Greetings, Everyone! The Holidays are almost upon us, and as is tradition, the Steam Winter Sale has started, and of course, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark participates with an awesome 85% discount - so if you haven't grabbed the game yet, now is the best time for it - possibly in a convenient bundle package including the DLC, Missions & Monsters! But even if you already own the game, the sale brings great opportunities to expand your gaming horizons - you can check out the following bundles to save extra when buying different games together; but not only that, you can get that extra discount on games you don't own yet, if some of the others are already in your library: If you already own Fell Seal and wish to broaden your horizons and check out a more traditional CRPG, you can get an extra 10% off on the recent Early Access release of New Arc Line: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/48901/TurnBased_RPG_Holiday_Bundle/ You can also opt for the Turn-Based Tactics Trifecta and get Abalon and The Iron Oath for an extra 15% off : https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/48627/TurnBased_Tactics_Trifecta/ Maybe you appreciate the classics, and would like an extra discount on King's Bounty: Armored Princess and Deep Sky Derelicts? Then it's Your Turn to Party! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24260/Your_Turn_to_Party_Bundle/ And last but not least, you can get an extra 10% off on a tactical RPG situated in the Tormenta setting, Reverie Knights Tactics: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24575/Reverie_Knights_Tactics__Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark_Complete_Your_Set/ And if that's not enough deals for you, you should check out the Fulqrum Publishing Winter Sale page - but don't forget, the Steam Winter Sale ends on January 2, 2025. We hope you have a lovely gaming Holidays, and the best possible start to the New Year 2025, everyone!

[ 2024-12-20 17:31:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This year's Steam Autumn Sale is almost here, but we have some even better news for you you're already able to get Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark for a lower price! For the duration of the sale (from now until December 4), you can get the game with an 85% discount! That's a hell of a deal, isn't it? And there are even more like that, just check out the "Discounts" list on Fulqrum Publishing's Steam page! What you might also find interesting is that a new CRPG just launched into Early Access and is also 15% OFF - if a steampunk setting is your thing, you might want to check out New Arc Line! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458310/New_Arc_Line/

[ 2024-11-26 17:59:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, everyone! Steam Next Fest is upon us! With so many titles to choose from this week, its easy to get lost. And thats why Fulqrum Publishing is on hand, with a diverse selection of three demos among which we are certain you can find a new favourite! Will you to take a stand in the eternal conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution in New Arc Line, prove your political brilliance in a grand strategy that will take your legacy to the stars in Realpolitiks 3: Earth and Beyond, or become a master of sword and magic in VED?

New Arc Line

Take a stand in the eternal conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution and tip the uneasy balance between sorcery, elves, dwarves and mysterious monsters on one side and steampunk gadgets, zeppelins, and tesla guns on the other in this single-player, party-based, story-rich RPG. In the demo, you will be thrown right into the middle of a deadly epidemic of the Iron Plague - select from 2 classes and play as either a Voodoo Shaman or a Diesel Engineer of either the Human or Elven race, and investigate what's going on in the Leprosarium; a hospital specializing in treating patients in the Slums district suffering from the horrific disease. With several ways of completing the quest and moral decisions to make along the way, will you rise to the occasion? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458310/New_Arc_Line/

Realpolitiks 3: Earth and Beyond

Prove your political brilliance in a grand strategy like no other: pick any contemporary country, set up your government and navigate the pitfalls of domestic and international politics. A glorious destiny awaits - the domination of not just the Earth, but the whole Solar system! The demo will allow you to govern either Germany or Mexico, and you will have 5 in-game years to show off your cunning leadership skills in the new, extreme Overdrive mode. At launch, any contemporary nation will be available for your ambitions, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and everything in between, and you will be able to enjoy different campaign modes to boot! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2298690/Realpolitiks_3_Earth_and_Beyond/

VED

VED is a story-driven, hand-drawn RPG with a unique turn-based combat system and roguelite elements. Set in two different worlds, VED tells the story of Cyrus, a young hero who sets out on a quest to become a master of sword and magic, and save everything he knows from destruction. The demo will let you sneak a peek at a very early part of the game's story - just enough to whet your appetite, but with no significant spoilers! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1182420/VED/ We are excited to hear what you think about the demos - please consider joining their individual Discord servers, and don't forget to wishlist and follow each of the games you like, so you can always stay up to date - there are many important announcements coming soon!

• New Arc Line Discord
• Realpolitiks HQ Discord
• VED Discord

[ 2024-10-14 17:01:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Arbiters! It's been a while since we've had some news to share, but we're excited to finally announce our new game, Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades! As a quick summary, it's a turn-based tactical RPG, with a focus on trading, exploring and tactical battles. It'll have multiple origin stories, classes and a procedurally generated world, so expect a lot of replay value.
For all the details, check out the Pathbreakers Steam page right here: Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades All news on Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades will be happening in the Pathbreakers Steam Community area, so make sure to follow us on there if you want to be kept in the loop! We hope to see everyone there! - 6 Eyes Studio Team

[ 2024-09-26 03:14:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We have great news to share! Fulqrum Publishing's sale is here and Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is getting its biggest discount ever, a whopping 80% off! Get your copy while you can, discounts like these don't happen every day! And if you want even bigger savings, get yourselves one of these bundles - even if you already own some of the games in them, you still get an additional discount on the others! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24260/Your_Turn_to_Party_Bundle/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24575/Reverie_Knights_Tactics__Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark_Complete_Your_Set/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15253/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters_DLC/ Don't forget to follow Fulqrum Publishing on their Social Media accounts as well to never miss any similar deals.

[ 2024-01-23 18:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Autumn is here and along with it one of the most anticipated sales in the whole year The Autumn Sale! Not only is Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark at an awesome 75% off along with its Missions and Monsters DLC, but Fulqrum Publishing is discounting every game in their arsenal to boot! Check out the whole Fulqrum Publishing Autumn Sale here and don't forget to follow them on their social media accounts.
And to save even more money, get yourself the game as a part of one of these bundles! The discount applies there as well and you'll also get a bundle discount, even if you already own some of the included items! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15253/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters_DLC/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24575/Reverie_Knights_Tactics__Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark_Complete_Your_Set/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24260/Your_Turn_to_Party_Bundle/

[ 2023-11-21 18:15:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings Adventurers, We have some especially exciting news for you! Fulqrum Publishing, along with the developers from Dreamate Games, have officially revealed their new project called New Arc Line. Official Announcement Trailer: [previewyoutube=ssM2CrCIbEE;full][/previewyoutube] New Arc Line is a new single-player, story-rich RPG set during the gilded age of magic and technology, which will introduce you to a troubled society: The New World looms on the horizon and on its shore New Arc, the shining city of progress, the last beacon of hope in your search for a cure to your family's fatal disease. But you will soon discover that the city's beauty runs only skin-deep; tensions growing between different factions in the world of arcane magic and steampunk gadgets, the rich exploiting the poor, the humanoid hunting the monstrous, and in the middle of it all you, a stranger in a strange land, unaware of the role you have to play in shaping the future of this world... Which side will you choose? What will you become? If that sounds interesting, make sure to wishlist the game and visit its Steam store page to learn more details about New Arc Line. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458310/New_Arc_Line/ And to find out even more about New Arc Line and stay up to date on its development, feel free to join the official New Arc Line Discord server, we are looking forward to chatting with you there!

[ 2023-09-04 16:39:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! That time of the year is finally here, Summer Sale has arrived to Steam and with it come tons of discounts - so don't hesitate and get all the cool games to make the hot summer days more comfortable! Or the other way round, if you are in the southern hemisphere, of course. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, of course, is a part of the sale and you can now get it for a 75% lower price. Don't hesitate though, this price won't last forever - the sale ends on July 13! To see the whole list of discounted games by Fulqrum Publishing, follow this link and head to "Discounts". And don't forget that Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is included in these bundles and the Summer Sale discount gives you the perfect opportunity to complete your collection! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15253/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters_DLC/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24575/Reverie_Knights_Tactics__Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark_Complete_Your_Set/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24260/Your_Turn_to_Party_Bundle/

[ 2023-06-30 13:20:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We would like to let you know that the sci-fi story-driven 4X strategy The Pegasus Expedition has just left Early Access! [previewyoutube=NKqW3jrau0I;full][/previewyoutube] During the first week after the full launch, it will be 15% off, so get your hands on it as soon as possible. There is also a deal running where you can get The Pegasus Expedition in a bundle with Space Rangers HD: A War Apart. This bundle is discounted by another 10% and that counts even if you already own one of the included games. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33272/ If you want to know more about The Pegasus Expedition, check out its Steam page, watch the official release trailer or join the Discord where you can chat directly with the developers! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1521070/The_Pegasus_Expedition/

[ 2023-06-20 17:09:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone, Autumn Sale has just started and Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is one of the included games. From now until November 29 you can buy the game for 75% off. Also don't forget that Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a part of Your Turn To Party Bundle along with Deep Sky Derelicts and King's Bounty: Armored Princess, meaning you can combine the discounts. That's a hell of a bargain, isn't it? https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24260/Your_Turn_to_Party_Bundle/ Many more games from Fulqrum Publishing, such as fresh titles Lords and Villeins, Forgive Me Father or The Pegasus Expedition, are discounted as well, you can find all of them on our sale page.

[ 2022-11-22 18:01:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! We are so happy to announce that the Fulqrum Publisher Sale just started and Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a part of it with an amazing discount! ALL of Fulqrum Publishing's games are discounted by up to 90% for an entire week! The sale ends on October 27. Besides, we have just launched a brand new game into Early Access, that being The Pegasus Expedition. If you have not checked it out yet, now is the perfect time! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1521070/The_Pegasus_Expedition/ Enjoy the sale, buy as many games as possible while they're discounted, play The Pegasus Expedition and don't forget to follow us on our Social Media so you never miss any important info!

[ 2022-10-20 17:11:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! The Somier plushie campaign is finally live! Head on to https://shop.makeship.com/3m8oY0v to order yours right now!
This is the Makeship website, our partner who's handling the plushie creation and the campaign for it. The way it works is similar to a Kickstarter campaign, in that we must have enough orders for Somier for him to get created (roughly 200). We have 21 days to meet that goal. If the goal isn't met, the plushie won't be created (but you won't be billed for it either, so no worries there). I think we'll make it though! It's pretty exciting to have some Fell Seal physical goods created this way! Thanks again to everyone!

[ 2022-07-15 20:13:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that the Somier Plush campaign will begin July 15th on the Makeship website. We'll be announcing it here and on our mailing list as soon as it starts.
In the meantime, we're doing a Somier giveaway on Twitter. Feel free to check it out for a chance at a free Somier plush! https://twitter.com/6EyesStudioLLC/status/1545467756107255813 And thanks again to everyone that voted for the plush character!

[ 2022-07-08 18:06:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Adventurers, Steam Summer Sale is almost here! And since we know you're hyped just as we are, we give you a perfect deal even before it starts! The daily deal for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark starts on June 22, 7PM (CEST) and ends on June 23, 7PM (CEST). And Steam Summer Sale then starts on June 23, 7PM (CEST) and will be going on until July 7, 7PM (CEST). The game will be off 75% during both of these events, so go and grab your copy while you can! Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is also a part of a few bundles, where the discount applies as well. Check them out right now! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24575/Reverie_Knights_Tactics__Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark_Complete_Your_Set/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24260/Your_Turn_to_Party_Bundle/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15253/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters_DLC/

[ 2022-06-22 17:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! It's taken a bit of time, but the Somier plush is finally created! I admit, we didn't think the process was going to be quite as lengthy as it was, but we're very happy with the result! The next step will be starting the Makeship campaign. We'll keep everyone informed when it goes live.
He's looking pretty cute, with a removable backpack, potions and various knickknacks. We were sent the prototype, and it feels nice, soft and sturdy. We'll be ordering a few ourselves to decorate our office when the time comes. It'll go well with our giant Kyrie banner and The Maw Energy Drinks (tm?) that we keep around. Thanks again to everyone that took the time to vote for their favorite plush idea before! And thanks for your patience on this!

New Project:

For anyone looking for news on our new project, it's still sparse on that front. Progress has been going well, but we're not quite ready for a full showcase yet. There are still too many placeholders and as they say: you never get a second chance at a first impression. So, we want to make sure to impress when we start showing the game off! Still, here's a quick screenshot to get an idea of how things are shaping up:
Still a work in progress of course, but this showcases some of the systems the game has, such as interactable elements that work together to create various effects (explosions, electrocutions, difficult terrain, etc). Here we see the liquid elements, namely water and blood (there's also an ice patch on there, although those will only be in winter maps). Water can put out fires and transfer electric attacks to people standing in it, for example. The other elements are currently functional, but lack proper visuals, so we can't showcase those interactions just yet. The explosive stuff is pretty funny though, as explosions can be chained if they're close enough, and it can pack quite a punch if a target is in the middle of several at once! Where we're headed: We're not a 100% sure about how we'll handle the overall process yet, with respect to Kickstarter, Beta, Early Access and Release, but the current goal is to get things visually presentable as a first step, to keep our options open. From there, we want to create our new Steam page as early as possible, so we can keep in touch with the community in a dedicated space (rather that use Fell Seal's space). Afterwards, we're currently leaning towards a Kickstarter + Early Access cycle again. We were very happy with the amount of visibility and feedback we were able to get that way for Fell Seal (again, a big thank you to everyone for that!). We think the EA was especially pivotal in getting the game out the door with a solid state of balance and boasting QoL features that the community actually cared for. So, that's where we're at for now!

[ 2022-05-31 19:52:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We want to give everyone an update on our current status and how things have been progressing, but first things first...

Plushies!

We've been approached by Makeship for a partnership to create a Fell Seal plushie. We'll only be making one design to start, so it's up to you, the community, to let us know which is the character you really want to see made into a plushie! We've narrowed down the options to these 4, so please let us know in the comments which you'd love to see turned into a plushie!
Please vote by leaving a simple comment like this: +1 Kyrie +1 Reiner +1 Vangal +1 Kawa Once we know which character you guys think would make the most adorable plushie, we'll start working on the design and announce it when it's ready!

News

We've been working on our next project for a while now. The design is nearing completion and we're very excited! Sadly, we don't have much visuals to show yet, as we're still using placeholder art, but here's a general idea of what we're planning: You'll be in control of a company of units. You'll be able to customize them when you recruit them and choose between 8 base classes. Later, each unit will be able to choose 1 of 2 "advanced class paths", which will guide the rest of their progression. Each class will have their own skill tree. We're planning tactical battles on a fairly large map, using a hex grid this time around. There will be zones of control and attacks of opportunities tied to that. There will be terrain effects involving water, fire and electricity, tied to spells and maps. And a lot more! Battles will be triggered by running into enemies roaming the worldmap or by entering a dungeon/lair. Your company will be able to sport about 12 to 16 units and you will be able to field 6 to 10 units, most likely (we're still hammering down the specific values). Your company will also have access to 3 skill trees of its own, representing its general focus: trading, fighting or exploring. The gameplay will be broader than Fell Seal: Missions and Monsters and have elements of trading, economy, mercenary-style quests, discovery, etc. We're planning for high replayability, with a procedurally-generated worldmap and battlemaps, with a few premade story related maps as well. We know it's still a little vaguer than is needed for a full announcement, but let us know your thoughts about the basic concept! Lastly, you can subscribe to our mailing list on our website (https://www.fellseal.com/) if you want to make sure not to miss any announcement tied to our upcoming title.

[ 2022-01-28 16:04:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings Everyone! Time cannot be stopped, and so the year of the Ox is ending, and the year of the Tiger is starting. This can mean only one thing for all PC gamers: Steam Lunar New Year Sale is here! If you've been waiting for a chance to grab Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark at a great price, wait no more - it is now at 67% off, with the possibility of even higher discount if purchased through the Your Turn to Party Bundle or this Complete Your Set Bundle - the additional discount applies in full even if you already own some of the games in it! And if you already do own Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, check the bundles out anyway - you are eligible for extra discounds on the other games in them! These incredible offers are valid now through February 3rd, so don't miss your chance and grab the game now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/ You should also check out the full list of discounted titles by 1C Entertainment. And once you've played the game, please, give us feedback in form of a Steam review, in the discussions or come chat to our Discord server. It is very much appreciated and helps us make the game even better for our fans!

[ 2022-01-27 18:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, everyone! We bring you good tidings, for an opportunity has arisen for the fans of our game. To reward all you faithful Arbiters, we have prepared a way to get extra 10% OFF the freshly released newcomer to the tactical RPG genre, Reverie Knights Tactics - just use this "Complete your set" bundle and get the 10% OFF on top of any other current discount on the game. And of course, if you're still waiting to get Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, you can just use the bundle to get the games together, the extra discount will apply to both! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24575/

[ 2022-01-25 19:05:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! The holiday season is here once again, and that can mean only one thing for all PC gamers: Steam Winter Sale is here! If you've been waiting for a chance to grab Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark at a lower price, wait no more - it is now at 67% off, and if you want an even better deal, don't miss Your Turn to Party bundle - the additional discount applies in full even if you already own some of the games in it! These incredible offers are valid now through January 5th, so don't miss your chance and grab the game! https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/ You should also check out the full list of discounted titles by 1C Entertainment. And once you've played the game, please, give use feedback in form of a Steam review, in the discussions or come chat to our Discord server. It is very much appreciated and helps us make the game even better for our fans!

[ 2021-12-22 18:00:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! It's finally happening. The long-awaited Steam Autumn Sale has started, meaning it's the highest time for you to grab Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark for a great price at 67% off. Get it now while the sale lasts! https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark You can also check out the full list of discounted titles by 1C Entertainment. And once you've played the game, please, give use feedback in form of a Steam review, in the discussions or come chat to our Discord server. It is very much appreciated and helps us make the game even better for our fans!

[ 2021-11-25 07:59:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! Steam Next Fest is now live! From now until October 7th, you have the opportunity to try free demos of Forgive Me Father, Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2, HYPERVIOLENT or Reverie Knights Tactics. And of course, in case you enjoyed any of the demo, don't forget to add the games to your wishlist so that you won't miss any updates and news about them! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1590910/Forgive_Me_Father https://store.steampowered.com/app/1401400/Lovecrafts_Untold_Stories_2 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1409200/HYPERVIOLENT https://store.steampowered.com/app/1399690/Reverie_Knights_Tactics

[ 2021-10-01 18:29:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! As promised, here's the Knifer and Draekon update for Missions and Monsters! The update adds these 2 new monsters:

They come with 2 new missions at the guild, which will each open a Hunt featuring a unique version of one of the new monsters. Both monsters can be tamed and their essence can be harvested by a certain Bzil unit. They have some pretty unique abilities, including what we would consider a "signature move" for each one of them. Give them a look! They'll be an interesting addition to your arsenal, opening up new strategies for creative players! Otherwise, the build has some bug fixes as well. As usual, the full patch notes are at the end of the post. To celebrate this occasion we have prepared a Steam Daily Deal - starting today at 19:00 CEST, for next 48 hours, you can get Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark with a 67% discount and the Missions and Monsters DLC with 50% discount! If you haven't grabbed the base game or the DLC yet, now is the right time to remedy that. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15253/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters_DLC/

What's next for 6 Eyes Studio:

Unless further balance tweaks and bug fixes are needed, this is the last major update planned for Fell Seal. We'll be focusing solely on our next project from now on. This whole adventure has been an awesome experience for us, and we hope it's been for the fans as well! Again, we've been humbled by the tremendous support from the Steam community and on our Discord. We couldn't have done it without you guys! Throughout the course of the development, we've done our best to balance community feedback with "what can realistically be done with our effective production power"; all while not compromising our vision. On the whole, we'd claim some level of success in that respect, but at the same time, we know there's plenty of areas that can be improved upon for our future projects. As such, we're hoping everyone will keep walking this path with us and providing us with their feedback, comments and support on our future projects! As for specifics on the next game, we can't announce too many details yet, but it will be a strategy RPG with turn-based combat and more of a pixelart visual style, rather than the mix of illustrations/pixelart of Fell Seal. There'll be a bit less emphasis on battles than Fell Seal and more "outside of combat" elements, such as quests, exploring and trading. On the technical side, we've been busy updating our engines for a while now, and here's what you can expect for our next game:

• Increased Modding support, including:
  • Adding your own sprites, music and sound effects to the game.
  • Some tools to help with the above.
  • Steam Workshop support.
  • Built-in support for using multiple mods at once (eg. having 2 different mods that add new classes to the game, without having to manually merge their files).
  • Simplified system to add languages.
• Interface: An interface primarily designed around mouse and Keyboard, rather than a gamepad (we will still retain full gamepad support though).
• Saving: We'll be making sure not to save in a weird location on Mac and Linux (sorry about that guys!).
• Sound: We redid a lot of the inner working of our sound engine and it should deliver a better experience, with smoother transitions and much smoother "volume ducking" if we end up going that route.
• Performance: This one probably won't exactly be a game-changer for most people, but we've made some updates to our system and it's using less memory and loading things faster in general. Not that Fell Seal actually had any loading times before, but still...

We'll be releasing more details and some screenshots as soon as we have something presentable! In the meantime, get on our mailing list (from https://www.fellseal.com) if you want to make sure not to miss any of the upcoming details. Also, you can follow us on Steam, as we'll have some announcements when the store page is ready for the next project!

A question for everyone:

Did you guys enjoy the devlog series we had for Missions and Monsters? Would something like that for our next game be of interest to you? We plan on showing you a variety of things throughout production. Do you want to hear more about the lore and story? See images of characters, monsters, and environments? Learn more about the technical processes behind the scene? Understand how the game's mechanics will function? Let us know in the comments!

In other news...

Today 1C Entertainment is also publishing a brand new turn-based, story-driven RPG adventure called Terrain of Magical Expertise. The game is inspired by a popular animated webseries (but not to worry, you will enjoy playing it even if you have never watched it!) and features a full cast of voice actors, including talents from some of your favorite video games, YouTube channels, anime and cartoons, as well as charming animations and a huge world to explore Get Terrain of Magical Expertise right now with a 15% launch discount for the first week: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1543430/Terrain_of_Magical_Expertise/ While we're on the topic of monsters, our friends over at Monster Sanctuary are preparing a juicy DLC of their own called Forgotten World. They're holding a community contest to design a monster which could end up in-game, as part of it. You can check it out right here: https://twitter.com/moi_rai_/status/1435267531099492357 Also, if you haven't checked out Monster Sanctuary on Steam yet, you probably should: it's a slick game :) https://store.steampowered.com/app/814370/Monster_Sanctuary/

Patch Notes:

09/09/2021 - Version 1.6.0

New Content:

• Draekon/Knifer: Adding 2 new monsters to the content of Missions and Monsters. The Draekon and Knifer. They have their own sprites, abilities, portraits, Bzil versions, etc.
• Missions: Adding 2 new missions tied to the Draekon and Knifer monsters.
• Hunts: Adding 2 new hunts featuring unique versions of the Draekon and Knifer monsters.

Bug Fixes:

• Hellhunds: Could use the wrong graphic for a specific variant. Fixed.
• Eruptor: There was an issue where the buff wouldn't reset correctly under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Change Appearance: The option at the guild would be unavailable if the player had no human recruits, even if they had monster recruits. Fixed.
• Buffs at the start of the turn: Buffs granted by equipment at the start of the turn wouldn't show on the information panel until it was refreshed (even though they would be correctly enabled). Fixed.
• Level Up: When gaining a level in combat, the current HP wouldn't be increased by the amount gained to max HP, which would make certain passives tied to "having full HP" less attractive. Changed things so the current HP is increased by the same amount as HP gained for the level.
• Guttersnipe: Pet was incorrectly increasing bleed damage. Fixed. Also, when both Guttersnipe and Polliwog were out, only Guttersnipe would apply its debuff at the end of the turn on adjacent targets. Fixed.
• Autosave: The autosave before battle could fail to save new consumables that were crafted during battle setup, while still using the ingredients. Fixed.
• Maps: Fixing a few layering issues in various maps.
• Taming: If the target was asleep, the sleep effect could remain visible after taming them. Fixed.
• Mouse Cursor: The cursor could vanish on the worldmap under certain circumstances that might leave it invisible in the troops menu as well. Fixed.
• Class change: The mouse would behave oddly in this screen while in 4k mode (or certain other resolutions). Fixed.
• Scrollers: The scroll bar would behave oddly in 4k when dragging the scroll button. Fixed.
• Misc: Fixing small miscellaneous issues.

Modding:

• Counters: The "kOffensiveCounterWithBuff" counter type wasn't fully functional before. It works like kOffensiveCounterWithDebuff, except it adds a buff on the user rather than a debuff on the attacker.
• Telekinesis: The passive will now be useable by human classes as well (it was only working on monster units before).

[ 2021-09-09 15:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We know it's been a while since we put some news up! I don' think we were quite prepared for just how much work our team's latest addition would create for us... But, we've been back in business for some weeks now, and I'm happy to report we're just about done with the big update for Missions and Monsters that we talked about a while ago! You should expect the update to go live in about 2 weeks, for all platforms and all consoles. We'll save the exact patch notes for the actual release, but in a nutshell, it contains several bug fixes for the whole game and 2 new monsters for the DLC Missions and Monsters. Those monsters can be fought against, tamed, and have their Bzil counterparts. It's been a while, so let me refresh everyone's memory with their looks:

It's been 3 years!

Also, it's been roughly 3 years since our Early Access launched on Steam. Time sure flies by! We wanted to take this opportunity to mention again how grateful we are for the incredible community support we've received throughout Fell Seal's lifetime and, especially, during our Early Access. The feedback has been invaluable and has helped us greatly in getting Fell Seal where it's at today! Of course, not all interesting ideas could be added to Fell Seal, but we've been taking notes, and our next project will be that much better for it! On that front, we're almost done with the initial design phase of our next game, and we'll be starting asset production soon. Sadly, we don't have any screenshots to share yet (unless you find spreadsheets exciting), but we'll get there soon enough! On that note, if you want to make sure you don't miss out on any news and screenshots of our next project, you should head to our website https://www.fellseal.com/ and register for our newsletter. And once again, thanks a ton for the awesome support!

[ 2021-08-26 17:17:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! Since you guys like tactical RPGs we thought that you might be interested to know that we have just released a free Prologue version for our upcoming tactical RPG, Reverie Knights Tactics. We would like to collect as much feedback as we can before the full version of the game is out, so feel free to try the Prologue version and share your thoughts with us. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638140/Reverie_Knights_Tactics_Prologue/

[ 2021-07-13 18:21:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Summer Sale is here again and we have prepared great discounts for all of our titles - you can now grab Ancestors Legacy, Deep Sky Derelicts, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin or our brand new Arena FPS Viscerafest and many other titles with discounts up to 90%! Check out the full 1C Entertainment catalogue here: https://store.steampowered.com/franchise/1CEntertainment/#browse

[ 2021-06-24 16:53:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Next Fest is in full swing and until June 22nd, you have the chance to play a free demo of our turn-based RPG adventure - Terrain of Magical Expertise!

Terrain of Magical Expertise

TOME Terrain of Magical Expertise is a game about a game! Take on the role of a White-Hat Hacker, battling your way through a turn-based RPG adventure with hundreds of unique enemies, doing anything it takes to achieve victory in the Campaign of Champions! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1543430/Terrain_of_Magical_Expertise/

You can also check out other participating titles that have free demos available right now:

Dread Templar

Dread Templar is a fast-paced retro FPS that combines 90s classic shooter elements with modern skill-based FPS controls. You are a Dread Templar who entered Hell seeking revenge. But in order to get it, you have to fight your way through the dark realm! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1334730/Dread_Templar/

Kapital: Sparks of Revolution

Kapital: Sparks of Revolution is a hybrid of city-builder and society management game. You play as a new mayor of the city that was recently destroyed by war. Your goal is to restore the city to former glory by managing limited resources, resolving social conflicts and overcoming crisis situations. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1399700/Kapital_Sparks_of_Revolution/

[ 2021-06-17 14:07:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! We are proud to announce Reverie Knights Tactics, a new turn-based fantasy RPG coming to Steam this fall! [previewyoutube=ZuMRmzIyf34;full][/previewyoutube] Embark on an expedition to find Lennorien, the long-lost elven city to save the ones you lost, while fighting the goblin menace that spread terror across the continent! Lead your party of heroes, each one with distinct, special abilities and skills, allowing you to use multiple battle strategies to defeat your enemies. Discover a fantasy world featuring deep map and scenario exploration in an epic adventure, visual novel style! Wishlist Reverie Knights Tactics now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1399690/Reverie_Knights_Tactics/

[ 2021-05-26 13:40:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Konnichiwa friends! We have great news for all of our fans from the land of the rising sun: a new patch for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark has just been released, that adds the support for Japanese language! After you update your game, you will have the option to switch the language and enjoy it with a proper Japanese translation. This applies to the Missions & Monsters DLC as well, so go ahead and grab the whole bundle and start your adventure today! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15253/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters_DLC/

[ 2021-03-05 15:06:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is just a micro update to remove some files that shouldn't have been part of the build. Nothing much to report other than that. We still have a small number of bug fixes in the works as well as working on the two new monsters for Missions and Monsters. We'll have some news on that soon enough!

[ 2021-02-04 17:11:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! The next Steam Game Festival begins tomorrow and we are happy to announce that GRAVEN and Viscera fest will be participating with playable demos! From February 3rd to February 9th you will have the opportunity to step into the shoes of the priest and experience the world of GRAVEN first hand as well as having the chance to cause some mayhem among the ranks of Dr. Mortice's army in Viscerafest! Don't forget to wishlist GRAVEN and Viscerafest! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371690/GRAVEN/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1406780/Viscerafest/

[ 2021-02-02 15:44:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! 1C Entertainment is launching a brand new project called 1C Champions! The purpose of this project is to offer members of our community the opportunity to participate in the early development of our games, that are currently being developed and supplying us with your feedback regarding these titles. In addition to being able to preview our titles in advance, the most active members of this program can look forward to receiving fabulous rewards as a compensation for their hard work! If you are interested in joining this project, join our Discord server and check out the #1c-champions channel for further instructions on how to join this program.

[ 2021-01-25 17:54:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings everyone! First of all we would like to wish you a Happy New Year! All the best for a great 2021 to all of you and your beloved ones! Let's kick off the year nicely with a limited discount promotion for both the base game and the Missions and Monsters expansion. In case you didn't have the chance to grab them during the Steam Winter Sale, here is a second chance to get Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark for 66% off, and Missions and Monsters for 25% off. The sale ends on Friday January 8th at 10am Pacific Time (7pm CET)! https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155320/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters/

[ 2021-01-06 18:21:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are happy to let you know that we have added Simplified Chinese localization to Fell Seal: Arbiters Mark! To all our fans in China, we hope you enjoy the game now in your native language. 12/17/2020 - Version 1.5.0b

New Content:

• Simplified Chinese: Is now an officially supported language.

Bug Fixes:

• Achievements: Some achievements could fail to trigger if they were triggered while playing in offline mode. This should be behaving better now.
• Eruptor: The bonus from this ability would only be removed when attacking with an Ability (rather than any HP damage). This should be fixed now.

Modding:

• Text: Modders could crash the game by creating recursive text replacement entries. Fixed.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/

[ 2020-12-17 18:25:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We just wanted to update everyone on the status of the announced DLC update, the one adding 2 new monsters, the Draekon and the Knifer.

We're adding Simplified Chinese and Japanese to the game's languages and it's taken priority, which has sadly delayed the work on the update. Normally, that wouldn't have caused that much delay, but we also expanded our team from 2 to 3 very recently.
(our newest member, Locke) Now, one would think a pair of extra hands would speed things up, but this new member's productivity levels have been abysmal! He's actually slowed us down tremendously >.< We're still working on the update though and we're hoping we'll be able to get some decent progress on it fairly soon.

Shoutout to Monster Sanctuary!

We wanted to mention that our friends from the Monster Sanctuary team recently came out of Early Access and the game looks like an inspired and fun mix of metroidvania and monster taming, with nifty pixel art. Give it a look right here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/814370/Monster_Sanctuary/

[ 2020-12-15 21:21:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! The Steam Awards of this year have just started and we would like to ask for your support! So if Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is one of your all time favorite games and you think that it deserves your vote for the LABOR OF LOVE AWARD, please head over to the dedicated page on Steam and nominate us! Thank you!

[ 2020-11-26 11:47:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are happy to announce that Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark will be releasing in Japan on January 28, 2021 through our partner DMM GAMES for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC! Pre-orders are now available here: https://fellseal.games.dmm.com/

[ 2020-10-29 15:04:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

2 Years!

It's been 2 years now since we launched the Early Access for Fell Seal. Once again, we want to thank everyone for the incredible support and engagement we've received! You guys have been truly awesome and we're very grateful! To celebrate, we're releasing a little pack of goodies that will be placed in a "Goodies" folder under the game's files. It contains some character art, portraits and other fun knick-knacks. Give it a look!

DLC Update:

We're still wrapping up testing, but we have a big update to Missions and Monsters lined up. It'll include, amongst other things, 2 brand new monsters, some new missions and various tweaks and updates.

We might also have a few more surprises in the works, but we can't quite announce those yet. Stay tuned! :)

[ 2020-09-14 17:02:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We had a lot of feedback after our last update, about our new UI to show quickly when units have enough AP to master their class, and we made some tweaks to make the feature even better. Now, the mastery star will be shown as well as the AP-arrow icon, so the player can see all the information at once. Also, the star will bounce up and down if there's new AP to master a class, but it's not yet mastered and won't bounce if the class is already mastered. We also made some visual adjustment to pretty things up. Here's the full change list: 07/15/2020 - Version 1.4.1

UI:

• Troops Menu: The star that shows a character has learned all the abilities for their current class will now be shown next to the AP Arrow, rather than replace it, so more information is conveyed. Also, it will bounce if the character "has enough AP to master the class but hasn't learned it all yet" versus not bounce if the class is already mastered.

Bug Fixes:

• Victory Dance: Could still apply deep wounds or venom to allies under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Troops Menu: Fixing some issues where the AP arrow/mastery icon in the main troops menu would disappear after changing class on a unit, until the menu was reopened.
• Deployment: For monsters using "default variant visuals", when changing their class during deployment, their sprite wouldn't update on the map if they were already deployed. Fixed.

[ 2020-07-15 16:33:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We have another update today. Mostly bug fixes, but we've also been listening to feedback on the forums and added some UI changes to help people deal with their increased roster size. From the troops menu, you'll now see a star on units that have mastered their current main class, or have enough AP to master it. From the Ability learn menu, there'll be a new option to "learn all" abilities if there's enough AP to do so. This should help players manage their troops easier and faster. We're still gathering feedback on that front so feel free to let us know your suggestions on the forums. Thanks! 07/12/2020 - Version 1.4.0

UI:

• Troops Menu: Now showing a * icon for a unit (instead of the arrow-up icon) if they have mastered their main class, or have enough AP to master it.
• Learn Ability Menu: Adding a new button to instantly learn all the skills on the page if there is enough AP to do so. A tutorial about this new feature will be shown the first time the player could use the new button.

Balance:

• Maximum Units: Increasing the default amount of maximum units from 54 to 66.

Bug Fixes:

• Aegis Hide: Was incorrectly greatly reducing damage from back attacks as well as front/side attacks. Fixed.
• Heel!: Would still work on targets market as "non-displaceable". Now it'll show 0% chance to work if the target is immune and it won't displace them.
• Oldebzar: Some water tiles had incorrect height information. Fixed.
• Arena: One enemy had 2 body armors equipped in one of the bouts. Fixed!
• Text: There were various small errors in non-english text and UI. Fixed all we found.
• Equilibrium: Dispelling effects would not correctly trigger Equilibrium in all cases. Fixed. Also, Equilibrium will be applied after regular damage, so if the target dies from the attack, Equilibrium will not be applied.
• Dumadi Depths and Three Sisters Hunt: Fixing level range if player accesses it as early as possible in the story.
• Helhunds: Fixing some visual inconsistencies when using multiple variants (some issues remain on that front that require some asset updates and will take a little longer to get fixed).
• Monsters Customizations: Some of the customizations were not layering in the correct order. Fixed many of them, although we could have missed some (so many permutations, it's hard to check it all). Let us know if you find anything weird, thanks!

Modding:

• Abilities.txt: Adding the "kRes" value to the list of values for DmgSource in abilities. This functions like kDef that was already there but will use the unit's RES value as the source stat for the power of the ability.
• Monster Portraits: There was still an issue with custom monster portraits where they would stop loading after reloading a save file. Fixed.

[ 2020-07-12 19:29:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Another small update with a few fixes: 07/08/2020 - Version 1.3.6

Bug Fixes:

• Zzakander Spires: Had incomplete shop entry when using "Missions and Monsters" upon reaching the city initially. Fixed.
• Crafting: The "new crafting" notification could be shown when it shouldn't under specific circumstances (being able to craft an higher tier of item upgrade without having crafted the previous tier).
• Troops Menu: Clicking on the "bottom right hints" could sometimes activate the unit underneath them instead of the hint itself. Fixed.
• Tame: Under very specific and rare circumstances, it could happen that some of your units would "vanish from the battle" after trying to tame a unit. Fixed.

Thanks again to everyone that took the time to report issues to us. At this point, most of the issues we're aware of are fairly minor, so we'll probably hold off on releasing another update until we have something critical, or a fair bit of changes. As always, please, let us know if there's anything weird going on! Thanks again!

[ 2020-07-08 17:55:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We have another update today, mostly fixing a few issues tied to mods, but also to making sure the Master of Monsters achievement is correctly awarded (you incorrectly needed all drakes variants before). 05/08/2020 - Version 1.3.5

Bug Fixes:

• Custom Monster Portraits: There was an issue with those. Fixed.
• Modded Missions: There was an issue with recruits, hunts and "class tags" fields of the custom mission file not being loaded. Fixed.
• Master of Monsters: This achievement incorrectly required the player to master all variants (including all different drake elements). This is fixed now and will require the player to master only one of the drake variants (that change is retroactive and the player will get the achievement upon loading a save file that meets the requirements).

Balance:

• Rogue's End: The crossbow is now "sellable".

[ 2020-07-06 14:50:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We have another small update with bug fixes that have been reported over the weekend. Nothing too major, but we don't like to sit too long on bug fixes, haha. Here goes: 05/07/2020 - Version 1.3.4

Bug Fixes:

• GameOptions.txt: One of the values to modify AP gains in battle could create a divide by zero with some extreme values. Fixed.
• Teleport Other: Special enemies with that ability could teleport units on top of "other units" if there was a trap under them.
• Meatshield: The ability was never meant to be useable on an enemy. Should be fixed.
• Shove: The player could "cancel" their movement back to where it was before being pushed by the enemy if they took their movement after the counter was triggered. Fixed.
• Difficulty Settings: The "enemies use drowning" settings wasn't always saved correctly. Fixed.
• 2 Kyries: During certain story battles, the player could place Kyrie on the map even though she was already deployed by the story if they had no other units available at all. Fixed.

Balance:

• Bzil Units: Will now gain vicarious AP from monsters (for the respective monster class) for missions AP as well as battles. They were already gaining it from battles. (This is really in this time).

[ 2020-07-05 16:39:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! We had a fix recently to address monsters without Deft not being able to activate crystals in the Ancient path and one for monsters not being able to activate "special commands" like the Ancient Bones. It turns out these issues could still happen under some specific circumstances >.< Patch 1.3.3 fixes that, this time for good! 02/07/2020 - Version 1.3.3

Bug Fixes:

• Ancient Path: There were still circumstances where monsters without Deft couldn't click the crystals. Fixed!

Balance:

[strike]
• Bzil Units: Will now gain vicarious AP from monsters (for the respective monster class) for missions AP as well as battles. They were already gaining it from battles.[/strike] (edit: that didn't make it in after all)

[ 2020-07-02 22:24:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, we have another small update from bugs reported on the forums. The majority of reports have been fixed by now, and we're hoping we won't have to deploy another update for a bit, but we'll see what happens. As always, we'd rather have a few more patches than not and make sure bugs are taken care of promptly! Here are the notes for this one: 30/06/2020 - Version 1.3.2

Bug Fixes:

• Kawas: The passive "Item Potency" for tamed Kawas gave them "Quick Fingers" instead. Fixed.
• Guild Upgrades: Input from the gamepad in that section didn't respect the type A/B control scheme before. Fixed.
• NewGamePlus: Characters won't retain previous injuries upon starting a new game plus. A certain character could potentially not have access to his story class under specific circumstances. Fixed.
• Missions: Under very specific circumstances, a character could fill more than 1 slot for a mission. Fixed.

