Devlog #33 - Fresh Roots

Greetings Talented Gamers!

Time for another round of changes from the last couple of weeks of Talented Development. Here goes nothing...

Fresh Routes

Since moving Epic Talents deeper into the tree we've received a lot of feedback on navigation. The main points came through loud and clear:

• There are too many dead ends, leading to frustrating backtracking
• There's often no way to avoid expensive Epic Talents/Abilities - meaning you're forced to buy them even if you don't want them
• Epic Talents/Abilities that are in vision are often not as easy to navigate to as they appear. Very annoying!

We've had a crack at fixing all three of these issues with two new major system changes.

Re-Connection Pass

Once the Talent Tree is generated, we've added an additional pass that looks for areas that could be more connected than they are and injects some extra fun!

Before

After

In an average run this pass adds over 200 additional connections to the tree, so you should have wayyy more options to avoid unwanted Talents and get to those you're desperate to learn!

Talent Discovery

Starting in 0.9 you'll no longer be able to see all Epic Talents from the very start of the run. 

This system was an amazing prototype but it does have a few issues. Choosing an Epic Talent at the very start of the run can be overwhelming, especially as we expand the number of talents in each run through Talent Packages. Additionally it's a little misleading to suggest that starting your run by picking a specific talent and making a run for it is anything like good play. 

However, we're replacing it with something much better!

Starting in 0.9 if you're within 10 Talents of an Epic Talent or Ability it will be revealed.

Not only do you get a sweet popup whenever one is nearby, but a much larger area surrounding the talent is now shown, giving you even more hints on how to get it.

And finally...

New Roots

Another enemy is joining Talented, and this one is our Tankiest yet. Meet, the Tronk...

• The Tronk is a hard enemy (meaning he'll only have a chance to appear at level 15).
• He has a whopping 43 Base Health
• He regenerates health every few seconds
• He loses leaves as you deal damage to him, making him faster over time

Fun Fact: Applying Burning to the Tronk will stop him from healing!

I think that does it for this week! Looking forward to talking about some new Talents and a sizable reworks to some Warrior Talents next time.

Stay Talented