Talented 0.9.26 - Nature's Bounty

Greetings Talents one and all!

Update 0.9 is finally here and it's slamming some mad b-balls with an overwhelming about of content, re-balancing, bug fixes and quality of life additions. Let's dive in...

Two New Enemies

We've expanded the roster of bad guys with a couple of brand new faces.

Squishrooms take a break in the middle of the lane and buff the movement speed of surrounding enemies.

Tronks are our mega tank. Each hit they take makes them lose leaves which increases their speed. Watch out for their health regeneration if you don't finish them off in time.

Talent Tree Improvements

We've listened to your feedback on the talent tree and this update comes with a wealth of changes that should make the tree easier to navigate.

Epic Talents and Abilities appear 25% more often and lower down in the tree

Runs should be more diverse and spicier than ever!

Epic Talents and Abilities are revealed on the tree when you learn a nearby talent

It's now much easier to know when you're actually near an important talent on the tree. You can also easily keep track of where nearby Abilities are.

Additional connections have been added to the tree to reduce the number of dead-ends

More options all around and far less getting caught in an unexpected dead-end/death loop.

Post Run Screen

Whether it's a victory or defeat, the run end flow has been given a revamp. Stand atop the podium of victory or find out which pesky bad guy delivered the killing blow while you let the experience and unlocks roll in!

The stats screen gives you a more details breakdown of which Talents helped you the most and which enemies caused you the most trouble. We have tons more plans for this screen in the future, so watch this space.

New Class Features

Warrior and Summoner have both received some new toys this update to help give them a slightly more ways to win.

Decay causes enemies to lose health over time (much like Burn) and it's coming to a Summoner near you. When an enemy dies while Decay is applied it spreads to a nearby enemy in that lane. Better yet, Gravestones now apply Decay! We know you love Gravestones.

Warrior is gaining access to Health Regeneration to boost the tanky side of their class identity. We can't wait to see all the new builds shrugging off enemy attacks like they're nothing.

Additionally Warrior gains access to a brand new Talent supporting the new playstyle:

New Talent Packages

Each class is gaining a brand new pair of Talent Packages many of which focus in on an gameplay element which has received positive feedback from the community.

Archer will be collecting more loot than ever before, Wizard will be enhancing their Orb game even further, Warrior will find it easier to raise their combo level and Summoner will be stealing all the life they can get their hands on - and much, much more.

Enemies and Difficulty Scaling

As Talented's feature set has expanded it's slowly moved away from the pace of gameplay we originally intended. In the early versions of Talented days were short and more focused on surviving large barrages of enemies but over time the days have become longer and, especially in the early game, enemies can be a little thin on the ground.

• Night duration now scales over time, going from 30 seconds to 80 seconds through a run. The final night is now extra long at 120 seconds!
• Enemy Movement speed reduced by 35%
• Enemy Spawn Rate increased by 25% from Night 1
• All experience gained increased by 25%

All of these changes together should mean shorter nights in the early game without any lost experience (you should have the same number of Talent Points to spend). Additionally there should be more enemies on screen, making it even more important to think ahead and giving additional value to Abilities with small AoE or spreading effects.

• Enemies now have a weight category that affects the distance they are knocked back when hit
• Lorges, Mega Blobs and the new Tronks are Heavy, meaning they are only knocked back 50% of the normal distance
• Lil' Blobs, Crawleys, Monches and Flies are all Light, meaning they are knocked back twice as far as normal
• Gigantic Elites are knocked back 33% less than their normal distance, Speed enemies are knocked back 33% further

It always felt strange that giant Pumpkins would be knocked back half way across the screen with a single attack - no more! Additionally, this should make it slightly less punishing when a squishy enemy becomes slightly too tanky to be oneshot, as you can knock them back quite far.

