Patch time! Thank you all for your patience - I intended to have this update out several days ago, but hit all kinds of snags with some technical hurdles that I've described at the bottom of this post. Thankfully, everything seems to be in working order and now I can go back to focusing on gameplay adjustments instead of boring things "behind the scenes". First, let's get a quick warning out of the way: the experience system formulas have been reworked. When you load your save file for the first time, you'll notice that your character appears to be at a much higher level than it really is on the title screen. That's fine - load your file and the game will do a one-time adjustment to your experience points. However, loading your save file for the first time might take a bit longer than normal as the game has to convert a lot of values first. Now then, on to the good stuff! The arena has been overhauled. The patch notes do a good enough job at describing how it works now, so be sure to read them carefully. I wanted the arena to feel drastically different from all other activities in Siralim 2, and I think it's finally in the spot that it needs to be. It's a lot of fun - probably my favorite activity in the game now - and I think you'll grow to love it as well. Next, sigils have been overhauled. Sigils are now given a difficulty level that ranges from 1 to 10. Low level sigils are easier, while high level sigils are harder. Sigil enemies scale to your creatures' levels and gene strengths, so while they're much more difficult than before, you'll also find that they're a lot more useful now. Not interested in tackling that sigil in your inventory that grants enemies immunity to attacks, debuffs your creatures with Silence, and triples their damage? Introducing a new NPC: the Arcanist! The Arcanist allows you to modify your sigils' difficulty level, as well as re-randomize their race and properties...for a price. Hopefully, the Arcanist will not only help you to more effectively choose your battle preferences, but also serve as a much-needed granite sink. Gene Strength is a lot different now. As your creatures gain more Gene Strength, the potency of each point diminishes - so, for example, at 100 Gene Strength, the creature will only receive +40 to their base stats. At 500 Gene Strength, the creature will receive only +95 to their base stats. Why the drastic change? So many reasons... 1) In its previous form, Gene Strength made artifacts obsolete. That's not good. In turn, that made Artifact Realms obsolete. That's awful. 2) Players felt obligated to breed for Gene Strength. Breeding should be used to acquire new creatures first and foremost, and Gene Strength should simply be a nice bonus - not a must-have. 3) Enemies became so powerful so quickly between higher realm depths that players felt like they were on some kind of "dominate everything, hit a brick wall, tediously overcome the wall, dominate everything again" routine. Obviously, this type of thing can't be avoided in a game like Siralim, but these changes should make this routine a lot less frustrating to overcome. 4) At high Gene Strength levels, cards became way too strong. A passive +10% Gene Strength from one item is a really big deal, and cards aren't meant to be that powerful. Diminishing returns should set cards back to where they belong. And lastly, the part that took me 5 full days to complete: I've finally finished implementing my own numbers system into some parts of the game's code. This means that the game can handle insanely huge numbers now! Several players ran into an issue where their experience points would reach a certain point, then roll back to a large negative number. That shouldn't happen anymore. Please note that this system is currently only implemented for creature and character experience points. It will be extended to all other numbers, including damage/healing, resources, and just about everything else in the next patch. VERSION 0.7.0: - Overhauled the Arena. - You will no longer battle in the arena using your own creatures. Instead, you will draft creatures at random from your bestiary. - After you give your Arena Invitation to Vashstine, you'll enter the drafting phase. In the drafting phase, you'll choose creatures to fight on your team. Each draft asks you to choose 1 of 3 creatures to fight for you. You'll repeat this process for a total of 6 drafts, meaning you'll choose a team of 6 creatures from a pool of 18. - Your team, as well as the enemies, will be scaled to level 100 with no Gene Strength. Both sides are given random, class-appropriate Spell Gems and a random artifact. The artifacts will not have any legendary properties, and cannot be a class shield (such as Chaos Shield). - Cards and Deity Perks have no effect in the arena. Battles are meant to be perfectly balanced at all times. - Between matches, your creatures recover 25% Health and all their mana. - There is still a total of 5 matches. The more matches you win, the more Arena Points you'll earn. - Arena matches do not award experience points, resources, energy, or favor. - Arena Invitations can no longer be purchased from the arena prize vendor. Instead, the drop rate for Arena Invitations is now based on the amount you have in your inventory. Note that you can still obtain Arena Invitations by purchasing treasure chests from the arena prize vendor. - Your game data will be saved after the arena master takes your ticket, so don't try to cheat the system by