance to play the game during development, we think it would be unfair and unreasonable to make these people wait that long.

So here's our new commitment to you: all Founders and Kickstarter backers who purchased Beta access will have their Steam keys no later than June.

We expect to be in Alpha still by June, but it doesn't matter. At that point, Alpha backers will have had the game for a year and a half, so it's not fair to make the other supporters wait any longer.

An influx of new players will be healthy for the community, so I think everybody wins with this decision.



We are currently working on a build that have pretty much all of the item systems but still no loot drop systems. What this means is that we are going to populate your inventory with a lot of loot of different rarities, and as you level up you will be able to equip them.

This will allow us to test the inventory screen and the overall workings of items. Even though there is no loot system, the items that will be on your inventory will be randomly generated with unique affixes and rolls, since that system is already done.

This is the first major step towards full item progression, and I hope you're as excited to see it as we are!

If you have Alpha access, expect to see this update next Friday (January 25th).

And don't forget to join our community on our Official Discord Channel and follow us in our medias to stay updated on everything we're doing!
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Cheers,

~Mark

Hey hunters!

We are on the home straight of 2018 and this year was incredible for us. How was it for you?

This year was full of changes in our team and especially on the development of Relic Hunters Legend! We are very close to wrapping up all the features that we promised for our Alpha release.

How about checking out a recap of everything we did in 2018? ːsteamhappyː

Click here, and check the things we did this year!



Just like in 2017, we have a planned preview of what's to come for next year. I'll debut it today on our livestream, at 11AM PT / 2PM ET / 5PM BRT.

So come join me as I go through a brief recap of what went down in 2018, and what are we aiming for 2019!

Cheers,

~ Mark Venturelli

Hey Hunters,

I hope you've been excellent to each other!

We are finally at the end of the year. 2018 has been such a great year for us, thanks in no small part to your support and how you allowed us to make our dream game, full-time!

Even though we are a bit disappointed that our Alpha is still not done, we got a LOT of stuff in the game, and implemented some major systems that will be used for many years to come. Just skimming through these last 50 weeks of development updates fills my heart with pride for my team and this community :)

Lucy, our Community Manager, compiled all of the major features we developed in 2018 into a neat Recap email that should be going out tomorrow for all of you who are subscribed to our Newsletter.

(You can subscribe to it on our website, it's very quickly and we sometimes send exclusive content through it, so don't miss it!)

Inventory Screen Progress

If you've been following closely, you know that we are laser-focused on delivering Loot to the game, and everything related to it. For the last couple of weeks, we've been working on our Inventory screen. It is coming along nicely, and include things such as the characters' capes and scarves moving around when you move your cursor:

woosh goes the cape, yay!

The behind-the-scenes engineering work is pretty much done, and we are now working on making it pretty and giving it all the little details and juiciness it needs. We believe that Inventory management is one of the most important parts of Loot-based games, so it must be as fun, smooth and fluid as the combat and movement.

Items and Affixes

We also worked on the "Affixes" system for our items. It is not 100% complete, and sadly won't be for the next build, but it is getting there. For now, you will be able to equip items with basic effects such as "increased Life" or "increased Precision Damage".

The system IS very powerful though, and will allow for much more interesting and intricate item effects in the very near future!

If you want to know more about item Rarity, Affixes and such, go check out our previous update about them.

Betu and Pedro have been working on the items themselves: lore, descriptions, and, of course, icons!

Here is a preview of some of the gear that Betu has designed:
some pieces of Loot of Crude and Common rarities

The new build should be coming this weekend for those who are Alpha tier Founders or higher.

What's coming in 2019?

Just like in 2017, we have a planned preview of what's to come for next year. We will debut it on tomorrow's livestream, so come join me as I go through a brief recap of what went down in 2018, and what are we aiming for 2019!

That was a lot of numbers on a single paragraph, sheesh.

TL:DR Livestream tomorrow, 11 AM Pacific Time / 2 PM Eastern Time, come check out what we have cooking for next year!

http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters

And don't forget to join our community on our Official Discord Channel and follow us in our medias to stay updated on everything we're doing!
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Cheers,

~Mark

Hey Hunters,

How have you been? On the month of November we at Rogue Snail have been hard at work on the Item System. It has been a lot of work (like, a LOT), but it's so rewarding! For many of us here, working on a loot-based game was a childhood dream - and it is finally coming true! We are SO close!


