Summery of weekly updates over on the Netherguild Discord Hey Guild Leaders! here's some of what I've added to Netherguild during July. This is a big update, so let's get into it!

Status Effect Improvements

Something that irked me a bit in the past was status effects being all too similar to one another (for example Burn, Bleed and Poison just dealing damage over time). So I decided to add some extra flavor to Burn and Poison...

Fire Increases Visibility

And functions as a double edged sword - giving you more information about the battlefield, but perhaps attracting the unwanted attention of far-away enemies!

Fire Spreads

When a unit is afflicted by "burn"- if it's alive after receiving status damage, the "burn" status spreads to adjacent units in its vicinity. Why is this great?

• Makes fire-based builds feel a lot more interesting and unique
• Turns burning units into hazards; perhaps incapcitating a burning enemy keeps it safely far away from you, or having to step away from a burning enemy keeps the battlefield more dynamic.
• Fighting a burning unit in melee for too long is bad, seeing how you'll end up recieving the status yourself and getting damage until combat ends or the status expires!
• Unexpected creativity - things like adding "burn" to an enemy adjacent to an explosive barrel to ignite it!

Poison Triggers After Attacking Too

This makes poison a very powerful status effect - dealing damage twice per turn for most attacking characters. However... This should also make things more interesting as a counter to builds or enemies that use "free action" abilities - using too many free actions in a row with a long poison will have its toll on them, health-wise, unless protected from poison by equipment for example. It also gives the player an "escape" - not attacking when poisoned would help conserve character health at times.

Falling System Complete

You may remember the falling system from a previous updates... https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1464220/view/3187993730659010317 This month it's 100% done! When enemies or allies die while falling to the next floor, their loot or items can be recovered there. For example:
Assassin dies while pushed to the next floor
All of his items & equipment can be recovered from his corpse at the next floor. Of course, allies that survive being pushed to the next floor can be rescued (as mentioned before). This system will be important in the new areas being added for early access - the Bandit Stronghold and Mist City.

Quality of Life Additions

A few small improvements make managing your expeditions far easier! such as:
Automatic resting which makes characters adjacent to the bonfire rest next to it automatically.
Can "quick send" items between containers & characters using shift-click (also appears in the tutorial now).

Procedural Generation Fixes

When playing, some players would get blocked by the procedural generation of levels - objects would appear where they shouldn't and prevent you from progressing.
This was an even more prominent issue on the new floors - where maps would generate with some rooms completely cut off. Technically there was a system set up to prevent that, but it was a 3-4 year old system at this point - and worse, it was completely broken. So I added a new one!

Or click the thumbnails for bigger image size:

It makes a "path" using some simple vector math and prevents any tile blocking objects (like crates or barricades) from spawning there. The issue, however, is that updating the game with it will mess up in-dungeons saves, so I I'll likely delay it for a bigger update in a week or few from now. Speaking of which...

Updates & Up Next

Working on Tile Heights Originally I didn't plan for tile height to affect gameplay, but, inspired by the 3D concept art I made (picture above) I decided to add it to Netherguild. It'll be difficult and take a decent amount of time to add, but at the same time I'm really excited for it (and for pushing enemies off high platforms!). Big update coming up It will include the level-generation fix mentioned here as well as new and improved daggers, and other changes.
Tacticon This is a big event on Steam which I'm excited to take part of, later in September! Netherguild has already been accepted to the event and will participate alongside other great strategy games.

And that's all... for now!

Thank you for checking out the update! Hope it made for a fun read. See you next time! (: -David

[ 2022-08-07 22:09:49 CET ] [ Original post ]