Balance:

• Dismiss: Non-dismissable units from mission rewards can now be dismissed in a New Game Plus, to help the player manage their roster.

[ 2020-06-30 15:05:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We're releasing another small update with some quick fixes to issues that users reported that we thought should be fixed ASAP. So here goes: 28/06/2020 - Version 1.3.1d

Bug Fixes:

• Victory Dance: Could sometimes trigger "added negative effects" from passives on allies. Other inconsistencies existed. Fixed.
• Monsters Visuals: Monsters using manual visuals, but without any selected visuals would revert to "default" instead after loading a save. Fixed (they will now use no visuals after reloading a file).
• Tame: Two "monster elements" couldn't be tamed correctly (Polar Bulldrake and Water Pektites), although their other elements were tamable. Fixed.

Thanks again to everyone that reported these issues! :)

[ 2020-06-28 15:42:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone. We just pushed update 1.3.1c to fix some bugs that have been reported from the launch of Missions and Monsters: 27/06/2020 - Version 1.3.1c

Bug Fixes:

• Worldmap: Clicking on the "bottom hints" with the mouse while they were over a town would favor moving to a town rather than the hints clicked on the bar. Fixed.
• Consumables: People using mods or manually corrupting their save file data could find all their inventory "gone" afterwards (due to invalid data). This should be more forgiving now and only remove "faulty items".
• Missions: When loading a save file, the bonus "duration reduction" to any active missions would be lost. Fixed.
• Monsters Class Change: When changing the main variant of a monster and doing a lot of back and forth between characters, the monster wheel could start showing class duplicates.

27/06/2020 - DLC Version 1.0.2

Bug Fixes:

• Upgrades: Adjacent bonuses for buildings got broken in update 1.3.1c. Fixed.
• Ercinee Kindling: Wasn't granting renew to the caster as it should have. Fixed.

[ 2020-06-27 19:43:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We can finally say that Missions and Monsters, the first expansion for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is out! The price is 12.99 EUR/USD with a loyalty discount for all of you who already own the base game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155320/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark__Missions_and_Monsters/ A (very) brief summary of what's new in the expansion (in case you don't know already):

• Recruitable monsters with their own class system.
• Mission and Guild upgrade system.
• Lots of new encounters, including the challenging Hunts.
• 3 New human classes.

For more details, check the store page of the expansion. This is a big one! :) We're really happy about how the expansion turned out, and just can't wait for you to sink your teeth into it. Definitely let us know your thoughts on it! Also, there will be a stream today! Conan The Librarian, our forum moderator and overall great guy will be doing the streaming and talking while the lead programmer, Pierre Leclerc, will be in the chat, answering your questions. The stream will take place today at 6:15pm PDT. It's time to head back to Teora! :) Lastly, here are the patch notes for new version of the base game: 23/06/2020 - Version 1.3.1a

UI:

• Worldmap: Now showing the patrol description when selecting any node on the map, rather than having to travel to the node and select patrol. Also, now showing the level range of story encounters this way.
• Shaders: Updating a game shader to be more performant and use less memory.
• Gamepads: Updating gamepad module. It should support a few more gamepads hopefully.
• Low Specs: Adding a new config option for "GameConfig.txt" that goes under the "Graphics" section, called NoWeather. Set it to true to disable the rain and ash effects on certain map if your computer can't handle showing the extra sprites and you get slowdowns.

Balance:

• Cabin Battle: Lowering the levels of a few enemies to make the encounter easier.
• Stampede: Will now use the distance traveled from all abilities that displace the caster, including Pounce.

Bug Fixes:

• Descriptions: Updating some descriptions that were missing information.
• Memory Leaks: Fixing 2 small memory leaks that could build up over time under certain circumstances.
• Class Wheel: Fixing a visual issue with level requirements showing a Star for the level when they shouldn't have.
• Pushing: Pushing enemies could trigger obtaining Hallowed Mind when pushing them against an obstacle. Fixed.
• Plaguestorm: Always had a 100% hit chance despite the listed odds. Fixed. Also didn't show malice's bonus in the prediction. Fixed.
• Focus Fire: AI could cast Focus Fire even if it didn't have enough MP to use with the give spell at times.
• Various: Fixing various very rare input issues. PS: If you are experiencing issues with downloading the DLC (download not initiating) please try to restart Steam. Steam needs to be completely closed and then launched again in order for this to work.
• Arena: A combatant was missing their weapon in the 2nd tournament. Fixed.

[ 2020-06-23 17:04:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We finally have the official release date for Fell Seal's Missions and Monsters! The expansion will release on all platforms on June 23 and will be priced at 12.99 USD/EUR. The Steam store page is up, with a new trailer, screenshots and all the information you could want! You can check it right here: Missions and Monsters on Steam. Add it to your wishlist for Steam to automatically notify you on the day the expansion releases. And a link to our trailer: https://youtu.be/HYe85S__H1k. If you haven't already, you can check out our previous Steam dev log entries to get all the nitty-gritty details on what the expansion brings to the table, but here are some (very brief) highlights:

• Recruitable monsters with their own class system.
• Mission and Guild upgrade system.
• Lots of new encounters, including the challenging Hunts.
• 3 New human classes.

But you should really check out the store page for all the details, as there's quite a bit more to the expansion than that! ;) Our focus was to enrich the core gameplay experience with new and improved features, ways to use your units and, of course, awesome monsters. We're extremely happy about the result, and we can't wait to have everyone experience all the new features Missions and Monsters brings to the table. Once again, a big thank you to everyone for the continued support, with a special mention to all our beta testers that helped with the expansion! You guys are really awesome! :)

[ 2020-06-05 14:39:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone :) This is a very small update for PC only again. We mistakenly turned off error logging when parsing mod files in the previous build. This update restores that so modders have better feedback on issues. Otherwise, the last update added a special debug flag to fix some data files not loading on what turns out is a Lithuanian language specific issue (the game isn't localized in that language, but users using a version of their system with that alphabet would run into the issue). That issue is now resolved automatically without any special flags. We also fixed the issue with Doppelganger-copied Final Sting having the caster "escape" battle by becoming invisible. Thanks!

[ 2020-05-24 00:37:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! A short and sweet update today: Missions and Monsters is finally fully completed! At this point, it's mostly waiting, as the game was sent to all our partners and it's getting a final review/testing phase going. We expect to be able to announce the official launch date in our next update, so stay tuned! Otherwise, our last update mistakenly disabled "error logging" for mods, so we'll be doing another quick update soon to restore that feature. Otherwise, the next expected update should be when the DLC launches. Afterwards, we'll keep an eye on the forums for any bugs and balance feedback from the community and make adjustments as needed, as always. This has been quite the adventure for us and we're very happy for all the support we've been getting during the whole process. Thanks again! And stay safe everyone :)

[ 2020-05-22 19:48:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, I'm posting the notes about this update for consistency, but it should not matter to 99% of players. This is to add a new option to the GameConfig.txt to help a few specific players that seem to be unable to load textures correctly with the latest builds. This will only matter to you if you were getting "white rectangles" in the Title screen before this update. If that's the case, this build might fix it for you. If it doesn't, you'll have to use that new option I mentioned. Details can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/1/3443510323235940613/ Note: this patch will not be going to consoles as it's not needed there (consoles can load textures correctly all the time!) and it'll make its way to Gog as soon as I confirm it helped the specific players having issues.

[ 2020-05-17 14:04:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Some rare players have been getting issues when using a flying unit, so we prepared a patch that should help narrow down the issue. If you're one of those players, I would recommend using Steam to "verify file integrity", just to be on the safe side. If you still experience the issue, the game should generate an error log with some extra data, so please post it on the forums. You should regain control of your flying unit within a few seconds hopefully. Here are the patch notes: 05/12/2020 - Version 1.2.2

UI:

• Buffs and Debuffs: Will now show their icons when shown as damage text over targets in battle.
• Help Screen: Will now show the trap description if a trap is visible on screen during combat.

Bug Fixes:

• Cutscenes: A unit with float could have their shadow float with them during a few very specific cutscenes. Fixed.
• Crafting: The "new crafting flag" in the troops menu could show up with nothing new to craft on NewGamePlus. Fixed.
• Flying: Some rare players have had issues with units taking flight under rare and specific circumstances. We added some code to report the issue better and to make sure the game doesn't stall if it happens (it'll resolve itself after a little delay).
• AI: Various behavior fixes and improvements.

[ 2020-05-13 01:08:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This should be the final update before Missions and Monsters comes out. Mainly, we had to delay sending the updates for other platforms to today (we forgot not everyone works on the weekends like us, haha), so this has some small updates from our weekend work. Here are the notes: 05/11/2020 - Version 1.2.1

New Features:

• Crafting: Will now show a "new icon" over recipes that the player hasn't seen before, as well as a "new crafting available" indicator from the troops menu when there are new recipes.

Balance:

• AI: Various small improvements.
• Steal Gold: Slightly increasing amount stolen.
• Accessories: Slightly lowering the price of starting accessories.

UI:

• Battle: The turn order number shown over portraits when pressing details will now skip dead units so the numbers remain sequential.
• Dialogues: The cancel button will now advance the dialogue as well as the confirm button.
• Arena: Adding a confirmation prompt when starting the battle for consistency with the patrols prompt.

Bug Fixes:

• Gadgeteer: Missing icon with first ability in skilltree. Fixed.
• Banyan Span: Fixing gathering point that wouldn't visually disappear after being picked.
• A certain Kawa: Could remain visible at the end of a cutscene where he shouldn't have been. Should be fixed.

Modding:

• Encounters.txt: You can name specific multiple classes or subclasses at once for generating an enemy. The system will pick one at random from the list. The format is "class:Class0|Class1|Class2|etc".

[ 2020-05-11 18:10:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another hotfix. This one is actually fairly important, as there was a potential issue with the new autosaves-at-the-start-of-battles feature.

Patch notes:

Patch 1.2.0c

• Autosaves: There was an issue with the new autosave where some special events might be flagged as already done if the player canceled them mid battle. Fixed!
• Dual Wielding: The second attack would always miss when attacking large creatures from 3 of the 4 possible tiles. Fixed.

[ 2020-05-07 23:05:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is the last announcement in quick succession hopefully! We just split the Steam Windows build into a 32 bits version and a 64 bits version. Steam should automatically detect the correct one for you (the 64bits version for about 99.5% of the players in our case, haha) and start using that one. The download won't be anything special as it's just the main executable getting changed, more or less, so no worries on everyone's bandwidth! This is mainly in preparation for the Missions and Monsters expansion, as it uses a bit more memory. Technically, not enough to require a 64 bits, but we'd rather play it safe and there's very little to lose by providing the 64 bits version of the game anyways. Let us know if you run into any issues. Thanks!

[ 2020-05-07 20:29:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small hotfix from bug reports we received. Thanks a lot for those!

Patch notes:

Patch 1.2.0b

• Low Resolutions: Some low resolutions were not using the troops menu layout with less units shown per column and thus some units were partially outside the screen area. Fixed.
• AI: Fixing some weird interactions when the AI is using Double Cast and One for All combos.
• AI: Minor improvements tied to double casting (including, but not limited to: not casting drain MP 2x in a row on the same target)).
• NewGamePlus: A certain secret character would start with the wrong passives equipped most of the time after a NewGamePlus. Fixed.
• Names: A certain villainous story character name was displaying the wrong name in combat. Fixed.
• Resolution Change: Changing the resolution and then canceling the confirmation would leave the UI looking weird until backing out to the title screen. Fixed.

[ 2020-05-07 19:16:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tiny update for the build, nothing critical, but we want to make sure everyone's cherished builds are working as intended :) Version 1.2.0a

• One for All: Recent update caused issues with One For All, where the 2nd attack when dual wielding would always miss and where the range for One for All to trigger was often incorrect. Fixed.
• Menus: Very minor tooltips tweaks in the Equip Abilities and Equip Weapons menu, where the wrong tooltip would be shown under rare conditions.

That's it! If you notice anything weird, let us know and we'll do our best to address it as fast as possible. This last update was truly massive in terms of amount of new code that went in, so it's possible we missed something somewhere >.<

[ 2020-05-07 02:14:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is the rest of the patch notes for Update 1.2.0, since they were too big to fit in a single update.

Patch Notes (2/2):

05/06/2020 - Version 1.2.0

Bug Fixes:

• 4_3 Fixing small inconsistencies in the Help screen and Try and Buy screens while using a 4:3 aspect ratio.
• Pulsar Generator: Spell could change the facing of the target to a different facing than the target had at the start of the spell. Fixed.
• New Game Plus: A certain secret character wouldn't retain his AP correctly in a New Game Plus. Fixed.
• Mouse: Using the mouse wheel, it was possible to enable the "Dismiss" command on Story characters in the Troops menu (and also during battles). Fixed.
• Swarm Strike: There was a visual glitch where "helpers" that are sleeping would remain upright (and still sleeping) at the end of the Swarm Strike animation. We don't want to change the functionality or complexify the ability, so it will keep working correctly even if teammates are sleeping, but their frames will reset to "sleeping" correctly at the end of the animation.
• Large Units: Cleaning up the way distance is calculated to/from larger units so it always uses the closest distance. This should make abilities that rely on distance (or the distance of weapons) always function correctly with larger units.
• New Recruits: Fixing a bug where under certain circumstances, new recruits from an advanced class would still lose access to that class after switching them out (even though we changed that behavior in a prior update).
• AI: The AI could have odd movements under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Misc: Reducing memory usage a tiny bit in battles and menus.
• Name Change: When changing the name of a recruit and then canceling changes, the old name wouldn't be restored.
• AI: AI could make odd decisions when it came to One for all, selecting it when it shouldn't or not selecting it when it should. Fixed.
• Niwot: Enemy had idle stance running too quickly. Fixed.
• Random Drops: There was an issue with the way the map rewards were being generated and it could often result in wrong odds for most item, the longer the player went without restarting the game. It also resulted in a lot more Godwood drops late game than was intended.
• Mystic Shield: Fixing an issue where Mystic Shield would absorb damage as MP if the character would heal from the damage due to high elemental resistances.
• Mystic Shield: Fixing an issue where the MP damage wouldn't be shown correctly when punting a target with Mystic Shield if there was no bonus damage.
• Sacrifice Abilities: Those abilities could have inconsistent behavior with One for All, Protect and other more complex interactions. Fixed.
• Cleave: When a character with the Cleave passive got a kill during a turn and died on the same turn (due to Thorn or other reasons) could result in the "next character in the Queue" getting their turn as a "cleave turn" (meaning they wouldn't regenerate MP). Fixed.
• Selecting Subclass: Fixing some minor UI issues.
• Relentless Investigator: The player could fail to get the achievement if the last chest they opened was located in Gelligh. This fix will be retroactive and grant the achievement to player that should have it upon loading a save file that has all treasures opened.
• Teleport Other: There was an extremely rare chance of the AI using this ability to teleport someone "on top of them". Fixed.
• Ancient Path: Fixed an issue where the crystal would deactivate after an enemy was revived (until another enemy would be killed), even though it should have stayed activated.
• Battle Menu: Fixing an extremely rare case where the battle menu could get 'stuck' if the player hid and showed it rapidly.
• Displacements: Fixing a rare issue with "abilities that displace a lot of people at once" sometimes leaving some of the targets "untargetable" until they moved again.
• Charge: Fixing an issue when using a charge ability from a water tile, where the attack wouldn't occur after the movement was done.
• Charge: When the player used a charge, the target would not get to counter it, even if they had a valid counter. Fixed.
• Leap: Leap will now correctly check for traps after the caster lands.
• One for All: One for All would ignore the target height and just check for distance. Fixed.
• Infused Edge: No exp would be granted to the caster if the spell part of the attack missed. Fixed.
• Doppelganger: Some bosses with multiple parts wouldn't have their parts correctly flagged as not being valid for Doppelganger and the player could attempt to copy some invalid ability sets. Fixed.
• Enemies: Fixing some issues in enemies generation tables that would prevent a few passives to be generated on enemies as optional passives.
• Zzakander Spires: When using "Elite enemies", the added enemy would spawn in an odd location. Fixed.
• Mind-Control: Mind-Controlled enemies with Smart Cast would apply Smart Cast incorrectly. Fixed.
• Pushing: Pushing someone out of a water tile with a push ability would result in visual issues and the target possibly surviving with 0Hp.
• NewGame Plus: Enemies would still be restricted by story progression in their choice of weapons and accessories, even when using the flag for enemies to have access to all the gear.
• Units in Water: Certain abilities that exchange position with a unit could have some inconsistent text positioning for caster drains if the caster started in water. Fixed.
• Fleeing Enemies: Fixing a rare case where strange AI behavior could occur when an enemy escaped battle and was under the effect of Protect.
• Double Cast: The AI could cast a spell using Blood Magic without enough HP if the first cast got countered and reduced their HP below what was needed for their 2nd spell. Fixed.
• Monsters: Some rare monsters had weaker stats in an upper Tier than a lower Tier. Fixed.
• Credits: Fixing an issue where some names in the credits didn't show up properly.
• Adaptive Evasion: Will now correctly be set to "Evade Regular Attacks" after being attacked by Infused Edge.
• Summons: Fixing an issue where mind-controlled summons would have no abilities other than attack for the player to use.
• Interstitch: Was ignoring the spell height restriction on the victims. Fixed.
• Stampede: Now calculating the amount of tiles walked more accurately (it used to calculate it from the distance between the 2 positions, rather than the steps taken to get there).
• AI: Will not attempt to cast Wild Cards on a target immune to all debuffs (or that has all debuffs already).
• Dispelling: Will now show 0% for the chance of the buff to be removed if the target has an Evade counter against the Dispel ability used.
• Scar Tissue: Will not trigger from fixed damage anymore (since those don't target def nor res).
• Bows: Under very specific circumstances, the optimize feature when changing classes could end up equipping a bow and a shield at the same time.
• Blazing Bolas: Under very specific circumstances, the target could be flagged as being underwater after the spell, even though they would not be. Fixed.

Modding:

• List All Jobs: The optional GameOptions.txt option to always show all classes in the class wheel was cleaned up to not show classes from bosses and other special hidden classes.
• Abilities: Adding a new abilities.xml field so abilities can use the element of the weapon equipped rather than have a built-in element. Previously, skills with "treated as a regular attack" would automatically have this behavior, but now they will be able to decide with this new field.
• Monsters: The game started using Monsters.xml last patch, but the file wasn't generated in the customdata_examples folder. Fixed.
• Abilities: Abilities will now correctly use the minrange value when being casted. Before, it would only respect values of 0 or 1. Now any value <= maxrange will work correctly.
• Abilities: Adding a new field to abilities (PosStyle) that can be set to "kLine" to force the ability to target only in a line from the caster.
• Jobs: Adding "noVicarious" to the job fields. When it's set, a class doesn't gain vicarious AP. This used to be hardcoded.
• GameOptions.txt: Adding "Vicarious-extensions" table. You can make special mappings there to have vicarious AP work "cross class" (for example, you can make it so that a specific story class earns vicarious AP from another class).
• Encounters.txt: Makings more robust in general in terms of error handling.
• Encounters.txt: Adding command to grant spawned units bonus stats, speed, max hp or mp. Those are: stat-hp, stat-mp, stat-atk-, stat-mnd, stat-def, stat-res, stat-spd. Eg: stat-hp:100 will give the unit 100 more max HP.
• Charges: Will now use the size field to create a max charge range. Using a very large value for size will essentially behave like before (ie, no real max distance).
• Abilities: Adding a new counter called "kOffensiveCounterWithDebuff". It can act with any debuffs and will trigger with the standard "offensive action" conditions. It will use SpellHash for the visuals to use during the counter (and use a generic effect if none is provided).
• Abilities: Adding a new counter called "kOffensiveCounterWithBuff". It can act with any buffs and will trigger with the standard "offensive action" conditions. It will use SpellHash for the visuals to use during the counter (and use a generic effect if none is provided).
• Abilities: Adding a new counter called "kRandomDebuffPerPower2". It will trigger on standard offensive actions and apply "x" number of debuffs ("x" is the power2 field) to the target and use SpellHash for visuals.
• Abilities: Adding a new effect field (AddsNonRemovableEffects3) to abilities with fields called: kfEquipAxe (and one for each weapon name). Those can be used to allow a character to equip said weapon as a passive ability.
• customdata_examples: Files will now automatically be refreshed if they are out-of-date rather than needing to be deleted first. We were afraid of deleting changes the user might have made to those files, but I guess making changes to those files wouldn't do anything since they aren't used by the game anyways, so it should be pretty safe. Files in customdata will never be deleted by the game though, just to make sure we don't delete people's mods.
• Stores.xml: Adding an XML to control store contents.
• Encounters.txt: By default, overrides for Encounters.txt replace the section they are targetting. By using the new command "AdditionMode=true", custom data will "add to the section" rather than replace it. This is useful to make tiny modifications, rather than redo an encounter.
• Encounters.txt: Adding new commands for the creation of enemy monsters: portrait, sprite and spriteextra. They allow the unit's portrait and sprites to be changed. "spriteextra" is for added sprites, as some monsters have multiple parts (you can see examples in Monsters.xml).
• Encounters.txt: Fixing an issue that prevented the helmet and armor commands to be used for accessories.
• Encounters.txt: Adding "weighttarget" command for units generation. Format is: weighttarget:AbilityHash|IncreasedValue|Target (eg: weighttarget:HEAL-A1|50|monster0 which will make that action 50% more attractive than normal).
• Encounters.txt: Adding "isaleader" command for units generation. Format is: isaleader:number, where number is going to be the bonus EXP granted for killing the leader.
• Encounters.txt: Adding "objective" command for Patrol fields (like: [city01-patrol0]). Format is objective:defeatleader. Currently, that's the only value and it will "win the map" automatically if all leaders are defeated and set the map objective description accordingly.
• Encounters.txt: Adding "story-" new command. Format is: story-=x:0, y:0, dir:rd where name is the name of a story character (like kyrie, reiner, etc). This will spawn them on the map on your team.
• Encounters.txt: Adding "nozone" new command. Format is nozone=true. It can be used in place of zone0=1,1,1,1 command so there is no zone at all. This will only be useful when spawning story characters, otherwise you'll need a zone to have units in there.

[ 2020-05-06 18:34:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We're happy to release update 1.2.0 today. It's probably our biggest update yet and it adds a lot of nifty things! Here are the highlights for the update:

Highlights:

• Player AI: Player units can now be controlled by the AI. Go to the system options and select "Player AI" and set the AI you want on your combatants. Their setting will be saved and remembered.
• Autosaves: Adding autosaves at the very start of battle, so the player won't lose all their work preparing their units if things go sour. The autosave will keep all pre-battle setup, but otherwise start the player right before the battle was triggered.
• UI: Lots of UI improvements all around for cleaner and clearer information in menus, in combat, everywhere! More options in menus (sorting, unequipping the whole army, etc.).
• Controls: Various updates to mouse and keyboards controls to improve upon them.
• Balance: A fair amount of balance tweaks across the board.
• Bug fixes: Lots of bug fixes on anything that's been reported by the community and from our testing team.
• Modding: Adding the Stores.xml file to the list of moddable files and a lot of improvements to many of the systems.

The patchnotes are too large for a Steam update and will be split into two updates (bug fixes and modders notes will be in a subsequent announcement). As a note to our other users: - the GoG update should come about by the end of the week. - the Ps4 And Xbox One updates should come about next week (or early the week after). - the Switch will not be getting this update for now. It will be getting the next update (the update for the release of Missions and Monsters). This is due to added delays on Nintendo's side, tied to the current Corona virus crisis, and is outside of our control.

Missions and Monsters Expansion:

We're finally fully done with the programming and asset creation for the expansion. Currently, we're busy testing, balancing and tuning for the absolute best experience! While we don't quite yet have an exact release date, we know it's going to end up being in June rather than late May after all. We want to release on all platforms at the same time and unfortunately, with the current world situation being what it is, some of our console partners are going to need a lot more time than they used to in order to review the expansion, which is creating this delay.

Fell Seal Milestones:

We passed 2000 reviews this week! Thanks so much to everyone for the support, it's been truly incredible!

Patch Notes (1/2):

05/06/2020 - Version 1.2.0

New Features:

• Player AI: Player units can now be controlled by the AI. Go to the system options and select "Player AI" and set the AI you want on your combatants. Their setting will be saved and remembered.
• Autosaves: Adding autosaves at the very start of battle, so the player won't lose all their work preparing their units if things go sour. The autosave will keep all pre-battle setup, but otherwise start the player right before the battle was triggered.
• Enemy Turns: The player can now press the System Menu button during an enemy turn and as soon as their turn is over, the System menu will open, allowing the player to load/quit/etc.
• Unequip Everyone: Adding a button to unequip the whole roster at once from the troops menu equip screen.
• Turn Completion: When pressing the "details button" in combat, each unit will display their turn completion amount as a percentage next to their health bar. This should help the player make better decisions when it comes to abilities that delay the turn of units, etc.
• World Map: Various updates were made to the controls on the world map to make keyboard only user more at ease (ie. users not using the mouse at all, but just the keyboard).
• Difficulty Settings: Adding a new difficulty setting to control if the AI will use drowning mechanics on the player or not.
• AI: The AI will now use the map's natural teleport points if it deems it a good idea.
• UI: Many different additions to give better information to the player.

Balance:

• Gear: Updating the list of what can be sold and not sold. In general, making more unique gear unsellable and more rare gear sellable.
• Story Characters: Some story characters have small static bonus to some stats upon creation. Now those will be stored in a different way so they are kept if the unit has its level reset to 1. This change is not retroactive and will require a new game. Also slightly changing those bonuses for some characters.
• AI: Various small improvements to the AI.
• AI: There was a chance the AI would cast Dispel 2x in a row on the same target with Double Cast. Fixed.
• AI: AI wouldn't always make smart use of Focus and Hallowed buffs. It'll now be smarter.
• Axes: Increasing vertical range to 4 (was 2 before).
• Healing Staff: No longer triggers Chilling Touch and other such passives.
• Defensive Hit: Now counts as a regular attack.
• Reanimate: Summoned zombies of tier 2 and 3 will now have "Counter: Poison" rather than "Counter: Critical Rebirth" since summons can't be affected by any Revive or Rebirth abilities.
• Counter: Thrash: Increasing damage dealt to 1.2x (from 1x).
• Chaos Slice: Increased dmg from 0.85x to 0.9x.
• Marked: The class's last ability won't be locked by the story anymore but purchasable like other abilities.
• Marked: The character that has access to this story class will now learn a special passive through the story (Penumbral Mastery).
• Exiled: The character with access to this class will have access to a bonus passive as well (Stampede).
• Avenger: Bonus will now be applied per allies that is currently fallen, or has fallen before in the current battle (and isn't protected against injuries). The net result is that reviving allies won't remove the bonus (unless they have injury protection).
• Story Battles: Made a certain NPC assisting in the fight in a certain city map more likely to drink potions if their health gets low.
• Pektites: Adding an element to their regular attack.
• Sleeping Targets: When the target is asleep, a bonus to accuracy will be given to attacks on the target (25%). The target's evasion was already ignored if it was asleep, so this is mainly a boost to special attacks with a low starting accuracy (like Wild Slam, etc.).
• AI: AI won't be as eager to get Hallowed Mind by slapping some nearby allies.
• Scoundrel: Increasing slightly the odds of Steal Item, Buffs and Gold.
• Wrathful Burst/Holy Burst: Increasing the vertical range to 4 (from 2), to match other Burst abilities.
• Wood Staff: Will no longer increase the casting range by 1. Other staves remain unchanged.
• Thorns: Increasing damage dealt by Thorns to 30% of damage dealt (was 25%) is reflected. Thorn damage is subject to defense, so it is not as high as that amount.
• Hellmuzzle: Increasing attack value slightly.
• Silver Rapier: Now grants increased MND, like other Silver weapons.
• Rapiers: Increasing their MND bonus a tiny bit. Rapiers now grant a bonus to accuracy as well.
• Ebony Dagger, Quarreller, Crimson Scythe: Now have a bonus to MND.
• Reflectotron: Lowering MP cost to 4 (from 6).
• NewGamePlus: A certain secret character will now remain on the player's roster when starting a NGP, rather than needing to be acquired again.
• Barrier: Will not be removed anymore from a target if the target was immune to the effect that was used on them. So, for example, an enemy immune to Poison won't used up its Barrier buff if Poison is casted on them, since they were already immune.
• Badges: Now, when the player finds a badge, the class it unlocks will be shown in the class wheel with its information, even if the player doesn't mean the requirements. That way the player can start planning their progression better if they want access to the class rapidly.
• AP Gained: On maps where the player's 6 main units are much higher level than the opposition, the AP is reduced by 33% (up from 25%).
• Stealing: Being afflicted with Blind will now reduce the chance of Stealing in half.
• Cleansing Blade: Reducing damage bonus from removing a debuff from 0.45x per debuff to 0.35x per debuff.
• Fellblade: Changed most Slices to a line targeting rather than diagonals.
• The Highlands: Updating the level range of the area to be lower in general and provide an option for the level 20-30 range.
• Story Characters: Story characters that join late into the game have had their starting AP increased a tad.
• Bonus Character: Reducing slightly the AP costs of abilities for a certain special character that likes to buzz around.
• Reavers: Gaining access to Mauls and losing access to Swords.
• Thorns: Thorn damage will no longer remove Charm from the recipient.
• Enemies: Should not spawn with Countershot anymore if they don't have a ranged weapon.
• Enemies SubClass: Changing the way the odds of an enemy having no subclass are calculated. They will now be based on character level and tied to Difficulty settings, rather than a flat 20%.
• Magic Bullet: Now counts as a Regular Attack.
• Quick Fingers: Will now allow the player to activate a chest/gather point/ladder/etc after taking an action and a movement if there is one in range.
• Worms: Can no longer spawn with boots.
• On-Hit Passives: Changing the proc chances of Deep Wounds, Chilling Touch and Sunder to all be 75%.
• Dreadmaw: Increasing chance to hit from 50% to "regular odds".
• Flippers: Enemies will never spawn with flippers if the map doesn't have water.
• Blazing Bolas: Blazing Bolas will now only try to place traps on valid tiles. Which means that a well targeted bolas, with many invalid location for the traps, will only land on valid tiles, and thus more likely to spawn directly under the target.

UI:

• Troops Menu: The screen could feel less responsive for KB M users if the user was moving the mouse around while pressing keys. Should feel better now.
• Troops Menu: The currently selected unit will show "Deployed" on its portrait (like in the battle placement screen) if the user is in battle the unit is deployed.
• Gear Description: Slightly increasing the size of the description of gear in their main description box.
• Abilities Equip: Some of the descriptions wouldn't shown until after the player had made an actual change to their loadout.
• Visuals: Various small spacing improvements to the UI.
• Visual Customization: Made the experience using both mouse and keyboard at the same time better.
• Troops Menu: Spaced out the units in the troops menu. Also made the troops menu layout better (less units covered by the UI) when using a small resolution.
• Abilities Description: Clarifying and updating a few descriptions.
• Worldmap: The worldmap will now center on nodes as a road is drawn to them. This will be especially useful to people using low resolutions since the new nodes are easier to spot.
• Title Screen: The game should reach the title screen just a bit faster than before.
• Unit Number: When pressing the "details button" in combat, each unit will be assigned a number based on their order in the turn bar and that number will be shown over their portrait and sprite on the map. This will help quickly seeing whose turn is coming soon by looking at the sprites only, as well as differentiating any sprites that might have the same portrait.
• Damage: The damage prediction box will now show "-0HP" rather than " 0HP" when an attack would do 0 damage, to be more consistent. Heals for 0 will still show " 0HP".
• Patrols: Adding a tutorial explaining a few basic concepts about the patrols, including their level range. It will trigger the first time the player selects the "Patrol" command on the world map.
• World Map: The right stick will now pan the map.
• World Map: Pressing and holding the mouse button will allow the map to be panned with mouse movements.
• World Map: The keyboard will now control the world map cursor as if it were a gamepad, so the mouse won't be required at all with mouse and keyboard. The directional buttons won't pan the map anymore without pressing and hold the "Pan Map" button or the mouse.
• Gear Description: Making the layout of the gear description box a little smarter if there aren't any on-hit effects or buffs attached to the equipment piece. This will make the description section better.
• Weapons Description: Now showing the shape information in the description for weapons with an AoE.
• Weapons Description: Will now show the base on-hit chance of debuff in the weapon description panel.
• Delaying a Turn: When an attack causes a delay in the turn of the target, the word "Delayed!" will be shown using the Debuff colors.
• Item Potency: Will now show the increased numerical amount in the item description box while browsing items in combat, rather than just in the prediction box.
• Damage Prediction: Will now show the amount of turns a debuff will last in the prediction box.
• Credits: Will now use less memory. It probably won't be noticeable by anyone really, haha.
• Class List: The list now has a sort option (default, a-z, z-a).
• Class Wheel: The wheel now has a sort option (default, a-z, z-a).
• Prediction Box: Will now show "No effect" instead of "not showing any effects" when Dispel or Panacea wouldn't do anything, for clarity.
• Prediction Box: Buffs will now be shown in "healing color" when being added and "damage color" when being removed, rather than the reverse. With this change, all "good effects" are "healing colored" and all "bad effects" are "damage colored".
• Abilities, Weapons: The base chance of debuffs will now be shown in the description of the ability.
• Descriptions: Changing the format of many descriptions from 0.5x to 50% if it would be more intuitive for what they do.
• Help Screen: Adding numbering to the help tooltips to make it clearer how many tooltips there are on any given screen.
• Sabotage: The % chance will be shown in the prediction box. It's always 100%, unless the enemy is immune to displacements. This should make it clearer the enemy can't be displaced at a glance though.
• Spell Speed: Effects at the end of the turn (like Renew, Poison, etc) will be shown faster if the player has increased the spell effect speed (they were already shown faster than regular spells, but now they will be even faster if the player spell speed is higher).
• Tutorial: Adding a mention about being able to add custom portraits to the game to the customize tutorial.

[ 2020-05-06 18:30:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This week, we'll go over some of the new gear that is being added in Missions and Monsters, and explain the overall design approach we took while creating them. First, in terms of scope, we're adding a hefty 60 new pieces of gear. About half of that is weapons, and the rest is split amongst armor and accessories. There were two main driving factors for the new equipment: adding new and unique gear and filling some more niche archetypes to give the adventurous player more options when crafting their dream team. Things like a shield with bonus atk or spell range, more elemental weapons options, cloth armor or deadly staves for the brawling healer, etc.
We're also adding a bunch of more complex pieces of gear, with many unique properties. Here's a few examples to showcase what you can expect:


That's only a small taste of the new equipment, but showcases some of the more unique ones. There's also this beauty that promises potent destruction raining on your foes...
At this point, most of the new content has been created and it's looking good. What remains now is polishing, testing, testing and more testing! We want to make sure the balance is as solid as it can be after all! We have a big update planned for the base game as well, with a lot of new features, UI improvements, bug fixes and modding options. I'll save the details of that for the next devlog though! Thanks again and stay safe everyone.

[ 2020-04-24 21:48:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Today, we're going over the last of the new human classes that will be introduced in Missions and Monsters: the Wrangler class. As we've mentioned before, the Wrangler class will be pivotal to the growth of your Beastmaster units, because of its Tame ability that lets you recruit monsters during battle. But, the Wrangler class is a lot more than just a supporting actor to your Beastmasters and brings many powerful abilities of its own. The Wrangler focuses heavily on interacting with monsters in general, be they allies or enemies, so it tends to lend itself better to a supporting role. Without any monsters on the field on either side, the Wrangler is probably not going to outshine most other classes. But with monsters around... it's a different story. And with monsters stronger than ever in Missions and Monsters, you'll quickly find yourself welcoming the Wrangler's expertise!

Abilities:

Let's go over their abilities, passives, and counter: Counter: Might: Counters any offensive action taken on the character by using Atk and Mnd up. This gives the Wrangler an easy means to pack a bigger punch if they'd rather be more hands-on than supportive. Passives: Skirmish: The character will be able to move 1 extra tile at the end of their turn. So if the unit moves before it attacks, it will get a second movement phase of 1 tile after its attack, and if it moves after it attacks, it will get to move 1 extra tile. This gives the Wrangler extra mobility and versatility, and even allows for extra back-attacks by melee units. Owner's Pride: Whenever an allied monster unit falls in battle or defeats an enemy, the Wrangler gets a stacking 10% bonus to their speed stat (up to 40%), allowing them to snowball their advantage or come back from a tough situation more easily. Actives: Tag Team: The Wrangler can select an ally monster unit in range and "swap them out" for a benched monster unit. The new unit will get all the buffs, debuffs, current HP/MP and turn completion transferred to them. This grants the Wrangler immense versatility as they can change the party composition itself as the battle progresses.
Tame: This lets the Wrangler recruit enemy monsters. The chance is based on the enemy's current HP (the lower, the better) and won't work on bosses and special enemies. But there are otherwise no restrictions. Attack!: The Wrangler orders all allied monsters on the map to attack the first target in range directly in front of them. With careful planning and placement, this ability has the potential to be devastating.
Frenzy!: This gives Atk Up to all allied monsters, but removes Mnd Up from all of them. Calm...: This gives Mnd Up to all allied monsters, but removes Atk Up from all of them. A quick way to bolster all of your allied monster friends. Heel!: This allows the Wrangler to select an enemy or allied monster within 5 tiles and teleport them to a tile adjacent to the Wrangler. This gives the Wrangler great control over the placement of all monsters on the field and can be used both offensively and defensively to great effect. Beast Whisperer: Allows the Wrangler to use Mind Control on an enemy monster (Mind Control is a superior form of Charm where the target will get an immediate turn, controlled by the Wrangler, on top of being left with the Charm status afterwards). This ability is melee range, so it's a little riskier than other Wrangler abilities, but very potent. Quicken Monster: A version of Quicken that targets only Monsters. It costs less MP as a trade-off. Hunt: An attack that deals high damage to monster units, but poor damage to humans and bzils. Counts as a regular attack. And that's it for all of the Wrangler's abilities! Their kit is unique and a little more subtle to use than most other classes, but if the field has many monsters and you're clever about placement, their potential is immense, both defensively and offensively. Stay safe everyone! And thanks for your continued support.

