Monster Sanctuary News

With E3 approaching and Hell Let Loose releasing on the 6th of June, it’s fair to say that Team17 has a very busy week ahead! In fact, next week we’ll be unveiling not just one but TWO BRAND NEW GAME ANNOUNCEMENTS!

You’re not going to want to miss these announcements, and we really can’t wait to share the trailers with you. To ensure that you’re the first to hear about these new games right here on Steam, make sure to follow the Team17 Publisher Page.

In the meantime, you can find a couple of cryptic clues in the image above, and if you hop over to the Team17 Twitter account, make your predictions, follow and re-tweet then you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win a copy of these two games, and Hell Let Loose, upon release!

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week!

Dear Steam Monster Keepers,

here's our monthly Progress Update for April! Here's what's been happening with Monster Sanctuary in April.

As of writing, the submission period for the second Community Monster Contest has ended. Once again, an astonishing amount of amazing Monsters have been entered to the contest! We are excited to see which Monsters will win the voting process this time. As last time, we as the developers of the game will also pick one Monster as our Dev Pick Monster to feature in the game.

From today until the 8th of May, "Monster Designer" backers (50€+) will be able to vote on which Monster they want to see in the game. We will reveal the winners shortly after. All of this is happening on our Discord server, which you may join by clicking on this link: Join us on Discord


A lot of dev time this month went towards fixing the bugs and issues our Beta Testers found in the beta release. We released two Beta Patches with many bug fixes, some new content and some rebalancing - the patch notes can be found here: Beta Patch 0.3.1 and Beta Patch 0.3.2. These will probably be the last patches to the Beta for a long while - look forward to the next test version when we get closer to the Early Access release of the game in late summer.

Here's a list of the things we've added to the game and the things we've changed:

• Added two new Monsters to the Beta: Raduga, a new Champion found in Ancient Woods, and Toxiquus, a new regular Monster in Stronghold Dungeon. As a Beta Backer, you may fight and conquer them now as well! Steam updates your Monster Sanctuary Beta automatically when you log on to Steam.
  
• Added a much-needed feature to the Beta: An options menu! Among other things, it includes volume settings, key bindings and a highly-requested feature: a combat speed option! You may set the speed of combat animations to 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5x and even 2.0x. This feature will be highly useful for all future testing of the game and it has already quite accelerated our own test runs of the game.
  
• Enemy leveling system has been revamped (changes also live on Beta now):
  
• Previously, enemy Monsters levels were based on the number of Champions the player had already defeated. This meant that wild Monster levels suddenly rose after beating a certain number of Champions, which penalized players who went directly for Champions, but also made the game quite easy if players skipped optional Champions. Especially since we're planning to make the exploration of the game more open, it seemed unnatural to bind enemy Monster levels to Champions. For instance, players could potentially explore 90% of Ancient Woods without fighting the Goblin King, then go back to Stronghold Dungeon and fight against severely under-leveled enemies.
  
• Instead, enemy leveling is based on exploration now. Whenever the player enters a room with a new Monster encounter in it, the enemy level is slightly raised. At certain thresholds, the enemy Monster levels rises one by one. A particular change with this new system is that wild Monsters will now stay at the level that they were originally encountered at (for instance, it'll be easy to farm Mountain Path Monsters for eggs now). Certain enemy encounters and areas will still have a minimum level.
  
• Lots of balance changes and bug fixes. You may find a complete list of them in the patch notes linked above (and found here on the Steam boards).
  

Dear Monster Keepers,

this is the second patch for the beta and includes a bit more changes this time.



Two new Monsters added
- Raduga, new Champion east most of Ancient Woods (a new room was added for him)
- Toxiquus, encountered in southern parts of Stronghold Dungeon
Also, monster distribution in Stronghold Dungeon and Ancient Woods was adjusted a bit



Options Menu added to the game
Includes Combat Animations Speed, Volume settings, Key Bindings for keyboard and Resolution settings. The game launcher dialogue got removed now.

Enemy encounter levels changed
Enemy levels are no longer raised when the Keeper rank increases, instead, after the first area (Mountain Path) the enemy encounter level increases based on how many rooms with monster encounters were discovered.
This gives a smoother progress instead of the previous difficulty spikes, independent of which areas the player explores first.
Also this way the player isn't incentivized to avoid Champion encounters. If loading an old savegame, the enemy levels will automatically adjust in the order the areas were explored in that savegame.

Combat ranking adjustments
The "Overkill Damage" rating in combat was renamed to "Overkill" and is now also increased by 1% for every buff one of the player monsters have at the end of combat, by 1% for every debuff an enemy had when killed
and by 3% for every poison or burn dot damage that was triggered on them.
This should make compositions that rely on dot damage be a bit more competitive now in regard to getting a good score.

Keeper Lancer rank
It is possible to reach the 'Keeper Lancer' rank now, which enables to buy a couple of +3 Equipment at the shop (Helmet/Wizard Hat/Impact Ring)

New Equipment
Added a new equipment 'Sun Pendant' (dropped by Raduga) that applies a shield to the wielder whenever receiving a buff

Balancing Changes

• 'Lifesteal' reduced to 15% from 20%
  
• 'Bite' lifesteal part reduced to (100 + 50% attack) from (100 + 100% attack)
  
• 'Mad Eye' base mana stat reduced to 4 from 6
  
• Druid Oak's 'Shielding Leaves' replaced with 'Soul Beam'
  
• 'Crit Damage Plus' skill node now increases critical damage by 20% instead of 15%
  
• 'Berry' and 'Grapes' now increase critical damage by 5%/7% instead of 4%/5%
  
• 'Flashfreeze' damage reduced to 75% from 100%
  
• 'Antipode' damage reduced to 125% from 150%
  
• 'Katana' critical damage part increased to 15%(+2% per upgrade) from 10%(+1% per upgrade)
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue that sometimes you weren't able to navigate between the teleporters in the map menu
  
• When evolving a monster that is following the player, it no longer stays in that form following the player
  
• Player can no longer become stuck in the goblin structure that leads to the northern parts with the Goblin King
  
• You can no longer place rocky/mushroom obstacles inside enemies to trap them
  
• Fixed Glowfly not being able to increase mana base stat above 10 (savegames that gained skillpoints this way will have the skills of glowfly resetted)
  

This is the last patch planned for the beta and we will focus on the new content for the planned Early Access launch in august. People still wanting to get onto the beta train can do so in our Paypal shop.

