The Player Progression Update is here!
Hello everyone! This is our biggest update yet and marks a turning point in the game's development. This is Part 1 of the game's Progression systems - introducing the inital setup of the player's long term game flow and progression. Part 2 will come next - the Villager progression update that is focused on letting the world inhabitants keep up with you. Once both Progression Systems are in place, players will finally get a really good feel of how the game will play like when it reaches V1.0. The next updates will then primarily involve filling in the remaining feature and content gaps.
This is such a big update that was truly tough to finish within these last three months - we admittedly got a bit too ambitious this time. We do apologize if there are some imbalances due to not having enough testing time. In particular, there may be some issues regarding game pacing. We actually intend to have another small update next week to introduce some more balance tweaks and performance improvements. Your feedback will be especially helpful!
For Custom Games, the Portal now has multiple levels starting from Level 1 up to Level 8. New Powers are permanently unlocked each time you upgrade the Portal to the next level. You spend Spirit Energy to upgrade the Portal and it takes multiple hours to complete. We've linked Archetype-relevant Powers to specific Portal levels. This allows us to have a better control in keeping the different Archetype playstyles intact and also better manage their pacing.
For Custom Worlds, the new victory condition is simply to upgrade the Portal to Level 8. Since there are different ways of obtaining Spirit Energy, this is intended to make the player less focused on eliminating Villagers and allows us to develop the game further towards providing the player a variety of creative approaches.
Mana has now been reworked to be a capped resource that automatically regenerates every hour. It is used for casting Spells, Afflictions and Abilities, as well as for summoning Parties and building Structures. There is a maximum capacity for Mana so it serves to limit the player from spamming Powers. There is a new Demonic Structure called Mana Pit that increases Mana capacity and hourly regen. Upgraded Powers cost more Mana so be sure to build enough Mana Pits to keep up.
Chaotic Energy is a new player resource used to upgrade Powers and unlock improvements for various Demonic Structures. The Biolab, for example, now also uses Chaotic Energy for upgrading your Plague instead of the previous separate Plague Points resource.
You gain Chaotic Energy from Chaos Orbs, which are produced from different interactions with the world. For example, using Trigger Flaw will produce one Chaos Orb immediately, and then if the target successfully completes the associated action, it will produce two more Chaos Orbs.
Chaotic Energy is intended to promote interactions with the world. We reward the player for performing various activities with Chaos Orbs which they can then subsequently use to obtain new Powers or improve existing ones. How Chaos Orbs are produced is probably the mechanic that would need a ton of tweaks and balances over the course of development as it is particularly prone to becoming either a major blocker for some players or easily exploitable by others (depending on certain situations).
Spirit Energy is another new player resource used to upgrade the player's Portal. It's the rarest and most essential resource to achieve the Custom Game's new win condition.
For now, you also obtain Spirit Energy from Chaos Orbs but this is only temporary. We will eventually separate Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy sources in a future update.
You only get Powers relevant to your chosen Archetype when upgrading the Portal. The Unleash feature was introduced to give the player access to limited charges of other Powers including those from the other Archetypes. These cost a small amount of Chaotic Energy.
When obtaining Bonus Charges for Demonic Structures, note that it will not increase your max capacity for that Structure type, so if you have built 2 Kennel Capacity and 2 Bonus Charge Kennels, the first 2 Kennels that will be destroyed are counted as the Bonus Charge Kennels and cannot be rebuilt.
Demonic Structures no longer take up an entire tile area and you can no longer build them anywhere you want. All your Structures will have to be built expanding outwards from the Portal. Once built, a new Demonic Structure will corrupt all tiles around it, allowing you to further build adjacent to it. You may also corrupt individual tiles manually as long as it's already adjacent to a corrupted tile. This costs a small amount of Chaotic Energy. You can also build Walls on corrupted tiles.
We will introduce some more means for players to customize and decorate their base later but since Ruinarch is more about interacting with the generated world, we do not intend for players to spend too much time fiddling around or defending their base.
Spawning monsters have been significantly reworked. Instead of spawning one at a time, you must form a party of them and then summon them anywhere in the wilderness. You can no longer summon these monsters directly inside a Villager or any other structure. We initially wanted them to spawn from the Portal but the travel time can be really frustrating, especially on larger maps.