[ 2020-04-10 20:39:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This week, we're going to cover in detail one of the new classes that will be available in Missions and Monsters: the Beastmaster class! The Beastmaster is our biggest class yet, with a ton of abilities. They are somewhat of an hybrid between a regular class and the Gadgeteer class, but with many new and unique mechanics. The Gadgeteer style part of the class comes from the way they will learn 14 of their abilities. These abilities are each tied to a specific pet monster and have 2 parts: the active part, which works the same way as any regular ability: you select the ability, you choose the target(s) and then you use it. Those have a wide range of effects, as the Beastmaster is incredibly versatile: damage, healing, debuffs, buffs, special abilities... Once the ability is used, the pet that it's associated with will appear next to the caster and remain there (almost) indefinitely. You can have up to 3 pets out at once per character, and if you summon a 4th one, the oldest pet will go away. Each character can only have 1 of each pet out, meaning they must have 3 different pets out at once. This is per character, so having 2 Beastmasters out won't interfere with their pets' availability.
At the end of the character's turn, any pet they have out will apply their effect to targets adjacent to the character. All pets are "smart", so healing pets will only apply their "end of turn effect" to friendlies and damaging pets will only target enemies, etc.
In the example above, 3 pets are out: the Blardger Brat, which deals damage, the Daodrenner Kit, which heals allies and the Arpia Guttersnipe, which has a chance to poison (and refresh poison duration on) adjacent enemies. All the effects happen at once so the information is displayed as quickly as possible. These 14 pets are unlocked by recruiting the corresponding monster, which means that once a monster is recruited, every Arbiter on your team will have access to the given pet summon (assuming they have access to the Beastmaster class to begin with). In this way, those behave much like gadgets. Monsters can be recruited through missions or through Taming (with the new Wrangler class). On top of these 14 pets that can be summoned, the Beastmaster has access to 7 more abilities that are learned normally through their skill tree (so those are not shared across all units and must be learned individually, like regular class skills). Those abilities are "Pet Dismisses" and are a new mechanic to the game. The Dismissal abilities can only be used when the character has at least 1 pet out. When they use a Dismiss ability, all their currently deployed pets will be dismissed and the spell will gain more power for each pet dismissed that way. The dismissal abilities have a very wide range of utility (and scale well with a high number of pets), such as damaging enemies, healing an allly or even all allies at once, revives, character displacement, etc.
All in all, the Beastmaster is a VERY versatile class, with varied play styles possible. The player can opt to maximize the pets' "end of turn" effects and run around with an aura of healing/damage to everything in range, or they can opt to focus on the Dismiss abilities, bringing out pets as fast as possible to prime big ratios to Dismiss abilities. Or they can pursue a balanced approach of the above, of course. One thing is certain, the true power of the class is tied to the cute pets it can bring out. And to help with that, there are various abilities to summon them faster, such as the counter Loyal Friends, which will trigger on any offensive action taken on the caster by summoning a random pet, thus helping the character bring out 3 pets faster than normal. The Beastmaster has 2 powerful passives, one which restores MP for each buff/debuff/pet that wears off or is dismissed/dispelled from the character, helping them build MP faster as they use their pets (or through buffs/debuffs removal). Their second passive is called Rampart, and it creates a "zone of control" around the unit, preventing any enemies from moving further once they move to an "adjacent tile" to the character. They'll only be able to walk past that tile on the next turn.
Here, Reiner can't walk past the unit with Rampart, as the shortest path is blocked by Rampart and he doesn't have enough movement to go fully around. With all these tools at their disposal, we expect the Beastmaster will quickly become a fan favorite! Let us know what you think! And as always, thanks for the support! Lastly, we hope everyone stays safe during these difficult times >.<

[ 2020-03-27 22:15:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! For this week's update, we have a bit of eye candy for the most part: we finished the monster customization menu and we're happy to showcase it in action! You can create some pretty crazy looking monsters with this!
For anyone paying attention, we ended up changing the design of it a little bit from the original sketch. You can now select up to 8 different monster variant visual effects (and 2 special added effects) and a custom portrait selected from any of the monster's portraits, the "unknown" portrait and player imported portraits. Other than that, the Beastmaster class is almost completed. We're wrapping the last details today, and we'll focus on it in the next update. It's a MASSIVE class, with a total of 24 abilities in total (1 counter, 2 passives, 21 actives)! We'll have all the details on it next time. Thanks again to everyone for the support, we appreciate it! :)

[ 2020-03-13 21:54:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Today, we'll go into the details of the Monster Variants system that we briefly covered a few weeks ago.

Quick Recap:

In Missions and Monsters, the player will be able to recruit monster units, either from Taming them (with the new Wrangler class), or by earning them as rewards from various Missions. Monsters behave a little differently than humans: they can't change their "monster class", such as being a Vangal, an Ercinee or a Daodrenner. Instead, they have access to mini-classes called Variants. Each monster can use 2 such variants on top of their basic monster class (for a total of 3 classes equipped). They can set up a primary Variant and a secondary Variant. It's easy to think of them as a main class and a sub class for the most part. Monsters gain access to the active ability sets from their equipped variants on top of their monster ability set and they'll automatically use any known passives tied to the variants they're using, thus equipping up to 6 passives in total. Thus, monsters gain access to more passives at a time, but have a little less flexibility when picking them. They also gain access to more sets of abilities (3 rather than 2), but those sets have fewer abilities than human sets would have. All in all, they have their own strengths and weaknesses and should prove to be quite an interesting addition to a player's arsenal.

In-depth overview:

Monsters need to use AP to unlock abilities from their class and variants, just like humans. Since a monster's base class can't be changed ever, learning everything on it is somewhat quick, so we're keeping things simple and awarding AP to both their monster class and their primary variant at the same time. It's also worth noting that when taming a monster, they will come knowing all the skills they knew when you tamed them, meaning quite often their monster class will start almost maxed (or fully maxed if recruiting a Tier 3 monster), so the real use of AP lies in the Variants. New Variants can be learned in many different ways: through missions, by using special badges, and by learning enough abilities from other Variants (so, all in all, a similar way to humans). Variants (and base monster classes) will work with the Vicarious AP system to help the player train all their monstrous forces. When it comes to stats, monsters have fixed stats that depend on their monster class (and tier). Thus, their stats will always be the same for 2 monsters of the same type (assuming they are currently using the same primary variant, more on that in a bit). All monsters in Fell Seal have 3 different tiers (such as Vangal, Komainu and Gyaum), and each tier confers higher stats and sometimes improved resistances and such. A monster's skill tree has 2 "Tier Up" nodes that can be purchased and will increase the monster's tier, resulting in higher stats, etc:
The Primary Variant is more or less treated like a human's main class. The monster will gain AP for that Variant. The 2nd Variant behaves like a sub class, meaning the monster won't be gaining AP for it, but will gain access to its active abilities, and passives.
The primary Variant isn't just about gaining AP though, as it also influences the monster's stats. The primary Variant has an effect on the monster's base stats, immunities, elemental resistances, movement, jump, flight, swimming, etc. For example, using Fire Drake as a primary variant will grant a %-based bonus to atk, mnd, def, res, a bonus to Fire and earth resistances, and a malus to water resistance. The Aerial variant grants Flying, a small evasion boost, earth resistance, and weakness to thunder, etc. Each variant has different modifications; some are pretty small and others a little bigger, depending on various factors. The primary variant can be selected from the Class wheel and will show the resulting stats and the bonuses granted, showing exactly how the primary variant will change things (that screen isn't finished, so we don't have a screenshot ready quite yet!)

Visuals:

As usual, we're all about giving the player options, so we're adding visual customization to the monsters. By default, recruited monsters have "automated" visuals that will show specific "accessories" representing their 2 equipped variants and show the base monster sprite representing their monster tier. This is how enemy monsters behave.
(Mystic/Clockwork Kawa) Using the character customization screen, the player can select a color for the monster from the 3 tier sprites the monster has, rather than using the color of their current tier. They can also opt to select any number of variant accessories to create their monster's look, rather than use those tied to their equipped variants.
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to monster variants, but hopefully we haven't forgotten anything! Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and thanks again for the support!

[ 2020-02-28 22:33:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Missions and Monsters is a collection of new systems, updates and additions to the game, resulting in a richer and more engaging gameplay experience. One of these new additions is the special Hunts.

Hunts:

The Hunts tie together the new missions system and the new monsters variants system (a quick refresher on this can be found right here). For most hunts, you'll unlock them by undertaking a special mission, or a "mission chain", which is multiple missions that must be completed in order and culminate into a difficult and rewarding special mission. These missions will become available from around the mid-game, right up to the final fight in the game. After the mission is completed, it'll open a new "Hunt event", which will show a special icon on the world map, much in the same way as character events .
The player can then visit that node and trigger the Hunt event, which will feature a custom battle against a very powerful hand-crafted named monster unit, boasting a complex monster variants setup. Achieving victory in a Hunt should be a challenging endeavor and will award the player unique rewards. Each Hunt can only be completed once.

New Maps:

On top of the new systems, new classes and new abilities, we'll be adding new maps as well. Notably, both Port Grendel and Fenfjord will get a town map, replete with special encounters and patrols. But we'll be adding many other extra maps as well (you can expect many Hunts to take place on these new maps we'll be adding!) Here's a sneak peek at two of them:

Thanks again!

[ 2020-02-14 21:26:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We have a fairly short update this week. We've been focusing on creating assets for a while now, so we won't be showcasing new mechanics or the likes this week. We've also moved to a new location and the move took a lot of time >.< There'll be a bigger update next time! We've been focusing on creating new maps, more monster variants visuals, and the visuals for the Guild Upgrades. As we've covered before, the guild upgrades are structures that you build in the various zones of Teora. Each zone will have its own grid to create the buildings in and each building has their own effect and bonus from being in the proximity of other buildings. The buildings mostly affect missions, but some affect patrols and others have a more global effect. Here's the original post about it for more details!



Those aren't quite in-game screenshots, but that's how it'll look in game as well! Thanks everyone!

[ 2020-01-31 23:31:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Today, we'll be covering our plans for the monsters! We'll be focusing on the monsters themselves, as well as their new sub-classes, which are tentatively called monster variants. The short and simple version is that monsters have their base class (Vangal, for example) and then can equip up to 2 variants. They'll get access to the ability set of the variant, as well as their passives, on top of their base monster class. We're still tuning, but the current idea is that each variant has 2 active abilities, 2 passives and 1 counter. One of the goals is to give them something different than humans in the form of more equipped passives, while expanding their base abilities without crowding them too much. We're focusing on the monsters today, but the systems in Missions and Monsters are all intricately tied together, so many of the features tied to monsters and variants will be obtained through special missions and new classes. We'll have updates about those later!

Monsters Specifics:

Missions and Monsters will be making monsters recruitable, so they can now join your Arbiter forces. You'll have to recruit them in a different manner than regular units, though. Monsters will join the player as rewards from special Missions or from being tamed during combat by the new Wrangler class (which we'll cover in a later update). Each monster base class (such as Vangal, Ercinee, etc.) will have its own skill tree, with their upgraded tiers (eg. Vangal -> Komainu -> Gyaum) being a node on their tree they can spend AP on to learn. There will be a tutorial on the process added early in the game to make sure things are well explained! The monster variants can be seen as classes that the monsters can learn, and they function in a similar fashion to the human classes. A monster cannot change its base class , but they can equip up to 2 variant classes and 1 counter. A monster unit will be able to set its 2 variants and its counter from the UI, which means that all its passives come directly from its base class and 2 variants. They get 6 passives in total, but they have a little less flexibility than humans in selecting them. The variant classes will have their own skill tree and AP pool and will unlock their abilities and passives in the usual way. New variants will be unlocked in a variety of ways, including having a high enough level in other variants, mission rewards, and special monster badges. On the visual side of things, each variant will have its own unique sprite representation (like human classes have their hats) so it'll be obvious at a glance which variants a monster is sporting. Since each monster can have up to 2 variants equipped, they could be showing 2 different sprites at once.
Here, a Thorned Vangal uses Thornstrike on a Venomous Skeletal Daodrenner.
Here, we can see a Blardger showing many of its possible variants, although only 1 at a time (there could be up to 2 shown at once).

Closing Words:

One of the reasons we didn't have recruitable monsters in Fell Seal before now is that we wanted to make sure they would be interesting and customizable enough compared to human classes. We feel that too many games in the genre have recruitable monsters tossed in, but never bother to make them as attractive when compared to human classes, which tend to be more feature-rich. With our system, we're aiming to change that and make monsters both viable and interesting. They'll have different pros and cons than humans, but ultimately should balance out well when compared. It'll be up to player preference at that point! Thanks to everyone for the continued support!

[ 2020-01-18 00:47:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! First and foremost, we hope everyone had great holidays and a very merry new year! We took some time off this year ourselves and had a great time with friends and family! It had been a while since we managed to take some time off during the holidays, as the last time was probably right before we started working full time on Fell Seal actually! This does mean that we have less to show this week and we won't go into the details of a new system, but rather showcase our new splash art for Missions and Monsters. We hope everyone finds it as awesome as we do!
Once again, we hope everyone had great holidays and we wish everyone the best for 2020!

[ 2020-01-04 02:48:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This week, we want to cover one of the new classes that we're adding in Missions and Monsters, the Samurai class! But before that, some quick notes about Missions: Since posting our devlog on the Missions system, we've been thinking about adding a currency cost to missions. As we've been creating the list of them (we're up to 79 missions so far!), it became obvious the cost was a good idea. We've decided to use both GP and CP (Company Points) for the cost. A mission will only have a GP or CP cost at once, but they'll always have a cost. This will help make GP less "trivial" to accrue and give it increased worth. And it will give CP another use apart from being used for Guild Upgrades, which will create an opportunity-cost for them. This change ties things together neatly and elegantly! It's just a question of creating all the remaining Missions now! Thanks to everyone that sent us feedback on this, we appreciate it!

Samurai Class:

With Missions and Monsters, we'll be adding 3 new base classes to human units. Base class means they'll be usable by any unit (story and generic) and won't require a badge to open up. The new classes are tied to missions though, and will only become visible after the associated mission has been completed, on top of having the usual class requirements (eg. 3 Mercenary, 4 Scoundrel, etc.). The default portrait for the Samurai unit:
The basic design idea behind the Samurai class is a mix of high-risk/high-reward abilities and passives, as well as a fairly versatile kit. They sport some interesting unique abilities to give them varied options. Samurais should be somewhat fragile in the face of taking damage, but deal fairly well with status effects, while providing high damage and utility for the team. Here's their ability list (please note the names aren't final at this point). As a note, a fair amount of these abilities apply their status effect on the Samurai themselves, so pay close attention to the wording! Actives:

• Overreach: 8MP. Attack range tied to weapon. Count as a regular attack. Deals 1.2x damage and inflicts def-down on the user.
• Meditate: 6MP. Self spell that removes all debuffs and heals 0.6x (mnd) for each debuff removed. Sets user evasion to 0% until next turn.
• Finisher: 20MP. Attack range tied to weapon. Count as a regular attack. Deals 2.4x damage and inflicts atk-down on the user.
• Single Out: 8MP. Range 5, single target. Inflicts def-down, res-down on the target and force them to turn towards the user.
• Spirit Sword: 14MP. Range 1. Does 2.6x (MND) non-elemental damage to the target and inflicts int-down on the user.
• Martial Spirit: 10MP. A small cross shape centered on the user. It deals 0.35x damage to all units around, inflicts cripple on them and forces them to face the user.
• Blood Spirit: 8MP. Range 1. Does 0.6x damage to the target and ignores their def stat. Also inflicts bleed on the user.

Passives:

• Razor Wind: Can use with any single-target skill. Adds 6MP to the cost and changes the range to 3. Sets user evasion to 0% until the next turn. (This adds a new command, much like Double Cast).
• Unbreakable Spirit: Being afflicted by def-down/mnd-down increases atk/int by the same amount. Being afflicted by atk-down/int-down increases def/res by the same amount.

Counter:

Counter Critical: Focus: Automatically uses Defend and Focus when HP becomes critical.

Weapons: Sword Armors: Light, Heavy

Preview:

Here's some of the art we're preparing for the new abilities: Single Out:
Spirit Sword:
Thanks everyone for the support!

[ 2019-12-20 22:01:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We've mentioned to you in the past about our good friends behind Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones. They have just published a major content update for their horror RPG, and as we know some of you from this community are interested in this game, we would like to share these news here. Check out the largest update for Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/779290/announcements/detail/1687093048750087508

[ 2019-12-19 15:16:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, just wanted to share with you that over at VideoChums.com Fell Seal was awarded the "Retro-Inspired RPG of The Year" To quote Video Chums: "Once in a while, a game developer completely nails a retro formula while offering their own gameplay twists. When I played the incredible Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark earlier this year, it brought back memories of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vandal Hearts and I absolutely fell in love with its challenging gameplay and immersive world. Talk about going above and beyond!" steamhappy steamhappy steamhappy

[ 2019-12-13 14:43:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! In this week's devlog, we'll detail another system tied to the missions: the Guild Upgrades system.

Upgrades

As mentioned in the previous devlog, the world is divided into 5 different regions. Upgrades can be built into any of these 5 regions and will confer a variety of bonuses, primarily to that region. After selecting the Upgrades section in the Guild, the player can decide in which region they want to build upgrades for. Selecting a region will show it on the world map, show which battle maps are tied to it and which upgrades are currently built on there.
Afterwards, the player can build upgrades for the region, or reset current upgrades for the region.
Resetting the upgrades will refund a portion of their cost and clear all upgrades from the area, so the player can change their layout if they feel like it. On that screen, the player can see the layout for the selected region and the currently built upgrades if there are any. Each region has its own layout for adding buildings. This example has a 3x4 area to add buildings. Other regions will have different areas, such as a 3x3 or perhaps a 2x3 and a 1x3, etc. Selecting to build a new upgrade will show the list of all possible upgrades the player could create as well as their cost in CP (Company Points). There will be a core of buildings that will be the same for all regions, but some regions will have unique buildings that confer special bonuses or bonuses that pertain to the specific zone better (things tied to poisonous maps for example).
You can see the bonus for the selected upgrade in its description. These bonuses are divided into 3 general categories:

• Mission Bonuses: these bonuses apply to Mission that are in the same zone as the Upgrade.
• Patrol Bonuses: these bonuses apply to Patrols that are in maps that are part of the same zone as the Upgrade.
• Global Bonuses: these bonuses apply all the time to all zones. Those are considerably rarer.

On top of this base bonus that a building confers, there's a concept of synergy, where a building can bolster another building if they happen to be touching on the building grid. For example, the Cantina will confer a bonus to the Gardens, the Bounty Board and the Watchtower if they are built side by side. Thus, the grid available in a region (3x3 vs 2x3 for example) will impact what kind of bonuses you could get in that region. And, of course, the player's choices in placing the buildings will also have an impact on that front. Here's what it looks like when selecting the Gardens, which receives a bonus from the Cantina. It shows what the bonus would be on that building if it was next to a Cantina, in this case "receive 2x as many components from Gathering".
Finally, when selecting a specific upgrade, you will be able to place it where you want in the building grid, assuming you have the CP and the grid position isn't already occupied by another building. As you select a position, the "border bonuses" that will be active will light up to show which would be active from placing the building there and greyed out if they wouldn't currently confer a bonus.
The current building icons were taken from some of our maps and aren't final, but they showcase the visual style we're going for with the buildings.

Upgrades Bonuses

Currently, there are 24 different building upgrades and each will have its own unique building sprite. Each has their own bonus and many will have synergy bonuses as well. Here are some examples of the bonuses the upgrades will grant: Missions:

• Missions take 20% less time to complete.
• Missions award 20% more CP.
• Missions award 2x as many components as normal.
• One extra unit can be sent on each mission.
• Missions award 20% more AP

Patrols:

• While patrolling the region, increase the chance of meeting stray Kawa Bandits 5%
• While patrolling the region, increase the chance of meeting stray Zotzits 5%
• While patrolling the region, increase damage dealt by player units by 5%.
• While patrolling the region, all deployed units will start with Renew.
• ...

Global:

• Store prices in any store are 5% cheaper when buying.
• Guild prices in any guild are 5% cheaper for all services costing GP.
• Can run 1 more mission at the same time.
• ...

When combined with the Missions, the Guild Upgrades system should give the player a lot to do outside of battles and help them open up new challenges, areas and rewards. Feel free to send us comments, ideas, feedback and suggestions! Thanks for reading!

[ 2019-12-06 21:04:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Its this time of the year when Steam once again organizes the annual Steam Awards where you can vote for your favorite games in multitude of categories. A lot of great games came out this year (some which we spent more time than we probably should), that deserve your vote and attention but if you consider Fell Seal to be one of those, please consider nominating it in some of the categories. We know that the competition is very hard as there are a lot of great and recognizable titles however every bit of potential visibility helps to introduce the game to new people who may also soak their teeth into the land of Teora and become full-time arbiters!

[ 2019-11-26 18:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We've been quite busy hammering the designs down for Missions and Monsters, and we've finally reached a point where we feel we have enough details to start our devlog on the creation process. With each devlog, we'll be focusing on one of the new systems that Missions and Monsters will be adding to Fell Seal. This week, that's missions! But first, a quick refresher on the general scope of the DLC.

General Concept

Missions and Monsters isn't meant as a continuation of Fell Seal's story, but rather to extend and add to the core systems of the game, as well as add new challenges and content. As such, the plan is to add a missions system, a guild upgrade system, recruitable monsters, a monster-taming system, monster classes, new encounters, new classes and new crafting recipes. We're also adding large encounters that will feature a lot more combatants on each side, for putting to work more of those units you've been collecting.

Missions

The new missions system is wide-reaching and meant to achieve several goals. It will give more things to do for "benched units", with some missions giving special rewards, opening new content and being a viable method to procure many crafting components. Missions can also serve as an alternative means of earning EXP and AP for benched units, although in that case they tend to yield less impressive loot. Most missions will be repeatable, but some will be unique and award something quite special. It'll be up to the player to decide which style of missions they want to focus on, as they can only run a limited amount of missions at once. Missions (and guild upgrades, which we'll cover in a later devlog) are accessed through the Guild menu:
A new resource called Company Points (CP) will be added next to the current GP bar. Currently, CPs are only used to purchase Guild Upgrades, but we're considering adding a cost in CP to run Missions as well. Once you've selected Missions from the Guild, you need to select the Region in which you want to start a mission. There are 5 Regions in the game and they open up as you unlock new nodes on the world map.
In this screenshot, only the "Centina Hinterlands" region is available and it's still missing 3 nodes to be fully unlocked. All missions have a location node where they take place, and thus won't be available until the given node has been explored by the player on the world map. After selecting the region, the player can start a mission in that region.
Missions that aren't known yet (because they are locked behind a map node, or because they require a previous mission to be completed, for example) are shown as ??? in the list. Missions can be in various states: new, in-progress, completed-and-done, completed-and-redoable. They have a different icon depending on their current state. In the example list, they are all "new" or unknown. Here you can see the rewards of the mission as well as the required participants and how long they last (more info on that later!). Selecting a valid mission will bring the player to a selection screen to decide which units to send on the mission. Only the units participating in the mission will earn the various rewards, such as AP, EXP, etc.
Story-characters can't be sent on missions and only recruits without an injury can be sent. When a unit is sent on a mission, they won't be available to be deployed in a regular battle map. Each mission has a minimum and a maximum of participants and the first participant chosen becomes the leader of the mission. Once enough units are selected, the mission can be started. Once the mission is started, it'll show as "in-progress" in the missions list.
In-progress missions have their own icon and are always sorted at the end of the list for a quick visual identification. Selecting a mission already in progress will allow the player to cancel it if they want to. Cancelling the mission will free up the units that were running it, but no rewards shall be given for the mission. Currently, the maximum amount of missions that can be run at once is 3, although there is a way to increase that amount via the Guild Upgrades system. When a mission is in progress, it will take some amount of time to complete, usually 30 mins, although that's something we're still tinkering with. After 30 mins of "real life time" has passed, the mission will be completed and display a result for the endeavor anywhere on the world map. Mission success is not guaranteed, although the success rate will be tuned to be pretty high in general. There are multiple ways to increase that, including Guild Upgrades and carefully selecting the leader of the mission. The class of the leader will grant them a bonus success rate based on the mission. The description of the mission itself will have clues hinting at which type of class would do well on it. This bonus is only applied to the leader of the mission, to reduce the amount of micro-managing of classes that the player has to do for missions, while still providing some incentive for "thinking about it" rather than just clicking through things. Missions can also have a critical success result, in which case bonus rewards will be granted to the player. The overall goal of the missions and guild upgrade systems is to create another layer of interesting actions the player can take "outside of combat", with a wide array of goals possible, such as farming AP, EXP, GP or CP, as well as focusing on crafting materials, special rewards or unlocking new content. It'll be tied to the Guild Upgrade system, which we should cover in our next devlog. Feel free to send us comments, ideas, feedback and suggestions about the design or the devlog itself! Thanks everyone!

[ 2019-11-22 22:38:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Build 1.1.2

Hello everyone! We have a quick update today. Nothing fancy, mostly some minor bug fixes and adding a forgotten portrait. Here are the full notes: 11/16/2019 - Version 1.1.2

UI:

• New Portrait: Adding a forgotten male portrait.
• Accessibility: Adding a new key to help with accessibility for users. The key can be setup in GameConfig.txt file under [UI] by adding "accessibilitymouse=2", which uses the "mouse middle button". Pressing the key in combat will "lock/unlock" the screen so that the cursor doesn't move the map cursor anymore. This allow the player to easily click the "bottom right hints" with the mouse at all times, without changing where the map cursor is on screen. This helps players to navigate the game using exclusively the mouse, without having to rely on the keyboard at all. This key should be moved to the regular key-rebind menu once it's been tested a little more.

Misc:

• Save Files: Tiny optimizations to the format to make it just a bit smaller.

Bug Fixes:

• Menu Sorting: Sorting could be used in combat under specific circumstances. Disabling that (sorting units while in combat creates issues with deployment).
• Hallowed Mind: Used to incorrectly trigger when being revived by Reraise. Fixed.
• Class Wheel: When using the custom option to show monsters sprites to represent Bzil classes in the class changing menu, it was showing human sprites after the last update. Fixed.
• NG Plus: When using "Keep AP" with a Newgame , a certain story character would not correctly retain their AP. Fixed.
• Mercer Warning: The warning to let the player know when the optional event with routing certain bandits would become unavailable would show even if the event was already completed. Fixed.
• Aries Ram: Last update broke the visuals. Fixed.

Balance:

• Massive Hit: Increasing MP cost to 16 (from 12).

Modding:

• Monsters: Adding Monsters.xml file, that allows the player to create new "base monsters entries", which are the building blocks of monsters (it contains their image, portrait, base elemental and status resistances, weapon range, etc). Using this file, monsters can be modified or new monster tiers, or different monsters can be created.
• GameOptions and Jobs Deprecating the Hats and Outfits section in the GameOptions.txt to set up the hat and outfit of classes. The class itself will now contain that information in Jobs.xml.

[ 2019-11-16 21:43:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

After 4 months (sorry about that) we are back with Did you know Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark! With the fact #6 we conclude the series but we plan to revisit it in the future as your reactions were super awesome steamhappy Stay vigilant Arbiters...

[ 2019-10-24 15:37:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Hotkeys System:

Hello everyone! Build 1.1.1 is a PC only update with one main goal: improving the mouse keyboard experience by adding hotkeys to all main "commands list". This will allow players to easily make selections with the keyboard alone without needing to move the mouse and help speed things up. Here's what the menus now look like when using mouse and keyboard:


The short version is that you can press these hotkeys to automatically activate them and that things will remain consistent even as you learn new spells and abilities or use different characters.

The Details:

The numbers on the side are the default keys assigned to "Hotkey 1 to 12" and can be configured in the regular "key binding" menu to be any key.
Each action in a list is bound to a specific hotkey, so that they remain consistent through time. For example, the "End" command in battle will always be mapped to "Hotkey 6", regardless of which other commands are available. That way, units with Double Cast, Focused Rage, next to a treasure chest, etc., will still use "Hotkey 6" to quickly end their turn so it remains consistent at all times.
The concept is the same for skills and spells, where a specific spell, such as "Water II" for example, will always have the same hotkey assigned to it regardless of which spells a Wizard has learned. So, learning "Fire II" later won't suddenly change the hotkey for "Water II" because now there's a new spell before it in the list. For example, "Sniper Shot" will always be "hotkey 7" on every character at all times, even if you made a beeline for it and skipped most other skills in the Ranger tree. The only exception to this is when using Double Cast, Infused Edge, etc. The generated list of available spells will simply use the hotkeys in order, since it's not possible to retain "always the same hotkey" across two different groups of abilities, since they would share hotkeys. Lastly, please note that when using a gamepad, those hotkeys won't be visible in the lists and nothing is changed from the previous state of things. Let us know how it goes!

[ 2019-10-19 16:09:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Build 1.1.0a

Very small hotfix to prevent a rare possible crash during some cutscenes when using a certain set of options with a New Game Plus. Sorry about that and thanks to the user that reported it to us and sent us their save file, it was a lot of help in fixing the issue!

[ 2019-10-13 21:56:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone!

New Build:

We released Build 1.1.0 today. The main addition is a versatile New Game Plus mode. In keeping true to our style of granting the player as many options as possible, you get to choice what carries over or not to the next game.
The options will be available from the title screen once you have completed the game and seen any of the endings. We're also adding support for the SteelSeries keyboards, where the keys will light up in different color depending on the current state of the game (menus, combats, enemy turn, etc) and also show all possible hotkeys for a quick visual cue of what they are. There's also a fair amount of balance tweaks and bug fixes. Finally, there are a few changes to some data files and engines to be ready to support the upcoming DLC, although that's fully in the background for now. The full patch notes are at the end of this post!

DLC News:

We're still ironing out various DLC systems and we're not quite ready to reveal everything yet, but here's a very small subset of what the monster mini-classes are going to feel like in practice:
There are a lot more options than this though, as we currently have over 15-20 different mini-classes in the works for monsters. Those classes aren't quite as big as human classes in terms of number of abilities, but each monster can currently equip two at once, which will provide a lot of options. We're still hammering out the details to make sure it's both fun and balanced though!

Follow us on Steam:

A new system was added a little while ago to follow developers on Steams and be notified when they have new releases and such. If you want to make sure not to miss our upcoming DLC release, give it a try! You can follow us on Steam from our developer page, right here: 6 Eyes Studio Steam Page.

Change log:

10/11/2019 - Version 1.1.0

New Content:

• New Game plus: Adding a New Game Plus option in the title screen. Upon clearing the game, the option will become available and the player can use the clear file to start a new game retaining various things from their previous game. The player can select what they retain and what is reset from a list of options.
• SteelSeries: Adding SteelSeries integration. When using a SteelSeries keyboard with per-key lighting capabilities, the keyboard will take different colors based on the current game state, and show all available hotkeys in white.
• New Male Portrait: Adding a forgotten male portrait.
• Optimizations: The game should load slightly faster than before.

Balance:

• Healers: Updating the weights associated with healer classes to limit their count in maps where enemies are randomly generated. The net result should be less classes with healing spells in general.
• Bite: Increasing the base chance for the Poison effect to 62% (from 50%).
• Meatshield: Meatshield used to wear off when the target of it got its turn. Now it will wear off when the caster of it gets its turn (or it gets replaced by another Meatshield/cover effect). This will make it last longer and thus be more reliable/useful.
• New Recruits: When a class is unlocked, the player will always be able to switch to it, even if the requirements are not met. The main effect from this is when recruiting a unit in an advanced class (like Gambler for example), the unit will be able to switch back and forth to that class even if they don't meet the requirements.
• Missable Character: A certain character can't be recruited anymore after a certain point of the story has passed. There will now be a warning on the world map about the specific event vanishing soon if the player ignores it for too long.
• Double Cast: AI will be a little smarter with their second cast when using Double Cast. This is mostly a result of fixing a bug that make the second cast fizzle at times (it had other ramifications).
• Blood Suck: Increasing ratio bonus when the target is bleeding from 0.35x to 0.45x.
• Soul Suck: Increasing ratio bonus when the target is bleeding from 0.25x to 0.30x.
• Drain Health: Increasing damage ratio from 1x to 1.1x.
• Drain Soul: Increasing damage ratio from 0.35x to 0.45x.
• Gold Thread: Will now be granted as a victory reward in one of the late game story battles (this is not retroactive).
• Ancient Path: Small adjustments to a few random drop rates for ingredients.

UI:

• Map Position: The map position will now update in the top left corner after an enemy has done moving.

Bugfixes:

• Gelligh Treasures: If the player opened the treasures there "late into the story", it's possible it could have caused a problem with the "open all treasures" achievement. Fixed.
• Dialogues: Various small typos got fixed.
• Dash Strike/etc: Charge abilities would act weirdly when targeting large units. This is fixed.
• Class Change: The "Cancel sound" would play 2x in quick succession when leaving the screen. Fixed.
• Gogomboba City: Some extra units had their levels incorrectly set too high. Fixed.
• Maps: Fixing minor visuals issues with the grid on some maps.
• Vampire: Couldn't equip "cloth helmets" as they should. Fixed.
• Lists: Fixing a very rare case where a list would cause issues when empty and hitting confirm.
• Cleave: Fixing issues with Cleave not triggering at times: killing a target sporting Rebirth with a Collect ability, or with drowning wouldn't work correctly before.
• Screwworm Swamp: The map could be won by killing all allies. Fixed.
• Custom Portraits: Custom portraits had issues on Linux/Mac and would have issues if the user synced files across computers where the absolute customdata path was different. This is resolved. Save files will not save the absolute path of custom portraits anymore (that wasn't intended to begin with). Previous custom portraits shouldn't be affected, but if they are, setting them again at the guild should fix any issue.
• Enemy Passives: Fixing two instances of specific enemies having the same passive equipped twice.
• Pektites: Tier 3 red pektites had the wrong counter. Fixed.
• Meatshield: Fixing a rare crash with Meatshield.
• Sorting: Sorting units from the troops menu while in combat would have all sorts of weird issues. Disabling Sorting from the battle screen for now.
• Master of All: If a unit had mastered a class for which they didn't meet the requirements (so, a unit was recruited as an advanced class directly), that mastery wouldn't count towards the "Master of All" achievement. This should be fixed.
• Options: Selecting a line on the Options screen could feel unresponsive with the mouse as the far right side of the line wouldn't trigger the line selection without a click. Fixed.
• Arena: The enemies speed value wouldn't be used correctly on their first turn during arena matches (due to not being calculated until the match starts). Fixed. The turn-order might not be accurate until the match starts because of this.
• Pounce: It was possible for an enemy to use pounce to land on the same tile as another enemy that died with rebirth. Fixed.
• Dreadmaw: Ability was supposed to steal Buffs from the target, but that wasn't working correctly. Fixed.
• Dash Strike/etc: When an enemy would charge over a trap without having moved before, they would still be able to move after the trap interrupted the charge attack. Fixed.
• Dash Strike/etc: Under specific and rare circumstances, some the red tiles representing the charge area of effect could remain visible during targeting, even though they should have been erased.
• Descriptions: Fixing various descriptions typos.
• Loco Rush: Fixing a rare issue where a character might disappear oddly if there is no obvious valid destination when getting pushed around by Loco Rush.
• Spread Pain: Can now be used with Infused Edge and Focus Fire, as intended.
• Shoving Abilities: Fixing a wrong interaction between pushing abilities and targets with Mirage, where the Mirage would absorb the base damage but still displace the target or apply the bonus damage from the collision. Mirage now absorbs the whole effect.
• Music: Music could have a jump in volume when backing out on the Load menu from the Title screen. Fixed.
• Options: The Apply command in options list couldn't be clicked with the mouse before. Fixed.
• Double Cast: On rare occasions, when enemies would use Double Cast, their second spell could fizzle. Hopefully this is fixed now.
• Worms: Worms wouldn't use their breath attack as often as they should have due to a bug. Fixed.
• Kawa Bandits: Small adjustment to one of the early-game tables that had a typo, resulting in worse loot than it should have.
• Name Input: Using the "cancel key" in the name box would cancel the name input before. Fixed. Some minor mouse interactions were cleaned up as well.
• Obelisks: An extra check was added upon loading a save file to make sure the flag about having "all obelisks" is correctly set. There probably wasn't an issue on that side, but "just in case".
• Enemies: Once the player reached level 99, some enemies could be generated with story classes they shouldn't have access to. Fixed.

Modding:

• Fonts: Adding a Vietnamese font to the list of available fonts for modders to use.
• Fonts: Adding a Japanese font to the list of available fonts for modders to use (it currently doesn't support Kanjis though).
• Errors: Adding more error checking for invalid data.
• Ingredients: Ingredients file will not require all sections to exist anymore (recipes, badges, gadgets, ingredients) and non-existent section will be treated as empty.
• Ingredients: Fixing some potential errors when modding this file where added data would behave oddly.
• Save Files: Slight update to the format to make it a little bit more efficient.

[ 2019-10-11 21:35:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We're still getting things ready for our detailed devlog on the DLC creation process, but we've been itching to give everyone a little preview of the new art we've been creating! We're planning to add a bunch of new maps to the DLC, including to any town that doesn't currently have one. This is a preview of the Port Grendal map:
We're still wrapping up details for all the new monsters-related systems we'll be adding, but we already have a solid idea about our new Wrangler class, which will be using small pets for its abilities. Stay tuned for the juicy details of their unique mechanics in our upcoming devlogs!
We hope you guys are as excited as we are about the new content that's coming!

Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones

We also wanted to mention that Stygian: Reign of the Old Gods, a Lovecraftian horror RPG with turn-based tacitcal combat, just released today! It's made by some good friends of ours and packed with madness-inducing lore, tentacles and fun! Give it a look right here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/779290/Stygian_Reign_of_the_Old_Ones

[ 2019-09-26 17:15:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, we reached a great milestone and only thanks to you! We passed over 1k reviews here on Steam! steamhappy We said multiple times but let us say it again. You guys have been simply amazing through-out the early access and after the release. Thank you for your continuous support and faith in us.

[ 2019-09-03 11:15:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

One year since our EA!

We launched our Steam Early Access on August 16th of 2018, so it's been about a year! Looking at Fell Seal today against what it was at the start of the Early Access really brings home the value of all the great feedback we received during that period (and afterwards as well)! The balance improvements, various UI adjustments and AI upgrades that we've implemented during the EA were all greatly influenced by your comments and suggestions and it has made the game that much better for it! You guys are terrific and we couldn't have done it without your support! So again, a big "thank you" to everyone!

Nintendo Switch

On another note, we released the Nintendo Switch version of Fell Seal a few days ago, which means it's now officially on all major consoles and all major PC platforms! While it was quite the journey getting this far, we're still not quite done yet! And here's what's next...

What's coming next!

We've been working on a big DLC package for Fell Seal for a while now, tentatively titled Missions and Monsters. We're still wrapping up some of the core designs for it, but it should have a hefty amount of new things! It'll feature recruitable monsters and monsters "mini-classes" which allow the player to customize their monster troops with quite a lot of options. It'll have a new missions system where the player can take on special quests from the Arbiter's Guild, expand the influence of the Arbiter's on various regions of the world and even upgrade the Guild with new buildings and features. There's a lot more to it, but we're still ironing out the intricacies of the system. And of course, there will be new classes (including a monster-themed class), new encounters, new equipment, and a lot more! We'll also be releasing a new base update at some point before the DLC which will feature a New Game+ option, some QoL updates and more goodies. Stay tuned! We want to keep everyone in the loop, so we're planning to have a Dev Log every few weeks during the creation of the DLC, just as soon as we start having some visuals to show for it! And once again, thanks for all the support everyone!

[ 2019-08-19 14:19:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's Deal: Save 30% on Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2019-08-14 17:07:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Since its launch back in April this year, Fell Seal has gathered a lot of accolades from the media. To celebreate this, we put together a small trailer highlighting the aforementioned accolades. https://youtu.be/BehyjM2Taa4 Enjoy! PS: If there are any Nintendo Switch fans here, we are launching on Switch on August 14th!

[ 2019-07-19 10:12:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Are there any classes you wish were in the game and have you guys played Tactics Ogre? How does Fell Seal compare to it in your eyes?

[ 2019-07-08 13:30:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are very proud and honored that Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark has been awarded for the Best Strat / Sim game at the Indie Playground Dreamhack 2019! A HUGE THANKS to everyone who has been supporting us so far! Source: https://dreamhack.com/dallas/expo/indie-playground-fell-seal/

[ 2019-07-01 12:35:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Even though the game was mainly developed by two people there were others who contributed over the years (freelancers)! Here is to you guys! steamhappy

[ 2019-06-18 15:20:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Build

Hello everyone! We have a small update to the build today. For the most part it's bug fixes from what's been reported on the forums. Thanks to everyone that took the time to let us know about issues they've encountered! We're also adding the option to exchange the confirm/cancel buttons on the gamepad, Switch button icons for the gamepad icons selection, some optimizations and a few balance tweaks tied to crafting components and Blood Magic. We're also adding a new difficulty option that will make the RNG "friendlier to the player" for those that would like that. Finally, we updated the packaging for a few assets, which dropped the build size down by ~400MB.

Dreamhack

We came back from Dreamhack a few days ago. Thanks to everyone that visited our booth! The event was a lot of fun and the feedback great! Thanks again!