restarting the game or you'll lose your Arena Invitation! - Slightly increased the amount of Arena Points you can win from the arena. - Slightly decreased the cost of arena prizes. - Overhauled the Sigil system. - Sigils now scale to your creatures' experience levels and Gene Strengths. - Sigils can no longer be used if any creature in your party is below level 20. - Sigils now have a 'Difficulty Level' between 1 and 10. The higher the Difficulty Level, the sharper the enemies' levels and Gene Strengths increase. - Sigils with a 'Difficulty Level' of 1 are relatively easy, while a 'Difficulty Level' of 10 are unbelievably difficult. The jump between difficulty levels is very drastic. - Sigils now display their reward bonuses in their item descriptions. More difficult properties increase your rewards, as does the sigil's tier (Minor/Major/Primal). - Sigil experience point bonuses now only apply to your creatures. This should make it much easier for your creatures to catch up to your character's level. - Major Sigils no longer have a chance to drop legendary crafting materials - now, only Primal Sigils can drop them. The chance that Primal Sigils will drop a legendary material is based on their Difficulty Level. At level 10, the chance is 100%. - Sigils no longer reward energy. - Sigil property names have been shortened so they're easier to read and understand. - Added a new NPC called the Arcanist. The Arcanist must be unlocked through a castle upgrade. - The Arcanist allows you to change your Sigils' race and Difficulty Level, or even re-randomize their properties for a price (Granite). - Minor Sigil drop rates from sources such as treasure chests are now based on how many you have in your inventory. If you have over 100 Sigils, the chance to find more Sigils becomes very small. - All of your current Sigils will have their Difficulty Levels randomized when you load your save file after the patch. - The silver jester in the tavern is now always visible (the one who can get rid of all your sigils). He will be removed in the next major patch, so if you have way too many Sigils right now, you should talk to him very soon. - Updated the Sigil quests in the library to work with this new system. - Updated the library's Guide to Sigils to describe this new system. - Updated the experience point formulas. Surprisingly, this should lead to a massive increase in game performance and loading times. The amount of experience points you gain in battle might need to be adjusted later on, so please let me know if you think you're receiving too many or too few experience points after this patch. - Experience points can now exceed 2 billion without rolling back to a negative number. This fix will be added to other values such as resources and damage numbers in a different patch later on. - Gene Strength potency is now subject to diminishing returns. As Gene Strength increases, each individual point of Gene Strength now contributes less than 1 base stat. - When breeding, the Health stat is now weighted more heavily. - Added new sorting options for sigils: Highest Level, Lowest Tier, Highest Tier, Highest Bonus, Lowest Bonus. - Large numbers over 1 million that are shortened (such as 123,456,789 to 123m) will now display 2 decimal places for better clarity (such as 123,456,789 to 123.46m). - Nether Creature traits can no longer exceed 300% (295 pills). This change is not retroactive. - Creatures in the arena will now appear in a more appropriate location when the 'Nostalgia' punishment is active. - Eggs found in the wild now have more varied Gene Strength than before. - Overhauled the 'Royal Authority' trait: This creature always has Protect and Ward, and defends at the end of its turn. - When Pandemonium Tokens grant or take away resources, the amount of resources is now based on a flat range rather than a percentage of the player's total resources. - The default selection in the item menu for Cards and Eggs is now "Cancel" rather than "Discard" to prevent hyper players from accidentally discarding these items. - When you complete two Realm Quests at the same exact time, you should now properly receive a reward for both. - Completed achievements should now always say "COMPLETED" next to their progress. - The 'Primal Conqueror XI' achievement now only requires 85 unique Primal Sigils to complete, down from 90. - Fixed a bug that prevented multiple Reaper traits from activating at the same time. - Fixed a bug that caused chef buffs to lose duration after a sigil or arena battle. - Fixed a crash that could occur that is related to the 'Starvation' punishment. - Fixed a bug with breeding that caused Gene Strength to be impacted by cards and similar effects. - Fixed a bug that caused the 'Treasure Hunt' minigame to not count your losses. - Fixed a bug that caused your 'Eggs Hatched' accolade to increase by 2 instead of 1 each time you hatch an egg. - Fixed a bug that caused your maximum Nether Realm depth to increase by 1 upon returning to Siralim even if the next realm wouldn't have been your highest. - Fixed a few potential freezes/bugs related to looting items. - Fixed a crash that could occur when the 'Soul Siphon' trait was used on a Nether Creature. - Fixed a bug with the 'Anomaly' trait that allowed it to deal more than 1 damage to creatures with the 'Secret Ingredient' trait. - Fixed a bug that caused Nether Creatures to be able to stack benefits from Gene Strength multiple times by depositing/withdrawing it from the stable repeatedly.