You spawn Raid Parties using the Maraud. These Raid Parties will harass Villages - destroying random objects and attacking Villagers. Their primary purpose is to produce Chaos Orbs and just simply disrupt the Village a little. Party members will continually produce Chaos Orbs as they deal damage in the target Village. A Raid Party requires a Lesser Demon to lead it.
The Prism is a defensive structure that allows you to spawn a Defense Party that will patrol around it. These Defense Parties are unique as they do not need a Lesser Demon party leader and they automatically spawn on the Prism rather than the player choosing the spot where to summon them.
Summoning monster parties cost Mana.
Snatching has also been reworked. A Snatch Party must be created from your Kennel or Prison to snatch a Monster or Villager. A Snatch Party also requires a Lesser Demon to lead it.
Instead of breeding monsters through the Kennel, the Kennel increases your capacity to spawn the captured monster type by 3. You then consume these charges whenever you add them to a Party. It takes time for a Kennel to regenerate its consumed capacity so you may end up defenseless if you use them all up and they get wiped out all at once.
The Defiler structure has been removed and its use has been added to the Prison. So now you can either Torture or Brainwash an imprisoned Villager inside the Prison. You can also drain their Spirit. This will slowly kill them while producing Chaos Orbs. You may also produce a Blackmail Intel which can then be used as a Blackmail material for your Schemes targeting someone close to your prisoner.
You can still use Seize Villager and Seize Monster to simply take your targets directly to these structures but note that these Abilities are now unlocked on higher Portal Levels. Some Archetypes do not even have access to either of them so you can only obtain limited charges of them through the Unleash system.
Crypts and Imp Huts are like Kennels but they produce up to 3 charges of Skeletons and Imps, respectively. The Lich has access to a Crypt from the start so that they'll have Skeletons to defend the base. The Puppetmaster has access to Imp Huts. The Ravager has immediate access to both!
The Spire allows you to upgrade your Spells, Afflictions and Abilities. We've already implemented some significant improvements to Afflictions as you level them up. As a result, some Afflictions have become noticeably weaker in their base Level 1 versions, but their Level 4 versions are now mostly much more interesting and powerful than before.
Spells and Abilities upgrades are a bit boring in comparison but we intend to do some improvements on them in a future update.
The Eye has been renamed to Beholder. Instead of logging Notifications and Intel for the entire map, a Beholder now gives the player only 3 Eye charges. These Eyes must be spawned in an unoccupied tile and they can only gather Notifications and Intel for a small square area around them. Please note that you may unsummon an Eye to spawn it somewhere else. You would need multiple Beholders to spawn more Eyes.
The monsters you breed will now mainly behave based on what type of Party they were spawned in. All monsters spawned in a Defense Party will patrol or defend around it. All monsters spawned in a Raid Party will go to the target Village and attack objects and villagers there. All monsters spawned in a Snatch Party will assist in abducting the target Villager or Monster.
However, as part of that party, monsters still have some behavioral differences based on their Monster Type. A Tank monster may taunt hostiles, a Healer can heal partymates, a Snatcher has a higher rate of knocking out its target, etc. Note that these only take effect when these monsters are part of your summoned parties. Their Wild Monster behaviors are still the same as before.
Characters now have Resistance values to the various elements in the game. These Resistances reduce the damage they take. Piercing negates a target's Resistance. A 100 Fire Damage Spell with 100% Piercing will deal 80 total damage to a character with 120% Fire Resistance. In addition, there are Resistances that may prevent your Powers from succeeding. For example, a Villager's Physical Resistance increases the chance that a Seize Villager ability targeting it will fail.
At this point, you can pretty much disregard Piercing and Resistances as the Villagers will only start gaining Resistance on the upcoming Villager Progression update.
This is a replacement to the Threat Meter. We want players to have more freedom to do more things in the world so we're moving away from having increased threat from every single thing the player does. The main purpose of Retaliation is to discourage the player from too much destruction and killing. At a certain point in the game, the player would be powerful enough that they can probably easily kill Villagers, especially now while the Villager Progression is not yet in place - and while that is a fun thing to do from time to time, it's not quite what Ruinarch is about.
For the new Retaliation mechanic, we have a few specific events that may increase the player's perceived threat:
Whenever any of these events occur, there is a small chance that the Retaliation Counter would increase by 1. Divine Retribution will now occur when the Retaliation Counter reaches 5. The Angels will now zero in on destroying demonic structures, often disregarding your defenses unless taunted - so you have to eliminate them quickly. The number of Angels would increase each time a Divine Retribution occurs.