Change log:

06/07/2019 - Version 1.0.4

UI:

• Confirm/Cancel: Adding an option to invert the Confirm/Cancel buttons to the options.
• Loading Maps: Adding a "Loading..." text when a map is being loaded, to be clearer about it.
• Menus: Making menu navigation a little smoother, as some of the slower menus could have a bit of stutter on slower systems.
• Optimizations: Various small optimizations were made to reduce loading times.
• Build Size: Refactored a bunch of assets, which reduced the build size by about 500 MBs.
• Crafting: Kyrie reminds the player about crafting after a certain point in the story, but only if the player hasn't already visited the crafting screen. Now she will remind the player regardless.
• Holy Bolt: Renamed Ercinee "Holy Bolt" to "Sacred Bolt".
• Arena Prompt: Updating the arena prompt after winning a bout, to make it clear what the options are (Keep Fighting and Retire vs Yes and No).
• Gamepads: Adding the Switch icons to the list of Gamepad Icons so the player can select them. The Switch controller works in game but the player needs to set it to "Switch Gamepad Pro" in Steam beforehand and it won't use the Switch icons by default in game.

Balance:

• Difficulty: Changing the -15% to enemy stats difficulty option to -25% to enemy stats.
• Fetid Depths: Flagging some tiles as invalid destinations for displacement abilities, so the player can't be stuck on those tiles.
• Blood Magic: Changing conversion rate from 1.5% HP -> 1 MP to 2% HP -> 1 MP.
• Ending 2: Now showing a red node on the map when certain conditions are met, to show a specific node could be visited to get more information.
• Ancient Path: Now showing a red node when the Ancient Path initially opens, to help people notice it on the map. It's a secret dungeon though, so a little obfuscation is part of it.
• Distilled Water: Adding more drop locations for this crafting component in the last chapter of the story.
• Quality Thread: Adding slightly more drop locations for this crafting component.
• RNG: Adding a difficulty setting about Random numbers, with 2 options. The first option is the current system of rolling a simple d100 and using the result. The second option is "Skewed", which will skew the player's rolls in their favor a bit.
• Difficulty Settings: Changing the Easy preset to use the new "Player Friendly" random numbers system.

Bugfixes:

• Gamepads: When switching gamepads during play, it could happen that the help/options buttons would stop working on the new gamepad.
• Kawa Event: A specific event with some kawas could happen twice under specific circumstances. Fixed.
• Story Characters: Some story characters could have a weird Counter equipped when joining. Fixed.
• Typos: Fixing a few typos in the dialogues.
• Infernal Depth: Fixing a lava tile not flagged as lava correctly.
• Patrol Levels: Fixing a visual issue where the patrol level range could be shown to be over 99 (even though it would still be capped at 99 in practice).
• Manual Sorting: Manually sorting entries in the Troops menu would leave many characters walking in place. Fixed.
• Life Font: In some languages, the tooltip wasn't showing the correct information for that passive. Fixed.
• Vyscerawyrms: When spawning in a position with a unit, they could push the unit away in an invalid tile under rare circumstances. Fixed.
• Undies Set: Adding missing frames to this outfit.
• Changing Appearance: Going into the "Change Appearance" menu at the guild after dismissing all possible units would crash the game. Fixed.
• Patented Usage: When the AI used an item through Patented Usage, it would not decrease the amount of item uses left for the item in question. Fixed.
• Turn Order: The turn order bar wouldn't update correctly (until their next turn) when removing Haste or Slow from a unit. Fixed.
• Pushing Attacks: There was a rare case where the AI could use a push ability on a target that's immune to displacements, thinking it would be useful. Fixed.
• AI Weapons: There was a very rare case where an enemy could have a Bow/Crossbow in their main hand and a gun in their offhand. Fixed.
• Grandhalls: During battle dialogues, a certain character could look towards the wrong direction while talking to another character. Fixed.
• Chilling Touch: Chilling Touch and similar passives would list a % chance in the prediction box for Sabotage and Teleport Other, even though it won't work. Fixed.

edit: Adding patch notes!

[ 2019-06-07 20:36:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, kept you waiting huh? Long awaited Fact #3 is here! You won't have to wait so long for the next one, I promise!

[ 2019-06-06 14:50:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

We'll be at Dreamhack 2019 in Dallas this year, May 31st to June 2nd! We've been lucky enough to be granted a free booth there through the Indie Playground, so a big thanks to them! If you're attending, make sure to drop by our booth, we'd love to hear from everyone!

What's next?

We've been working on our next update for Fell Seal, which has a few balance adjustments, bug fixes, optimizations and QoL changes. That patch will probably come out shortly after we're back from Dreamhack. We also wanted to give a big thank you to the community and all the fans! We're not only very happy with how Fell Seal turned out, in great part thanks to all the awesome feedback we received during our Early Access, but we're also very happy with the sales and post-launch feedback/reviews we've been getting! So again: Thanks everyone for the support! Now, as for our next move, we've seen a lot of enthusiasm around releasing a sizeable DLC pack for Fell Seal, and that's currently the main option we're exploring. It's not quite official yet, but it's looking very promising and we still have a ton of new ideas and concepts we'd like to get in the game! If you have suggestions and feedback for the DLC, feel free to post those in the forums and comments!

[ 2019-05-28 15:08:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, thank you for all the feedback on our previous Did you know post that was very positive. So we will keep them coming. We will share interesting facts and trivia about the game, lore, development etc.

[ 2019-05-14 13:10:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Build 1.0.3

Hello everyone! We're pushing another update today focusing mainly on fixing all the bugs that have been found since release, as well as some QoL changes, especially centered around mouse usage. We also have a few balance tweaks, although that wasn't the focus of this patch. Here are some of the more noticeable changes:

• Balance: Various small changes to make the enemies take less advantage of "drowning" the player.
• Mouse: While in the troops menu, the mouse will allow the user to select a new character by clicking on them, even if they aren't in the "select character" phase (mouse over a unit on the camp screen, click the left button to select them).
• Mouse Movement: Reducing the frequency at which the "cursor moved" sound can play on the battle map when moving the battle cursor with the mouse.
• Show Details: Can now be used by pressing-and-holding the mouse cursor over the bottom right hint.
• Self Targetting: Will now skip the "select unit" phase and directly select the caster to save a superfluous step.
• Movements: When in battle, clicking on the map will act as if "move" had been clicked, which should reduce mouse movement on the screen when trying to move a unit with the mouse.
• Injuries: Regular injuries (not permanent injuries) will now show the units 4 stats in red in the menu, unless they have passives that increase those stats.

The full list of changes is at the end of this post.

Shout out!

We also wanted to give a shout-out to our good friends at Overhype Studios about their newest DLC, Battle Brothers - Warriors of the North, which was released yesterday.
If you haven't checked out Battle Brothers yet, you should give it a look right here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/365360/Battle_Brothers/

Change log:

05/10/2019 - Version 1.0.3

UI:

• Mouse: While in the troops menu, the mouse will allow the user to select a new character by clicking on them, even if they aren't in the "select character" phase (mouse over a unit on the camp screen, click the left button to select them).
• Mouse Movement: Reducing the frequency at which the "cursor moved" sound can play on the battle map when moving the battle cursor with the mouse.
• Show Details: Can now be used by pressing-and-holding the mouse cursor over the bottom right hint.
• Self Targetting: Will now skip the "select unit" phase and directly select the caster to save a superfluous step.
• Movements: When in battle, clicking on the map will act as if "move" had been clicked, which should reduce mouse movement on the screen when trying to move a unit with the mouse.
• Status Effects in Combat: Increasing the maximum amount of status effects listed in the "damage phase" from 6 to 8.
• Steal Gold: Gold value was shown with very small text before. Fixed.
• Injuries: Regular injuries (not permanent injuries) will now show the units 4 stats in red in the menu, unless they have passives that increase those stats.
• Performance: Minor performance improvements.
• Spearvault: Will now look better when casted from under-water.

Balance:

• Drowning: Adding a 33% chance that an enemy will ignore "drowning/lava dunking" targets on their turn even if it's the best move they can do.
• Ekidna Falls: Rakkerjaks on this map will no longer be upgraded to tier2 if the player is high enough level.
• Highlands: Making some changes to the elite version of the encounter to prevent a scenario where the elite enemy would Snapback on the guests too early and lead to a near unavoidable defeat.
• Achievements: The achievement about mastering all the classes on a certain special character will now not count their "secret end-game class" as being needed.
• Timber Roads: Reducing the levels of a few units in the Patrols, to make them a little bit easier.
• Beginner Maps: Beginner maps with a very low max level for enemies, made to help the player level up beginner units, will now yield less AP/GP than normal if the player's highest level units are higher than that zone.
• Skyjack: Will now not move people to locations that are off-limits for teleport-other (such as very high ledges, etc).
• Azure Plains: Moving one of the Vangals to the Elite difficulty to make the map easier.
• Maps: For Gelligh, marking some of the tiles as invalid destinations for "teleport-other" to reduce chances of characters getting stranded where they shouldn't.
• Meteorites: Adding a meterorite drop to 1 story encounter and 1 optional encounter. Also as a random drop to some late maps.
• Leap: Counters will now consider leap's destination (rather than starting point), which means it behaves like an "adjacent attack" for the targets.
• Final Battle: Updating the 2 ending battle maps to have better drops in general. The Ancient Path is still a better spot overall to get rare drops, but these 2 maps should feel more rewarding now.

Bug Fixes:

• Displacements: Fixing an issue where enemies immune to being displaced could still be displaced by Pandora's Box or Skyjack.
• Mount Nervanzer: Fixing an issue with a character showing over a tile while jumping.
• Claret Woods: Fixing an issue with an enemy spawning on a spot they can't escape from.
• Try and Buy: Purchase couldn't go through if the cost and player gold were the same. Fixed.
• Title Screen: Fixing a rare issue with timing for users with an invalid time zone setting on their OS (still not sure how that's even possible, haha).
• UI: Fixing various non-fatal errors tied to rare edge cases when navigating the UI. It probably won't have a noticeable impact on most users, but if something behaved oddly once in a while, it'll be probably be fixed.
• Bootup: Fixing a potential error when starting the game for users that might have deleted folders they shouldn't have in "My Documents\Fell Seal".
• Turkish Locale: Fixing some potential issues with the titlescreen on Turkish locale.
• Dreadmaw: If there were status effects applied by the attack, their text would remain on the screen at the end of the attack. Fixed.
• Maps: Fixing some drawing ordering issues for some maps.
• Archafflictor: The Bzil variant had 3 jump instead of 4. Fixed.
• Title Screen: Under specific circumstances, the titlescreen animated image could be shown too zoomed-out/in. This should be fixed.
• The Gauntlet: When certain special enemies would die, some of the map tiles would become "walkable", even though they shouldn't have.
• Thespeiros: An NPC walking around town could sometimes start walking in places he shouldn't. Fixed.
• Wild Cards: The case where Wild Card has a critical miss and applies the opposite effect will now not result in a 'miss' unless the target is immune to the effect (ie, it will refresh the duration if the target has it).
• Chitin Armor: A certain treasure was granting the wrong armor (Dendrite Armor) instead of the Chitin Armor. This is fixed, but is not retroactive unfortunately.
• Bzil Classes: When learning a Bzil class, there was a chance the popup would remain visible if there was a cutscene happening after the battle. There were other instances where this could happen with popups at the end of combat. All fixed.
• Descriptions: Fixing some typos and mistakes in some descriptions.
• Spell Effects: After using Plaguestorm or Hippocampos, subsequent spells might be partially misplaced on screen. Fixed.

[ 2019-05-10 18:43:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, we wanted to try post here some intersting (at least to us interesting) facts from the game/development. Let us know if this is something you guys are interested in. If yes we will post more of these :)

[ 2019-05-10 13:40:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our release build broke all language options other than English somehow. We are EXTREMELY sorry about this >.< Build 1.0.2 fixes that! (you might have to restart your Steam client to force it to update the game more quickly). We keep seeing these day 1 patches in other games on Steam and we promised ourselves that wouldn't be us, but it somehow hit us too, sigh... Here are the patch notes:

• Mount Nervanzar: Gave flippers to the guests on this map so they wouldn't drown.
• Languages: Release update made other languages than English unselectable. Fixed!

And by popular request, here are the patch notes for 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 (they are bundled together): 04/30/2019 - Version 1.0.1

New Content:

• Ending: The game's ending is now accessible.
• Ancient Path: The optional end-game dungeon Ancient Path is now accessible. Can you beat all 7 floors of it?

UI:

• Help Screen: Icons, and help sections can now be moused over to show them, rather than having to rely on the arrows (so mousing over the ATK stat, the Blind icon, etc, will show the help for it.)

Bug Fixes:

• Shadows: After being targeted by Flip Kick, the target's shadow would follow them oddly. Fixed.
• AI: Won't cast Refresh on the same targets 2x with Double Cast.
• Options: Some of the left/right arrows could fail to be shown over some selections. Fixed.
• Dispelotron: Didn't have 100% hit chance like it should. Fixed.
• Dispel: AI could attempt to Dispel a target with Evade Magic/etc even though it could never succeed. Fixed.
• Visuals: Fixed a few visual layering issues in the Council room.
• Interstitch: Now correctly gives an injury to the person that got disintegrated.
• Loot Drops: Under rare conditions, loot drops could be granted to the player when they shouldn't have.
• Help Menu: In some very rare cases, the help screen wouldn't show up correctly. Fixed.
• Soul Gear: They would stop getting stacks once the user was level 99. Fixed.
• Scar Tissue: Scar Tissue would often grant the same effect as quicken. Fixed.
• Pestilence: Would only show 3 of its 4 effects in the Equip panel. Fixed.
• Last Temple: Fixing various drawing ordering issues related to the map.
• Ability Learn: Fixed a very rare crash while learning abilities that probably was only possible when using Mods.

Balance:

• Citadel: Making same adjustments to lower the difficulty a bit.
• Gorge Battle: The unique zombie there will not be upgraded to a higher tier anymore if the player's level is high enough.
• Loot drops: Enemies will now drop loot even if defeated by another enemy rather than by the player.

Modding:

• StreamingAssets: Removed most of the contents of that folder. All the content will now get copied to "My Documents/Fell Seal/customdata_examples" so modders can still look at those files to see what the core data of the game looks like, but they won't be able to make direct modifications to the game files anymore. Any modification to the base files can already be done with the override files, so there is no loss of functionality, but it will prevent people from modifying files they shouldn't be changing.
• Docs: Updated documentation to clarify folders for Windows vs Mac vs Linux and removed mentions of StreamingAssets.

[ 2019-04-30 21:39:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone!

Release!

Fell Seal is now finally out of Early Access! It's been a long journey for us, with about 2 years and a half of full-time development and a few years of part-time work as well. We've had the great luck of getting a ton of great feedback from the community, between our successful Square-Enix collective campaign, Kickstarter and Steam Early Access. It's allowed us to keep improving the game every step of the way and get to a great final product, with a ton of content and really solid balance. We really couldn't have done it without everyone's support and help, so once again, I big thank you to our fans and the whole community! We hope everyone has as much fun playing it as we had fun making it! https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/ Edit: Also, anyone interested in the music of Fell Seal should check out the OST, available right here from our Musician, Jan Morgenstern: janmorgenstern.com

[ 2019-04-30 17:22:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Tomorrow is the day! We can't wait to finally have version 1.0.0 live! We received some questions regarding the exact release time of the game. So here you go:

• Los Angeles: 10am
• Florida (devs time zone!): 1pm
• London: 6pm
• Prague: 7pm
• Moscow: 8pm
• Tokyo: 2am
• Sydney: 3am

We will be streaming the game once it launches and are looking forward to seeing you there to chat and have some fun! steamhappy

[ 2019-04-29 14:34:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Progress Report

It is finally done! Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is complete and releasing in a few days (April 30th)! It's been an intense adventure and while it's been a lot of fun, it's also been a lot of hard work. We finally made it to the finish line and now all that's left is to wait for the reaction of the fans :) We think our Early Access has gone quite well and if we could "do it all over again", we'd definitely still chose to go with an Early Access. It has been invaluable in helping us balance the game better and helping us refine the UI and systems even better. An immense thank you to everyone that's taken the time to give us their feedback! You guys are the best!

What's next

We're not sure what's the next move for us. We'll definitely make another game after this one, but is it going to be Fell Seal DLC, Fell Seal 2 or a completely different game? We'll have to wait and see. At this point, if the fans are interested in Fell Seal DLC, it's probably our first option. If not, we'll probably move on to another project altogether rather than Fell Seal 2. We'll consider a second entry in the saga for a later game though, that's for sure! We'll also be supporting Fell Seal for as long as necessary, fixing any bugs we might have missed before release and keeping an eye on how the balance of the game is looking and if we need to address anything. We also have list of upgrades we'd like to get in and we'll probably start looking at those in a few weeks (after a small vacation most likely. It's been so long we took one of those >.<) Which means we won't be pushing an update every Friday anymore, unless it's somehow needed, but that would be quite surprising! Once again, a big thank you to the whole community from the two of us here at 6 Eyes Studio! :)

[ 2019-04-26 21:37:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Today we are adding Steam trading cards, including badges, emoticons and backgrounds to the game. Collect cards, craft badges and show everyone that you bear the title of Arbiter through chat or your soon-to-be enhanced profile!

[ 2019-04-24 14:21:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Yet another small update! ^^ We're making a build for another platform today, so we thought we'd push the same changes on Steam for parity. It's mostly bug fixes and tiny ui/balance tweaks. We're not planning anymore updates until Release at this point, although the Release build will have some more bug fixes and UI tweaks. Here's the change log: 04/22/2019 - Version 0.9.5c

Bug Fixes:

• Trapdoors: Trapdoors stopped working with the new Turn order changes. Fixed.
• Placement: Selecting enemies during placement would sometimes highlight the wrong portrait in the Turn order bar.
• Kawa Temple: Fixing an issue that could arise in the cutscene if a player didn't have Bzaro recruited yet.
• AI: Found a rare set of circumstances where the AI could attack an invalid target. Fixed.
• Cutscenes: Minor cleaning of some scenes when some optional actors aren't present.
• Shadowstep: Using Shadowstep to land on a water tile and then cancelling the movement could leave the sprite shown over other sprites when it should be under.
• Boomerang Bounce: With perfect diagonals, sometimes the punt direction wouldn't match the "side of the attack" from the prediction. Fixed.
• Turnabout: Abilities that bypass counters could fail to bypass Turnabout. Fixed.

Balance:

• AI: AI could make some odd decisions when using shoving, especially with Boomerang Bounce. Should be better.
• AI: AI could still make some odd decisions about mana drains. Should be better now.
• AI: Enemies that don't use MP at all won't use Manastones on themselves anymore. Also found issues with granting Mana to allies being valued higher than it should.
• Pektites: Lowering their MND for the tier1 variant to compensate for Adaptive Affinity being stronger on them now.

UI:

• Equipping: QoL: when equipping gear, the category will start on the same type of item you're trying to replace.
• Scar Tissue: Will now show "+Scar Tissue" when obtaining the first stack (so switching stacks will show it again). We won't show it for every stack gained as it would simply mean showing the text every single time a Tangrel is attacked, which might get old fast.

[ 2019-04-22 19:52:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just pushed a hotfix after discovering some issues with Turnabout, Initiative and some rare issues with gear optimization. Please make sure to restart your Steam client to force it to pickup the new version asap. Here are the fixes: 04/21/2019 - Version 0.9.5b

Hotfix:

• Initiative: Works correctly again for the player units.
• Turnabout: Won't trigger multiple times anymore. Also fixing other rare issues.
• Changing Class: There was possible way to switch class and retain equipment that the new class couldn't equip. Fixed.

We're very sorry about this! It's been a while since we've had to push a hotfix, but I guess we just got a little carried away over this weekend's work >.<

[ 2019-04-21 23:26:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey :) We just released another quick update, mostly with some UI additions, some new patrols and various odds and ends. We're adding the Turn Order bar to the deployment screen and changing the way gear on characters gets "optimized" after changing their class or passives. Now, after changing their class (or removing passives that change their gear options, such as removing Dual Wield or Equip All for example), if the current gear has invalid entries, those entries will be removed and then filled with "the best possible option". If a unit doesn't have any "invalid gear" after the change, their loadout will not be changed at all. We also updated the way the best weapon is calculated to account for hybrid classes, fighting classes and magic classes. We're adding 4 new patrols and tweaking the tuning on a few others. There are a few bug fixes that we wanted to get out ASAP and some small balance updates as well. From now on, the main focus will be primarily bug fixes until release and it's likely there will not be another Early Access build update until the actual Release build, on April 30th. We'll keep reading and collecting the community's feedback as we prepare for post-release updates though :) Thanks again!

Change log:

04/21/2019 - Version 0.9.5a

New Content:

• Patrols: Adding new patrols to Caravan Trail, Graveyard, Godstear Waste and Gelligh Foothills.

UI:

• Turn Order: Will now be shown during troops placement.
• Changing Class/Passives: Will not run "optimize gear" anymore but instead "optimize invalid gear", which will will call optimize only for pieces of gear that need to be unequipped with the new class/passive.
• Optimizing Gear: Will now be better about equipping the right type of weapon, choosing the best weapon between ATK, MND and ATK+MND based on the main class.
• Sorting by Level: Will now use EXP as the second sorting parameters to differentiate units with the same Level.
• Gelligh Battle 2: Updating shown objective to make it clear Kyrie must survive.
• Cutscenes: Minor adjustments to many cutscenes.

Balance:

• Initiative: Character will no longer get a "bonus to the time gauge" if taking no action on their Initiative-granted turn.
• Skyjack: Now cannot miss. It was always meant to be this way, so it's technically a bug fix.
• AI: AI will value more accurately MP granting/draining abilities.
• Gelligh Battle 2: Enemy items usage is now disabled. Slightly adjusting the extra enemies to be a little more managable.
• Vangals AI: Many Vangals, Thervas and Daodrenners have had their default AI behavior change to be more aggressive and less prone to heal.

Bug Fixes:

• Pounce: Fixed an issue where characters could jump "outside the bounds of the map".
• Rebirth: Rebirth would not trigger of the character died from thorn damage or from Turnabout damage. Fixed.
• Exhausted: Could be prevented by Barrier even though it's supposed to ignore all forms of debuffs removal/prevention. Fixed.
• Shoving: Will now correctly grant killing blow exp on the second target and when drowning targets.
• Visuals: Added missing frames to the Ghost sprite and fixed some Bzil accessories that had some issues.
• Blazing Bolas: Fixing a rare issue where the trap could spawn in a weird location.
• Maps: Fixing a few small layering issues in some maps.
• Turn Order HP: The bar will correctly update the user HP after canceling a movement where Life Font gave them HP.

Modding:

• Jobs.xml: Adding a new field to classes: casterClass, with values 0: not a caster, 1: caster, 2: hybrid. This will be used when optimizing gear, rather than the old IsAMagicClass from GameOptions.txt (which is now removed).

[ 2019-04-21 19:33:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

In case you missed it, our Release trailer is up on our Steam page!

New build:

We have another build this week and once again, it's one of our biggest updates yet. We've been working on the final balance changes and various loose ends, so the changes are all over the place, but there's a lot new stuff! Here are the highlights:

• Difficulty Setting: The "Extra Enemies" setting has a new option called "Elite", which will add/replace some enemies on many maps. The new enemies are custom-made to be dangerous. This should increase the difficulty quite a bit and is meant as an alternative to make the game harder, other than +Stats% on enemies. Enemies added by this mode will have the "Elite" tag rather than "Enemy" on their info panel. A BIG thank you to Dabor for this!
• Title screen: Switching to the Animated Titlescreen we've been preparing for a while. Big thanks to Brodie Swift who created it!
• Exclusive Fullscreen: Adding an option to enable Exclusive Fullscreen.
• New Assets: We have a new character portrait, haircut and some revamped portraits for many NPCs, as well as new spell visuals and sounds. We also added ambient props to a lot of maps.
• Balance: We have a bunch of new balance updates again, including tweaks to some passives the community has been feeling needed love, such as:
  • Focused Rage: Is now an action command (like Double Casting), so the player can choose to use it or not.
  • Hallowed Mind: Now a new passive: grants bonus damage on the next action after using a Regular Attack.
  • +Damage Passives: Adjusted a lot of their numbers.
• AI: Various AI updates and improvements.
• Monsters: Monsters will have their tier increased automatically in patrols. To tier 2 if their average level is 20 or more and to tier 3 if the average level is 30 or more.
• A lot more! Seriously, there's a lot of changes in this one! You can see them all at the end of the update.

Progress Report:

This should actually be our last big update before release. At this point, we'll be focusing on fixing any bugs that are found, some polish and a few modding additions. This week was spent wrapping up everything and testing everything. It's looking very solid and we're happy with where Fell Seal is standing right now! Even though we're pretty much done with all the features for the game for Release, it doesn't mean we're not hoping to keep getting everyone's feedback! We'll keep fixing bugs and adjusting things after Release and if there is enthusiasm from the community, there's a good chance we'll start looking at some DLC options as well. So, keep the feedback coming please! :)

State of the Early Access:

With our Early Access closing soon, it's a good time to take stock of things and we have to admit we've been very happy with the experience. All in all, it's been very positives, and I would say that the feedback and support of everyone alone has made this an incredibly fruitful Early Access for us, and we think Fell Seal is a much better game for it! Once again, a very big thank you to everyone for all the feedback and support!

Change log:

04/19/2019 - Version 0.9.5

New Content:

• Difficulty Setting: The "Extra Enemies" setting has a new option called "Elite", which will add/replace some enemies on many maps. The new enemies are custom-made to be dangerous. This should increase the difficulty quite a bit and is meant as an alternative to make the game harder, other than +Stats% on enemies. Enemies added by this mode will have the "Elite" tag rather than "Enemy" on their info panel. A BIG thank you to Dabor for this!
• Title screen: Switching to the Animated Titlescreen we've been preparing for a while. Big thanks to Brodie Swift who created it!
• Exclusive Fullscreen: Adding an option to enable Exclusive Fullscreen.
• Portraits: Adding 1 new female portrait.
• Portraits: Updating the portraits of some story villains.
• Sounds: Adding a dozen or so missing sounds. We are now fully done with sounds.
• Visual Effects: Adding the last remaining missing visual effects. We are now done with those.
• Troops Menu: When in combat, deployed units will be shown in the "casting" motion in the Troops menu so they can be spotted quickly.
• Iirzkt'ara Gorge: Adding a new patrol to this map.
• Ambient Props: More ambient props added to various maps.
• Character Customization: A new haircut was added for male/female characters.

Balance:

• Monsters: Monsters will have their tier increased automatically in patrols. To tier 2 if their average level is 20 or more and to tier 3 if the average level is 30 or more.
• Vessel: Changing Hallowed Mind to a new passive: grants bonus damage on the next action after using a Regular Attack (after using a melee attack: 45% bonus, after using a ranged regular attack: 35%).
• Pandora's Box: Will now be 'smarter' about what is used and try to favor using an ability that works better with the ATK or MND stats of the caster. It's still random, but it's skewed a bit to be 'better'.
• Sunder: Now works like Chilling Touch and Deep Wounds: it will apply to any offensive action and have less chance of hitting per target the more targets the attack has.
• Sunken Ship: The guest in this balance will now have a Pure Band to protect against Poison.
• Very Hard: Changing the presets to enable Elite enemies. Lowering the +Stats to 10% (from 25%) to compensate.
• Boss Levels: Many bosses would bypass the "story level cap" even without that specific difficulty setting. Fixed.
• 4th Temple: Lowering the level of the boss characters a little bit, on top of the above fix about boss levels something not getting capped.
• Focused Rage: Is now an action command (like Double Casting), so the player can choose to use it or not. It will not work with Infused Edge anymore though.
• AI: Various improvements to the AI.
  • Better AI for Tangrels, Malcubus.
  • Taking better account of various counters, including less likely to "kill themselves" via Counterattack/etc.
  • AI will now make use of Sabotage.
  • AI will now make use of Pile On and Refresh.
  • AI could have some strange behaviors with Collect abilities on rare occasions. Fixed.
• Optional Story Character: A certain optional story character that joins late in the game will now start with 15% more AP on his classes.
• Story Character: A certain story character that joins fairly late will now start with a little more AP than before on certain classes.
• Sorcerer: Reducing the AP needed for most abilities.
• Leech MP: Adding a cap of 15 MP leeched maximum per regular attack. Leeched amount cannot be negative anymore (due to elemental resistances, etc).
• Siphon: Adding a cap of 25 MP drained maximum. Can't yield a negative amount anymore (it probably couldn't before in practice).
• Versatile: Adding a cap of 15 MP for the amount of MP restored on a crit.
• Poison Swamp: Will now be prevented by Barrier. Also won't refresh the duration on every turn spent in the poison anymore, but only on the turn it wears off.
• Pounce: Pounce will now try all 4 possible positions around the target, favoring the closest, rather than just the closest. Damage ignores direction and uses the real autoattack of the unit (which means it will use Dual Wielding and apply weapons effects).
• Malice: Will now correctly apply to Chilling Touch, Sunder and Deep Wounds.
• Somier's Rescue: No enemies will spawn with boots anymore.
• Charm: The Charm ability on the Vampire class is now "not a spell, not a skill" rather than a spell. It means it won't work with double cast and infused edge anymore, but now won't be prevented by mute.
• +Damage Passives: Adjusted a lot of their numbers.
  • Eruptor: Increasing the bonus each turn from 10% to 18% and the cap to 72%.
  • Blood Mark: Adding a cap at 80%.
  • Into the Fray: Damage for 2 targets increased to 32% (from 30%).
  • Height Advantage: Cap increased to 40% (from 35%).
  • Perfect Body: Bonus reduced to 32% (from 35%).
  • Avenger: Increasing damage reduction to 12.5% per stack (from 10%).
  • Execute: Increasing bonus to 45% (from 40%).
  • Legendary Healer: Reducing bonus to 45% (from 50%). Also adding the value to the GameOptions.txt.
  • Stampede: Adding a cap of 60%.
• Rain of Arrows/Rain of Spines: Greatly increasing the Vert range and AoE Vert range to make it easier to use.
• Bzaro: Will now get bonus AP from slaying Bzils, for the class that Bzil was using. Since Bzaro doesn't get Essences from Bzils, he will only get this bonus AP if he's already learned the class.
• One for All: Now, melee attacks made by One for All will do 1x damage and Ranged attacks will do 0.75x damage.
• Turnabout: Turnabout and similar counters (where the target explodes on death) will not trigger if the target is defeated by a counter ability anymore, to add more counter-play.
• Arena: Arena enemies will no longer be able to spawn with "unique gear" (that was technically a bug).
• Lich: The player can now get the class a little earlier: exchanging the special treasures from The swamp and the ship.
• Vessel: The player can now get the class much earlier: exchanging the special treasures from the forest with that of the canyon.
• Worms Fight: The player will have more time to move out of the big ground effect that signals the arrival of a certain boss.
• Patrols: Now, when running a patrol on a map, until the player has seen all the patrol possible for that map, the "next patrol" will be automatically selected. Once all have been seen, they will become randomized as before. This should help the player see all the possible patrols for all maps. This is not retroactive.
• Interstich: The boss that uses Interstitch will now have lessened chances of using it (or Teleport Other).
• Lockets: Increasing the DEF/RES lockets values (36 to 48) and reducing speed locket value (30 to 20).
• Daggers: Reducing Flash Knife (25 to 20) speed and Dragon's Nail speed (16 to 13).
• Cap of Ages: Reducing Speed from 13 to 8.
• Gear: Very minor tweak to some speed stats (we changed the rounding method for the speed stats on gear so some might gain 1 speed).
• Gogombob City: Adding a pair of hover boots on one enemy to patrol0.
• Henge Battle: Adjustments to the enemy AI and gear and to the guest's gear to give the guest character an easier time. Also giving the guest a subclass, a counter and some extra passives for the encounter to make it a little easier.

UI:

• Class Mastery: The first time the user masters a class, a quick tutorial popup will mention permanent stats are granted.
• Help Compendium: Smoothing out transitions to and from the Help Compendium so it looks better.
• Descriptions: Updating a few descriptions with more information.
• Guest Characters: Will now try to use the "generic enemy portrait made for the player" and if they can't find one, use a "non enemy portrait".
• Patrols: Adding a confirmation popup before running a Patrol to reduce the chances of accidentally starting one.
• Details Button: Adding a tutorial about the Details button for the first time the player sees a "delayed attack" (ie, in the Worms battle).
• Bandit Kawas: Giving them a new color so they look a little less "friendly".
• Colored Tiles: Updating the priority of ordered tiles so the "starting position" tiles are shown over the "passage tiles" to be clearer.

Bug Fixes:

• First Boss: When playing with extra enemies, the battle will now end after killing the boss, as intended (rather than needing to kill all enemies).
• Injuries A drowned unit wouldn't get an injury correctly under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Mirage: Fixing some strange interactions between Mirage and drowning.
• Bandit Kawa: There were still some issues where the Kawas would have odd behavior after moving (untargetable, etc). This should be fixed for good this time, although they will be more passive than before.
• Counterattack/Countershot: Will now correctly check for vertical height after getting pushed back (by Forceful Strike, etc) to ensure the counter attack is still valid.
• Worms: Counter Critical:Haste wasn't granting Haste correctly and had some issues in the description. fixed.
• Abilities Range: When using a Staff, sometimes the ability range in the ability description would be showing wrong values. Fixed.
• Collect Trophy: It had the wrong min range value. Fixed.
• AI: AI would still cast Quicken on allies with the Exhaust debuff at times. Fixed.
• Traps: With certain abilities (Bolas, Forceful Strike, etc), a trap could trigger at the end of the sequence even though the target was dead. Fixed.
• Quicken: Fixing a few weird issues when quickening multiple targets each turn with doublecast, including quickening the caster.
• Outfits: Adding missing "special outfits" to the list of outfits generated sprites can't spawn with.
• Wildcards: Diamond: Fixing an issue where Haste would be granted almost all the time as a buff.
• Save files: The save files could fail to load correctly if the user has an unrecognized timezone. I admit I'm not sure how that would ever happen, but stranger things have happened. Fixed.
• Large Enemies: Back/Side/Front attacks status was weirdly calculated on large enemies. It should now feel more natural.
• Thorns: Thorns will now correctly reflect damage for both attacks (grouped as 1 reflection) when taking damage from dual wielding attackers. Thorns will now correctly reflect damage for the spell part when taking damage from Infused Edge.
• Descriptions: Fixing some tooltip descriptions that had imprecise information (like Blood Magic).
• Old Armor: Anadine now correctly starts the game wearing the Old Armor.
• AI Double Cast: Fixing some small odd interactions between counters and the AI using Double Cast. AI will also not try to Double Cast on a target that has Counter:Mute unless it's immune to Mute.
• Hover Boots: Equipping or removing Hover boots at the start of a battle will correctly start the character with the "floating visuals".
• Reanimate: Was granting too much EXP, equivalent to a killing blow. Fixed to yield regular EXP now.
• Guardian Sword: Now correctly flagged as Unique and won't be equipped by enemies unless they can equip uniques.
• Ability Learn: The list to select the the class to learn abilities from could get messy under certain circumstances. Fixed.
• Gelligh: After the city gets in a bit of trouble, the map used had a house shown over some units weirdly. Fixed.
• UI: Fixing some UI layouts that weren't correct in other languages than English.

Modding:

• Encounters.txt: Armor, Helmet, Shield slots can now be used for monsters/bzils as well and filled with accessories. They can technically be filled with "non-accessories", but it might cause problems.

[ 2019-04-19 20:54:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We're almost there! Just two more weeks and Fell Seal will be coming out of Early Access. On April 30th, you will be able to experience the epic conclusion to your adventure in Teora. To celebrate this, we prepared a brand new trailer that you can check out here: https://youtu.be/GT8R-R26da0 It has been quite the journey from our Kickstarter campaign to where we are now, but it was well worth it! We're extremely grateful for all the feedback and suggestions we've gotten from the community and for how much it's helped us make the game better. Once again, a huge thank you to everyone that took the time to check the game out and give us their comments and support. Your help has been truly invaluable! That being said, there's still plenty of balance updates and additions to be made, so it's back to work for us! https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/

[ 2019-04-16 16:07:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We released achievements yesterday, but it's been brought to our attention that not enough of them were retroactive. We're pushing a small update today (0.9.4a) which should have almost all achievements be retroactive upon loading a save file. If one of them isn't retroactive, feel free to drop us a line on the forums, but chances are that it's normal, as there are a very small amount that aren't retroactive. There are 8 (out of 43) non-retroactive achievements, including 6 "in-combat achievements", 1 trivial-to-unlock, and 1 crafting related. That's the only change for the new build, so no patch notes this time! Let us know how it goes!

[ 2019-04-14 15:47:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Achievements!

New Bulid:

This week's build's main attraction is Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud saves! There are 43 achievements in game, including 22 "hidden achievements". Many are going to be retroactive and trigger after loading a game and messing around a little bit, but not all of them. In general, those that aren't retroactive are either very easy to obtain or involve doing something specific during a battle (that's repeatable, so you can't miss it). Also, the cloud saves could require a Steam restart to kick in. Let us know how it all works out! Here are the highlights:

• Achievements: Achievements are now enabled. Those are retroactive for the most part, although some specific combat ones (like killing an enemy by drowning them for example) will have to be done again to be obtained.
• Cloud Saves: Cloud saves should now be enabled. Everything should be working fine, but it's something a little new for us, so let us know if you notice anything weird! (Cloud saves are not enabled on Linux sadly).
• Balance: Various small updates to the balance, including tweaks to specific encounters, small adjustments to some growths from feedback from last week's changes, tweaks to some gear, etc.
• Bug Fixes: Lots of bug fixes from internal testing and from forums feedback. Thanks again to everyone taking the time to let us know about bugs!

Progress Report:

We finally finished our last Ancient Path map work and now all the content for the game is finished! We're still going to keep polishing and updating balance and bug fixing for a while though, of course! Otherwise, we finished our Steam integration: cloud saves and achievements have been added to the game. Collectibles and badges should also already be tied to the game as well.

Change logs:

04/12/2019 - Version 0.9.4

New Content:

• Achievements: Achievements are now enabled. Those are retroactive for the most part, although some specific combat ones (like killing an enemy by drowning them for example) will have to be done again to be obtained.
• Cloud Saves: Cloud saves should now be enabled. Everything should be working fine, but it's something a little new for us, so let us know if you notice anything weird!
• Gogombob City: Adding a new patrol to the area.

UI:

• Mouse: Improving some interactions between the mouse and keyboard on the map screen.
• Battle Map: Made things a little more responsive when navigating between the map and a menu.

Balance:

• Mender: Increasing HP growth a bit.
• Exemplar: Will not copy buffs granted by gear anymore, only those obtained through combat.
• Mastery Bonus: Slightly adjusting bonuses for Reaver, Werewolf, Lich, Mercenary, Knight and Gadgeteer.
• Restful Stones: Vangal will not spawn with boots anymore. Changing 1 Assassin to only spawn on higher difficulties.
• Bosses and Leaders: Now will never use "sacrifice" types of abilities.
• Bandit Kawa: Will now never spawn with boots.
• Maces: Now have a crit chance.
• Enemies: Updated tables for generating counters/passives to reflect all the recent balance updates. Moved the "evasion %" passive to later levels to reduce early game evasion bonuses.
• Rings: Pure Band lost its speed bonus. Shinning Band got +2 speed.
• Daodrenner: Reducing evasion of tier1 to 5 (from 10). Reducing evasion of tier 2 to 7 (from 10). Bzil form evasion reduced to 7 (from 10).
• Enemies: Will know various tiers of their skill trees just a little later than before in terms of levels.
• Strong Abilities: Some abilities are obtained a little later by enemies than they normally would (Sniper Shot, Assassinate, Righteous Blade). Adding Dual Casting to that list and adding individual levels (rather than 1 level for all of those) for better control.
• Chilling Touch, Deep Wounds: Changing the passives to work with all offensive actions. The more targets in the zone, the less chance to succeed per target (the combined probability will always be the same amount regardless of the amount of targets).
• Tournament 2: Some tweaks to some encounters.
• Arena: Changing the AP/GP bonus to 40% (from 33%).
• Bosses: Certain bosses could ignore the level range of encounters, this has been changed so they will be within the level range of the encounter.
• Worms: Changing their counter from "Haste" to "Critical: Haste" (it used to be Critical: Haste but the recent change transforming it to "Haste" affected the worms as well, so we reverted their counter.)
• Worms: Will now never spawn with Poison or Bleed immunities.

