Another Patch based on player feedback of our Major September Patch less than a week ago. We are iterating to improve game scaling and further balance it for solo and group play. Weve also made another pass on melee combat that makes both the Rogue and Champion feel very accurate and powerful. We have included some beginning improvements to Cleric and Wizard as well. The following fixes and refinements have been made.

SCALING

• Heroism Scaling has been adjusted with a large reduction in NPC health and small increase in NPC damage.
• All classes now start with more health and gain more per level than previous as well.
• Group scaling has been made more consistent reducing NPC health per person added to group. NPC damage increases for players being added has been removed from Normal and Hard difficulties
• Nightmare scaling for health and damage increases have been made consistent across the four current dungeons
• Experience scaling has been increased. We wanted to clarify for players that experience gained while in a group is not split. You get the same base experience for killing an NPC in group as you would solo. In addition to this, players receive a bonus for group play that increases with each player added (ie a 4 player group receives more per NPC killed than a 2 player group). In short, the more players you add the more experience you gain per NPC killed. We did this to incentivize people to play together, so the more the merrier and the faster you will level.
• Item Quality has been overhauled and increased across all qualities starting with Superior (Green). You will now receive more stats per quality increase than previously. You should begin to feel the impact of equipping new gear faster.
• Star items will now have a consistent level increase per star gained, previously some star levels awarded a lower percentage of stats gained than the previous star level.
• Stars on weapons will now contribute a greater increase to stats than they had previously
• Fixed issue with weapon racks not distributing loot evenly among all classes (drop rates are now equal for all class items for all weapon racks).
• Increased the quality of items that drop from the tombs in Crypt of Horrors. Destructible loot distribution is unchanged.

ABILITIES

• Increased Channel Heal range by 30%
• Increased damage and knockback range on Holy Blast
• Increased damage on Holy Light
• Increased damage on Heavenly Strike
• Reduced cooldown of Avatar
• Increased damage of Ember Lance
• Reduced damage of Cone of Fire
• Increased player Meteor cast speed by 15%
• Increased knockback range on Flame Blast
• Increased range of Sleep
• Attached collision updates for Slash
• Attached collision updates for Eviscerate
• Increased collision box size and adjust some notifies on Slash montages
• Law of the Zealot and Kindled set bonuses improved (added 15% Critical Damage and 30 Spell Penetration)
• Ember Eruption has been adjusted. We have plans to further change Ember Eruption in the future but the functionality has been adjusted to be more clear. While teleporting player functionality could become unstable if an ability was used. To fix this the animation will be locked during the ability for it's duration. As a tradeoff we decided to grant the player immunity from damage for the duration of the ability.

SPLIT-SCREEN

• Split Screen - players can now manage their inventories independent of other players.
• Split Screen - Option to increase font size added to the Options menu. Affects ALL font including items in Split-screen which dramatically improves the legibility of text in this mode.
• Split Screen - Fixed bug where players joining a game already in progress were unable to focus input on the name while creating a new character.

Loot Improvements

• Previously players had two options for loot, Free-for-All and Round Robin. Previously Round Robin would award loot that appeared Free-for-All but it was proximity loot at the group leaders level.
• Players now have three loot options to choose from. Round Robin, Round Robin (Smart) and Free-for-All.
• Dungeon Loot settings are locked during dungeon runs and must be changed prior to loading a dungeon. Dungeon Loot type currently cannot be changed during a dungeon run. We are working to add this functionality.
• Round Robin - Loot is awarded Round Robin regardless of player proximity to one another
• Round Robin (Smart) - Loot is awarded Round Robin based on player proximity to the kill
• Free-For-All - Loot is awarded to the first person to loot the object.
• When either Round Robin or Round Robin (Smart) loot is selected and a player kills an NPC (and NPCs only). The players level will be used to determine the item level for armor, weapons, etc. Players in the proximity of the kill will be on the eligible list for the item to be their level. Whoever "owns" the loot ability, it will be at their level when looted.
• Boss Chests will drop level based loot.
• NOTE: Loot from objects such as destructibles, weapon racks, tombs, chests and other non NPC generated loot objects will continue to scale at the group leaders level in all loot types. We looked at adjusting this but this is not a trivial adjustment due to game optimization reasons. There are no plans to adjust object loot level at this time.
• The proximity for loot ownership determination is approximately 40 meters.
• Non item based loot (silver, gold) will continue to be/appear Free-for-All

SYSTEMS/GAMEPLAY

• Added Loot Level for Round Robin corpses and Boss Chests is now based on the looting players level
• Added Boss chests request an immediate save of player data
• Added AI updates for flying creatures
• Combat Improvement: Player animation frames are never dropped due to performance load balancing, resulting in same-accuracy of hits at all times
• Improved (reduced) the time it takes for loot to generate for chests
• Increased Item stats by quality (% increase per quality type)
• Increased star level stats on weapons
• Improved star stat level progression, now more consistent (10%) per level
• Improved Accept distance for Pick Ability AI Task uses the MAX(ability range, capsule radii) instead of adding them together
• Improved Tether check alternates between self and target distance checking
• Fixed achievements not completing when there are multiple players in the party
• Added Item detail and currency widgets support Increase Font Size
• Fixed Only host and owning client disable URO of player character mesh
• Fixed Character base supports vector offset for capsule attached components and disable URO on player controlled meshes
• Fixed RPC player preference changes to host so they are not lost when receiving persistence
• Fixed Eviscerate animations
• Fixed Last Target set if attacked but not attacking a current target
• Fixed exclusive input locking in split screen
• Fixed essence conversion not functioning correctly on clients
• Fixed incositency in Juran wasp phase. Juran should fly out of range, prompting players to dispatch added NPCs to return Juran to fight
• Fixed Juran combat height/auto height ability for wasp types.
• Fixed Iothir drain life and strength debuff not marked with asset tags as debuffs
• Fixed bad melee distance values AI were stuck on
• Fixed bad melee distance, likely causing range hysteresis of AI in melee
• Fixed Hud stats picks up instigator as last target when no target set
• Fixed Iothir drain life and strength debuff
• Fixed player preferences not saved when changed on the client