Balancing changes:
- Wild enemy monster's health scaling lowered a bit, especially the difficulty jump at level 10 shouldn't be as drastic now
- Enemy levels of the western part of blue caves reduced to 9 from 10. Specter's level reduced to 10 from 11.
- Frosty grant more 'Difficulty' score points now when fighting against them
- Fixed wild frosty being able to cast Ice storm even when below level 10
- Slightly increased the exp gained from enemies

Bugfixes:
- Fixed Monster Journal not being available when loading a demo save that completed the blue caves
- Fixed Camera being misplaced rarely in combat
- Fixed possibility to repeatedly evolve the same monster
- Fixed visual glitches occurring when casting Shield
- Fixed player able to land inside or on top of walls when using a vertical room transition
- Fixed bug when switching between actions while having buff info view open
- Fixed not being able to do the second jump while using monster flying ability
- Fixed not receiving exp rewards for all 6 enemies in keeper battles (you only got those for the last 3)
- Multi Barrier description fixed
- It is no longer possible to summon rock obstacle on spikes (and skip to Keeper's Stronghold early in the game with Crystal Shards)
- Fixed following monster possible to get stuck inside the ground in the magic barrier puzzle room in Ancient Woods
- Fixed Level 20 Badge icon
- Fixed possibility to display lore of hidden Monster Journal entries when changing page
- Fixed inability to load a savegame when the first three save slots are empty
- Fixed possibility to place the rock or mushroom inside enemies to prevent them from moving
- Fixed Restore lvl 3 not removing two debuffs
- Some text/typo fixes

We are eager to get your feedback, especially on the current difficulty of the game. After some first feedback, the enemy health scaling was slightly reduced. Also western Blue Caves are now more accessible at around lvl 9.
Its best to post it to our discord into the #feedback subchannel.

There is another bigger patch planned to be released in 2-3 weeks that will include a new Monster, a new Champion, probably the options menu and some more smaller changes/bugfixes.

Dear Monster Keepers,

the Backer Beta for Monster Sanctuary is now live. If you're a 25€+ backer, you will be sent an Email with a Steam Beta key to the Email address associated with your Kickstarter/Paypal account very soon. Please check your spam folder if the Email doesn't arrive soon.
If you wish to participate in the Beta, you can still become a late Backer on our Paypal shop.
The new areas added in the Beta are balanced for Lvl 10-12 Monsters. You may continue your save files from previous demo versions of the game, but if your Monsters are higher than Lvl 12, the new content will be very easy for you. We recommend starting a new save file to experience the modified starting areas.


We added following new content to the Beta:

• New story content that takes you through the Stronghold Dungeon & the Ancient Woods to uncover a terrible plot that threatens the Monster Sanctuary. The story content features three Keeper Battles and two new Champion Monsters. The new areas are larger than previous areas and offer a lot of optional rooms to discover + you may complete the new areas in any order you wish. The new areas are east of the Keepers' Stronghold.
  
• Thirteen new Monsters
  
• New area: Stronghold Dungeon
  
• New area: Ancient Woods
  
• New feature: Keeper Battles
  
• New feature: Monster Journal
  
• New feature: Monster Evolution (2 evolutions have been added to the game)
  
• New feature: Monster Renaming
  
• Monster explore abilities have been reworked
  
• Old areas have been modified with some new rooms
  

• Fungi mana base stat increased to 7 (from 5)
  
• Multi Poison additional stacks only have half effect
  
• Grummy mana base stat increased to 7 (from 6)
  
• Grummy now has "Purify" passive instead of Defense+
  
• Blob now has "Magic Proc" passive instead of Magic+
  
• Steam Golem now has "Tackle" attack instead of "Heavy Punch"
  
• "Improved Regeneration" now gives +10% healing to Regeneration buff (from +5% increased)
  
• All shielding actions now have a base value but reduced defense scaling
  
• All healing actions now have a base value but reduced magic scaling
  
• Health scaling for monsters modified (difference between low base health stats and high base health stats decreased)
  
• The amount by which mana is increased per level was raised slightly
  
• Defense - damage reduction scaling formula reduced
  
• Defense values of many accessories slightly reduced
  
• Critical Chance and Critical Damage values of equipment increased
  
• Some of the other equipment values and some skill values were modified
  
• Infinity Arena is available at 'Keeper Seeker' rank now and enemy monsters start at lvl 15
  
• Infinity Arena stacks damage boost increased to 30%.
  
• Infinity Arena rewards changed
  
• Reward Box Lvl1 contents changed, reduced amount of possible common equipment/egg drops
  
• Player jump physics are now a bit faster / less floaty
  
• Drop chances for rare rewards slightly increased and there is now a 33% chance to receive two rare rewards instead of one.
  
• Resurrected Monsters no longer get to act within the turn they were revived