This is also another feature that probably needs some further tweaks so expect us to have some changes in how the counter increases over the next few updates.
World Map tiles have been removed. Biomes and Cave structures are now no longer limited to square areas and should therefore look more natural.
The player can now store Characters and Objects in a new Targets List. This allows the player to quickly navigate to those they deem important. The Targets List will also be used to instruct your monster parties. For example, you can send a Snatch Party to abduct a Villager or Monster in your Targets List.
A new Bookmark widget has been added below the Game Speed buttons. This section will display various important events. All your stored Targets will also be visible here so you can navigate to them quickly by clicking on their Bookmark entry.
We have removed the previous Tutorial stage and replaced it with a much simpler Tutorial Menu with subcategories detailing different features of the game. The players can access at anytime in the game. This will make it easier for us to keep on adding more Tutorials without having to make players go through a lengthy Tutorial Stage.
Scenarios have also been reworked to fit the new systems. We tried to keep it as similar to what they were as possible while still integrating the new mechanics. The intent is for Custom Worlds to be for long games while Scenarios are for shorter playthroughs:
We didn't have enough time to seriously playtest these scenarios yet so we do expect some imbalances. We'd include some tweaks on our small update next week!
Please note that now that we're finally putting in most of the major features into the game, our development focus will go further and further into Custom, as this is where we intend the game's replayability to be at.
This is such a big update that was truly tough to finish within these last three months - we admittedly got a bit too ambitious this time. We do apologize if there are some imbalances due to not having enough testing time. In particular, there may be some issues regarding game pacing. We actually intend to have another small update next week to introduce some more balance tweaks and performance improvements. Your feedback will be especially helpful!
Upgrade Portal
For Custom Games, the Portal now has multiple levels starting from Level 1 up to Level 8. New Powers are permanently unlocked each time you upgrade the Portal to the next level. You spend Spirit Energy to upgrade the Portal and it takes multiple hours to complete. We've linked Archetype-relevant Powers to specific Portal levels. This allows us to have a better control in keeping the different Archetype playstyles intact and also better manage their pacing.
New Victory Condition
For Custom Worlds, the new victory condition is simply to upgrade the Portal to Level 8. Since there are different ways of obtaining Spirit Energy, this is intended to make the player less focused on eliminating Villagers and allows us to develop the game further towards providing the player a variety of creative approaches.
Mana
Mana has now been reworked to be a capped resource that automatically regenerates every hour. It is used for casting Spells, Afflictions and Abilities, as well as for summoning Parties and building Structures. There is a maximum capacity for Mana so it serves to limit the player from spamming Powers. There is a new Demonic Structure called Mana Pit that increases Mana capacity and hourly regen. Upgraded Powers cost more Mana so be sure to build enough Mana Pits to keep up.
Chaotic Energy
Chaotic Energy is a new player resource used to upgrade Powers and unlock improvements for various Demonic Structures. The Biolab, for example, now also uses Chaotic Energy for upgrading your Plague instead of the previous separate Plague Points resource.
You gain Chaotic Energy from Chaos Orbs, which are produced from different interactions with the world. For example, using Trigger Flaw will produce one Chaos Orb immediately, and then if the target successfully completes the associated action, it will produce two more Chaos Orbs.
Chaotic Energy is intended to promote interactions with the world. We reward the player for performing various activities with Chaos Orbs which they can then subsequently use to obtain new Powers or improve existing ones. How Chaos Orbs are produced is probably the mechanic that would need a ton of tweaks and balances over the course of development as it is particularly prone to becoming either a major blocker for some players or easily exploitable by others (depending on certain situations).
Spirit Energy
Spirit Energy is another new player resource used to upgrade the player's Portal. It's the rarest and most essential resource to achieve the Custom Game's new win condition.
For now, you also obtain Spirit Energy from Chaos Orbs but this is only temporary. We will eventually separate Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy sources in a future update.
Unleash Bonus Charges
You only get Powers relevant to your chosen Archetype when upgrading the Portal. The Unleash feature was introduced to give the player access to limited charges of other Powers including those from the other Archetypes. These cost a small amount of Chaotic Energy.
When obtaining Bonus Charges for Demonic Structures, note that it will not increase your max capacity for that Structure type, so if you have built 2 Kennel Capacity and 2 Bonus Charge Kennels, the first 2 Kennels that will be destroyed are counted as the Bonus Charge Kennels and cannot be rebuilt.