Bug Fixes:

• Worms AI: Fixing an interaction that could be off when a target would be immune to roots.
• Typos: Fixing some typos in some ability descriptions and dialogue.
• Protect: Offensive skills "centered on the caster" would bypass Protect on targets. Fixed.
• AI Dual Casting: Fixing some instances where the AI would still cast its 2nd spell even if a counter killed it after the 1st spell.
• Map Placement: The triggers to switch between enemies would sometimes not work correctly during map placement of some story battles. Fixed.
• Enemies: Fixing rare cases of invalid classes or subclasses for certain human enemies.
• Lever 99: Certain actions would still award EXP even after reaching the level cap and gaining a level past the cap would enter an infinite level-up loop. Both issues are fixed.
• Dark Resist: All units in the game would automatically master a special boss class and gain various stats, including Dark restistance 5. Fixed.
• Obelisks: One of the Obelisks wouldn't show its activated sprite after being activated. Fixed.
• Fleet of Foot: Fixing the information panel not showing correctly the updated movement.
• Status Effects: Upon removing a status effect on a target, abilities that interact with the "amount of status effects" on the target would still count it as active until the target got its next turn. Fixed.
• Turn Order: When reviving someone, selecting a unit on the map to view their stats would sometimes fail to show them correctly in the turn order. Fixed.
• Info Placard: Fixing an issue where the "other pages" buttons would become visible when they shouldn't.
• Mouse: When using the mouse scroll to switch between 2 overlapping tiles, changing tiles with the keyboard or gamepad would leave the cursor "shown on top of everything". Fixed.
• Help: Fixing an issue where the help tooltips would be partially outside the screen for certain resolutions.
• Bandit Kawa: Fixing a rare issue where they could spawn on an invalid location in the Restful Stones.
• AI: Fixing some odd AI decisions with Shadowstrike.
• Side Effects: Fixing an issue where Side Effects would cause damage when granting Quick due to the Exhausted debuff.
• Armors on Enemies: On rare occasions, some unique armors that aren't supposed to be on enemies would still spawn on them. Fixed.

[ 2019-04-12 22:04:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Visible traps will now adjust pathfinding so the player can tell where they can really walk to. None of the paths will walk on a visible trap, unless the player selects the trap itself as the destination.

New Build:

We have another update this week. This time the focus was almost entirely on Balance and there are a lot of changes all over (about a 100 different line items). The main goal was to bring "up to par" various class growths, passives and counters, as well as resolving some abusable combos (around quicken and evasion mostly). Oh, and we updated the pathfinding to account for visible traps now too :) The patch notes are quite lengthy this time around, but here's the rough highlights:

• Traps avoidance: When a trap is made visible by the player, the pathfinding will update to block paths that can't be reached anymore (because the trap would interrupt the player). The player can still decide to walk right on top of the trap, but that's the only way they'll hit a trap, as none of paths shown will walk on it.
• Class Growths: Most growths were slightly adjusted to bring up classes that were lacking and bring down some classes that had growths quite a bit better than others.
• Passives/Counters: A number of passives and counters were changed or removed. Some new passives were added to replace them.
• Quicken: There were various scenarios involiving infinite turns with Quicken. This should be fixed for the most part (it might still be possible to cheese things partially with Critical Quicken, but it's quite risky and involved, so we're not touching that one).
• Thorns: Redid the way calculations are done for Thorns damage. The damage will now be based on the targets DEF stat (the target of the thorn damage) rather than be a portion of the damage dealt to the thorn-user. This will make it so high defense units won't do weaker thorn damage anymore. Thorn reflection ratio changed to 0.25x (from 0.35x) to compensate for this.
• Portraits: By popular demand, adding more of the enemy portraits to the list avaible to the player. I believe pretty much all of them are available now, with a blue color rather than red to limit confusion.

That's really only a small subset of the changes we added this patch. The full list is at the end of this post. Also, we're not done with balance, as we still have pages of changes we want to get in. Please, keep the feedback and comments coming in the Forums, as the end of April is approaching fast! We'd also like to mention that while we don't answer all the posts on the Forums about balance/etc, we read all of them and the feedback is very appreciated (even if we don't act on all of it)!

Progress Report:

We've mostly worked on balance this week, as can be seen from the patch notes. But we've also put more work on the Ancient Path and wrapped up all the the loot and treasures in that place. The only thing missing is some special AI code for one of the levels and it should be done. We expect it to be done next week, which will make all the content finished.

Change log:

04/05/2019 - Version 0.9.3

New Content:

• Traps avoidance: When a trap is made visible by the player, the pathfinding will update to block paths that can't be reached anymore (because the trap would interrupt the player). The player can still decide to walk on top of the trap, but that's the only way they'll hit a trap, as none of paths shown will walk on it.
• Soul Binder: Soul Binder will now correctly trigger the 100% Charm chance if the target is asleep, as well as trigger Mind Control on the target.
• Portraits: By popular demand, adding more of the enemy portraits to the list avaible to the player. I believe pretty much all of them are available now, with a blue color rather than red to limit confusion.
• Visuals: Adding forgotten visuals for Pick Off and Rusty Stab.

Balance:

• Sturdy Grip: Now also allows for shield usage as well as equipping a 2H with 1 hand.
• Into the Fray: Slightly adjusted the value for "2 enemies in range".
• Health Siphon: Increasing range to 2 to better match the rest of the Fellblade's abilities.
• Alchemystic:
  • Insight: Spell now costs 8 MP and has 3 range like other Alchemystic buffs.
  • Fortitude: Passive has been moved to the Plague Doctor.
  • Side Effects: New Passive: When successfully applying a buff on a target, it will also heal them at 0.3x. When successfully applying a debuff to a target, it will damage them at 0.25x.
  • Thorns: moved to Plague Doctor.
  • Soul Tendrils: Adding a long range high damage high MP cost non-elemental spell to the Alchemystic.
  • Reorganized Skill tree to accommodate new abilities.
• Plague Doctor:
  • Armor Proficiency: Removing passive. Granting Heavy Armor to the Plague Doctor to compensate.
  • Fortitude: Armor Proficiency was replaced by Fortitude (previously on Alchemystic).
  • Into the Fray: Moved to the Reaver.
  • Permanence: New Passive: Buffs and Debuffs casted by this character will last 1 turn longer.
  • Thorns: Thorn spell moved to the Plague Doctor. Spell is now an AoE and MP cost increased to 8 (from 6). Also, we redid the way Thorns damage is calculated so it won't be reduced from the user having high defenses anymore.
  • Total Shield: spell is removed (moved to Druid).
• Templar:
  • Equip Shield: Passive is removed (it was fused with Sturdy Grip on the Mercenary).
  • Resilience: New passive: debuffs applied to this character will last 1 less turn than normal (min 1).
• Reaver:
  • Desperate Blow: Increasing MP cost to 16 (from 6).
  • Doublehand: Passive has been removed.
  • Into the Fray: new passive for the Reaver (previously on Plague Doctor).
  • Spread Pain: Will now also cause damage to the target.
  • Primal Blow: Adding MP cost of 6.
  • Primal Wave: Adding MP cost of 8.
• Druid:
  • Shield and Aegis: Replacing by Total Shield, with MP cost of 6. This should synergizes better with their Dual Casting feature.
  • Dispel: Lowering MP cost to 6 (from 8).
  • Counter Magic: Moving the counter on the Wizard.
  • Adaptive Affinity: Moving the counter from the Wizard to the Druid. Also changing the way the calculations are handled so that if the caster is ever targeting himself, the "affinity" bonus will be granted before damage calculations are made.
  • Adaptive Affinity: Now not restricted to 1 buff and a character can have 1 per element. They will last 3 turns now though.
  • Skill Tree: Was reworked slightly since 1 ability was removed. Dual Cast was moved to a lower node as well.
• Knight:
  • Chivalrous Spirit: Lowering MP cost to 18 (from 22).
• Vessel:
  • Hallowed Body: Changing the passive from: +15% to ATK/MND to: +20% of ATK to MND and +20% of MND to ATK.
  • Spells: Increasing damage a bit for some spells, to better compensate for high costs.
  • Psyhie: now restores only 5 MP, but MP cost lowered to 18 (from 22).
• Weaken: Now lasts 3 turns (from 2). Now is removed by Regenerate and Balm as well as other abilities that removed it before.
• Evasion: Evasion can easily reach high numbers, especially for the player, and it presents too easy an opportunity to "cheese" things.
  • Cap: Adding a hard cap to the evasion stat of 50%.
  • Gear: Reducing evasion of most gear pieces. Specifically, Main Gauche, Shields, Cap of Ages, and Exo Gloves had their evasion reduced, but many other small tweaks.
  • Passive: Reducing evasion from the passive to 13 (from 15).
• Debuffs: When applying debuffs, the debuffs from the selected ability will be applied last (so, weapons, passives, etc, will come first) to give the user more control over which debuff will get absorbed by Barrier. This is a fairly advanced feature to be honest.
• Thorns: Redid the way calculations are done for Thorns damage. The damage will now be based on the targets DEF stat (the target of the thorn damage) rather than be a portion of the damage dealt to the thorn-user. This will make it so high defense units won't do weaker thorn damage anymore. Thorn reflection ratio changed to 0.25x (from 0.35x) to compensate for this.
• Quicken: There were various scenarios involiving infinite turns with Quicken. This should be fixed for the most part (it might still be possible to cheese things partially with Critical Quicken, but it's quite risky and involved, so we're not touching that one).
  • Using Quicken on a character will give them the debuff "Exhausted", which will prevent further Quicken spells from affecting them until it wears off. It will wear off the next time they get a "natural turn". Counter: Critical Quicken ignores the debuff (so it will always trigger if the critical condition is met), but will still give the debuff to the unit.
  • Self: Because of the above debuff, Quicken can now be casted on "Self" again.
• Class Growths: Small update to stats growth to get up-to-date with recent balance changes. All changes are very small amounts unless specified. None of these changes are retroactive (ie, current stats will not change).
  • Sorcerer: HP up, Res up, Spd up, Atk up, Def up.
  • Reaver: HP down, Res up.
  • Demon Knight: Def down, Res down, MP down, HP down.
  • Assassin: Atk up, HP up.
  • Wizard: Atk up, HP up.
  • Lord: MP down, Res down, Def down.
  • Ranger: Hp up.
  • Mercenary: MP up.
  • Gadgeteer: HP down, Def down, Res down.
  • Knight: Res down.
  • Vampire: Mp up.
  • Plague Doctor: Mp down, Def down, Mnd up.
  • Warmage: HP up, MP down, Spd up.
  • Fellblade: HP down, Atk Up, Spd down.
  • Alchemystic: Spd up (a fair amount), Res down, Mnd up.
  • Peddler: MP up, Hp Up, Res Down.
  • Vessel: Hp down, Atk Up, Def up, Res up, Spd up.
  • Lich: Large changes for this one. HP up, MP down, Def down, Res down. Atk up.
  • Anatomist: Spd up, Atk up, HP up.
  • Princess: Spd up, Res down, MP up, Atk up.
  • Spymaster: MP up, HP up.
  • Exiled: MP up.
  • Marked: Mp up.
  • Scoundrel: MP up.
  • Druid: MP down, Res down, Spd up.
  • Mender: Spd up.
• Princess: Reordered the skill tree around significantly and changed some AP costs a bit.
• Counter Shield/Counter Aegis: Now became Counter Total Shield.
• Crossbows: Increased attack values a tiny bit for all of them. Adding a small accuracy bonus to all of them as well. Increasing existing MND bonus to those that had one and added a MND bonus to Aerolus.
• AI: Made AI smarter with Infused Edge in general.
• Counter Haste: Was changed from Critical: Haste to Haste, so it will now proc from being attacked, rather from being at critical health. This might be a little too strong, so we'll keep an eye on it.
• Light Armors: Making tiny adjustments to Lorica Musculata and Lorica Mentis (higher offensive bonus, lower RES) and to Golden Garb (small MND bonus).
• Pick Off: Reducing base damage to 1.6x (from 1.7x). Increasing the reduction for "nearby ally" to 0.6x (from 0.4x).
• Gadgeteer: Changing the damage type of certain gadgets to Mixed and certain to ATK (most were MND before).
• Daggers: Reducing speed bonus of Flash Knife and Dragon's Nail.
• Swords: Increasing MND bonus of swords with a MND bonus a tad. Giving a small speed bonus to Eternias.
• Spears: Increasing MND bonus of spears with a MND bonus a tad. Godray's stats bonus were slightly increased.
• Scythes: Reaper now has a small MND bonus.
• Maces: Increasing their MND bonus.
• Guns: Adding a small MND bonus to Hell Muzzle.
• Staves: Reducing MND and DEF bonus for Godsleg.
• Archafflictor: Replacing Reanimator with Plaguestorm, a spell that deals damage and has a chance to inflict a random debuff on all enemies.
• Archafflictor: Reducing AI odds of using items a little bit for this monster.
• Scoundrel: Making Fleet Of Foot an AoE around the caster rather than self target.

UI:

• Into the Fray: Tooltip has been updated to show that it applies to damage and healing.
• Various Spell Names: Renamed many spells to Mass "name" to be more consistent with the naming scheme.
• Stats Growth: Making layout a little easier to read.

Bug Fixes:

• AI: The AI wasn't valuing using Panacea the way it should, so it almost never bothered. Should be fixed, but we'll have to keep an eye out to ensure the AI isn't too trigger-happy about this now.
• Sunder: Passive wasn't being applied correctly in general.
• Blood Mark: Will not be applied to "fixed damage" anymore.
• Bandit Kawas: There were instances where Bandit Kawas would take a movement action that was a little weird (such as moving on top of other units or moving before a counter would trigger, etc). Fixed.
• Sleep Visuals: The visuals would be shown over/under the target oddly before. Now they are always correctly over the target.
• Revival: The camera would move to where the target died, rather than where it would be revived. Fixed.
• Leeching HP/MP: Even when missing, it would still leech HP/MP. Fixed.
• Mirage: Fixing various interactions with Mirage, including not gaining EXP in some cases when removing Mirage with an attack from a target.
• Visuals: Adding some GameConfig.txt options to help the few users having some weird flickering. Adding "Vsynccount=" and "targetframerate=" properties to the Graphics tab.
• Class Mastery: Mastered classes that the character doesn't have full access to yet (from being recruited in an advanced class) will still correctly grant their mastery bonus now.
• Floating: Fixing a rare instance where the floating animation would disappear from a unit.
• Countershot: The damage prediction box would show it as active even if the weapon range wasn't good enough (even though the counter would correctly not trigger).

Modding:

• GearFill: Adding "noboots" an a gearfill option. It will prevent any accessories with a move or jump component from being place on the unit by the randomizer.

[ 2019-04-05 20:29:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, We safely returned from our voyage to Boston where we presented Fell Seal to the visitors of PAX East. It was our second year there, and it was once again a great experience. We met plenty of new excited fans as well as people who are already enjoying Fell Seal at home. It is always wonderful to meet you guys and chat about the game, other games in the genre, or just chat about stuff in general. Looking forward to meeting you somewhere else soon! :)

[ 2019-04-05 14:58:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

New looks for information placard.

New Build:

Hello everyone! This week, we've been focusing on UI updates and more balance updates. Actually, pretty much all the visuals for the UI were redone and we think they're looking better than ever. Give it a look and let us know what you think! Here are the highlights for this week:

• UI: We redid most of the visual components of the UI to give them a slicker look. Adjusted some colors and positions here and there to look better as well.
• Class Mastery: Adding Class Mastery to the game. For each class mastered, the character will receive a permanent bonus to various stats (the class doesn't need to be selected for the bonus to apply). You can see the bonuses in the Class selection screen.
• Town Art: Adding town art when the player selects a town node on the world map.
• Class Select: Adding a button to view the character's Abilities of the selected class in the Class Wheel menu, for classes that are discovered.

We finally added the Town art to the worldmap. It'll be visible when selecting a town node.
The biggest change to the game balance is probably the "mastery bonus" we've added. When a character masters a class, they get a small permanent stats bonus from then on (even without using said class).

Progress Report:

We've been quite busy this week, as usual. On top of the above changes, we've also been working on the Ancient Path dungeon and we have 1 more encounter left to create for it before it's all finished! Otherwise, lots of bug fixes, balance changes and some UI improvements. There's still a lot of balance tweaks we want to get in and a few more UI upgrades as well.

Change log:

03/29/2019 - Version 0.9.2

New Content:

• UI: We redid most of the visual components of the UI to give them a slicker look. Adjusted some colors and positions here and there to look better as well.
• Class Mastery: Adding Class Mastery to the game. For each class mastered, the character will receive a permanent bonus to various stats (the class doesn't need to be selected for the bonus to apply). You can see the bonuses in the Class selection screen.
• Town Art: Adding town art when the player selects a town node on the world map.
• Class Select: Adding a button to view the character's Abilities of the selected class in the Class Wheel menu, for classes that are discovered.

UI:

• Help: Darkening the rest of the screen when showing the help screen, to make things a little more visible.
• Abilities Descriptions: Clarifying some descriptions, including Sabotage, Snapback, Flip Kick. Adding numbers to passives that didn't have them.
• Vangaals: Renamed their ability to Alpha from Savagery (another class already uses that term).

Balance:

• Height Advantage: Will now cap at 35% bonus. Bonus increased to 5% from 4% per height.
• Stats Expert: Now gives a flat amount of their STAT, based on character level. Their overall value was increased to a little over ~20% (from 15%) for ATK/MND and to ~30% for DEF/RES. These numbers might need further adjusting. This should make these passives more attractive even for characters not already stacking the STAT since it's a flat bonus.
• Doublehand: With the changes to "Stats Expert", Doublehand will need a rework, but we haven't gotten to it just yet. Soon!
• Stats Buffs: ATK/MND battle buff were increased to 20% (from 12.5%) and DEF/RES were increased to 25% (from 15%).
• Templar: New counter is Evade Attack. It evades all regular attacks (rather than just melee regular attacks).
• Ranger: New counter is Countershot. It counterattacks with a regular attack against any ranged regular attacks or skills (so, not spells).
• Life Font: Now restores 4+lv/4 HP per step, rather than 10/step. It means it will start a little weaker, but end up much stronger at high levels. In general, it should be more consistent throughout the game.
• Dirty Hit: Increasing base effect chance to 62% (from 50%).
• Hallowed Body: Increasing bonus to 15% (from 10%).
• Soul Gear: Increasing the max stacks to 60 (from 50). Reducing starting values a bit. Reducing Soul Armor "offensive bonus" by 50% per stack. Reducing Soul Eater "defensive bonus" by 50%. Reducing crit/eva/speed bonus by 50%.
• Soulreaper: Renamed to Reaper, to avoid confusion with Soul Eater.
• Oldebzar: Setting static passives on enemies that had a randomized one, for more consistency.
• Bzil Capital: Tweaking some enemies for better balance (making things slightly easier).
• Second Temple: Making one of the Rangers an "extra difficulty" enemy.
• Righteous Blade: Adding Righteous Blade to the list of abilities the AI can't use until they're at least level 30.
• Pick Off: Lowering damage from 1.8x to 1.7x.
• AI: Improving AI behavior in a few situation, including in dealing better with Mystic Shield on player units, and being smarter about dual casting buffs (not the same buff on the same target 2x).

Bug:

• Last Story Cutscene: The current "last story cutscene" was always triggering as if no "special items" had been gathered the first time the player would see it, even if they had gathered all "special items". This is fixed.
• AI: Abilities with a "Drain HP" component could be valued higher than they should by the AI. Fixed.
• Berserk: Berserk wouldn't recognize "2x2 monsters" as being closest to the Berserk target for some of their edges. Fixed.
• Skills: Skills with "counts as a regular attack" will now correctly use the status effects of the 2nd weapon as well as those of the 1st weapon.
• Evade Skills: Will now correctly prevent "Steal" abilities from working on the character.
• Tarnished Locket: Fixing an issue where a cutscene might not trigger when it should, tied to this crafting component.
• Menus: Fixing small memory leaks in some menus.
• Maps: Fixing a few more priorities-of-drawing for some maps.
• Learn Abilities: Character box would not update with new passives until after changing screen when learning a new passive on the current class. Fixed.
• Pick Off: Pick off would not work correctly on "large targets", as they would detect their own large bodies as being "nearby buddies". Fixed.
• Character Customize: Changing an existing character's visuals while they are injured would show them crouching when using the "select a sprite from the list" layout. Fixed.

[ 2019-03-29 21:07:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Those nifty town images still need to be added. Hopefully next week!

New Build:

Hello everyone! This week's build focuses on balance changes and polish. We also have some very exciting UI updates in the works, but that'll wait until next week! For now, balance changes to Marked, Scoundrel, Demon Knight, Fellblade and more... Most of the changes came from feedback from the community, so a big thank you to everyone for helping us getting the balance ever better! The notes for this update are actually pretty long, so the summary doesn't do them justice. Feel free to check out the full notes at the end of the post. Highlights:

• Portraits: By popular request, adding some of the Enemy portraits (with different colors for clarity) to the list available to the player.
• AI: Substantially speeding up AI calculations in the rare cases they're not "instant".
• Intro Video: Changed the way we handle the intro video to a different format. It should be more compatible hopefully. Let us know how it goes!
• Balance: A LOT of changes, including to the stats cap, AI, Marked, Demon Knight, Fellblade, Scoundrel, many monsters, abilities, etc.
• Modding Update: The list of classes in the store will now correctly accomodate a lot of user-adder classes.

Progress Report:

This week was spent working on balance changes mostly and we made good time. Despite that, we still have a lot more to go though, with many passives, counters and weapons getting some tweaks soon. There's even more than that, but that's probably what's going to be around next week, on top of some nifty UI updates. We've also been working on the Ancient Path, our special end-game optional dungeon and it's 50% done now. It should be finished next week, which will wrap up all optional and regular content in the game.

Change log:

03/2/2019 - Version 0.9.1

New Content:

• Portraits: By popular request, adding some of the Enemy portraits (with different colors for clarity) to the list available to the player.

UI:

• AI: Substantially speeding up AI calculations in the rare cases they're not "instant".
• AI: In the rare cases where the AI makes a decision that takes longer than "instantly", the game could visually stutter during the process. This is now fixed.
• Intro Video: Changed the way we handle the intro video to a different format. It should be more compatible hopefully. Let us know how it goes!
• Status Effects: In the rare cases when applying the same status effects more than once with an attack, the odds will be combined into 1 odd and the effect shown only once in the prediction.
• Counters: Cleaning up camera movement during counters. Countering from "very far from the target" will lose the unnecessary "center on counter-caster" at the end of the sequence it sometimes had.
• Switcheroo: Changed visuals a little bit.
• Errors: Improving error logging a little bit so "repeated errors" don't keep getting logged.

Balance:

• Stats Caps:
  • Monsters will now have their own stat cap to compensate for them relying on higher stat since they don't have equipment (currently, 700).
• AI: New functionalities and smarter AI:
  • The AI will now properly use Double Cast when it has it. This should be the last "big functionality" that the AI was missing and only fine tuning should remain at this point.
  • Making the AI a little more likely to want to dispel Charm from its allies.
  • There was an issue that made the AI slightly more likely to use hp/mp draining attacks than it normal. Fixed.
• Marked: The main goal is to give the class more options that aren't "Dark element", since mid late game has a lot of Dark resist.
  • Slightly adjusting AP cost of some abilities, mostly lowering them.
  • Adding Holy Bolt, a holy version of Dark Bolt.
  • Adding Holy Beam, a holy version of Wrathful Beam.
  • Changed Holy Burst to do Physical damage like Wrathful Burst. Lowering the cost to 14MP, from 18MP and the damage to 1.1x (from 1.15x).
• Demon Knight: Slightly shoring up some weaker abilities, as we feel the class is in a good spot in general.
  • Vicious Slash: Now does 1/6th of current health rather than 1/4th.
  • Demonic Might: Now does 1/5th of current health rather than 1/4th.
• Fellblade: The class is in a decent spot, we're just revisiting the Skill Tree, some AP costs and small tweaks. Since the Skill tree was changed, some "learned abilities" might change a bit, but nothing that can't be fixed with a little of AP.
  • Health Siphon: Changing the damage to ATK (from MND) and reducing the base ratio from 0.7x to 0.65x. The skill should be more effective based on ATK.
  • Skill Tree: Moving some things around. Mainly, making Counter: Evade Magic less costly and moving it up the Skill Tree, as well as Health Siphon.
  • Chaos Slice: Now, it will roll a random debuff taken from "any debuffs that would be valid on the target", so it should never fail to apply a debuff (unless the target is immune/afflicted by all debuffs already).
  • Versatile: The ability was a little strong, especial at high levels. It will not restore HP anymore and the MP restore was changed to 5% (minimum 5MP) from 10% and can only happen once per spell (that part was always intended actually, so it is more of a bug fix).
• Scoundrel: Mainly a few tweaks to give them a few more offensive options.
  • Arterial Cut: Adding a new ability that has a chance to inflict Bleed with a 0.85x ratio. Counts as a regular attack. (Localization is not done for this yet, it'll be in the next update).
  • Dirty Hit: Getting the "counts as a regular attack" flag as well. The idea is to give a few options to the rogue that works well with their daggers.
  • Steal Items: Now has a 0.75x damage component. Steal abilities have a fixed "lower" chance of hitting, which mean the damage will only work if the steal is successful. An interesting side effect is that since the hit chance is fixed, it works just as well against rare "high evasion enemies".
  • Steal Buffs: Now has a 0.75x damage component.
  • Skill Tree: since we added an new ability, the skilltree got changed a little bit and some of the AP costs reduced to compensate having an extra one.
• Plague Doctor: Treatment will now remove Weaken as well.
• Gambler: Changed the way Wildcards work. They will now only roll buffs/debuffs that the target doesn't already have (unless it rolled for a "bad outcome", in which case it won't work if the target already has the effect). Also changed how the better rolls work by giving "more buffs/debuffs" rather than fixed ones.
• Heavy Potion: Changing healing tiers from 200, 400 to 150, 300.
• Stampede: Reducing damage bonus from 12.5% to 10% per move.
• Undead Kawas: Their missing passive has now been set to Plaguebearer.
• Fortitude: Will now also protect from Weaken, Bleed and Poison.
• Absorb MP: Now renamed Absorb Mana and will only trigger on "offensive abilities that don't heal the target" (so, healing an ally with Fire I will not absorb the cost).
• Collect Abilities: Will now have 0% chance of success against a target that can't be collected (eg. Collect Bounty will not work on a Monster) to make it clear none of the effects will trigger on an invalid target.
• Druids: Replacing Poison with Bleed, a spell that inflicts bleeding damage rather than poison damage. The bleed effect wasn't present enough and this is a good way to give the Druid a spell other classes don't have access to.
• Desperate Blow: Now has 1 range, 3 vert range, rather than "weapon range".
• Blood Magic: Changing the ratio to 1.5%/1MP (from 1%/1MP) as it feels a little strong. We're considering moving it to 2%/1MP, but we'll see how this goes first.
• Net: Removing the MP cost (was 6).
• Enemies:Slightly reducing the odds of Demi Gauntlet spawning on very early enemies.
• Tangrels: Replacing "No Flank" with "Health Expert".
• Deep Wounds: This passive will now apply to all Regular Attacks, rather than just critical hits.
• Snack Stash: Now will only select a Buff that the target doesn't already have, so there should always be 2 buffs used, unless there's no more buffs to cast.
• Weapons: Switching around the Ebony Dagger and Kunai, so that the 1/2 Dark mod is "early into the game" rather than at its current tier.
• Weapons: Toothed Sword: now has a chance to inflict Bleed.
• Battle Rewards: Gold rewards will be lessened on "low level maps", the same way that AP gains are.
• Zotzits/etc: Disabling those special spawns on the maps meant to be a training ground for very low level characters (The Crossroads, etc.). Also very slightly reducing their initial spawn chance.
• Aeoths: Now will not have a cap on their HP, just like bosses. Also, they will not spawn with poison/bleed protection, to maximize "%hp damage" options to deal with them.
• Archafflictor/Therva: Their counters were exchanged, so Therva how has "Absorb Mana" and Archafflictor has "Adaptive Aegis".
• Difficulty Setting: The AP Malus Injury setting will now have a 20%/injury malus (down from 25%). And the the malus will never be greater than 60%, so a unit that died 4x in a battle will still get 40% AP.

Bug Fixes:

• Skull Crusher: This mace had an incorrect price (an extra 0 snuck at the end of the price). Fixed :)
• Mirror Trick: Removing some abilities that would cause problems from the list abilities that can be copied.
• Maps: Fixed a few "sprite ordering" issues on various maps.
• Sabotage: Sabotage was changed from being a "healing" ability to an offensive one that won't trigger counters on allies. Making sure it bypasses all counters correctly.
• Visuals: Fixing a glitch where changing the direction of sprites could have some odd layering for some rare sprites (usually, those with a beard).
• Doppelganger: Fixing an issue where Infused Edge wouldn't be useable after being copied.
• Zotzits/etc: On certain maps, they could spawn in unreachable locations. Fixed.
• Phoenix Ring: Fixing a rare case where the ring wouldn't be active at the start of an encounter.

Modding:

• Store: When at the store, or in the troops menu, and listing the classes that could equip a piece of gear, the box will now accommodate all classes correctly, even if the user added "a lot of them".
• Stats Caps: The stat caps for hp/mp/stats/speed/level can now be adjusted in the GameOptions.txt file. Without redoing the Level Range of encounters, changing the level cap will probably not yield anything too useful, but otherwise changing these values should be fine.
• GearFill: Adding "NoDots" as a gearfill option for encounters.txt enemies, no prevent them from spawning with an acessory that would protect them from Poison/Bleed (this is used with HP bosses and minibosses currently).
• Abilities.xml: Slightly cleaning up the file so it's easier to read and each entry contains the Name and HashName for all abilities.
• Error Checks: Adding more error checking for invalid classes.

03/2/2019 - Version 0.9.1a

Hotfix:

• AI: The AI could act funny when somehow using 2x the same status effect on an attack (through having it on the weapon or from sunder/chilling touch, etc). Fixed.

[ 2019-03-22 22:04:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

We will be at PAX East this year and with us we are bringing the latest build of Fell Seal! If you are there stop by to say hi and check out the game if you haven't had the pleasure already. Booth #19115 is definitely the place to visit (our booth)!

[ 2019-03-22 15:32:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

A new secret encounter.

New Build:

Hello everyone! We have a big update today, our biggest yet! With our Release date just around the corner, we're wrapping up all the content we want to get in and this update has (almost) all of it! We also have important news about the price tag. The price for the game will be increased on Monday 18th from $19.99 USD (16.99 EUR) to $29.99 USD (24.99 EUR). This price is final and will remain the same even after the game leaves early access. With the current 10% off and lower price, there has never been a better time to get the time than NOW! Let's list what it's missing, as that will be a much shorter list:

• The current build stops a short ways before the game's end, which means our 2 different ending are not accessible. Those will only be accessible in Release.
• We have a big 7 levels secret dungeon in the works, with a special boss, special loot, etc. That will only be added at Release as well.
• Steam cloud saves and achievements. That will be added either for the Release build or a little before.

And that's it for the missing content. Everything else is in this build. Now, onto what we're adding today! Here are the highlights:

• Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
• Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
• Optional Content: We're adding 3 secret optional battles with special rewards.
• Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
• Special Enemies: Adding special enemies that will randomly spawn during Patrols. These enemies will award a big bonus of AP or components if you manage to defeat them before they flee the battle.
• Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.

With all this content in, the game experience should be pretty close to what it'll look like on Release day, barring the balance changes we have planned. We'll be very eager to get everyone's feedback during our balancing/polish phase, to make sure everything is as great as it can be! So please, don't be shy, and let us know what you think! :)

Progress Report:

With Release approaching so fast, we've been focusing on handling any loose ends we have. We're adding polish to cutscenes, abilities, menus, etc. We're hunting down and fixing any bugs we have in our list that haven't been fixed yet. We also started work on the first wave of big balance changes we have planned, although that isn't ready for primetime yet. Starting today, our main focus is going to be polish, balance and bug fixes. This includes various UI improvements that we've add planned for a while too. Second to that, adding the Steam Integration (cloud saves, achievements) and finally, wrapping up our optional secret dungeon.

New Content Preview:

Here's what some of the new optional content looks like, to help everyone get started!
The first Obelisk you can find.
The Zotzits give a big AP bonus based on the monster tier. This story battle is the first time you can encounter one. They will start randomly spawning in Patrols from then on.

Change log:

03/15/2019 - Version 0.9.0

New Content:

• Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
• Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
• Secret Character: It's possible we added a secret character that's fairly difficult to unlock...
• Optional Battles: We added 3 secret optional battles with some quests to unlock them.
• Patrols: Adding a lot of new patrols.
• Iirzk'tara Gorge: A new enemy was added to this map. Normally you would encounter him during your story battle there, but for people already past that content, you might want to go back there and check it out.
• Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
• Zotzits: We added a special enemy, the Zotzit, that randomly spawns during patrols after a specific point in the story. If you manage to defeat them before they run, you will be awarded with a large AP bonus.
• Bandit Kawa: We added another special enemy that randomly spawns during patrols. Defeating them before they flee will yield rare crafting components and weapons.
• Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.
• Outfits: Adding some outfits/hats that only become accessible after completing certain quests in game.

Balance:

• Bosses: Bosses (and some other special characters) will now ignore the "extra gear" flag when it comes to generating accessories in empty slots, to prevent them from spawning with boots and status immunities they are not supposed to have.
• Somier: In a battle involving Somier, some adjustments were made to make sure his level always matches the player's. Also weakening a few enemies and ensuring some of them will not spawn with boots when they shouldn't on any difficulty setting.
• Encounters: Many encounters have had small tweaks made to them, usually to make them a little easier. The "Extra Enemies" option brings all those maps to the same difficulty as before, or higher (usually higher, haha).
• Counter: Mute: Changing the counter so it works on attacks from all ranges instead of only "ranged attacks". The goal is to make the trigger conditions of counters more uniform across the board.
• Weapons: Crossbow "Willam's" now gives +10% accuracy.
• Arena: Changing the arena fight bonus from +50% GP to +33% GP/AP, to account better for the increased difficulty of the battles. Let us know how that works for you!
• AI: Adding new functionalities to the AI weights system so different weights can be added to specific targets (this helps get the AI to prioritize certain allies for heals/buffs). These will be made available to modders soon.

UI:

• Next/Prev Enemies/Allies: When using the buttons to quickly switch to the previous/next enemy/ally in combat, if the cursor is already on a valid target, the cursor lookup will start on that target. This eliminates the issue where the "next target" is the same as the "current one" so the button press does nothing the 1st time.
• Abilities: Cleaning up the description of a few abilities to be more accurate.
• Extra Enemies: Enemies spawned by the Added Enemies difficulty setting will show "Extra" on their information panel in combat rather than "Enemy", for clarity.

Bug Fixes:

• Crash: Fixing a very rare crash that could happen when canceling a cutscene.
• Visual Glitch: Fixing a rare visual glitch where a dagger using enemy could spawn with a weapon with no name and a missing icon.
• Infused Edge: Fixing an issue where the predicted damage from the spell part of the attack would account for the critical damage (so the player could tell if the spell was going to be a critical hit).
• Learn Ability: The list where all known classes are shown could sometimes show the wrong selected class at times after a lot of class had been unlocked by a user.
• Flying and Water: Fixing some visual oddities when flying in/out of water without the Float status.
• Revives: Enemies that started their turn in water would revive other enemies in their starting position if they decided to revive on that turn.
• Water: Not applying anymore the bonus/malus to being in water if having the status Float.
• Sprite Priorities: Fixing various priority of drawing for sprites/maps on various maps.

Modding:

• Errors: Adding more error checking for spawning enemies through Encounters.txt.
• Encounters.txt:
  • Adding "shield" as an argument for spawning humans, to decide their shield (true, false, "item code"). This was already covered by "weapon2", but it's a little clearer now.
  • Changing the "shield", "helmet" and "armor" tags so that putting an accessory in them will now work.
  • Adding "noitems:true", to make a specific enemy unable to use items.

Edit: Hotfix notes: 03/15/2019 - Version 0.9.0a

Hotfix:

• Ekidna Falls: The Seal there got its orientation changed at some point. Fixed.
• Plains01: Missing a collision on a tile there. Fixed.
• Bandit Kawa: They were using the wrong AI script. Fixed. They might be a little hard to catch now though. Let us know what you think!

[ 2019-03-15 19:01:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

UPDATE: Thank you everyone that came and chat with us. We always like to interact with you :) Hey everyone, we are right now streaming Fell Seal on Steam! Go to our store page to talk to us and find out more about the game/development. Of course feel free to ask anything that is on your mind :) Talk to you there steamhappy https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/

[ 2019-03-15 16:04:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, today's announcement is short and sweet :) Fell Seal is 10 % till next Monday! steamhappy The discount will run till Monday 18th. We also have some very interesting news coming in couple of days so stay tuned... https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/

[ 2019-03-11 17:41:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! There won't be a new build this week, as we're busy preparing for next week's big content update. We'll be adding all our planned optional content next week, save for the Ancient Path, our big secret optional dungeon. It's going to be our biggest content update yet and also the last one before Release, which is approaching rapidly (end of April)! After next week's content update, we'll keep releasing builds until Release, with a big focus on balance, bug fixes and polish. We'll be grabbing all the feedback from the forums and going through it in detail and making changes and adjustments from it. We'll be counting on everyone to keep giving us their great feedback and comments! Again, a big thank you to the whole community for all the support until now: it has been invaluable and greatly appreciated! :) Here's a quick preview of what's going to be in the next content update:

• Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
• Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
• Secret Character: It's possible we added a secret character that's fairly difficult to unlock...
• Optional Battles: We added 3 secret optional battles with some quests to unlock them.
• Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
• Bonus Enemies:Some special enemies now have a chance to spawn and they will be giving either a large bonus to AP or special drops.
• Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.

And quite a bit more... :)

[ 2019-03-08 21:27:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

An older version of Sagittarian Cavalry, which was added to this build.

New Build:

We have a new build this week. We finally got around to adding our Credits section and we're adding a lot of new VFX and SFX to the game, as well as the usual bug fixes and small balance tweaks. We've been busy wrapping up our optional content and end-game content lately, although we'll be saving the ending of the game as well as our large secret dungeon for the official release of the game. The rest of the optional content (other than our large secret dungeon) will be in the March big-content-update, so there'll be a lot of new material to check out, including Reiner's special class, a secret character and many optional/secret battles. For today though, here are the highlights:

• Credits: Credits section has been added to the title screen.
• Music: All music cues have been updated to their final version (following work by our musician on the game's OST).
• VFX: Adding many new VFX, most of them for optional content battles we're currently working on, but also for Immortal Souls, Autotomize, Meat shield, Rekindle, Swarm Strike, Wild Slam, Vicious Push, Quetzalcoatl, and a few others.
• SFX: Adding another 2 dozens SFX or so.
• Localization: All missing localized text has been added. With this, the localization process should be fully complete!
• AI: Many updates to the AI system to fix some issues and make it better.