After months and literally dozens of iterations, we have finally settled on the (for now) final version of our Hunter Screen, where you will view your character's equipped items, and all the sweet loot you just dropped. Here it is:

Huzzah!

The Destiny UI influence is still very obvious, but I think we finally hit a point where it fits our game perfectly, and has its own flavor and identity. We wanted something sleek and cool that would work the same way regardless of your screen (4:3, Widescreen, Ultrawide) and input device (mouse+keyboard, gamepad, touchscreen), that showed all the important information at a glance with no sub-screens, and allowed you to view and equip items with a single click.



There are 6 Gear Slots on the left side, as well as 2 Weapon Slots (Primary and Seconday) and 2 Relic Slots (Relic Weapon and Relic Gear) on the right.

As we explained on update #51, each Hunter will have different Types of Gear that they can equip on each Slot. Here is the current list for each of the 4 Hunters on the Alpha:

Jimmy: Light Clothes, Heavy Shields, Gloves, Medal, Shoes, Potion

Pinkyy: Heavy Clothes, Armor, Gadget, Medal, Boots, Potion

Ace: Light Clothes, Light Shields, Gadget, Accessory, Shoes, Potion

Raff: Heavy Clothes, Light Shields, Sash, Accessory, Shoes, Potion

Even though there is overlap in some Slots, we want every single Hunter to have a unique combination of item Types that they can equip. You can re-use Gear between Hunters, but not the entire build!

You can K.O. a Ducan and get their nice shirts. It's a thing.



Those little squares on the side of the slots are your Backpack. Each Slot will have a capacity for 12 items. We know it is not much, but the Backpack is meant as a "quick access" for your most-used items, or recently-dropped ones.

At any time (or when your Backpack is full) you can send items to your Vault - that is your bigger, long-term storage. We still have to decide how big the Vault will be, and we will do so over time with the help of our Founders.

We understand that Vault space is a very contentious subject in looter games, so we are giving it serious thought and we have come up with some guidelines:

How will we decide on available Vault space?

a) Vault space costs real money to us. Increasing item carrying capacity means that server costs go up for every single player account. In every system in Relic Hunters we try to design things smartly, with low server costs in mind. Money saved in server costs means that we need to make less money to support the game, which means less need for aggressive monetization. By saving costs we can be more generous.

b) Begginers need less Vault space than veterans. When you are just starting out, having a lot of storage space is pretty much meaningless - a luxury at best. But later in the game, when you are trying to make a profit with Trade or chasing for that perfect roll, it can be vital. Also, in every free-to-play game, the majority of accounts are "noob" accounts that never get into the endgame. So we will surely implement a system that gives you VERY limited inventory space when you start out, but allows you to unlock (for free) more space as you progress in the game. It is a great way of saving costs for us, with no cost to our players.

c) Really big Vault space will have to be purchased with premium currency. At the end of the day, if you want to have a lot of space, you will have to invest premium currency. This does not mean you have to pay real money, though. We are very serious about making everything achievable for free, so you will be able to Trade for premium currency and get that Vault space you want, if you put in the time.



We are working extra hours these days to try and complete the next build for next Friday (30th). It is still a bit risky, so we might be delayed. We appreciate your patience, as we are doing the best we can.

The build will feature the new Hunter screen, complete with some pre-rolled items for you to play around with.

This build will NOT feature loot drops yet, though - that is the next milestone that we will work towards!



Meanwhile, Mari has been working on the new environment that will be available on the Galyno Desert Region: The Kami caverns! These will feature many mushrooms, old Ducan equipment, and the mysterious ruins of an old city skyline. Take a peek:

Mushrooms bonanza!

Concept art for our new 3D tilesets!

Can't wait to fight some Kami in there, leaping from building to mushrooms!

The year is almost over, but we want to deliver cool things before Christmas, fingers crossed! 2019 will be the year of Relic Hunters!

Join our community on our Official Discord Channel and don't forget to follow us in our medias!
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Cheers,

~Mark
Game Designer of Rogue Snail