• Enemies each have their own difficulty
• Additional enemy types can only be added to the run on certain nights
• An Easy enemy is always added on Night 2 and 5
• A Medium enemy is always added on Night 10
• A Hard enemy is always added on Night 15

The difficulty variance in runs was pretty insane in 0.8, and we want to address that by correctly categorizing enemies and making sure they are only added to runs when you're ready to fight them. Generally speaking you'll find Medium and Hard enemies to be much tankier than they were in previous versions, and some have received addition tweaks to their speed and abilities to give them the push they need.

Mastery Improvements

Last update we refactored a few of our Mastery bonuses to be difficulty increases each night instead of a big old boost to enemies on night 1. We're really happy with how that affected the balance of Mastery so we've expanded it even further!

• Longer Nights Mastery Penalties now increase the length of nights by 1 second per night (instead of adding a flat 10 seconds)
• Enemy Speed Mastery Penalties now increase enemy speed by 1% per night (instead of a flat 3%)
• Enemy Spawn Rare Mastery Penalties now increase enemy spawn rate by 3% per night (instead of a flat 15%)

Additionally, we've removed all Mastery Penalties that  add enemies to the pool and they've been replaced by Mastery Penalties that cause you to take 25% of your health at the start of each night. This should make it harder to tank your way through nights and adds increased values to defensive options on higher mastery. 

Class Balance

This update sees our largest rebalancing effort so far. We've targeted some of the biggest outliers in each class' arsenal and hit them with nerfs and buffs where necessary.

Note: There has been a general push towards lower base Attack Speed and lower base Attack Range. This gives us more room to give out buffs to those stats that feel impactful all the way through the game. (e.g. Less -0.01 time between attack reductions!)

Archer

• Attack Range reduced to 3 (from 3.5)
• Base Time Between Attacks increased to 1.0s (up from 0.7s)
• Chance for Attack Damage talents reduced by 5%
• Hail of Arrows now buffs 3 (up from 1)
• Hail of Arrows cooldown increased to 30s (from 15s)
• Bandage now restores all Health Points but has 1 charge (down from 3). It has also been renamed to "First Aid"
• Twinstrike now fires a second arrow every other attack (instead of every attack)
• Vortech Shrink-Ray Cooldown increased to 30 seconds (up from 10s)
• Maelstrom no longer grants Shot Speed and grants 25% Attack Speed instead
• Maelstron now buffs 4 attacks (down from 5)
• Brutal Bounty bonus Attack Damage reduced to 3 (from 5)

Wizard

• Attack Range reduced to 2.8 (from 3.25)
• Base Time Between Attacks increased to 1.0 (from 0.8)
• Fireball damage increased to 10 (from 5)
• Fireball Rank 2 damage increased to 15 (from 5)
• Cyclone base damage increased to 6 (from 2)
• Relentless Winds damage increased to 10 (from 6)
• Black Storm now halves the range of Cyclone, meaning Shocked enemies are inside Attack Range
• Flawless Execution duration increased to 3s (from 1s)
• Simple Interest now only requires 1 unspent Talent Point
• Burning Ambition now only requires 10 unspent Talent Points for the piercing effect
• Atomize cooldown reduced to 45s (from 90s)
• Knowledge is Power cooldown reduced to 45s (from 60s)
• Agile Knowledge grants 3% Attack Speed (from 2%)
• Dazzling Knowledge is now an Epic Talent (instead of a Rare)
• Untamed Knowledge is now a Rare Talent (instead of an Epic)
• Untamed Knowledge activation chance reduced to 15% (from 50%)
• Base Orb Damage increased to 2 (from 1)
• Base Orb Speed reduced to 3 (from 8)
• Blazing Orbs movement speed increase down to 20% (from 25%)
• Analysis experience bonus increased to 25% (from 10%)
• Insight experience bonus increased to 25% (from 10%)
• Deep Learning increased Rare, Ability and Epic chance reduced to 50% (from 100%)
• Arcane Wisdom deals 4 additional damage to elites (up from 2)
• Spell Thirst kill requirement reduced to 5 (from 10)
• Spell Thirst activation window increased to 2s (up from 1s)