Progress Report:

We've just finished the final localization QA phase and we're done adding all our VFX right now. At this point, all assets (including maps, VFX, sprites, text) are complete, save for a dozen or so SFX. We're still missing some cutscenes and some encounters though, and that will be our focus for the next week or two. Afterwards, the rest of our time will be spent tuning/bug fixing and polishing the game, mostly from the feedback we'll be getting on the Forums, so don't be shy and drop us a line on there! :)

Change log:

02/22/2019 - Version 0.8.1

New Content:

• Credits: Credits section has been added to the title screen.
• Music: All music cues have been updated to their final version (following work by our musician on the game's OST).
• VFX: Adding many new VFX, most of them for optional content battles we're currently working on, but also for Immortal Souls, Autotomize, Meat shield, Rekindle, Swarm Strike, Wild Slam, Vicious Push, Quetzalcoatl, and a few others.
• SFX: Adding another 2 dozens SFX or so.
• Localization: All missing localized text has been added. With this, the localization process should be fully complete!
• Key Items: Adding some key items to the game. Some of those would already have been gathered by the time the player reaches the end of the current build and will be retroactively granted. Key items can be seen from the Troops Menu "View Inventory" section. Most of the key items are tied to optional content that's still being added.

Balance:

• AI: Various small improvements to the AI. Many improvements to Cadavers AI specifically.
• AI: AI wasn't properly taking into account when its attack would kill the target and wasn't being "more enthusiastic" about such cases.
• AI: AI will be better when using Infused Edge. It wasn't tallying all that it should before when comparing options.
• Alphine Woods Patrol: Switching Duelist for Templar (Duelist are a fairly late game class and it seems a bit early to introduce them to the player).
• Gyaum Tor Patrol: 2 of the 3 Reavers were changed no another class. This is still early into the game and the player is unlikely to know much about Reavers at that point.
• Resting Giants Patrol: 1 of the Reavers got chanced to a different class.
• Cabin Fight: Slightly adjusting the base stats of a certain female guest character to she has more defense a little less attack/speed. The goal is to make sure more survivable mainly.
• Princess/Lord: Reducing the AP cost to learn Equip-All.
• Guests: Guests will never use "sacrifice" types of actions unless they have Rebirth on.
• Vessel: Lowing MP cost of Immortal Souls and Fafnir by 2 MP each.
• Cadavers: Changing the height values of some of their abilities a tad.
• Vampire/Marked: Increase the damage ratio for Soul Suck and Soul Drain.
• Holy Burst: Increasing MP cost from 16 to 18.
• Weapons:
  • Lowered attack of True Flight a bit and lowered price.
  • Increased attack of Mach Bow a bit.
  • Giving "dark dmg bonus" to the Ebony Rod.

UI:

• Status effects: When a crit happens, the status effect text will no longer be enlarged. Only the critical damage will be enlarged.
• Volumes: Updated the way the volumes are handled by the game. The default volume is now 80% across the board. This will reset the user's currently saved volume values.
• Movie Volume The intro movie will now use the "music volume" value when playing rather than the default Unity value.

Bug Fixes:

• Items Usage: Maps that have a flag to prevent item usage would still have the AI use items after our AI rework. Fixed.
• Blazing Trap: Trap wasn't ending the unit's turn upon stepping on it. Fixed.
• Desperate Blow: Fixing issue where Desperate blow would show "remove:" instead of 0 damage when user is at full health. Fixing an issue where the damage would show "MISS" rather than 0 even if it didn't miss with 0 damage dealt.
• AI: Fixed something in the AI behavior that didn't value mp damage correctly. This lead to using "mp-drain" abilities on allies a lot more than would otherwise make sense.
• AI: The new AI was ignoring a flag that forces enemy to "never use skills". That flag is mostly used in some early maps. That functionality is now restored and enemies should use less skills in the early maps.
• AI: Fixed an issue where AI wouldn't use Reanimate.
• Infused Edge: Fixing an issue where using Infused Edge with Warmage "burst" spells would leave the target in "getting hit" stance at the end of the spell.
• Abilities Descriptions: Fixing some missing icons and such on some abilities.
• Mirage: Fixing issue with the mirage icon staying on the target after Mirage is removed by attacking (even though it would behave correctly). This issue could have affected other buffs too.
• Blood Axe: This craftable axe was never properly added to the crafting list before.
• Adaptive Aegis: The effect wouldn't wear off on the target after the buff timed out, until the target was attacked (or other conditions). Fixed.
• Localization: Fixing a few strings that had some small mistakes.
• Siege Ram: If Siege Ram was interrupted by a trap, strange things would happen. Fixed.
• Steal %: After displaying a 0% chance number, the % chance of stealing abilities would be shown in red in the prediction box. Fixed.
• Traps: When a unit would trigger a trap, it would use up the Boon status on the trap's original caster. Fixed.

Modding:

• Names: All character names are now in terms2.txt, so modders can translate them if desired.
• Errors: Adding more error checking for character outfits information.
• Names: Story character names are now read from terms2.txt everytime a game is loaded. Before, the name would be saved in the savefile. This will enable "using the localized name" when switching languages.
• AI: Adding "magic" and "skill" for weights name that can be used for the AI.
• Weights: Fixing an issue where weights name had to be capitalized in the encounters.txt file to work before.
• Summoning: Abilities that use the SummonAny flag can now be created for the player to use (they could only be used by the AI before).
• Hiding the UI: Adding a new Debug option called "hideui". If set to true in the Gameconfig.txt Debug section, pressing 1 or the Left-Stick-Button will hide/show the UI.

[ 2019-03-01 22:47:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This week, we won't be putting up a new build. We've been frantically working all week trying to get all the content finished so we can move on to our big balance pass and get our big QA pass done, and we're getting there. But we're not quite done yet. There are too many "not quite finished" additions and we don't feel it would be a good idea to release a new build this week with so much content in flux. It just means there'll be more stuff next week ^^

Progress Report:

This week, we got the credits done and one of the 2 endings created. We have 2 visual effects left to create only for abilities and we finished creating Reiner's special class. We still have to add the character cutscene that will unlock this class though. We added another 2 dozen sounds effects (we're up to something like 400 SFX. That's pretty scary) and we're almost done with those. The final localization has also been done, which means 100% of the game is translated now. That's mostly it for this week! :) Here's one of the spells we added this week for the Vessel class:

[ 2019-02-22 21:57:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gelligh's worldmap art

New Build:

We're releasing build 0.8.0 this week, which adds 3 new story battles and 3 patrols. We're also adding over 50 new SFX and a dozen new VFX. This build takes the story almost to the final battle, so most of the core content is there. We're mainly missing optional content, in the form of 4 special battles, a few cutscenes, a secret character, another Tournament, some secret loot and enemies and a special 7 maps end-game dungeon. Well, I guess that's quite a bit of content that's still missing, come to think of it! All the maps and the design for the above content are ready and we're missing the cutscenes and the encounters for most of them. We're working on it though and we're on schedule. There certainly won't be any vacation for us for the next 2 months though! Here's the highlights of today's build:

• Story: Adding 3 story battles and 3 patrol battles.
• SFX: Adding about 50 new sound effects, including some for cutscenes (like the last cutscene of the previous build).
• VFX: Adding numerous visual effects, including: Scorpio Ballista, Shatter, Blazing Bolas, Whetstone, Bulldrake Limits, Phoenix abilities. Updating Bullets effects.
• Name Input: The textbox will now use the correct font for non-english languages, which should allow input in other character sets.

Progress Report:

This week we've been working on wrapping up today's build and creating cutscenes and encounters mainly. We also spent time integrating new SFX and VFX to the game. Lastly, we spent time creating the credits section and it should be ready for the next build. We're hoping to be done with all cutscenes late next week as well, and everything that isn't optional content should also be done. We should also receive the final batch of localized text next week (we're missing a few tutorial toolitps, some abilities and some later cutscenes mostly), which should make the game fully localized in all launch-languages at that point (and we'll update our Steam supported languages to reflect that).

Change logs:

02/15/2019 - Version 0.8.0

New Content:

• Story: Adding 3 story battles and 3 patrol battles.
• SFX: Adding about 50 new sound effects, including some for cutscenes (like the last cutscene of the previous build).
• VFX: Adding numerous visual effects, including: Scorpio Ballista, Shatter, Blazing Bolas, Whetstone, Bulldrake Limits, Phoenix abilities. Updating Bullets effects.
• Abilities: Blazing Bolas Ability added (previous version was a placeholder). This added the Blazing Trap as well, which is a trap that deals fire damage based on the caster's MND stat.

UI:

• Name Input: The textbox will now use the correct font for non-english languages, which should allow input in other character sets.

Balance:

• Level Range: Updating level range for last 3 battles of the previous demo, as they had default values.

Bug Fixes:

• Diamondform: Fixing an issue where the AI would not consider using this ability. Also fixing a visual glitch when Tangrels would use Diamondform.
• Arena: The platforms were obscuring the cursors since last update. Fixed.
• Focused Rage: Fixing an issue where using abilities that "count as a regular attack" wouldn't remove their MP cost before calculating the bonus damage.
• Counter: Cripple: Fixing an issue where the counter wouldn't activate sometimes, even though it was predicted to activate.
• Impetus: Impetus and scar tissues stacks would still show after combat. Fixed.

Modding:

• Traps: Adding the ability for a trap to reference a spell effect through TrapEffect (KAW-03-A4 has an example) that will be used to calculate what the trap does (rather than being limited to the bleed, half damage, etc). Currently the spell will only affect the trap target, regardless of the spell targeting information.
• Errors: Adding more error checking in case a job goes missing.
• Errors: Adding more error checking when reading data from encounters.txt.

Hotfix:

• Chinese Font: Chinese font wasn't being loaded correctly by mods anymore. This is fixed.

[ 2019-02-15 23:34:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're putting out build 0.7.4 today. The main addition is that the intro movie has its subtitles localized in all supported languages. We also added some error checking when playing the video, so if a user has codecs issue/etc, the error message will be shown to them. Otherwise, we're also adding a popup about enabling/disabling the sending of anonymous data the first time the player enters the title screen. You can still enable/disable this from the Options, but now there'll be an explicit mention of it once in the title screen as well. The update is fairly big in terms of size because we're adding all these extra videos, but it's actually a small update, haha.

Change log:

02/12/2019 - Version 0.7.4

New Content:

• Intro Video: The intro video has its subtitles localized in all supported languages.

UI:

• Intro Video: Adding an error check and error message when trying to play the intro video. If the video failed to play for any reason, the message with the shown and the video skipped.
• Telemetry: Adding a message in the title screen for the very first time the player starts the game, letting them know the game would like to gather error logs and class/abilities anonymous data to help us fix/balance the game. The player can opt out at that point (or from the Options, as before). Everyone will see this message at least once, even if they already have been playing for a while.

Balance:

• Loot: Small adjustments to some loot tables for late game.

Modding:

• Errors: Adding yet more error checking for mods with incorrect data, so the game won't throw errors when trying to display missing classes.

[ 2019-02-12 14:40:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Town of Fenfjord

New Build:

Hello everyone! This week's build main additions are the Help Compendium localized in all supported languages, bug fixes and a few balance tweaks. Here are the highlights:

• Help Compendium: Now available in all languages. Also adding a few missing icons to the English version.
• SFX: Adding a dozen or so new sound effects.
• Bounty Hunter changes: Our goal was to make the class more unique and remove/change the few abilities that overlap with "base classes" abilities.
• UI: Adding tutorials tooltips and clarifying some descriptions.

Progress Report:

This week we've been working on wrapping up all cutscenes. We're missing 7 right now, so almost done with those! We've also been focusing on wrapping up all texts fully, as we've been adding a few new texts while creating the last cutscenes. We have 1 last localization pass to handle those new additions and then everything should be fully localized. We also got the intro movie subtitles created and those are ready to go. They should be in next week's build. Finally, we're adding new sound effects as they get created, so we have a bunch of new ones this week and should have another big bunch to add next week. Almost done with those too, although it's certainly going to be a much closer schedule than we anticipated on that front!

Change log:

02/08/2019 - Version 0.7.3

New Content:

• Help Compendium: Now available in all languages. Also adding a few missing icons to the English version.
• SFX: Adding a dozen or so new sound effects.

Balance:

• Cadavers: Ability Ravenous Soul was replaced with Soul Suck. It was always meant to be Soul Suck actually, so it's more of a bug fix.
• Wild Slam: Now causes Bleed as well.
• Bounty Hunter: We want to make the class more unique and remove/change the few abilities that overlap with "base classes" abilities.
  • Thrown Dagger replaced with Boomerang Throw.
  • Collect Bounty replaced with Collect Trophy. Collect Trophy will collect loot on both Humans and Monsters and has a 0.75x multiplier (rather than 0.8x).
  • Blind Powder replaced with Pick Off.
  • Sneak Attack replaced with Shadowstrike, a skill that does 1x damage and grants Mirage to the user. Costs 16MP.
  • Visuals: the visuals for these abilities are not all ready.
• Elemental Mastery: Now will only apply to resistances < 100. This means you can't break the resistance of a target that's immune/absorbing an element. This will prevent making Elemental Mastery a detriment to players trying to capitalize on strategies involving hitting their units when they are immune/absorbing attacks. It will prevent breaking through the resistances of enemies too, but players would just use a different element if an enemy was at 100+ resist anyways.
• Equip Heavy: Replaced with Armor Proficiency, which allows the user to equip any armors (rather than just heavy).
• Revives: Further reducing weights for AI reviving units when most of the Enemies are still alive.

UI:

• Abilities: Updating the description of Boon, Cleave and Collect abilities to clarify how they work with Rebirth.
• Equipping: When trying to equip a piece of gear that's already in use by other teammates, the error message will now list the other teammates to help the player find the item a little quicker. We might add to this functionality later.
• Menus: Adding tutorial messages for the first time the player unlocks a Counter or a Passive, to help them remember to equip them and for some added information.

Bug Fixes:

• Missing Dialogues: If a text wasn't present in a non-english language (we added a few new texts recently), the game would skip them rather than show the English version. This is fixed for now and won't be an issue at release when we translate the few new texts we have.
• Adaptative Affinity: Casting a buff on a target with an adaptative affinity on them would remove the Affinity buff. Fixed.
• Thespeiros: Fixing some layering issues when moving in certain spots of the map.
• Commands List: The commands list in combat was getting cutoff for very long words after the last update. Fixed.
• Russian: Target box wasn't showing the word for HP in the damage prediction box. This is now fixed.
• Russian: Kyrie's class wasn't shown in the Save/Load menu for save files. Fixed.
• UI: The "Begin!" textbox was getting cut-off on language where that text is quite long. Fixed.
• Changing Language: One of the bottom-right-hints box wasn't getting translated after switching language in the Options menu. Fixed.
• Languages: Fixing spacing issues with AP and some other strings in non-English languages.
• Misc: Lots of various tweaks and cleanups to dialogues and cutscenes.
• Boon and Wild Slam: Fixing a bug where having Boon would report "normal damage" rather than "critical damage" if the attack was going to be a miss.

Modding:

• Classe: When loading a save file with a missing class (from removing or changing a mod), the game will just change the character's current class to to Mercenary (or nothing for the subclass) so the save file remains usable.
• Loading/Saving: If Kyrie was using a custom class that didn't exist anymore (from removing or changing a mod), the save/load screen would crash on showing the save file. This is fixed.

[ 2019-02-08 21:18:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tanks on the front line! - from the digital art booklet.

New Build:

Build 0.7.2 is out this week. It's a fairly small update all in all, with a few new VFX and SFX added. The best addition is probably the new Difficulty Setting to control the AI's use of Revive, which we added from the feedback we've been getting about the new AI system using Revive a lot more than most players are comfortable with. The new settings vary from "No Revives at all" to "AI uses Revive about as much as the player would in its shoes". Here are the highlights of the build:

• Revives: Adding a new Difficulty Setting to control enemies using Revive. The default will have a maximum of 2 Revives per battle for now.
• VFX: Updating/adding visual effects for: Leap, Soul Binder (actual ability effect is still not implemented) and many spells for enemies that aren't yet accessible in the game.
• SFX: Adding a dozen new sound effects or so.

Progress Report:

With the release date coming up fast, we've been extra busy trying to get everything done as quickly as possible. Our objective is to be able to devote as much time as we can to optional content and balance tuning. This week's focus has been on scripting all of the game's cutscenes right up to the ending of the game. We got a lot done, and hopefully we should be finished with those late next week. Then it'll be preparing the encounters for the next big content update.

Change logs:

02/01/2019 - Version 0.7.1a

New Content:

• VFX Updating/adding visual effects for: Leap, Soul Binder (actual ability effect is still not implemented) and many spells for enemies that aren't yet accessible in the game.
• SFX Adding a dozen new sound effects or so.
• Adding Text:
  • Adding details about the person that dies in the intro battle to one of the character-backstory-cutscenes.
  • Adding extra lines of text in "the last battle of the current build".
  • Adding a few new tutorial entries.

Balance:

• Story Characters: Story characters that join you after the story begins will now start with AP similar to that of a new recruit from the Guild. The special character that uses monster abilities will start with some AP already for a few classes as well. These changes are not retroactive and only affect story characters that you do not start the game with.
• Level Up: Changed the way levels up are gained a little bit. Speed gains were getting normalized strangely before due to a poor formula, amongst some side-effects. This change is not retroactive.
• Revives: Adding a new Difficulty Setting to control enemies using Revive. The default will have a maximum of 2 Revives per battle for now.
• Revives: Changing weights for Revives (so they are a little less likely)

UI:

• Help Compendium: Adding "The Librarian"'s picture to the compendium, to represent the friendly helper with the tips. He might seem familiar to some...

Bug Fixes:

• Glasses: Item wasn't sold for a segment of the story where it should have been sold. Fixed.
• Sabotage: Fixing a rare issue where using Sabotage (or other special displacement abilities) would prevent a target from being attacked by dual wielding correctly afterwards, until it moved again.
• Errors: Adding more error checks. It should only affect people with mods probably.
• Graveyard: The map was missing a mist layer at night. This should now show correctly.
• Autotomize: New AI system would never use this ability. This should be fixed now.

[ 2019-02-01 21:39:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Town of Centina

New Build:

Hello everyone! This week's main feature is that we're adding 45 new sound effects to the game. Most of them for monsters' death and attack sounds. Otherwise, we have a few bug fixes and a better font solution for the Russian language. Here are the highlights of the update:

• Sounds: Adding 45 new sound effects to the game. Most monsters should now have their correct sounds.
• Russian: Various fonts updates and small corrections.
• AI:Various small AI improvements.

Progress Report:

This week, we've been working on a few loose ends: the ending is now written and the credits have been gathered. We still need to add those to the game, but the data is ready at last! We've also integrated another round of QA feedback we received, mostly centered on localization issues and console problems. We're done with all the PS4 issues that were found and have a few Xbox One issues left to fix and then we should be ready for the first party certification process. This work should translate as better error messages and handling on the PC version for the most part. Finally, we've been busy adding new sound effects and commissioning the next big batch of them. We should be about done with sound effects after the next wave. Getting there! On the art side, we're working on wrapping up the last few spells we're missing as well as adding a nice image for each town (as can be seen at the top of this message). It'll be a little while before we have time to add those to the actual game, but all the assets are ready at this point and looking great!

Change log:

01/25/2019 - Version 0.7.1

New Content:

• Sounds: Adding 45 new sound effects to the game. Most monsters should now have their correct sounds.

Balance:

• AI:
  • AI will be less likely to ever use Sneak Attack from the front.
  • Ercinee will use its self-death move a little more frequently if it has Rebirth on.
  • A few small tweaks to various weights.
• Holy Bolt: reducing MP cost to 6 (from 8).
• Rekindle: cost increased to 26MP (from 24).

UI:

• Russian: Some texts where using fonts that couldn't display Cyrillic characters properly. This should be fixed.
• Russian: Adding an outline to the Cyrillic font. It should look much better and be easier to read.
• Gamepad: Last week we added a workaround for a crash with gamepads on Windows, which disabled XInput for Microsoft controllers. An actual fix has been added, so we're restoring the default XInput setting for controllers, as it tends to be more compatible when using Xbox related controllers.

Bug Fixes:

• Localization: Applying many fixes suggested by our localization QA team to the translations in various languages.
• Errors: Adding more error checks for people edit their save files, to reduce crashes. You probably shouldn't be removing story characters from your save data manually though, as it WILL break cutscenes.
• Gamepads: More tweaks that should increase compatibility for gamepads under Windows.
• Revive: Fixing an issue where targets could be revived in water with certain spells.
• Npc Gear: Fixing an issue where enemies with the "Equip All" passive could spawn with no weapon.
• Kawa AI: Fixing a bug with the Kawas AI that would make them walk near the target and do nothing once in a while. Could have affected other classes with a shove ability too.
• Leap: Fixing an issue when targeting with Leap, canceling, selecting another ability. The visual effects would be shown where Leap was supposed to be casted.
• Last Battle of the Current Build: Adding missing ambient sounds and fixing an issue where canceling some cutscenes would leave an ambient sound playing forever.

Modding:

• Errors: Adding more error checks for missing abilities and missing classes.

[ 2019-01-25 21:53:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Big Content Update:

Today, we're pushing our big monthly update! The first big chunk we're adding is the story character events. We're adding 6 of them, which is about half of the events we have planned. The other ones are all written, but not scripted yet. They should be in the next big update. The events are represented by an exclamation mark on nodes on the world map. Just walk to it, activate the node and you'll see an "event" option in the list of possible actions. Please note that 2 of the events added stop being available after a certain point in the story, so you might not be able to see those in your current save file. They are fairly early in the story though, so it should be easy to check them out. The next big chunk we're adding is 4 more story battles. Just like our last big build, those should be fairly challenging and we might need to be toned down. We'll be awaiting your feedback on this topic! Here are the highlights of the build:

• Character Events: Adding story-character events. We're still missing a few, but 6 of them are in the game right now. 2 of them can only be accessed during a specific story period, which might make them unaccessible in a save file that's very advanced in the story. The events will appear on the worldmap as an exclamation mark on nodes and should be fairly obvious. They are normally triggered around the time of some specific story event, so some might be a bit "old" for a player that's reached the end of the current content.
• New maps: 4 new story battles are added to the build. There are no new patrols though.
• AI: Lots of improvements and fixes to the AI, especially around Raises and items.
• Gamepad Triggers: Xbox One/Xbox360 controllers triggers started acting strangely after the last update. This should be resolved.

Progress Report:

The current build should speak for itself in terms of progress. We've been busy with character events and the new encounters. We managed to squeeze in a few balance tweaks from comments from the forums, especially centered around the AI, but it's just scratching the surface of all the updates we want to put in. Our priority is to get all the content in first though, to make sure QA can run through all the levels of the game. Then we should have a full month left dedicated to balance and tweaks before release. And of course, we'll be able to put more balance updates after release too, if needed. We had a first big pass of QA last week, so starting next week, our first order of business will be to go through the issues that were found and fix them all, so we're ready for our next big QA pass. The only remaining big tickets are our credits section and game ending, so we're starting work on those to make sure whatever text we add to those can be localized in time for release. Everything is on schedule for now, but we'll be extremely busy in the coming months, that's for sure! Finally, we'd like to thank again everyone on the forums for all their input and feedback! It's been a tremendous help and we really appreciate it! Thanks again for the great support, everyone! :)

Change logs:

01/18/2019 - Version 0.7.0

New Content:

• Character Events: Adding story-character events. We're still missing a few, but 6 of them are in the game right now. 2 of them can only be accessed during a specific story period, which might make them unaccessible in a save file that's very advanced in the story. The events will appear on the worldmap as an exclamation mark on nodes and should be fairly obvious. They are normally triggered around the time of some specific story event, so some might be a bit "old" for a player that's reached the end of the current content.
• New maps: 4 new story battles are added to the build. There are no new patrols though.

Balance:

• AI:
  • Guests can't revive allies anymore.
  • Updating weights for items so they are a little less used in general.
  • Every time an AI uses a healing item, it's less likely to use one again in the future. Increased that reduction.
  • Added a reverse-reduction to the above: every time an AI doesn't use an item, it reduces any "item usage reduction" it might have accrued from using items previously.
  • Reducing weight value of DefDown and ResDown for AI calculations, so they focus on those a little less.
  • When trying to "find a spot away from enemies", the AI will now count Berserk allies as hostiles.
  • Adding a global weight reduction to revives. That reduction is partially lifted once enough enemies have been killed.
  • AI that are "waiting for the player to get closer/X turns" are supposed to be less likely to self-buff, but the recent AI update had removed that behavior. Adding it again.
  • AI will try to revive allies much further away from the battle than before (unless they are melee types and raised at full health)
  • Each time a target is raised, it will be less likely to be raised again in the future, to somewhat mimic the negatives of injuries on the enemies.
  • Cleaned up the AI calculations when using MP-damage and MP-draining abilities. AI should make smarter decisions.
• Archafflictor: Increasing melee height range from 3 to 4.
• Aeoth: Reducing Dark resistance to 0 from 75.
• Harvester: Reducing Dark resistance to 0 from 50 on base tier. Other tiers reduced to 25 from 50.
• Thespeiros: Disabling revives for the AI on that map.
• Cabin Battle: Disabling the chance for a certain enemy to spawn with "Height Advantage" on this map. Also reducing the level of some enemies and making the Ranger wait 1 turn before activating.

Bug Fixes:

• Guild: The right arrows in the guild customization screen will now work again.
• Gamepad Triggers: Xbox One/Xbox360 controllers triggers started acting strangely after the last update. This should be resolved.
• Blood Suck and Soul Suck: Now cannot be casted on oneself.
• Shove Attacks: Killing a target using a push attack into an obstacle would use all the MP of the caster.

Modding:

• Errors: Adding better error handling for missing abilities that a custom job could be referencing.
• PoachNone: Removing special ability flag "kPoachNone" and adding extraFlag "kTargetCannotRevive" instead, so "PoachNone" won't use the Special flag slot.

[ 2019-01-18 22:46:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our latest update added a crash when disconnecting a controller, so we're pushing a quick update to address that. It has a few other changes that were already added to the game, so they're getting pushed through as well. Here's the change log! 01/15/2019 - Version 0.6.3b

Bug Fixes:

• Crash: Some users have reported a crash when unplugging their controller since we updated to the new Unity version. We found a work-around to prevent the crash.
• Crash: When exiting the game, it would crash on shutdown after our last update. Turns out that was related to the controller plugin as well, so the above workaround fixed that too.
• Equip Menu: Fixing an issue when equipping gear and backing out really quickly where it could back out past a menu and create input problems.
• Infused Edge: Infused Edge was reporting incorrect "predicted damage" when used with Dual Wielding.
• Save Menu: Fixing small visual issues on the screen.
• Aeoths: These enemies cannot be raised anymore.
• Drain Soul: Drain Soul (and other abilties doing only MP damage) would show 0 damage (even though they would do the correct damage) when targeting a unit with Mystic Shield.
• Infused Edge: AI would use the wrong visuals for the spell part of infused edge pretty often.

Balance:

• Arcane Engine: Hp to Mp ratio changed to 10:1 (from 4:1).
• AI: AI will be smarter when attacking a unit with Mystic Shield.
• AI: Tweaked the weight of some presets.
• Debuffs: The chance of landing debuffs was influenced by the level difference between the caster and the target, at a 5% * spellChance bonus per level of difference. This has been changed to be 1% per level of difference from 0 to 5%. This means debuff% should be much more consistent, but still have a slight variance.
• Big Worm: Reducing the HP/level for the biggest worm (from 40 to 35).

UI:

• Save Files: Corrupted save files will now be listed with other save files, so the user can delete from the game if desired.
• Cursors: Adding a matching "bottom part" to the new "top part" for the cursor when shown over water, poison or lava tiles.

[ 2019-01-15 23:13:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, we will be present at PAX South 2019 with the latest demo of Eternity: The Last Unicorn! It would be our pleasure if we could meet some of you there to chat and showcase you the game! We will be at booth #10220! Looking forward to seeing you there steamhappy

[ 2019-01-14 18:36:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week, we have our localization done! We're adding French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and German to the game. Everything should be done except for the in-game manual and some rare newer abilities/changes which will show in English. There shouldn't be too many of those and they should be taken care of before the actual release, but with about 95% of the game translated, we thought it would be great to finally share it with everyone. Let us know how it goes! Other than that, a few AI updates to fix some of the issues fans have reported this week and a few UI tweaks. We also had to update our version of Unity and their latest version had some dubious changes to the c# XML parser which broke our save files. We got some workarounds and fixes going so everything should actually be working correctly and everyone's save files should be 100% OK, but let us know if you notice anything weird and we'll get right on it. Here are the highlights for the build:

• Languages: Adding Russian, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese to the game's languages.
• Visual Effects: Adding effects for Ippokampos, Luussa, Gemini Flail and Garrote.
• New hats: Coonskin and Samurai headwear.
• New faces: 6 new faces per gender.
• AI: More AI updates.

Progress Report:

This week has been fairly hectic for us as we had to submit our current console builds for a big QA pass before we can send them to 1st parties. And there were a few surprise requirements we'd missed. And of course, there were surprises from adding all those languages, especially centered around some them having very very long words where English has short and compact words, haha. We didn't get as much time spent on preparing next week's content as we would have liked, truth be told, so it's going to be a very busy week next week to make sure we get all the features we want in next big update. Here's a preview of Ippokampos, an effect we just wrapped up this week:
And here's an effect we're still working on that's part of an optional event that isn't fully done yet:

Change log:

01/11/2019 - Version 0.6.3

New Content:

• Languages: Adding Russian, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese to the game's languages.
• Unity: Updated to Unity 2018.3 and their changes to the XML deserializer broke a lot of things, including save files. I should have gotten proper work-arounds for all the issues, but please let us know if any of your save files are acting strangely!
• Portraits: Adding 2 new portraits: Gladiator and PumpkinHead.
• Visual Effects: Adding effects for Ippokampos, Gemini Flail, Luussa and Garrote.
• New hats: Coonskin and Samurai headwear.
• New faces: 6 new faces per gender.

Balance:

• AI:
  • Disabling the use of the Raise spell by charmed units.
  • New AI was ignoring the value of "self heals/self damage" side effects of some skills, which lead to strange behaviors (like Coalesce spam or units using "self-death" moves for little gains). This is fixed.
  • Disabling Revives fully for the AI in some battles, including Cabin battles.

UI:

• Misc: Various tiny UI improvements prompted by the testing the game in all sorts of other languages. Some menus should be cleaner and more spacious, etc.
• Loading Time: Should have slightly sped up the initial loading of the game.
• Worms: We updated the assassin Cautious Step passive to protect against slow a while ago and the Worms were using that passive. Made their own passive to protect only against Traps and Roots.
• Liquid Tiles: Adding a different "cursor arrow" in battle when over a "liquid tile", for added clarity and prettiness.
• Troops Placement: Showing the map objective during troops setup in battle if the player presses pause.

Bug Fixes:

• Resolutions: Fixing some issues when changing resolution from 4k to something lower.
• Leak: Fixing a memory leak after playing the intro video.
• Soft Lock: Fixing a softlock when loading from a battle into a battle (ie, a map that was saved "in between battles").
• Map Graphics Missing: In some very rare cases, some parts of the map could vanish if the GFX cache filled up too much. The size of it was fairly conservative to begin with, so we changed it to be elastic (ie, it will grow if it needs to). This should fix the issue while keeping memory usage to the minimum needed.
• Dialogues: Small corrections to some dialogues for accuracy and grammar.

Bugfix 0.6.3a

• Softlock: Fixing a rare softlock that could happen when using Quicken.

[ 2019-01-12 00:17:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

We hope everyone had great holidays!

Build 0.6.2

We're fully back in operation this week and resuming our weekly builds! This latest build mainly focuses on the AI. We redid a lot of the core workings of the AI to make it more flexible, more easily moddable and smarter. Without getting into too many details, the AI should now favor the best course of action amongst all the things it could do, whereas before it would only look through a specific "set of things" (like "doing damage") before even considering other options (like "buffing allies"). The new AI uses weights for all these "sets of things", so the big melee fighters will still favor "kicking your face in" over "healing teammates" in general. But now, if it could land a 5-men Haste somehow, it might just do that rather than auto-attack your Knight.

Highlights:

• AI: Redid significant portion of the AIs and the way it makes decision. It should be significantly more versatile in combat now. It should also be easier to mod enemy behaviors more precisely.
• Recruits: Changing the way AP calculations are handled for new recruits to use the "average AP of the 6 highest characters for each class", rather than the "average AP of the 6 highest characters in total". This should result in more consistent and higher AP values in general.
• Visuals: Adding spell effects for Sales Pitch and Flipkick.
• Infused Edge: The damage prediction will now account for the damage dealt by the spell part of Infused Edge.

As always, the full notes will be at the end of the post.

Progress Report:

Even with the holiday season upon us, we've been pretty busy recently. We wrapped up the console ports a bit ago and then moved on finishing adding all the story cutscenes to the game. We've been working on adding the new "optional character events" to the game and those are coming along nicely. We should be able to have most of them in for the next big content update. Otherwise, we'd been planning on an AI system revamp for a while now and finally got to it during the holidays. The system will make the AI much more flexible and much easier to mod as well. It probably has a few kinks that need working out still, but it's already looking like a nice improvement :) On the art front, we're working on finishing all the missing visuals and sounds and while we haven't added that many to the build this week, we have a bunch of new ones getting added, including that cute little guy at the top of this post. Here's a new spell still in the works, but that should be ready soon:
We have a few more, but those are tied to the final boss, so we'll keep them under wraps until release. Once again, we hope everyone had fun holidays and we wish everyone a great upcoming year!

Change log:

01/04/2019 - Version 0.6.2

New Content:

• AI: Redid significant portion of the AIs and the way it makes decision. It should be significantly more versatile in combat now. It should also be easier to mod enemy behaviors more precisely.
• Visuals: Adding spell effects for Sales Pitch and Flipkick.

Balance:

• Recruits: Changing the way AP calculations are handled for new recruits to use the "average AP of the 6 highest characters for each class", rather than the "average AP of the 6 highest characters in total". This should result in more consistent and higher AP values in general.
• Patented Usage: Updating it so it uses the item range values rather than a fixed value from the ability.
• AI:
  • Killing Blows: Making the AI smarter by not valuing debuffs at all on the target if the hit would kill it anyways.
  • Mystic Shield: AI should be smarter in the way in deals with Mystic Shielded targets.
  • Charm: Charmed units will no longer run towards healers when they have low health and instead focus on being active with actions.
  • Charm: Charmed units will be very unlikely to heal themselves.
  • Crits: AI will factor critical chances better when calculating the worth of different abilities (including the fact that debuff have a 100% accuracy on crits).
  • Smarts: Improving the way the AI calculates "secondary effects" worth to be more accurate.
  • Patented Usage: The AI will now be able to use this ability.
  • Delayed Attacks: Enemies that use a blast that will land "next turn" will now favor targets that are rooted, asleep or will have their turn come up after the attack would land.
  • Behavior: Adding a new AI behavior style where the AI will not care about friendly fire and just focus on hurting its targets.
• Archafflictor: Reducing cost of Vilerot to 12 MP (from 14MP) and reducing debuff chances to 33% (from 50%).
• Coronal Plume: One of the later maps gave this item and it wasn't meant to. Changing the drop to a Dark Core. This change is not retroactive.

UI:

• Spells: Various spells received small tweaks to their animation speeds.
• Performance: Various small performance optimizations and reduced memory usage.
• Infused Edge: The damage prediction will now account for the damage dealt by the spell part of Infused Edge.
• Enemy Movements: Moving the "show all enemy movements" away from the "details button" and into the "free movement" navigation. The feature is still there, just not "forced on" the details button, as it was distracting.
• AI: Speeding up the AI decision process a little bit.

Bug Fixes:

• Skyjack: Will now check for traps at the end of the spell for the target.
• Patented Usage: Fixed a bug where it wouldn't remove the MP used.
• Starting MP: Fixing a bug where characters present in cutscenes would often start the battle with full MP.
• Buffs/Debuffs transfers: Abilities that transfer buffs/debuffs in combat wouldn't always update the tooltips correctly before.
• Blood Armor: Fixing some issues with the Blood Armor and making it more modable (less hardcoded values).
• AI:
  • Leech: Fixing an issue that made the AI overvalue abilities with HP/MP leech.
  • Stealing: Fixing various issues with Stealing where the AI didn't value the abilities correctly.
  • Accuracy: Fixing an issue where the AI would value "less accurate" attacks positively rather than negatively.
  • Focus Fire: Fixing a fairly infrequent issue where the AI of Bzils wouldn't check for all their Focus Fire options and just check for a random one.
  • Infused Edge: Fixing an issue where the AI would pick a random spell rather than "the best option" when using Infused Edge.
  • Positioning: AI could make weird decisions when player had some "really high movement" units on the field.
• Charm: When a charmed unit charms another unit, the newly charmed unit should be of the "charmer's current faction" now.
• General: Fixing a very rare initialization issue that could cause data corruption with some tables.
• Maps: Fixed some small sprite ordering issues on many maps.
• Abilities Menu: Fixed an issue where the user could press confirm/cancel in quick succession in the abilities equip menu and it would act strangely.
• Protect: When a character was protecting another character and both of them were in the same AoE, the protect would still trigger even though it shouldn't, which lead to weird behaviors. Fixed.

Modding:

• AI Behavior: Adding options when spawning characters in Encounters.txt to change their base weights (eg: weightstyle:debuffer) and updating the Encounters.txt file that gets generated in the My Documents\Fell Seal\customdata folder (the one with all the explanations) to have more information. You'll have to delete/move your current file if you want the game to generate a new one to see the added text.

Hotfix:

Removing unfinished "character events" that were left in the game and crashing. Very sorry about that!

[ 2019-01-04 20:29:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

We wanted to wish everyone merry holidays and a happy new year! Work has been sluggish last week with the holidays, but we'll resume our regular weekly updates starting this week. Once again, we hope everyone is having a great holidays season and are as excited about the new year as we are! As always, thanks for the support!

[ 2018-12-31 17:33:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

We have a small update this week. We're adding a few new portraits and some spell effects. We're also adding the save feature for "chained battles" that we mentioned during the last update. Here are the highlights:

• Saving: Adding the ability to save "in between battles" for chained battles.
• Portraits: Adding 4 new portraits for female characters for the player to choose from.
• VFX: Adding visual effects for: Aries Ram, Demonic Might, Psyhie, Regenerate, Rest up

Full notes at the end.

Progress Report:

This week has been spent mostly on the Xbox One and Ps4 builds. Both of the builds should actually be complete now, so we'll be able to start focusing solely on new content and balance starting next week. One of the good points of the consoles being taken care of is that we finished our achievement system, so it'll be easy to enable them on Steam when we get to it. We don't have any snazzy images this week as it was all console work, sorry!

Change log:

12/21/2018 - Version 0.6.1

New Content:

• Saving: Adding the ability to save "in between battles" for chained battles.
• Portraits: Adding 4 new portraits for female characters for the player to choose from.
• VFX: Adding visual effects for: Aries Ram, Demonic Might, Psyhie, Regenerate, Rest up.

UI:

• Molecular Softener: Updating the name to Demoralizer, to match the visuals better.

Bug Fixes:

• Keys Remap: Fixing incorrect icons in this menu.
• Cellar Events: Fixing an issue where Cellar Events stopped working.
• Modding: Adding more checks to reduce the chance of the game crashing when users add incorrect data to the Jobs/Abilities lists.
• Damage Text: Fixing an issue with the damage text sometimes being small. And a flickering issue with some damage text.

[ 2018-12-21 22:56:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Somier the Kawa merchant

New Build:

Build 0.6.0 is up! It's probably our biggest content update yet in terms of new encounters. We're adding 4 story battles, 2 patrols, 1 cutscene, 1 optional event, an optional 3 battles tournament and a special arena with 7 patrols. We're adding our first battle with a "2 back-to-back fights" in this build as well. We're strongly considering adding a save prompt in between the 2 battles, but we haven't had time to test the system enough, so it's probably going to end up in next week's update. But you won't lose to that 2nd battle, so you don't need the added safety, right? :) In all honesty, the 2nd fight in that series of fight can be brutal, so that's another thing we'll be keeping an eye on.

The Arena

The arena is a decent spot for leveling new characters. The way it works is that all the enemies will start with a "??? level" and their final level will be calculated from the levels of the 6 characters you deployed once you're done selecting your team and start the encounter. This means there's always a spot that will be "the right level" for your units, regardless of what level they're at. The enemies have been tuned to be a little challenging though, so we might end up tweaking the difficulty based on your feedback.