Base Building
Demonic Structures no longer take up an entire tile area and you can no longer build them anywhere you want. All your Structures will have to be built expanding outwards from the Portal. Once built, a new Demonic Structure will corrupt all tiles around it, allowing you to further build adjacent to it. You may also corrupt individual tiles manually as long as it's already adjacent to a corrupted tile. This costs a small amount of Chaotic Energy. You can also build Walls on corrupted tiles.
We will introduce some more means for players to customize and decorate their base later but since Ruinarch is more about interacting with the generated world, we do not intend for players to spend too much time fiddling around or defending their base.
Maraud and Prism
Spawning monsters have been significantly reworked. Instead of spawning one at a time, you must form a party of them and then summon them anywhere in the wilderness. You can no longer summon these monsters directly inside a Villager or any other structure. We initially wanted them to spawn from the Portal but the travel time can be really frustrating, especially on larger maps.
You spawn Raid Parties using the Maraud. These Raid Parties will harass Villages - destroying random objects and attacking Villagers. Their primary purpose is to produce Chaos Orbs and just simply disrupt the Village a little. Party members will continually produce Chaos Orbs as they deal damage in the target Village. A Raid Party requires a Lesser Demon to lead it.
The Prism is a defensive structure that allows you to spawn a Defense Party that will patrol around it. These Defense Parties are unique as they do not need a Lesser Demon party leader and they automatically spawn on the Prism rather than the player choosing the spot where to summon them.
Summoning monster parties cost Mana.
Kennel and Prison
Snatching has also been reworked. A Snatch Party must be created from your Kennel or Prison to snatch a Monster or Villager. A Snatch Party also requires a Lesser Demon to lead it.
Instead of breeding monsters through the Kennel, the Kennel increases your capacity to spawn the captured monster type by 3. You then consume these charges whenever you add them to a Party. It takes time for a Kennel to regenerate its consumed capacity so you may end up defenseless if you use them all up and they get wiped out all at once.
The Defiler structure has been removed and its use has been added to the Prison. So now you can either Torture or Brainwash an imprisoned Villager inside the Prison. You can also drain their Spirit. This will slowly kill them while producing Chaos Orbs. You may also produce a Blackmail Intel which can then be used as a Blackmail material for your Schemes targeting someone close to your prisoner.
You can still use Seize Villager and Seize Monster to simply take your targets directly to these structures but note that these Abilities are now unlocked on higher Portal Levels. Some Archetypes do not even have access to either of them so you can only obtain limited charges of them through the Unleash system.
Crypt and Imp Hut
Crypts and Imp Huts are like Kennels but they produce up to 3 charges of Skeletons and Imps, respectively. The Lich has access to a Crypt from the start so that they'll have Skeletons to defend the base. The Puppetmaster has access to Imp Huts. The Ravager has immediate access to both!
The Spire
The Spire allows you to upgrade your Spells, Afflictions and Abilities. We've already implemented some significant improvements to Afflictions as you level them up. As a result, some Afflictions have become noticeably weaker in their base Level 1 versions, but their Level 4 versions are now mostly much more interesting and powerful than before.
Spells and Abilities upgrades are a bit boring in comparison but we intend to do some improvements on them in a future update.
Beholder
The Eye has been renamed to Beholder. Instead of logging Notifications and Intel for the entire map, a Beholder now gives the player only 3 Eye charges. These Eyes must be spawned in an unoccupied tile and they can only gather Notifications and Intel for a small square area around them. Please note that you may unsummon an Eye to spawn it somewhere else. You would need multiple Beholders to spawn more Eyes.
Minion Combat Behavior
The monsters you breed will now mainly behave based on what type of Party they were spawned in. All monsters spawned in a Defense Party will patrol or defend around it. All monsters spawned in a Raid Party will go to the target Village and attack objects and villagers there. All monsters spawned in a Snatch Party will assist in abducting the target Villager or Monster.
However, as part of that party, monsters still have some behavioral differences based on their Monster Type. A Tank monster may taunt hostiles, a Healer can heal partymates, a Snatcher has a higher rate of knocking out its target, etc. Note that these only take effect when these monsters are part of your summoned parties. Their Wild Monster behaviors are still the same as before.