Warrior

• Base Time Between Attacks increased to 0.9 (from 0.7)
• Chance for Attack Damage talents reduced by 10%
  
• Rage Up Talents no longer exist
  
• Base Rage increased to 40
• Attack Damage Core Talent replaced with Health Up
• Bloodlust Attack Speed increase reduced to 2% per 5 Rage (from 3%)
• Base Time Between Attacks increased to 1.0 (from 0.8)
  
• Bladestorm Cooldown reduced to 15s (from 20s)
• Bladestorm cost reduced to 10 Rage (from 20)
• Pure Brilliance now only requires a Talented Combo (down from Truly Talented)
• Blast Strike damage increased to 8 (from 5)
• Blast Strike cooldown reduced to 10s (from 15s)
• Short Temper has been reworked to grant 10 Rage at the start of each night (instead of 5 Rage on damage taken)
• The Impaler requirement increased to 25 HP (up from 20)
• Axe Toss Cooldown Reduction per kill increased to 50% (up from 25%)
• Axe Toss Cooldown reduces to 6s (from 8s)
• Axe Toss now restores 5 Rage per enemy kill
• Reflectium now deals Attack Damage on Parry (up from a flat 5)
• Fury Unleashed cooldown reduced to 45s (down from 90s)
• Guardian Unleashed cooldown reduced to 45s (down from 90s)

Summoner

• Elites no longer deal double damage to Helpers
• Added an absolute cap of 50 on number of active Gravestones (down from infinity!)
• Essence Thief activation chance reduced to 25% (from 100%)
• Royalty's Queens now summon a Fly every 10s (up from 5s)
• Bone Piles from Grim Sacrifice now have 5 HP and Skelebobs they summon have 5 HP (down from 10 HP and 25 HP respectively)
• Infestation now summons 5 flies (up from 3)
• Call of the Haunted now gives Helpers returned 5 additional maximum HP
• Call of the Haunted now costs 10 MP (up from 5)
• Call of the Haunted cooldown increased to 20s (from 15s)
• Twisted Contract now only grants Attack Speed (5% per Helper Sacrificed, up to a maximum of 50%)
• Graveyard Shift Summon Speed reduced to 10% (down from 15%)
• Worthy Sacrifice loot drop chance reduced to 3% (from 5%)
• Pumpkania's Lorge health increased to 60 (from 40)
• Pumpkania cooldown increased to 30s (from 16s)
• Squelchomega's Mega Blob health increased to 30 (from 20)
• Squelchomega cooldown increased to 20s (from 16s)
• Spookantation's Skelebob health reduced to 20 (from 30)
  
• Spookantation's Bone Pile health increased to 20 (from 10)
  
• Spookantation cooldown increased to 20s (from 16s)

General

• Attack Speed Up Talent's Attack Speed increased to 5% (up from 4%)
• Experience Up Talent's experience bonus increased to 5% (up from 3%)
• Magic Up Talent's MP increase reduces to 5 (from 10)
• Bonus Experience granted by the Combo Meter is now Multiplicative instead of Additive
• All Attack Buffs (e.g. Rapid Fire or Blast Strike) reset the attack times, allowing you to attack instantly after their use
• Increased the speed of Lorges to 0.5 (up from 0.35)
• Enemy Speed Up bonus increased to 10% (up from 4%)
• Enemy HP Up bonus increased to 35% (up from 25%)
• Spectral Elites no longer have additional movement speed
• Burning Explosion damage reduces to 3 (from 5)
• The 1 Ring increases all combat stats by 1 (instead of 5 up and 2 down)

Bug Fixes

And... the bugs... here goes nothing!

