Devlog #29 - Quality AND Quantity

Hello high quality gamers!

I'm back to completely overwhelm you with a huge dump of bug fixes, quality of life changes and balance improvements that are coming in the 0.8 update! I hope you like lists!

Quality of Life

• [Shadow Strike] now always attacks directly behind the player
• Pressing ESC while the Run Info Panel is open now closes it and the pause menu (instead of leaving the Run Info Panel open with the game running behind it!)
• We've added a setting to lock the speed of the music on higher game speeds (no more nightcore music on 2x speed!)

The Combat Stat Panel has seen a few improvements!

• The Combat Stat Panel no longer overlaps with the left lane! (We already told you that but it's worth repeating because so many people requested it)
• We've added Experience Multiplier to the panel
• We've added a small text popup whenever a stat is increased or decreased by any source

• Massively increased the maximum zoom distance on the talent tree

Balance

• Skelebobs have lower base movement speed, but increase in movement speed whenever they resurrect 
• Skelebobs resurrect slightly faster than they did before

Knockback power is a stat that has always felt weaker than it actually is. By reducing the base Knockback of all characters we'll give everyone more of a reason to drop a few points in it and really feel the impact of the difference between 0.2 and 0.4 knockback!

• Added an absolute maximum Knockback power of 1.0
• Archer base Knockback reduced to 0.2
• Wizard base Knockback reduced to 0.1
• Warrior base Knockback reduced to 0.2
• Summoner base Knockback reduced to 0.1

Speaking of the Summoner, we've added some fundamental changes to try and move away from the W-A-S-D cycling playstyle that slowly filling the screen with snails encourages.

• All summons (Basic Attacks and Abilities) now die when they reach the edge of the lane
• Base Basic Attack projectile speed (Snail speed) heavily increased
• Base Attack Speed increased to 1.25
• Summoner Mana reduced to 20

We've seen several reports of players being forced into an epic talent they don't want early in the run (looking at you Blood Pact!). We also feel like the early arrival of Epic Talents are having too much impact on run outcomes.

• Epic Talents only appear above a certain height on the tree
• Epic Talents now have a minimum distance between each other

Right now it's almost trivial to fill up your ability bar, we want Abilities to feel a little more special and like something worth chasing after.

• Ability Talents have a greatly reduced probability of appearing on the tree

Bug Fixes

• Added a small internal cooldown to [Untamed Knowledge] to fix the infinite spawning of experience gems when it is combined with [Knowledge is Power]
• [Hemomancy] no longer resets the combo meter
• [Blood Pact] no longer leaves you with 5 invisible current health for the day it removes it
• Enemies can no longer spawn from the same spawn points (meaning two enemies exactly on top of each other)
• Mega Blobs always spawn the Lil Blobs a set distance apart from each other, meaning they are far less likely to be killed in a single attack
• Magical Hats now only purchases talents a certain distance away from itself
• Shields on enemies with the Blessed trait no longer overlap other enemies
• T Pieces should now always display correctly on the talent tree

Many of these changes come from community suggestions - so we're really thankful for all of the feedback and requests on our Discord. Looking forward to talking to you next time about our final new feature of 0.8!