Resistances and Piercing
Characters now have Resistance values to the various elements in the game. These Resistances reduce the damage they take. Piercing negates a target's Resistance. A 100 Fire Damage Spell with 100% Piercing will deal 80 total damage to a character with 120% Fire Resistance. In addition, there are Resistances that may prevent your Powers from succeeding. For example, a Villager's Physical Resistance increases the chance that a Seize Villager ability targeting it will fail.
At this point, you can pretty much disregard Piercing and Resistances as the Villagers will only start gaining Resistance on the upcoming Villager Progression update.
Retaliation Counter
This is a replacement to the Threat Meter. We want players to have more freedom to do more things in the world so we're moving away from having increased threat from every single thing the player does. The main purpose of Retaliation is to discourage the player from too much destruction and killing. At a certain point in the game, the player would be powerful enough that they can probably easily kill Villagers, especially now while the Villager Progression is not yet in place - and while that is a fun thing to do from time to time, it's not quite what Ruinarch is about.
For the new Retaliation mechanic, we have a few specific events that may increase the player's perceived threat:
- killing a Villager
- destroying Village structures
- removing or destroying resources from a Village town center
- a non-allied Villager discovers one of your demonic structures
Whenever any of these events occur, there is a small chance that the Retaliation Counter would increase by 1. Divine Retribution will now occur when the Retaliation Counter reaches 5. The Angels will now zero in on destroying demonic structures, often disregarding your defenses unless taunted - so you have to eliminate them quickly. The number of Angels would increase each time a Divine Retribution occurs.
This is also another feature that probably needs some further tweaks so expect us to have some changes in how the counter increases over the next few updates.
Updated World Generator
World Map tiles have been removed. Biomes and Cave structures are now no longer limited to square areas and should therefore look more natural.
Targets List
The player can now store Characters and Objects in a new Targets List. This allows the player to quickly navigate to those they deem important. The Targets List will also be used to instruct your monster parties. For example, you can send a Snatch Party to abduct a Villager or Monster in your Targets List.
Bookmark
A new Bookmark widget has been added below the Game Speed buttons. This section will display various important events. All your stored Targets will also be visible here so you can navigate to them quickly by clicking on their Bookmark entry.
Tutorial Menu
We have removed the previous Tutorial stage and replaced it with a much simpler Tutorial Menu with subcategories detailing different features of the game. The players can access at anytime in the game. This will make it easier for us to keep on adding more Tutorials without having to make players go through a lengthy Tutorial Stage.
Reworked Scenarios
Scenarios have also been reworked to fit the new systems. We tried to keep it as similar to what they were as possible while still integrating the new mechanics. The intent is for Custom Worlds to be for long games while Scenarios are for shorter playthroughs:
- the Victory Conditions and unique situations are still the same as before
- you still start off with a bigger loadout with optional slots
- but there is no Portal Upgrade so you don't unlock any new permanent powers and there is no Spirit Energy
- you can unlock bonus charges via the Portal Unlock and upgrade starting loadout via the Spire
- unlike in Custom, Mana costs do not increase when upgrading Power's level via the Spire
We didn't have enough time to seriously playtest these scenarios yet so we do expect some imbalances. We'd include some tweaks on our small update next week!
Please note that now that we're finally putting in most of the major features into the game, our development focus will go further and further into Custom, as this is where we intend the game's replayability to be at.
Other Tweaks
- Game time tick is now equivalent to 3 minutes instead of 5. This means that an hour will now last 20 ticks instead of 12.
- Induce Migration and Stifle Migration are now Abilities that is available to all Archetypes. Right-click on a Village Center to access this.
- Player must spend Chaotic Energy to unlock Villager and Faction information.
- Significantly reduced Triton appearance rate.
- Blessed is now included in Traits that can be targeted by the Psychopath.
- Biolab starts with all upgrades at zero.
- Biolab now unlocks Spawn Plagued Rats spell and Plague affliction.
- A new Spawn Necronomicon spell has been added. Available as part of the Lich's Upgrade Path.
- Damage and Heal popups will now show up when characters take damage.
- Toggle ALT to hide or show Villager names under their sprites. Stored Targets will still be shown even if this is Toggled off.
- Demonic Structures no longer receive damage from the player's Spells.
- Villagers in Icalawa are no longer Robust by default.
- Decreased starting max Village caps for Large and Extra Large Custom Maps. Reason: the longer game duration means fewer starting Villages and Factions that expand slowly over time is preferable.