• Fixed a bug where Orbs would float above the Wizards head
• Fixed a bug where using Atomized while above an Orb count of 50 would make it so you had no Orbs at all
• Fixed a bug where Deep Learning wouldn't grant increased chance for abilities on the tree
• Fixed a bug where Defiant (blue) elites would still be duplicated by Vortech Shrink Ray (even thought they couldn't be shrunk)
• Removed Lifesteal as a primary stat from Wizard (meaning he can no longer see it in the stats screen or gain it from The One Ring)
• Added an absolute minimum Time Between Attacks of 0.01 second for Archer, Wizard and Summoner
  
• Stopped Reflectium from proccing after the player was already dead
• Added an (extremely large) bullet speed to stop bullets from covering the entire screen
• Added the current night's number to the post-night popup
• Stopped talent tree connections from being visible in the dark on higher brightness screens
• Enter/Return will no longer skip the Day End Panel and press the Next Day button at the same time
• Resetting Data no longer resets the settings menu
• Talent Points no longer show in game while holding shift
• Fixed Helper Summon smoke appearing behind summons and being the wrong colour
• Crawleys can now be feared
• Having your combo reset while Smokin' Combo is active will no longer cause abilities to gain additional cooldown
• Premature Burial now applies the Cooldown Reduction improvement to Gravestones created before it was added
• Added a minimum time between any two of the same Sound Effects
• Queens and Gravestones with Premature Burial now correctly spawn flies even after the day ends
• Fixed Orbital Arrows exceeding the max cap on orbitals and causing performance issues/inconsistent turning circles
• Fixed Tiny Blobs and other summons sneaking past enemies under certain circumstances
• Fixed Skelebobs contributing two kills to the combo meter and giving twice as much experiences as they should
• Fixed a bug where Gigantify would slowly make helpers smaller and smaller if cast with large amounts of Cooldown Reduction
• Fixed Gigantify applying to the second attack of Helix Squad if timed just right
• Fixed the Hold Your Ground buff never being removed when hit by enemies if the timer had ticked down but all enemies had no been killed yet
• Fixed a bug where certain connections would be completely invisible on the Talent Tree
• Fixed some instances where Talents appeared to be connected on the Talent Tree but were not
• Fixed Archer's Arrows appearing behind their Mines and Traps
• Fixed an issue with Spark Quiver and Orbital Arrows where the Orbital Arrows wouldn't know which direction to move in and sit on top of the Archer's face
• Removed Cooldown Reduction from the Archer's primary stats
• Fixed a bug where Relentless didn't increase the number of attacks that strike abilities enhanced
• Fixed unlock messages appearing for classes that had already been unlocked
• Updated the tooltip for Summon Damage to make it clear that it affects all Summons (from Abilities, Talents and Basic Attacks)
• Removed the "Main Menu" button from the main menu settings panel
• Correctly added the tooltip for the Shocked status effect to Black Storm's tooltip and Burning to Blast Blobs' tooltip on the Run Setup Screen
• Fixed an issue where there would sometimes be a gap between Talented/Ability tooltips and the Status Effects they applied
• Shadow Strike has been renamed to Shadow Boxing
• Compound Interest has been renamed to Simple Interest (it is Simple Interest after all!)

Quality Of Life/Small Features

• Confirmation Popups can now be dismissed using the Escape Key or the Return Key
• Magic Point generation now has an activation popup and a particle effect (Rage generation also has a particle effect)
• The speed of the game can now be changed while the game is paused
• Game Speed can now be changed to 1.2x, 1.5x and 2.0x
• All abilities now how a very small cast time during which basic attacks cannot be fired so basic attacks cannot be fired at the exact same moment as an ability
• Unavailable talents are now very slightly greyed out to make it clearer which talents are connected to learnt ones
• Enemies can no longer be killed while offscreen by any source (although they can be killed the moment any part of them appears on screen!)
• Added post effects to boost that nostalgic feel
  
• Added screen shake to boost the impact of those juicy screen clearing explosions
• Warrior has a cool new helmet!

If you made it this far thank you very much for reading and enjoy! We'd love to hear your feedback over on the Discord.

Stay Talented