The Tournament

Finally, the Tournament is also held at the arena and the arena itself won't be "ready for business" until you finish the Tournament. The Tournament was supposed to become accessible after the 2nd Temple though, so for a save file "at the end of the content", the encounters will be pretty easy. Let us know how it goes!

Highlighs:

• Story: Adding 4 new story battles, 2 patrols and 1 lengthy cutscene.
• Arena: Adding the Centina Arena to the game. The Arena is a good spot to level new characters, as the enemies levels will only be calculated AFTER you have fielded your team and always match the level of the characters on the field. It acts like a regular Patrol, but tends to be more randomized and offers more gold (but no components). Big thanks to Dabor for setting up these encounters!
• Tournament: There is a Tournament at the Centina Arena with a shiny prize. The Tournament opens up after the 2nd Temple normally, so if your save file is much passed that, it might be a little easy for you. You must complete the Tournament for the Arena to become accessible.
• Outfits: Some new outfits were added to the game.
• Portraits: We added a few new portraits to the game.

Full notes will be at the end of the post.

Progress Report:

It's been a big week for us! We started work on our PS4 version, which is running smoothly. It's still missing the achievements system and the save system. Our Xbox One version should only be missing its achievements system. Other than that, we've been incredibly busy getting today's build ready. Lots of bug fixes and new features. On top of the tournament, arena, new battles and optional cutscenes, we've been adding some new functionalities to the Encounters.txt file to allow modders to modify the terrain a bit (adding blocked tiles and platforms) as well as better control over the AI of spawned enemies. We also have a lot of new spell effects ready, although we haven't had time to integrate them to the game itself yet. They should be added in a week or two. Here's some of the new stuff we have going:
Concept art for our next Summon style spell.
Initial work on the digital game manual.
A few such spells are done, but still need to be added to the game's data.

Change logs:

12/14/2018 - Version 0.6.0

New Content:

• Story: Adding 4 new story battles, 2 patrols and 1 lengthy cutscene.
• Arena: Adding the Centina Arena to the game. The Arena is a good spot to level new characters, as the enemies levels will only be calculated AFTER you have fielded your team and always match the level of the characters on the field. It acts like a regular Patrol, but tends to be more randomized and offers more gold (but no components). Big thanks to Dabor for setting up these encounters!
• Tournament: There is a Tournament at the Centina Arena with a shiny prize. The Tournament opens up after the 2nd Temple normally, so if your save file is much passed that, it might be a little easy for you. You must complete the Tournament for the Arena to become accessible.
• Optional Event: We added an optional event. It's the end of a chain of events that we've been adding over time.
• Outfits: Some new outfits were added to the game.
• Portraits: Enemy portraits for special classes have been added to the game.
• Portraits: New player portraits have been added to the game.

Balance:

• Counter Cripple: Changing it so it procs from all ranges rather than just from melee.
• Marked: Changing Wrathful Beam to Magical damage and Wrathful Burst to Physical damage.
• Boon, Focus: Changing both of these effects to be regular buffs (although they will still wear off automatically after being used), which means they can now be dispelled.
• AI: AI should be smarter with dispelling effects.
• Kawa: Increasing their stats accross the board.
• Monsters: By default, monsters would mostly spawn without accessories. This has been changed to mirror humans better.

UI:

• Damage Prediction: Damage number will be shown in red if it's a healing spell that will do 0 healing (because of Weaken).
• Counter Debuff: Counters that apply a debuff will be marked as "not activating" if the character that would get countered is immune to the status effect or already has it.

Bug Fixes:

• Assets: Fixing an issue with the new asset system that could cause silent errors
• Sounds: Fixing an issue that could cause the sound cache to get bloated over time.
• Scout: Fixing an issue where the Crit % bonus from Scout would only be applied after the character got targeted by an action.
• MouseWheel Icon: Icon wasn't animating correctly before (icon is shown when you could use the mousewheel to switch heights on the terrain).
• Pile On: Fixed an issue where Pile On had 0% chance since last update.
• Shove Damage: Fixing an issue where shove damage wasn't being reported accurately in the prediction damage after last update.
• Summoned Creatures: Fixing an issue where their stats could be off for their level.
• Boon: Fixing some issues between Boon and Infused Edge. Fixing issues with Boon and certain counters.
• AI: Fixing an issue that could cause the AI to auto attack when trying to use only items.
• Modding: Fixing a bug where "nomove:true" would only work on human generated characters.
• Level Up: Fixing an issue where some buffs could vanish upon gaining a level under certain circumstances.
• Evade Magic/Melee/Skills: For abilities that only do a Debuff and no damage, the corresponding Evade:Thing counter wasn't triggering correctly. Fixed.

Modding:

• Encounters.txt
  • AI: Updating enemy generation so the AI style can be inferred from the job if the job is provided but not the AI.
  • Abilities: Adding the ability to add a weight to individual abilities per character to increase the chance of the character using them. The command is: "weight:MERC-A2|10" to give ability MERC-A2 a 10% increased weight. You can add as many "weight:" to a line as you want to select multiple abilities.
  • Terrain: Adding a command to add a sprite on the terrain and turn that terrain into a block, or change its height. The Arena uses that command, so that's a good example to check. We'll have to work on a list of sprites that could be used at some point.
  • Abilities: When generating a character via the Encounters.txt file, you can now specify abilities:all to have the character know all the abilities for that job.

Hotfix:

• Story Scene 3: There was a softlock in the latest build after story scene 3. It's fixed.
• Bzil: Fixing incorrect abilities for the Harvester class.
• Patrols: Adding missing patrol description to 2 maps.

[ 2018-12-14 23:10:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Build

This week's build focuses on AI upgrades, some balance tweaks and 2 added difficulty settings. The size on disk also went from 3.5GB to 1.5GB, after a big update to our assets system. Here are the highlights of the build:

• Build Size: Very significantly shrunk the build size (3.5GB to 1.5GB).
• AI: Many improvements and fixes!
• Difficulty Settings: Adding 2 new Difficulty Settings to better control AI item usage and enemy spawning passives and counters.
• Performance: Made a change to the asset loading system to make it a little bit faster.
• Debuffs: If a character already has a debuff, the listed % to inflict it will now be shown as 0% (you can't reapply a status that's already on).

Full notes are listed at the end of this post.

Fell Seal's Music:

Our composer, Jan Morgenstern, has been working on preparing the OST for the game. We're still not there yet, as there's still a few tracks missing, but it's getting there and sounding great. :) Check out this link for more details on the OST, including some free tracks!

Progress Report:

We finally finished our dialogues early this week! They should be final at this point, barring any problems. The localization process has just begun it and they should be ready within about a month. You can expect to see a lot of added languages early next year! This week, we've worked mostly on our Xbox One build. Most of the work is done, save for the achievements. Next will be the PS4 build and preparing for December's big content update. As soon as the console builds are taken care of, we'll start splitting our focus between creating the rest of the encounters and on a slew of UI/Balance updates that we've been preparing from all the great feedback we've been receiving. Again,a big "thank you" to everyone for the feedback and suggestions. It's going to help us tremendously getting it done right! On the art side, our maps are almost finished by now and our final tally should be 52 maps. Currently, we're working on finalizing our special classes spells and have started work on our next "summon" style spell. Here's a preview for it:

Change log:

12/07/2018 - Version 0.5.3

New Content and Features:

• Build Size: Very significantly shrunk the build size (3.5GB to 1.5GB).

Balance:

• Fellblade:
  • Bleed Slice: Removing Bleed Slice and replacing it with Chaos Slice. Chaos Slice does damage and inflicts the target with a random debuff.
  • Miasma: Will now require a "center target" to propagate debuffs, otherwise it will only do damage. Center target won't have its debuff removed from the attack (such as sleep/charm).
• Templar: Rapturous Chant will now remove all debuffs.
• Ranger: Evasion Up value lowered to 15%.
• Duelist: Reducing damage from elemental Flourishes to 1.55x (was 1.7x) and adding a small chance (25%) of a debuff tied to the element.
• Bulldrake: Increasing the damage of Somniloquy a fair amount.
• AI:
  • Abilities: Enemies will now be generated without missing abilities at higher level (there was a small chance before they wouldn't know all abilities if a skilltree had many abilities on 1 tier).
  • Levels: Enemies will now have a min/max level variance cap. Enemies spawn within roughly plus or minus 10% of the army's average level. This means that at very high levels, the level difference can start being very big. Now it's bounded to +/- 5, roughly.
  • Random Enemies: Enemies with a random job/subjob have a restriction on how many "healing" job/subjob will be generated so there aren't too many healers. Updated what is considered a "healer" to be more accurate (this should result in more healers than before on random maps, in general, since many jobs are now considered "partial healers" only).
  • Hybrid: Hybrid enemies will now spawn with better passives in general.
  • Items: Bypassing the odds of "not using an item even if we need it" for enemies if they couldn't take any action that turn.
  • Self-Panacea: Enemies will have much better chances of removing debuffs on themselves if they didn't take an action during the turn.
  • MP Granting: Improving the logic around giving MP to allies/self to be much better.
  • Accessories: Enemies won't spawn with duplicate Rings and Boots anymore, unless specifically meant to.
  • Smarts: Making the AI smarter with killing blows and with MP shield, so they won't be as likely to waste big attacks that would have the same effect as a smaller attack.
  • Counters: Enemies will be smarter about not triggering counters needlessly.
  • Revives: AI should be more likely to use Revive spells or items in general.
• Difficulty Settings:
  • Enemies Passives/Counter: Adding a setting to control the chance of enemies not having a passive/counter.
  • Enemies Use Items: Renaming old settings to "Enemies Have Items". It controls the amount of items the enemies have.
  • Enemies Use Items: Adding a new setting to control how likely enemies are to using items.
  • Beginner: Updating preset to allow enemies to have items, but to use them at a Low chance.
  • Enemies Gear: Default setting will now have 25% per empty slot of having an accessory (more is 50%).
  • Enemies Gear: Will now affect monsters as well (was only humans before).
• Gear:
  • Green Beret: Now gives +20HP (down from +25HP).
  • Enhancer: Increasing MND bonus slightly.
  • Energy Scythe: Reducing MND bonus a fair amount.
  • Energy Mace: Reducing MND bonus a bit.
  • Heavy Staff: Increasing ATK a lot and reducing MND bonus a fair amount.
  • Soul Armor: Changing resistance from -50 Holy to -25 Holy.
  • Brand Swords: Adding 50% resistance to their element.
  • Rapiers: Lowering their attack a bit, as their table had a problem that shifted some values upwards.

UI:

• Performance: Made a change to the asset loading system to make it a little bit faster.
• Tutorials: Updating some tutorials to be clearer.
• Menu: Changing character with L/R in the main menu would act differently if a character was selected or not. This now behaves the same always.
• Debuffs: If a character already has a debuff, the listed % to inflict it will now be shown as 0% (you can't reapply a status that's already on).

Bug Fixes:

• AI: Fixing a bug that would make any Enemy with "Smart Casting" fail at casting spells.
• Descriptions: Fixed an issue with some rare descriptions not showing an icon correctly in the text.
• Name Input: Changing it so canceling out will not pick a random name anymore.
• Leak: Fixing a memory leak when using custom portraits.
• Gelligh City: Fixing some weird layering issues when in the water with floating units.
• Counter Pounce: Fixing an issue with enemies sometimes jumping in an occupied location if the player casted an AoE over multiple Pounce-Counter characters.
• Modding: Fixing a crash when trying to spawn a "hybrid" enemy without specifying their job manually.
• NPCs: Fixing a bug where very high level enemies could spawn without a counter or passives.
• Maps: Fixing a bug where some maps wouldn't load their correct background after running the Halloween event (until the next restart of the game).
• Steal GP: Fixing an issue that might have caused it to be used more often than it should.
• Sleep: The Sleep debuff will not be reapplied to targets that already have it anymore (if a target had sleep and you did damage+sleep to it, it would wake up then get reslept at times).
• Berserk: Units with Berserk won't ignore the nearest target if that target has "Evade Melee" anymore.
• Focus: Fixing a bug where Focus would get "used up" by "Debuff counters".
• Thespeiros: Preventing all "non-swimming" units from spawning with Flippers to ensure they remain "non-swimming".
• AI: Fixing a bug that made the AI ignore Def Down/ Res Down items usage.

[ 2018-12-07 22:58:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi guys, many of you might have already seen the final version of the Intro Movie in the game but for those who havent had the chance we uploaded the intro movie to Youtube! steamhappy We wanted something magical to happen when you press New Game so we prepared a hand-drawn intro movie that appears when you start a new game and introduces you to the world. Soak in the atmosphere and let us know down in the comments what do you think! Here it is: https://youtu.be/EeVpFJi9en0 Let us know what do you think down in the comments Also check out the roadmap we prepared:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/

[ 2018-12-06 13:26:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week's build has our Intro Movie updated with awesome Voice Over. It sounds pretty great, give it a listen! Other than that, we added about 50 new SFX to the game, fixed some bugs and made some small balance changes. Here are the highlights:

• Intro Movie: The intro movie has been updated with Voice Acting.
• SFX: Adding over 50 new SFX.
• Patented Usage: Doesn't work with Manastone anymore.
• Loot drops: Many of the special drops had a wrong chance of dropping, which resulted in higher odds than normal. This is fixed, but it does mean that the current odds could be too low now. We'll have to monitor.

As always, the full change log is at the end of the post (as well as in-game in the Patchnotes section).

Progress Report

This week was our last week working on dialogues. All of the game's dialogues have been created, minus the ending, as we're still working out some details on that front. At this point though, we're pretty sure we'll have 2 possible endings. That was a LOT of dialogue writing and we're glad to be moving on to something else, quite honestly. Starting next week, we'll be splitting our time between console work, cutscenes and balance updates for the next month. We also want to give a big Thank You! to the community for the great feedback and suggestions we've been receiving lately! Thank you very much for taking the time! We have a TON of balance changes we want to get in from all that feedback, but it's going to take a little bit before we can get it all in. Stay tuned :) On the art front, we've been working on the "end game" maps (so we can't show them, too many spoilers) and new spell effects. We've started work on our next "big scale summon spell" too. Here's the basic sketch of it:
It should be pretty epic when it's finished!

Change log:

11/30/2018 - Version 0.5.2

New Content and Features:

• Intro Movie: The intro movie has been updated with Voice Acting.
• SFX: Adding over 50 new SFX.

Balance:

• Patented Usage: Doesn't work with Manastone anymore.
• Monsters Resistances: Updated some enemies resistances to better spread elemental weaknesses and strength for the mid game.
• Strangled Cove: Changing a Water Buldrake to a Fire Buldrake in a Patrol.
• Plague Doctor: Changing Poison burst to be a Square rather than Cross. Reducing MP cost to 10 (from 14) and decreasing damage to 0.9x (from 1x).
• Werewolf:
  • Leap: Changed the cost to 8 from 6.
  • Fetid Breath: Reducing Weaken's base chance to proc from 100 to 75%. Increasing damage to 0.95 from 0.75 and changing the ability from a skill to a spell (so it's now magical).
  • Howl: Increasing damage to 1 from 0.5.
  • Blood Trophy: Changing the range to "weapon range".
  • Cunning Slash: Adding missing ability. It deals 0.75x damage to a single target in melee range, bypasses all counters and has 100% hit chance always.
• Gadgeteer: Changing Surpriser-Plus to be single target, but do 0.9x damage with a 10 MP cost.
• Kawa: Changed Swarm Strike to ignore flanks and have lower base damage, but higher damage for more allies.
• Loot drops: Many of the special drops had a wrong chance of dropping, which resulted in higher odds than normal. This is fixed, but it does mean that the current odds could be too low now. We'll have to monitor.

UI:

• Descriptions: Updating Blessed One and Focus description to make it more explicit if they work or not with items.
• Dialogues: More dialogue cleanup.

Bug Fixes:

• Blessed One: Fixing an issue where Blessed One would restore HP to the caster for restoring MP to another character.
• Weapons Debuff: Fixing an issue where weapons with a debuff chance would use the ability's chance instead for abilities that make use of the weapon's debuff.
• Godstears Waste: Fixing some issue with the Event on that map, as well as with some of the special enemies on there (ignoring Rebirth effects and not giving Injuries to dead units).
• Worm Battle: Fixing an issue where Rebirth might not trigger when a character would be killed by certain abilities.
• Menus: Fixed a minor visual issue when unlocking more than 1 class at once from learning an ability.
• Kapawka Jungle: Fixing a bug where having your whole team die would result in a Victory rather than Defeat.

Hotfix:

• Fixing an issue with certain save files where some of the later levels wouldn't appear on the map.

[ 2018-11-30 21:34:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

We hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! :) We'd like to mention first that we wanted to release our updated Intro Movie (with added Voice Over) this past week, but it's been delayed. We're hoping it'll be ready next week instead. The work on this is handled by an outside contractor, so it's not slowing down our overall progress at all, so no worries there. Next, we have a new build this week. It's mostly light balance changes, targeted at increasing the attractiveness of some abilities/items/systems/etc. that the community has found to be a little weaker than others. Quick highlights are:

• Weaken: Weaken's previous effect (increasing chance of Status Effects lading on the target) has been changed. Now, it will prevent any normal healing from working on the target while they are afflicted.
• Fleet of Foot: Both the ability and the counter will now also remove Root from the character. Since the counter will only proc if the character doesn't already have Fleet of Foot, it will only protect them once until the buff wears out.
• Assassin: Cautious Step will now also prevent Root and Slow.
• MVP: Updating the MVP system to favor "low level characters" less than before and to have a higher overall chance of getting an MVP.
• Consumables: Adding XML file for consumables, allowing the player to create consumable items for battle.

As always, full notes are at the end of the post!

Progress Report:

Wrapping up all dialogues has been our focus this past week once again. It's still the main item on the agenda for next week as well, and then we should be done with those. The work on the "character events" dialogues has started this week and it's looking good so far! Otherwise, it's been more maps this week, such as this one, which will feature some old friends:

Change log:

11/23/2018 - Version 0.5.1

New Content and Features:

• Equipment: Adding Flippers, an accessory that grants Swim to the wearer.
• Weaken: Weaken's previous effect (increasing chance of Status Effects lading on the target) has been changed. Now, it will prevent any normal healing from working on the target while they are afflicted.

Balance:

• Fleet of Foot: Both the ability and the counter will now also remove Root from the character. Since the counter will only proc if the character doesn't already have Fleet of Foot, it will only protect them once until the buff wears out.
• Adaptative Aegis: Increasing elemental resistance bonus to 75 (from 50).
• Assassin: Cautious Step will now also prevent Root and Slow.
• Druid: Changing "Shield" spells to be AoE rather than single target.
• Warmage: Exchanged Critical: Haste and Earth/Thunder Burst in skilltree.
• Lich: Changing requirements to Sorcerer-6, Plague Doctor-4
• Lord: Lord can now equip a Shield by default.
• Fellblade: Changing Mute Slice to Decay Slice. It now afflicts with Weaken rather than Mute. Damage lowered to 0.8x.
• Scarred Summit: Making one of the enemies "more enemies" only.
• Oldebzar: Changing 2 Pektites from Water to Fire.
• Aqueduct Battle: Removing an ability and a passive from one of the enemies.
• Gelligh 2nd Battle: Increasing the main enemy's HP by a fair amount and gave them immunity to Berserk.
• MVP: Updating the MVP system to favor "low level characters" less than before and to have a higher overall chance of getting an MVP.
• Monsters: Updating resistances score again, generally increasing their resistance a bit to their weak element.
• Mana stone: Recipe changed so it can now be crafted much earlier (around Oldebzar).

UI:

• Crafting: Last sorting option for the crafting menu will now be remember the next time the crafting menu is selected.
• Abilities: When having no abilities equipped in the Abilities Equip menu, a description about what the slot does will be shown.
• Gadgets: Most gadgets have been renamed.
• Save Files: Changed the save file format to make it much smaller. Older save files are still 100% compatible.

Bug Fixes:

• Wordlmap: Adding missing dialogues when certain story characters join the party.
• Adaptative Aegis: Fixing an issue where Adaptative Aegis would show "MISS" when switching to a different element, even though the correct element would be granted.
• Leap: Leap was missing its target confirmation stage. Fixed. Also fixing a visual issue happening when Leap target is in the water.
• Kawa Class: Adding missing description to Counter.

Modding:

• Consumables: Adding XML file for consumables, allowing the player to create consumable items for battle.
• Errors: Adding error output for Ingredients.xml file.

Hotfixes:

• Fixing an issue with the new save file format not loading correctly new files under certain circumstances.

[ 2018-11-23 19:23:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sneak Peek at one of our new spell in the works. Hello everyone! This week, we're releasing our next chunk of new content, along with a lot of balance tune-ups and a big dialogues update. Here are the highlights of the build:

Highlights:

• Story Content: Adding 4 new story encounters, 3 new patrols, 1 optional small event.
• Dialogues: All dialogues in the game were reviewed/updated by writer Scott Hamm. We have a proofreading pass coming at the end of the month, and then they should be final.
• AI: Lots of AI improvements again.
• Balance: Balance updates for many classes, including abilities and requirements.

Full notes are in the build and at the end of this post, as usual.

Progress Report:

First, a big thank you to everyone for all the incredible feedback we've been getting on the game! We made another big round of balance tuning from it and it's looking better than ever! We have several pages of balance notes that still need to go in though, so expect even more improvements in the coming months! We spent a lot of time testing and tuning this week and we started the final dialogue editing process. We have about 70% of the dialogues in what should be pretty much final form after writer Scott Hamm finished his giant pass on them. We'll still be focusing for 2 more weeks on creating the rest of the game's dialogues, then it'll be updated by Scott again, and then off to localization. We're keeping a good pace on that front and we're on schedule. :) We're also about 95% finished with the Voice Over for our intro movie. It's looking and sounding amazing and we can't wait to show everyone the final version! It should be ready Monday or Tuesday, so expect a quick update early next week! Lately, we've been working on maps for optional/secret dungeons as well as the final battles of the game, so we can't quite show all of them, but here's one that should be safe to show:
Lastly, we've been working on the visuals for the abilities of one of our special classes. They should have a pretty unique style! (like the one at the top of this post).

Change log:

11/16/2018 - Version 0.5.0

New Content and Features:

• Story Content: Adding 4 new story encounters, 3 new patrols, 1 optional small event.
• Dialogues: All dialogues in the game were reviewed/updated by writer Scott Hamm. We have a proofreading pass coming at the end of the month, and then they should be final.
• Cutscenes: A few cutscenes had minor updates.
• Sound Effects: Adding sound effects to many abilities.
• Outfits: Adding a new outfit to the game for males. The female version should be ready in a bit.

Balance:

• Map balance:
  • Alpine Woods: Making one of the Daodrenners a "more enemies" option.
  • Gyaum Tor: Making one of the Mercenaries a "more enemies" option.
  • The Highlands: If the character doesn't have 7 units in total, one of the Vangals won't spawn.
  • Yates Cabin: Changing the player spawning tiles to make things a little easier.
  • The Banyan: Changing on the Rangers to be a "more enemies" option.
  • 2nd Temple: Changing the Wizard to be a "more enemies" option.
  • Ekhidna Falls: Changing the component yield on the 0,5 tree to 2 (from 1).
• Difficulty Settings: Changing Hard mode to use "more enemies" and "regular stats" and Very Hard to use "Regular Injuries".
• Berserk: Reducing duration to 2 turns (from 3).
• Thorns: Thorns damage will not apply to counters anymore (when a counter hits a target with thorn, thorn will not reflect a portion of the counter damage).
• Self Buff Counters: Those will not proc if the effect is already on the target (which means that damaging dispels won't trigger them anymore).
• Smart Casting: Disabling Smart Casting for all Single target attacks.
• Consumables: Reducing the vertical range of many items to 5 (they all had 8 before).
• Story Characters: Story characters that depart from the party will receive some bonus AP to basic classes after they rejoin. New story characters that join will get more AP when joining.
• Demon Knight:
  • Demonic Might: Adding Renew to the effects.
  • Vicious Punt: Lowering damage to 0.85 but increasing vert range to 4.
  • Vicious Slash: Increasing vert range to 4.
  • Cleave: Cleave won't grant 10MP on the bonus turn anymore.
• Ranger: Increasing vert range of Multishot (6 to 7). Increasing damage of Rain Of Arrows (.85 to .9).
• Knight: Exchanging Taunt and Defensive Hit positions on the skill tree.
• Warmage:
  • Requirements: Changed to Plague Doctor-3, Fellblade-4
  • Stasis Burst: Removing it from the Warmage. The ability doesn't fit very well with their kit and they still have 10 without it.
• Scoundrel:
  • Sneak Attack: Adding a MP cost of 6.
  • Steal abilities: Steal abilities that deal no damage will not trigger most counters anymore.
• Fellblade:
  • Sleep Slice: Increasing the MP cost to 12 from 8, reducing damage from 0.8x (from 0.85x)
  • Poison, Bleed Slice: Reducing damage to 0.85x (from 0.9x).
  • Mute Slice: Reducing damage to 0.9x (from 0.95x).
  • Black Blade: Damage is now non-elemental rather than Dark.
  • Health Siphon: Damage is now non-elemental rather than Physical.
  • Miasma: Reducing range to 2 (from 3), increasing damage to 0.6x (from 0.5x), increasing vert range to 7 (from 6) and changing shape to Square (from Cross).
• Werewolf:
  • Leap: Updated how it works. Give it a go to see just how it works! The visual effect is temporary as it's missing the damage visuals, but the functionality is there.
  • Fetid Breath: Is now a cone (it was meant to be a cone, so it was technically a bug).
  • Gear: Adding swords to the list of weapons.
• Plague Doctor:
  • Treatment: Reducing MP cost of Treatment to 8 (from 10).
  • Mass Slow: Increasing base success rate from 50% to 75%
  • Weaken: Increasing base success rate from 75% to 100%. More changes will come to make this spell more attractive soon.
• Assassin:
  • Sleep Powder: Increasing vert range of to 1 (from 0).
  • Dispel Powder: Adding 0.6x damage to it.
• Druid:
  • Requirements: Changing to Mender-3, Wizard-5, Alchemystic-3
  • Dispel: Changing MP cost to 8 (from 10) and range to 3 (from 2).
• Gadgeteer:
  • Requirements: Reducing to Scoundrel-3 (from 4) and Wizard-3 (from 4).
  • Dispelotron: Reducing MP cost to 8 (from 10).
• Peddler: Can now equip crossbows.
• Duelist: Increasing elemental Flourish damage to 1.7x from 1.6x. And Cripple Flourish to 0.9x from 0.85f.
• Gunner: Changing requirement to Mercenary-4, Knight-4, Ranger-4
• Sorcerer: Changing requirements to Druid-5
• Templar: Adding MP cost of 8 to Soothing Chant.
• Human Classes: Lowering the MP growth of most classes.
• Bzaro: Starting Bzaro with the Daodrenner class unlocked as well.
• Rakkerjak: Changing passive from Cleave to Execute (that was actually a bug).
• Monsters: Updated the elemental resistances of most demonic creatures (mostly the Dark element).
• Bulldrakes: Increasing base stats. Increasing damage to Breath attacks.
• AI:
  • The AI will instantly switch targets if its current target moves to a spot where the AI could never follow (due to height issues, etc), rather than sadly follow it for a few turns.
  • Revive Items: The AI will now have a chance to use Revive items at times.
  • AI will be less likely to shove targets into their allies when using long ranged shoves.
  • AI will be smarter about including allies when buffing itself with AoEs.
  • AI will be less likely to self buff if it has the special "waiting for the player to get closer" flag.
  • AI will be smarter about using abilities that have scaling damage with proximity to the target.
• Equipment:
  • Vigil Band: Adding the Vigil Band, an accessory that protects against Sleep.
  • Judogi: Reducing Armor value.
  • Silver Helm: Changed the ATK bonus to a MND (it was always meant to be MND).
  • Main Gauche: Increasing ATK value. Also reducing the chance of enemies using it.

UI:

• Azure Plains: Making the tall grass 85% opacity so the movement tiles can be seen through them. It's still hard to see, but it should be more obvious where you can move to this way.
• Abilities: Cleaning up and adding details to a lot of abilities information.
• Special Classes: When prompted to use a Badge to learn a special class, the prompt will now mention how many badges you have in total.
• Difficulty Settings: Renaming "Easy" to "Beginner". Updating the description of Veteran to make it clearer the battles will be challenging for most players.
• Help Compendium: Fixing typos. Adding missing camp fire sprites to the background.
• System Menu: The Start button/Key will now close the menu (as well as the Cancel Button/Key).
• Accuracy: When an attack or a debuff has 0% to hit, the 0% will now be written in Red (rather than white) to make it more obvious.
• HP/MP Bar: The bar wasn't precise at low levels. Fixing it so it's accurate now.
• Items: Updating the Items command description to mention they are shared and refill automatically.
• Fullscreen: Changing the behavior of the game to remain "Visible in Background", as it seems to be the default recommended behavior. Sadly, Unity doesn't allow this behavior to be changed at runtime as it should, so we have to pick one or the other.

Bug Fixes:

• Abilities Learn Menu: Fixing issue with character panel not updating when switching characters from the Ability Learn menu.
• Mouse/Kb: Fixing: Mouse wheel icon could remain visible when it shouldn't if using the keyboard rather than the mouse.
• Difficulty Settings: Fixing an issue where starting a game on a different difficulty setting than the default one, quitting the game and starting a new game would show the wrong difficulty setting name.
• MP Values: After switching passives or before deployment in combat, the current MP value of characters can show the wrong value at times (this is cosmetic, as the correct MP is always used in combat).
• Various Maps: Fixing priorities that were a little wonky on many maps.
• Bzaro: Fixing a bug were Bzaro would start with most classes unlocked.
• Debuffs: Now correctly showing that Barrier was removed when a Counter: Debuff is triggered by a character with Barrier on.
• Crafting: Fixing rare case where Gear or Badges crafting categories would be flagged as unavailable after browsing components.
• Sound: Fixing a caching issue with the sound effects.
• Crash: Fixing a rare crash with Adaptative Affinity.
• StealTables: Fixing a bug where enemies that spawn during battle all had an empty steal table.
• Charge: Charge abilities can now correctly hit targets in the water, assuming the charge itself doesn't go into the water.

Modding:

• Encounters: The "apbonus" field can be used on enemies to have them grant a flat AP bonus to the player if they were killed during the battle.

[ 2018-11-16 22:20:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've been busy wrapping up our dialogues, so we have only a small update this week. The main addition is the Help Compendium. It has explanations on all the systems, tips for beginners and advanced tips. Give it a look and let us know if you think anything is missing! It's accessible from the System menu (so, from the world map or during battle) and it's called "Help Compendium". As usual, the full patch notes are at the end of the post.

Progress Report:

As we've mentioned, we've been focusing on wrapping up all dialogues, so that's where most of our progress has been. But, we've also been working on new sounds, new maps and new abilities visuals. Here's some of them. A new map that should be used for a secret optional dungeon:
A spell for a new enemy type that isn't in the game quite yet:
We've been working on new spells for one of our secret classes, so you should expect some cool visuals coming in soon! Also, we're almost done adding the Voice Over for our intro movie, so keep your eyes peeled for that one too. It's sounding pretty awesome with the VO! :)

Announcement:

We'll be at Free Play Florida later today and over the week-end. If you're in the area, come say hello!

Change log:

11/09/2018 - Version 0.4.4

New Content and Features:

• Help Compendium: Adding the Help Compendium section to the System menu. It's accessible from the worldmap or during battle. The Help Compendium has a lot of information about many systems.
• Visuals: Updating Health Siphon, Vicious Blow and Rend. Adding Wrathful Blow, One for All and Enraged Blow.
• AI: The AI will now use One for All if it has access to it and it thinks it's a good move.

Balance:

• AI: Adding various small improvements to the AI to make it a little smarter.
• AI: For AIs that have Teleport Other, they will now try to teleport targets onto traps if they can't drown anyone.
• AI: Ranged units will be less prone to charge forward after attacking.
• Drakesmouth Seaway: Making one of the 2 Gunners a "More Enemies" option spawn only.

UI:

• Ability Learn Menu: Now showing the character's information panel on the screen where you can select which class to learn abilities, for more clarity.
• Turn Order bar: Cleaning up the way the currently selected character is shown on the bar to be more consistent.
• EXP Sequence: Making sure the character is always on screen when showing their EXP (with very long range attacks, they could be out of the screen at times).
• Counter: Teleport Other: It shouldn't teleport people to spots on the map that are very isolated anymore.
• Titlescreen: Adding a back button option from the difficulty settings after selecting "New Game".
• Thespeiros: The map objective states the Guest must suvive, but no gameover came if they die. This is fixed now.

Bug Fixes:

• Accuracy: Base accuracy is now 100% rather than 99%. Most enemies have 1% evasion, so it's still 99% unless you have Glasses/Passive. This was meant to be in a few patches ago, so it's technically a bug.
• Cleave: If the current character has the Cleave Passive and attacks a target, which gets killed by an ally's One For All, they will no longer receive a Cleave turn.
• Worm Battle: Fixing an issue where one of the corridors could be unblocked after a small worm died.
• Music: Fixing a rare problem where the battle music could fail to play at the start of some battles and the preparations music would keep playing instead.
• AI: The AI will no longer try to dispel permanent buffs from targets.

Modding:

• New Classes: Defaulting missing class outfit to 0 rather than having an error.

[ 2018-11-09 16:37:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

We have another build this week, this one focusing on various AI improvements and a host of small updates and bug fixes. Here are the highlights:

• AI: Multiple improvements and fixes to the AI, covering a wide range (more details in the change log).
• Crafting: Adding Crafting.xml file. It contains Ingredients, Badges, Recipes and Gadgets. Each of those can be changed or new entries can be added, using the same system as for weapons, armors, etc.
• Gamepad: Modifying the gamepad system to maximize compatibility with Xbox controllers in general. Removing the previous "Gamepad Fix" option as it is now unnecessary.
• Difficulty Settings: We added new stats scaling options last patch and forgot to mention them. They are aimed at increasing the difficulty. We do have another system in the works on that front that should be more interesting than simply higher stats, but it's not quite ready yet.

Progress:

Nothing fancy to report this week as we're still focusing on our dialogues for the most part. We're making good time on that front though! We've also been hard at work creating new assets, including new sounds, new spells and new maps. Here's our latest map concept:
The overall plan is to keep making small balance improvements until we clear our dialogues load, then we'll take some time for a big balance update with all the feedback we've been gathering. Keep it coming and thanks! :)

Change log:

11/02/2018 - Version 0.4.3

New Content and features:

• Sounds: Adding a lot of new sounds for abilities and cutscenes.
• Visuals: Updating/adding visuals for many abilities, including: Bite, Bulldrake Breaths, Primal Cry and Shadow Hunt.

Balance:

• Difficulty Settings: We added new stats scaling options last patch and forgot to mention them. They are aimed at increasing the difficulty. We do have another system in the works on that front that should be more interesting than simply higher stats, but it's not quite ready yet.
• Yates Cabin: Reducing the difficulty of the 2nd encounter on the map by removing an enemy unless the "more enemies" difficulty setting is used.
• AI: The AI should be more aggressive with moving towards the player units and should be less prone to moving before buffing itself.
• AI: Making the AI smarter when choosing a path towards a target they can't reach yet.
• AI: AI with Charm status should be more effective (they were prone to wasting some turns moving towards their new allies without taking action).
• AI: Various small tweaks to AI behavior to make it smarter.
• AI: Updating the pathfinding for flying creatures to be much better.
• AI: Reducing chances of "offensive units" to go buffing their allies rather than charge at the player.
• AI: Increasing the minimum range a player unit must be to an enemy trapper for them to decide to place a trap.
• Buffs/Debuffs: Making it so Stats Up/Down buffs and debuffs remove their opposite when applied, the same way haste/slow currently works. (So, applied Atk Up will remove Atk Down from the target).
• Barrier: Counter: Barrier will no longer activate if the target already had barrier at the start of the attack (so, casting a debuff on a target with Barrier and Counter: Barrier will use up the current Barrier and not recast it on the same attack).
• Knee Shot: Reducing damage to 0.85x from 0.9x. Also renaming to Rooting Shot.
• Thespeiros Encounter: The guest helping on this map will start using recovery items once no other actions can be taken.
• Abilities: Small tweaks to some monsters abilities (spell to skill, etc). Adding a MP cost of 12 to Rest Up.
• Charm: Charm ability MP cost increased from 6 to 16 and chance up to 100%. Increasing chance of Allure to 75% base (from 62%).
• Charm Debuf: Charm debuff duration lowered to 2 turns (from 3).
• Focused Rage: Increasing the damage per MP converted from 2% to 2.5%. Also including the damage conversion ratio in the description.

UI and Visuals:

• Gamepad: Modifying the gamepad system to maximize compatibility with Xbox controllers in general. Removing the previous "Gamepad Fix" option as it is now unnecessary.
• Gamepad: Adding an option to use specific icons for the gamepad. Current selection is: Auto, Xbox360, Xbox One, Ps4, Steam Controller.
• Projectiles: Speeding up projectiles (arrows, bolts, etc) travel speeds by quite a bit.
• Graveyard Story Battle: Making a certain character immune to Sleep so they aren't slept during the quick dialogue cutscene during battle.
• Critical Hits: Adding a screenshake to critical hits to make them more impactful.
• Charm, Sleep, Berserk: Updating help tooltips to show that only one of these debuffs can be on at once. Updating visuals during damage phase to correctly show if a previous debuff was removed by a new one.

Bug Fixes:

• Rebirth: Rebirth will now correctly trigger if a character dies by being countered to death.
• Rebirth: Fixing an issue where Rebirth might not trigger on the target when killed by a Dual Wielding regular attack.
• One for All: Fixing a bug where One for All would trigger from Counterattack and Counter: Magic.
• One for All: One for all will now correctly trigger Counters on the person attacked and also won't bypass Rebirth anymore.
• Spiked Glove: The description box now correctly shows "None" as the stat that will defend against it.
• AI: Fixing an issue where Gadgeteers AI sometimes didn't get access to the correct gadgets.
• Evasion: Fixing a bug where the base evasion of units was listed as 0 but was internally 1.
• Events: Fixing incorrect text being shown on the worldmap after finishing the 3rd Temple.
• Counter Steal: Fixing an issue where Counter: Steal would sometimes fail to trigger when it should.
• Height Advantage: Fixing an issue where the bonus from Height Advantage would be incorrect under many circumstances.

Modding:

• Crafting: Adding Crafting.xml file. It contains Ingredients, Badges, Recipes and Gadgets. Each of those can be changed or new entries can be added, using the same system as for weapons, armors, etc. Each item can only have 1 recipe for it though, so keep that in mind.

[ 2018-11-02 21:24:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone :) We have another update this week, which features a Halloween themed encounter, with a special reward. Give it a try, it should prove to be challenging! To check it out, you'll have to finish the last battle of the current build (the one in Drakesmouth Seaway). Don't worry, we won't remove the encounter after Halloween, so you'll be able to try it later if you haven't reached that point yet. The update also has a bunch of bug fixes as well as UI and balance improvements. Here are the highlights:

Highlights:

• New Battle: Adding a new Halloween themed encounter once the Drakesmouth Seaway encounter is completed (it will be red on the map, although it is not a mandatory story encounter). It should be difficult and has a special reward.
• Patch Notes: Adding the Patch notes directly to the client from the title screen.
• Intro Video: Updating the video with the correct music. Just missing the VO now!
• Visuals: Updating/adding visuals for Multishot, Critical Expertise, Mirage, Counter Mirage, Counter Barrier, Sedate, Phantasm, Steal GP, Boomerang Toss and Nameless One.
• Movements: When using Show Details in battle, all enemies movements will be shown in blue to quickly see the "dangerous" areas.
• Difficulty Stats Scaling: Fixing an issue where many enemies would not spawn with the correct stats scaling. This should impact both easier and harder difficulties.

As always, the full notes are at the end of the post.

Progress:

There isn't a whole lot of new things to report this week. We're still focusing on getting all our dialogues fully written so we can have a big review of them and then start the localization process. We're focusing on new maps, story events and dialogues right now and this will remain the case for a while still. We have a few new maps for optional content in the works, like this one:
In terms of new art, we have another spell for the Vessel class and this is what it looks like:
Lastly, we have a bunch of Halloween themed assets that we've been creating recently and those should all be part of the Halloween encounter we're adding in this update. Here's some nifty art one of our contracted artists made to celebrate Halloween:

Full Change log:

10/21/2018 - Version 0.4.2

New Content and features:

• New Battle: Adding a new Halloween themed encounter once the Drakesmouth Seaway encounter is completed (it will be red on the map, although it is not a mandatory story encounter). It should be difficult and has a special reward.
• Patch Notes: Adding the Patch notes directly to the client from the title screen.
• Intro Video: Updating the video with the correct music. Just missing the VO now.
• Equipment: Adding new accessory Glasses that gives +10% accuracy.
• Visuals: Updating/adding visuals for Multishot, Critical Expertise, Mirage, Counter Mirage, Counter Barrier, Sedate, Phantasm, Steal GP, Boomerang Toss and Nameless One.
• Visuals: Somier now has a different sprite/portrait to other Kawas.
• Visuals: Adding ElvensEarsHorns and Horns hats for the player to use.
• Visuals: Adding Vampire portrait.

Balance:

• Abilities: Giving a MP cost to One for All of 16 MP.
• Abilities: Changing cost of Shock box to 24 from 28 MP.
• Abilities: Coalesce will not cause an injury for the user anymore.
• Abilities: Skyjack will no longer drop targets into the water. Skyjack will always do a minimum of 1 damage.
• Gameplay: Removing Boon and Focus effect from a character when they die.
• Monsters: Increasing Pektites RES a bit.
• Passives: Into the Fray will now grant an increasingly larger bonus based on the amount of adjacent targets (before: 0.125x to 0.5x. Now 0.125x to 0.85x depending on the amount of targets around).
• Item Usage: Increasing the level needed for the AI to gain access to powerful healing items (so they will get them later).
• Item Usage: Adding decreasing odds of the AI using a healing item after it's used one already. The more they use, the lower their chance of using one again will get.
• Dual Wielding: Boon and focus will now only affect the first attack when dual wielding. It will also only apply to the initial attack when used with Infused Edge.
• Charm: Charmed units can no longer break their own Charm status by doing damage to themselves (this isn't a normal behavior, nor happening often, but it does at times).
• Charm: Improved charmed units behavior as they were doing a few weird things at times.

UI:

• Scrollbars: Cleaning up the scrollbar visuals, specifically in resolutions other than 1080.
• Descriptions: Updating Boon's description.
• Movements: When showing the movement range of enemies in Free Navigation mode, it's now accounting for Root.
• Movements: When using Show Details in battle, all enemies movements will be shown in blue to quickly see the "dangerous" areas.
• Skill Trees: Improving the visuals for skill tree nodes that contain multiple abilities.
• Attacks: When the target of an attack that gets bonus damage from sides/back has No Flank, it will be shown instead of the direction in the attack prediction box.
• Kyrie's Portrait: Some of Kyrie's portraits will not use image compression anymore as it wasn't looking as good as we'd like.
• Equipment: Made the optimize equipment a little smarter with accessories. It will try to reuse more accessories than before if it can when optimizing.
• Double Cast: Updating the description of the double cast command while in combat, so it shows it will use spells at 75% power.
• Turn Order: Updating the remaining HP bar on the turn order as the damage gets dealt, rather than after the damage is dealt for slightly faster update.

Bug Fixes:

• Difficulty Stats Scaling: Fixing an issue where many enemies would not spawn with the correct stats scaling. This should impact both easier and harder difficulties.
• Visuals: Fixing an issue where the wrong portrait would be selected in the turn order at times when selecting a unit that had a turn so far in the future, it's not shown on the bar.
• Descriptions: Fixing a typo for Rekindle. Fixing Firescourge and Howl descriptions not correctly mentioning they do damage.
• Blessed One: Fixing an instance where Blessed One would apply when it shouldn't (when using a multi-target spell on 1 target only).
• One for All: Fixing a bug where One for All would trigger for sleeping characters.
• Focus Fire: Fixing Focus Fire showing the wrong spell names if the user backed out and came back in during the targeting process.
• Abilities: Fixing monster abilities that should have been spell/skills but were the wrong type.
• Abilities: Fixing the minimum range of many abilities that should have not been able to target self.
• Dodge Melee: Fixing a bug where Dodge Melee didn't correctly apply to the 2nd weapon when the attacker is Dual Wielding.
• Charges: Fixing a visual glitch when showing the area of a charge attack.
• Mouse Cursor: Fixing an issue where the mouse wheel icon that shows a 2nd tile exist on a space would remain on screen during spells and other circumstances.
• Rebirth: Fixing an issue where Rebirth would sometimes fail to trigger when killed by Infused Edge.
• Collect Abilities: Fixing an issue where the wrong table was used when collecting some targets.
• Equipment: Fixing a bug where using "equipment optimize" by changing passives would sometimes leave some pieces of gear flagged as equipped until the next load.
• Focus: Fixing an issue where the focus visual frames would remain after focus had been taken away at the end of the turn if not used.
• Boon: Fixing an issue with Boon not going away correctly at times.
• Dispels: Fixing an issue where Dispels wouldn't remove Fleet of Foot.
• Equipment: One of the secret classes was incorrectly flagged as unable to equip helmets. This is fixed.

[ 2018-10-26 21:43:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Build 0.4.1

We have another update this week. It focuses on balance, UI and difficulty updates based on community feedback. And we've also made a targeted pass at equipment pieces to make them more unique and interesting. We still have a long backlog of community feedback and ideas that we want to get in, and it should keep us busy for a while yet! Here are the highlights of the new build:

• Ease of Mouse: Redoing the system to select overlapping tiles with the mouse. Should be a LOT more intuitive and easier to use!
• New Assets: New assets, including new sounds, portraits and spell shapes.
• Weapons: Staves will now grant +1 range to ranged spells.
• Weapons: Some rods will now grant a bonus damage to a specific element.
• Accessories: Adding Throwing Gloves crafted accessory. They grant +1 to item usage range.
• Equipment: Updated the stats of a lot of gear pieces.
• AI: Made the AI smarter and more efficient in many ways.

As always, full change log is at the end of the post.

Progress:

Our main focus currently is wrapping up the first version of all the dialogues in the game, then doing a big quality pass on them, and finally starting their localization. We have a big localization team already booked to handle that part, so we have to get ready for it. Otherwise, we've mostly been busy making various improvements across the board from community feedback, with a focus on adjusting the difficulty. Now that we have the Difficulty Settings, we want to make sure we start tuning things to ensure both new players and veterans alike have a space they can live in happily. There are many changes in this update that should help on that front. On the art side, we have some new maps in the works, like this one:
And we're adding new portraits to the game. Perhaps in preparation for Halloween?

Change Log

Version 0.4.1

New Content and features:

• Spell Shapes: Adding a square shape to possible abilities shape. We'll need to do a pass to see what spells might make sense to change to this new shape.
• New Portraits: Adding new portraits for enemies and players.
• Added Cutscene:: Adding a small cutscene to the Ship battle so it's less abrupt.
• New Sounds:: Adding many more sounds, specifically for gadgets and more worm effects.
• Ease of Mouse: Redoing the system to select overlapping tiles with the mouse. Should be a LOT more intuitive and easier to use!

Balance:

• Difficulty Settings:
  • Updating difficulty presets names and changing the default one to "Easy". Changing Easy preset options a bit.
  • Reducing difficulty level in The Crossroads story battle by lowering the level of most enemies and removing Counterattack from the one enemy that has it.
  • Reducing difficulty in Timber Road story battle by lowering the level of 2 enemies.
  • Reducing difficulty in all the starter maps for "Equipment: Full" setting, but ignoring that setting on "starter maps".
  • Increasing difficulty in "Equipment: More" setting by having it try to spawn accessories in empty slots using the default "accessory chance" (roughly 75% per slot near the end of the game).
  • Changing the way the "max levels" are calculated so enemies are never above them (before they could still be randomly above that level by about 10%).
  • When playing with enemy stats scaling upwards, Guests will also have the same scaling applied to them so they are sturdier.
• Story:
  • Cleaning up the secret-kawa-questline significantly so the clues are easier to find and easier to follow.
  • Changing "escape from the cave" to spawn enemies that are not "neutral" and only hostile to the player. Reducing the amount spawn to 1 per 2 turns (from 1 per turn) to compensate and removing 1 enemy (unless More Enemies is selected).
  • Removing "slow" from the worm Quicksand spell. With the recent fixes to the turn order system, this looks too potent now.
• MP related Updates:
  • Changing Mana Font to 1 MP per step.
  • Economy will now reduce the MP cost of abilities by 1/3 (rather than 1/2).
  • Blood Magic will now use 1% HP per 1MP (rather than 2 HP per 1MP).
  • Boon no longer gives HP/MP on a kill, but instead will make your next action a guaranteed crit, even if it's an ability. It will dissipate at the end of the next turn, used or not.
• Various Classes/Mechanics Updates:
  • Adding MP cost to Focus of 6.
  • Focus will now wear off on the next turn, regardless of if it was used or not. This adds the risk that you might have wasted a turn putting it on if you don't get to use the buff.
  • MP damage will get a bonus from crits now.
  • Making small stats growth adjustments across most classes.
  • Slightly reducing damage to Whirling Blow (1 -> 0.95x).
  • Increasing MP cost of Sniper shot to 36 from 32.
  • Changing the bonus to the next turn start to 25% from 20% when not taking an action.
  • All "all enemies" spells will now have damage scaling from their proximity to the target (far away -> less damage, closer -> more damage). This should help adding a higher risk/higher reward scenario to them.
  • Accuracy can now be 100% if using the Concentration or Lucky passives.
  • Bzaro will now receive bonus AP after gaining Monster Essence for a class he's already unlocked (he will gain the bonus AP to that monster class), to compensate for the fact he can't benefit from Vicarious Learning.
  • Increasing the MP cost of many gadgets as the kit is probably too versatile otherwise.
  • Increasing the MP cost of Treatment and reducing the amount of status effects it handles.
  • Slightly reducing the Daodrenner's ATK/MND starting value.
  • Reducing potency of tier 1 potion to 45 from 50.
  • Increasing flat potency of healing magic a little bit and reducing its MND scaling a little bit. This should bring healers a little closer to pure casters for numbers and increase the healing at early levels a little bit.
  • Reducing healing from Lick Wounds a bit (0.9 to 0.8).
• Fellblade:
  • Abilities that don't do damage can't crit anymore from Versatile.
  • Adding Daggers to Fellblade weapons.
  • Changing most abilities of the Fellblade to skills to make things more consistent. They still have 1 spell (hp drain spell).
  • Updating tooltips to mention which abilities count as "regular attacks".
• Templar:
  • Changing ratios on Cleansing Blade so it does more damage per buff removed. Damage at 1 debuff remains unchanged.
  • Updating Siphon's damage to be Mixed Atk+Mnd. Also adding HP damage to it.
  • Increasing the healing done by Soothing Chant from 0.5 to 0.65.
  • Changing holy chant to a square shape (so it's bigger).
• Gear Changes:
  • Staves will now grant +1 range to ranged spells.
  • Some rods will now grant bonus damage to a specific element.
  • Reducing some of the bonuses to Blood Armor and Soul Eater. Adding a configurable cap as well.
  • Updating Status resistance Earrings to cover less statuses.
  • Adding Throwing Gloves crafted accessory. They grant +1 to item usage range.
  • Increasing speed bonus on all Daggers.
  • Increasing defense malus on all axes.
  • Updating inaccurate def/res values on a lot of gear (this was technically a bug), mostly accessories and some weapons..
  • Changing Auto Crossbow to work differently.
  • Increasing shields defense across the board.
  • Lowering random badges drop chance (with the fix to the wrong loot-table being used at times, it would have been too high).
  • Changing base chance of "no loot" from 65% to 70% (this applies to killing an enemy mainly).
• AI Updates:
  • Updating again how the AI prioritizes removing debuffs so it's less trigger happy on that.
  • Making the AI smarter about where it'll stand when trying to find a defensive position.
  • Updating the AI so healers are more efficient with healing themselves + allies when their HP is low.
  • Fixing an issue where enemies had a much lower chance than they should at having accessories equipped.
  • Updating AI so it won't try to remove Sleep from targets with Somniloquy (unless they are afflicted by enough other things).
  • Made the AI smarter with how it uses debuffs on enemies.

UI:

• Cleaning up visuals for classes that have "too many abilities" on one skilltree node.
• Adding an error popup when trying to reset a character to level 1 without having enough gold.
• Updating tooltips of Wild Cards to properly show they ignore evasion.
• Music won't stop playing anymore in the Options from the Titlescreen.
• Adding a tutorial popup reminding the player about the "details button" when escaping the cave.
• Cleaning up the Elemental Mastery description to better reflect how it works.
• Adding a tutorial about back and side attacks. This will be shown on the very first map on a new game, but existing save files will see it in their next battle.
• For abilities and passives that bring crit chance to 100%, the damage prediction will show the correct expected damage.
• When targeting, showing the red tiles that are "out of vertical range" as dimmed-out to better show what's in the vertical range or not.
• Making the fade in/out of the music smoother during various transitions.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing a bug where the wrong loot tables where being used at times. This should result in more appropriate loot in general.
• Preventing errors due to the use of invalid data in modding files. Things should be more stable when working on mods.
• Updating the prefetch sound and image systems to be more efficient.
• Making some small adjustments to reduce "jumping frames" after loading data.
• Fixing the Bulldrake having 2x the same passive on its skilltree.
• Fixing the target damage information so absorbed damage doesn't show a negative number anymore.
• Fixing issue where sleeping enemies could sometimes select a different direction at the end of their turn.
• Fixing an issue where character could stop on top of another character while walking if they got interrupted by a trap. Now walking over a trap that's already "occupied" will not trigger it.
• Fixing issue with Bzils where they would lose their "natural weapon" after changing their passives.
• Fixing issue where unequipping a passive on a Bzil would prompt an automatic "equip optimize" that shouldn't have happened.
• Fixing some interactions between mirage, rebirth, cleansing blade and coalesce.
• Fixing a bug where placing a trap wouldn't cost any MP for the player.
• Fixing a bug where jumping over a tile wouldn't grant a step for Mana/Life Font.
• Fixing issues in various options where the mouse might not always have behaved as well as it should.
• Fixing a bug where Elemental Mastery would work on Dark and Holy damage. Also fixing bugs where the wrong amount of resistance would be ignored (usually more than it should have).
• Fixing a UI issue where all abilities would be described as a "small area" in their description, when some should be marked as "large area".
• Fixing a bug where Shakedown wouldn't show the component that was stolen (even though it would correctly steal it anyways).
• Correctly showing a "big crit number" when getting a crit of an ability with a push component.
• Fixing an issue where the AI wouldn't consider attacking from the position it started its turn on if it could move.
• Fixing a bug where the music could fail to start on the worldmap after skipping a cutscene.
• Fixing a wrong interaction between muti-target spells and some rare passives that could create inflated damage under certain circumstances.

Modding:

• Adding "armorstyle" and "helmetstyle" to list of creation options when spawning a character (values: cloth, light, heavy. Default is random), so they can focus on an armor style if they can equip many.

Edit:

Hotfixes:

• Updating Economy and Boon descriptions as they had missing/wrong information.
• Updating Dual Wielding description to make it clearer.

[ 2018-10-19 22:08:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's finally time for the next big content update! After the big balance update last week, this build is focusing more on adding new content. Here are the highlights of this update:

Highlights

• Adding an intro video to the game. Hit "new game" to check it out! The current music is a placeholder and we have a narrator planned for the video as well, but that's still in the works.
• Adding 4 Story Battles, 3 Patrol Areas, 1 Optional/Secret battle.
• Adding an extra patrol for zones: Caravan Trail, Azure Plains, The Resting Giants, Alpine Woods.
• Adding difficulty levels to the game. You will be able to select them upon starting a new game or from the Troops Menu from the world map.
• Adding new visual customization options for characters, including some accessories, haircuts and hats.
• Adding a shield sprite to the idle stance in combat.
• Adding "monster specific sprites" to Bzils to show their main class.

As usual, the full notes will be at the end of the post.

Progress Report:

This week has been all about creating and testing the new content, including our video system. We also fixed a fair amount of important gameplay bugs, notably the one that was making the turn order act strangely at times, especially for longer battles. We added shields to the idle animation and Bzils will now use show a special sprite depending of their base monster class. Here's how it looks in game:
Otherwise, we'll be focusing on new maps and new content for a while, although we have another batch of balance tweaks in the works from the community feedback. Keep it coming! :)

Change Log

Version 0.4.0 Including some hotfixes notes for emphasis.

New Content and features:

• Adding an intro video to the game. Hit "new game" to check it out! The current music is a placeholder and we have a narrator planned for the video as well, but that's still in the works.
• Adding difficulty levels to the game. You will be able to select them upon starting a new game or from the Troops Menu from the worldmap. The "added enemies" option isn't implement in all the maps yet.
• Adding 4 Story Battles, 3 Patrol Areas, 1 Optional/Secret battle.
• Adding a new patrol for encounters: Caravan Trail, Azure Plains, The Resting Giants, Alpine Woods.
• Adding a new hairstyle (shortlaced) and Elf ears as a hat (making those a hat was the only way for them to show properly with our layering system). A big thanks to Hector Velar for those!
• Adding visual customization options: Orc Tusks accessory, Pumpkin Head hat , and 2 new skintones.
• Adding new monster type: Bulldrake, Malcubus.
• Adding visuals for Massive Hit. Improving visuals of some abilities.
• Updated missing abilities/passives on some monsters.
• Adding more sound effects in general, specifically to the worm cutscene and battle.
• Adding Cone shape to abilities shape. We'll go over abilities and see if it would make sense for some to be changed to this new shape.
• Adding a shield sprite to the idle stance in combat.
• Adding "monster specific sprites" to Bzils to show their main class. The class wheel will now show those sprites rather than the monster sprites for Bzils (you can revert to showing the monsters by changing the value "BzilClassChangeShowsMonsters" to true in the GameOptions.txt if you want).

Balance:

• Reducing the amount of items counts per battle for most items, especially healing potions.
• Increasing movement of Plague Doctor to 4.
• Reducing boon's MP boost on kill from 12% of max MP to 10%.
• Small tweaks to some Ranger abilities damage.
• Updating Counter-Pounce to jump in water if the caster can swim.
• Healing Staff will not trigger counters anymore.
• Adjusting stats growth of many classes. Notably reducing wizard MND, but there's a lot of small adjustments to try balance classes a little better.
• Increasing the RES of most shields a tiny bit.
• Lowering the Sorcerer's damage from 1x to 0.9x for now, although we have a new system in the works for "full screen spells" for the next update.
• Changing the cost of Quicken to 14 from 10 MP.
• Reducing the difficulty of the Crossroads story battle by removing one enemy (they will stil be there with "extra enemies" difficulty setting).
• Reducing the difficulty of Timber Road story battle by removing one of the ranged enemies (they will still be there with "extra enemies" difficulty setting).
• Updating loot, steal and poach tables. Some entries were missing the further along the story the player went. This should result in better drops in general as the story progresses.
• Assassins are now able to use Bows rather than Crossbows.

UI:

• When selecting "end turn" in combat without having taken an action, the Turn Order will be updated to reflect the correct order.
• When Raising a dead ally, their turn will be shown in the Turn Order and they will be shown as a "target" so you can see the HP gained.
• Moving the Crafting option to the root of the Main Menu (on Extra Button) rather than from the character commands box, since it doesn't pertain to the selected character.
• Changing damage dealt to a character with Mystic Shield to be "MP colored". Changing damage prediction text to be MP colored as well.
• Changing the Bzil Class Change process so it saves better passives/subclass that were in used before the class change.
• When removing passives that changed the equipement you can use, the "optimize gear" will only be triggered if your current gear isn't valid anymore, rather than every time.
• Updating the "attack command" description to show more information about the currently equipped weapon.
• Tweaking the items tutorial to try to encourage player to read it.
• Updated the "Gamepad Fix" option as it wasn't helping as much as hoped. This new version might help out more people (but is still not recommended unless you're having issues with your gamepad).

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing a visual glitch where the Vicarious AP bonus would be shown as much smaller than it really is if you skipped the "AP countdown phase" in the Victory Screen (the correct AP was still awarded, but the screen wouldn't reflect the correct amount).
• Fixing issues where AI would sometimes ignore the chances of "not using an item it might otherwise want to use". This should make the AI use less items overall, as is intended.
• Fixing a bug where raising an enemy as a zombie would sometimes drop loot when summoned.
• Fixing visual glitch in item upgrade information box where the wrong power was sometimes listed.
• Fixing a bug where Bzil units wouldn't pickup the debuff immunities from their main class correctly.
• Fixing an issue where if a unit died on their own turn with regen, poison or bleed, they would take some damage/healing from it after death.
• Removing the ability to crit on "fixed damage" (damage that is fixed, such as a rock, % based, etc.).
• Fixing menu music not playing correctly when accessing the menu from the store.
• Fixing rare issue with weapon showing at times when unit is underwater.
• Fixing various issues tied to displacement abilities involving water and/or traps.
• Fixing damage showing 'miss' rather than the actual damage when pushing a target that can swim into the water.
• Fixing various issues with the turn order when using abilities to quicken or slow down characters.
• Fixing issue with volumes not being saved properly for users using a different locale.
• Fixing issue with the Store where one could buy items after running out of money under certain circumstances. And other small visual issues.
• Fixing an issue where a troop might have the wrong position in the menu after changing its class from the class change section.
• Fixing an issue when canceling video resolution change.
• Fixing a bug where Wild Cards that heal or damage were not counted as damage abilities for counters.
• Adjusting the volume of some sounds that were off. That process will be ongoing for a bit and there's definitely more sounds that need tweaking, especially the UI ones.
• Fixing an issue where the AI wouldn't consider Wild Cards buffs/debuffs as a valid option when checking for what to do.

Hotfixes:

• Fixing an issue where the game could hang on The Crossroads if a specific difficulty was chosen and a new recruit was hired prior to entering.
• Fixing an issue where starting a new game, skipping the intro video, quitting to the titlescreen, then starting a new game again would lead to the video being skipped automatically.

[ 2018-10-12 19:32:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just pushed another big update to the game! On this one, we've been focusing mainly on balance changes and there's a lot of them! The full and lengthy notes are at the end of the update, as usual, but here are the brief highlights:

• Significantly changed the Fellblade class.
• Changed some weapons and abilities for Gadgeteer, Reaver and Templar.
• Many changes to the Scoundrel abilities.
• Lots abilities and passives got updated.
• Lots of changes to the level caps for most story battles and patrols. The idea is to have a small amount of maps "tuned for very low levels characters" and most other maps tuned for higher levels characters, which will give more viable options for players wanting to run random maps. (We are also working on adding a lot of new patrols to maps, but that's not ready yet).
• Enemies now have access to a stash of items, much like the player does. This is a pretty big change to their possible power, so we'll need to make sure things are tuned properly.
• Lots of AI improvements were made and the AI should be even smarter now, especially around decisions involving buffs/debuffs
• Adding a lot of sounds and visual effects.

Progress Report

In terms of progress this week, other than getting this update ready, we've been working on new maps and spells. We've also started work on the Difficulty Settings option. I think it should be ready next week probably. I know the difficulty settings were further down on our Roadmap, but we've been noticing a lot of feedback about players wanting the game to be easier, or harder, as well as some people struggling with the injury system, so we decided to start on those settings a little earlier. We'll have more information next week, but the basic idea is that the player can select between many different options for injuries, level scaling, enemy power levels, and a few more things. You'll be able to select between presets labeled easy, normal, hard or make your own custom setup by tuning those values as you want. We think it should be pretty awesome :) On the art side, here's one of the new maps we've been working on:
And the final in-game version of that big dragon spell we showcased before:

Change Log

Version 0.3.4 Including notes from hotfixes for clarity.

New Content and features:

• Adding a lot of missing sound effects. The first temple scene specifically has now a lot more sounds going on.
• Updating all songs with final remastered versions. We also updated the volume of all sounds to better match the music. Some volumes might still need tuning from this.
• Adding new spell effects: Pulsar Generator (for real this time!), Blood Trophy, Spearvault, Barbed Blades, Mercurial Dance, Rally Howl, Diamond Form, Rally and updated many others.
• Adding guest characters to many patrols. If they survive the fight, a small AP bonus will be awarded.

Balance:

• Doing more adjustments to map level ranges: story minimum level was raised a bit in general. Patrols got changed so there is more "high level zones" in general. Starter maps (The Crossroads, Timber Roads, Alpine, Gyaum Tor) have their patrol levels kept low so they can be used to level up very low level teams. Other maps in general have higher level ranges.
• Exchanging Vangal and Ercinee passives (Hallowed Body <-> Fortitude).
• Increasing Life Font HP restored from 8 to 10 per step.
• Rebalancing the stats and resistances of most monsters and associated bzil classes. Changes are too numerous to list, but in general: cleaning up resistances and lowering some stats that were too high.
• Changing the Mirage buff to proc only on actions that deal damage (so it will not protect from pure debuff abilities anymore).
• Knight lost Doublehand passive, gained Life Font passive.
• Gunner lost Life Font passive, gained Concentration (formerly Arcane Sight) passive.
• Sorcerer lost Arcane Sight passive, gained Eruptor passive.
• Duelist lost Perfect Focus passive, gained Blood Mark passive.
• Mercenary lost Heavy Blows passive, gained Health Expert (formerly Life Expert) passive.
• Templars gained access to weapon: Scythe.
• Reaver changes: the general idea is that Reavers have good offensive growth and a very versatile ability kit, so they shouldn't have access to the highest damage weapons as well (2H weapons), so they are losing those.
  • Reaver lost Deep Wounds passive and gained Doublehand passive.
  • Reaver lost access to Scythes and Mauls, and gained access to Swords.
• Scoundrel changes: the general idea is to make scoundrel abilities more worthwhile to use in general.
  • Changing Steal GP to also do some damage (0.75 ratio for now).
  • Changing Fleet of Foot to a regular buffs with 3 turns duration, but reduced the bonus to +1 (from +2).
  • Changing Exploit Weakness to act as Heavy Blows (+50% to critical damage).
  • While Steal Items currently remains unchanged, you'll now actually be stealing items that enemies could use, so it should feel more impactful.
• Fellblade changes: the idea is to make the class overall stronger and more interesting. They gained range/height on most abilities and their abilities are now more special, as they count as "regular attacks", which means they use the built-in weapon statuses and elements and benefit from regular-attacks themed passives. They might be a little too strong after this, so we'll monitor.
  • The 4 basic Slices abilities now do Mixed Damage.
  • They now have a range of 2.
  • They now count as regular attacks, which means they can apply weapon effects and work with passives that work on regular attacks.
  • Half of their abilities are Skills and the other half are Spells, so the Fell Blade won't be stopped by Mute or Cripple alone.
  • Their vertical range has been increased to 4, so they are as long as 2H weapons.
  • Health Siphon now does a lot more damage/healing with every debuffs on the target.
  • MP costs have been adjusted upwards in general.
  • Passive Versatile now also has the former effect of Exploit Weakness (on critical hits, some HP and MP is restored).
• Gadgeteer changes: the idea is to make them a little less difficult to unlock and have them be a little more interesting as a main class.
  • Changing requirements to unlock to Scoundrel-4/Wizard-4 (from Gambler-3/Wizard-3).
  • Lost Daggers, gained Maul.
  • Lost Life Expert passive, gained Perfect Focus passive.
  • Increasing Mana Expert passive MP from 10 to 15.
  • Slightly increasing def and speed growths.
• AI will now have access to a list of gadgets based on their level.
• AI will now have access to a list of items based on their level. Stealing items from them will deplete their stocks, etc.
• Scout will now also grant the Crit Up buff to the caster.
• Updating Ercinee AI to make it smarter and less prone to spamming Kamikaze right off the bat. Damage of Kamikaze was also lowered.
• Enemies will now have a chance at using Scout if the player places some traps.
• Made the enemies less likely to use a debuff that the target already has.
• Made various AI improvements. AI should be smarter in general, especially around buffs and debuffs.
• Adjusting the vertical range of most physical abilities that were mistakingly tied to the user's weapon vertical range.
• When "actions that aren't doing anything" are taken (such as healing a character that's already full), there is no EXP granted anymore.
• Cleaning up the Focus buff: won't proc from counter attacks and will proc on damage and heals. Description has been updated.
• Bringing the level of special guest characters "in line with the party" so they can't be abused to earn massive EXP.
• Adding Bandit Gloves as loot to the Banyan story battle.
• Reducing the amount of EXP gained from using Double Cast to compensate for getting 2 actions. The base exp is reduced by 1/2 per action, but the kill bonus is unchanged. This makes double casting "as good as normal" for exp gains for the most part.
• Reducing the cost of sorcerer spells to 24 for basic elements. This should allow them to use a "regular" 6MP attack once in a while to be a bit less 'idle'. Holy And Dark are now at 26 and Non-Elemental at 28.
• Lowering the MP growth and starting MP of several classes. This should make your max MP a little more relevant at earlier/mid levels (not retroactive).
• Adding missing passives to generated enemies list.
• Increasing the damage per debuff of Opportunistic Bullet from 0.3 to 0.5 and lowering base damage from 0.9 to 0.8
• Adding an option to GameOptions.txt to allow the setting of the maximum amount of units the player can field to be changed globally there, rather than just "per encounter" like before.

UI:

• Adjusting rain effect to be a little transparent and adding a small full screen darkening. Looks better :)
• Switching the names of Gamblers Wild Cards so colors are grouped for positive vs negative.
• Updating many tooltips and descriptions throughout the game to be clearer and have more information.
• Updating various tutorial tooltips to have better information.
• After using Double Cast, the Double Cast spell list will come up again rather than the regular list.
• Adding the Enter key as a default 2nd binding for the "confirm button" (so now by default Space and Enter will act as a confirm button). This only applies if you reset your key bindings/install the game for the first time.
• Adding a menu button to the Guild and Shop for faster access.
• Removing "Vsync" from the graphics options. It should really always be set to ON because the game's FPS is often too high. You can still manually change it in the Gameconfig file.
• Adding options to control the worldmap gamepad-cursor speed and the worldmap scrolling speed. Moving the battle map speed into "graphics" from "gameplay".
• Fixing a bug where Root and Bleed would always be part of a help description for abilities, regardless of their use in the ability.
• Adding a version number to the GameConfig.txt file to better reset values that need to be changed due to code updates.
• Resetting most volume values and vsync value in the config.
• Characters with invalid gear will now have that gear unequipped upon loading a save file.
• Improving the information shown in the Item list from the Menu screen to show the usual "full information".
• Fixing various visual issues that arose from allowing the targeting of blocked tiles.
• Showing the cursor "over everything and semi transparent" when using the mouse to select a tile that is visually masked by another tile. Should make it easier to use.
• Changing the layout of the AP rewards screen to show a bit more information.
• Realized the game doesn't show anywhere that Scythes give a bonus to Crit Damage. Now adding to their description.
• Changing equip screen so that a shield can be selected while a 2Hander is equipped. Equipping the shield will remove the 2Hander (much like a 2Hander will remove the shield currently).
• In battle, showing a red cursor rather than a green cursor when it is over a blocked tile.
• On the worldmap, you now have to "stop directly on" optional battle maps to trigger them. This will allow people to "walk past" the graveyard (and other potential optional maps) without triggering the fight.

Bug Fixes:

• Updating the volume of most sound effects to be "correct". This let us update the music volume as well to be closer to that of the SFX, which will result in better quality.
• Fixing issue with Opportunist doing more healing on targets with debuffs.
• Fixing issue where extra weapons sprites would get created upon leaving the menu from combat for some characters.
• Fixing an issue where the "speed up" could get stuck and persist outside of combat.
• Adding some code to make sure the game doesn't spin too fast if vsync is off.
• Enemy peddlers will no longer use a strange version of "Patented Use" that uses no items and does damage.
• Fixing an issue with Turkish locale and consumable items not playing nicely together.
• Fixing an instance where a weapon would show above the water for a swimming unit.
• Fixing an issue where one could revive characters on blocked areas.
• Now correctly hiding visual accessories when wearing a "full hat".
• Fixing issue in the visual customization screen where some layers where not always shown in the correct order for the sprite being customized.
• Fixing the "there is a treasure here" note in combat showing on the Graveyard chest even after it has been opened.
• Removing a stray Mastery star in the top left corner of the class change screen.
• Fixing a bug where Life Font and Mana Font would restore values based on the distance traveled, rather than the amount of steps taken. This should make them a little better than before in general.
• Adding a missing icon for PS4 controller icons (Up-Down Dpad icon).
• Fixing a bug where enemies could go over level 99.
• Fixing an issue where dismissing a character would leave an empty open slot in the menu that could cause various problems (such as eating your characters while manually sorting them).
• Fixing a small volume issue with sounds played at the start of cutscenes.
• Fixing an issue where walking to a tile with a trap and hitting a trap on the way there would trigger both traps instead of only the 1st one.
• Fixing an issue with autosaves that might have caused problems for some users.
• Fixing a softlock when not having any weapons equipped.
• Fixing an issue when entering the menu for some rare users.
• Fixing visual glitch when switching characters in abilities learn/set screens with a very large number of units.

Modding:

• Adding the ability to spawn guests in patrols (faction:player).
• Adding the ability to have enemies give some flat AP bonus if defeated (for enemies) or if kept alive (for guests) (apbonus:).
• Adding a global value to change the maximum amount of units that the player can deploy. This will still be restricted by the size of the zone where allies can be deployed in some maps, but we'll work on updating those as needed.

Hotfixes:

• Fixing issue with a Vangal passive being incorrect.
• Fixing issue with Bzarro unequipping his 'natural weapon' when loading a save file.
• Fixing issue with gear unequipping after loading a game if the gear was only equippable due to a passive.
• Fixing issue with some characters being shown in cutscenes when they shouldn't.
• Fixing issue where Bzil character gear would be unequipped upon loading the game after the patch.
• Fixing issue where AP earned after battles would be 0 after the patch >.<

[ 2018-10-05 21:43:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! This week we released another build, packed with a LOT of QoL changes from community feedback, including the much anticipated option to change the spell animation speed and the walking animation speed. The build has an extensive list of QoL, UI and modding features upgrades and additions! You can view the full change log right here. We’ve started working on the next update and this time we’re focusing on balance. We have lots of changes planned for many human classes, including the Fell Blade, Scoundrel, Sorcerer and Gadgeteer. We also have a huge update pass to the numbers of almost all monster classes to improve on their balance. As you might have seen in the last build, we’ve also been busy adding a lot of new sound effects and new spell visuals. The big spells we showed in recent progress reports are finally done. Here’s what the Demon one looks like in-game:
Otherwise, we're just chugging along, adding more content, more maps and refining the game's cutscenes. We're planning on a big content update on October 12th and we're getting ready for it!

[ 2018-09-28 21:16:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just pushed hotfix 0.3.3a. The big 0.3.3 QoL update introduced a softlock in combat when a character would have "no weapon equipped". This is fixed. Very sorry about that! It's also including a few balancing changes that were started for build 0.3.4.

Change Log

Version 0.3.3a

Balance:

• Reducing the cost of sorcerer spells to 24 for basic elements. This should allow them to use a "regular" 6MP attack once in a while to be a bit less 'idle'. Holy And Dark are now at 26 and Non-Elemental at 28.
• Lowering the MP growth and starting MP of several classes. This should make your max MP a little more relevant at earlier/mid levels (not retroactive).
• Increasing Mana Expert passive MP from 10 to 15.
• Adding missing passives to generated enemies list.
• Increasing the damage per debuff of Opportunistic Bullet from 0.3 to 0.5 and lowering base damage from 0.9 to 0.8.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing an issue with autosaves that might have caused problems for some users.
• Fixing a softlock when not having any weapons equiped.
• Fixing an issue when entering the menu for some rare users.
• Fixing visual glitch when switching characters in abilities learn/set screens with a very large number of units.

[ 2018-09-27 13:38:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're releasing build 0.3.3 today. It's a compilation of fixes and, mainly, a lot of quality of life changes that have been requested by the community. Here are the highlights:

• Adding an option to speed up walking in combat.
• Adding an option to speed up casting animations in combat.
• Exporting Weapons, Armors and Accessories to an XML file. Modders can now add/modify them.
• UI clean up, including new tutorials, better tooltips, showing the source of the damage for abilities (ATK, MND, etc.), etc.
• Making AOE targeting able to target a "blocked area" in combat (like a rock for example) to make things simpler and less frustrating. Also hiding the target AoE area when targeting if it's not within the "allowed range", to help with clarity.
• Adding a lot of new spell visuals and new sounds.

Change Log

Version 0.3.3 Including notes from hotfixes for clarity.

New Content and features:

• Adding an "ability speed" setting in the gameplay options. This will allow abilities to play significantly faster.
• Adding a "walking speed" setting in the gameplay options. Similar to "ability speed", but for the walking phase in combat.
• Adding a setting to speed up the sound to match the "ability speed-up" (if it's sped up at all). This makes the sound higher pitched, but has tighter timings (off by default).
• Exporting Weapons, Armors and Accessories to an XML file. Modders can now add/modify them (those are/go in the same location as the Abilities.xml file).
• Adding a new option to Gameplay called "Gamepad Fix". If you're running into issues with your gamepad (or are using an Xbox One gamepad), this might help out. Otherwise, if everything is working already, you should leave it be.
• Updating various cutscenes with small added details.
• Adding a fair amount of new sounds effects and preparing to create another big wave of them.
• Adding new spell effects: Silverhorn, Coalesce, Demon, Dragon, Firescourge, Forest Flute, Pulsar Generator, Autohealer-3000, Healing Burst, Holy Locus, Holy I, Holy II, Poison Burst and Zohl Heal.

Balance:

• Starting Bzaro with more learned abilities for his unlocked classes and a little more partial progression on some more classes (this is not retroactive).
• Adding MP bonus to maces and HP bonus to Mauls. This was always supposed to be there but was missing from the data files. These changes might make those weapons stronger than they should be (especially the Mauls), so we'll have to keep an eye on them and adjust as needed.

UI:

• Speeding up showing the Poison, Bleed, Regen, etc. numbers at the end of the turn.
• Cleaning up the worldmap navigation with mouse/kb a bit, especially when using "pan map".
• Updating "range" field for skills. When a skill uses the weapon range, but not the weapon vertical range (only a small amount of skills behave this way), the information displayed wasn't clear.
• Adding a tutorial about "info box pages" during the Gyaum Tor story battle.
• Adding a tutorial message in the crossroads for players using a small resolution, to let them know about switching on/off pixel-perfect visuals and show more of the map.
• Updating the description of all abilities to include the source of the damage (ATK, MND, ATK+MND).
• Updating a few abilities that were missing the description of their associated buff.
• Various small updates to the character visual customization screen so colors aren't reset as often when changing things around, specifically, when changing gender.
• Updated damage prediction box to zero out the status effect of the 2nd weapon when dual wielding if the user is out of range for the 2nd weapon attack.
• Updating the name of a few abilities.
• Adding a star over the classes in the Class Change menu if the character has mastered it already.
• Adding the game name of all maps to the Encounters.txt file so it's easier for modders to match them.
• Hiding the "red area tiles" when targeting if the cursor is outside the "possible zone (blue tiles)" to help make things easier to understand.
• Now allowing the targeting of "blocked tiles" when casting AoE spells. So, if a rock is creating a "blocked area", you could still target that area (assuming the heights are ok) to get the AoE damage on adjacent tiles.
• Showing "type: counter/passive" for those types of abilities in their description box to increase clarity.
• When switching classes, the game will now try to use your former main class/passives to fill up your subclass/passives if those would now be 'empty'.
• Cleaning up the "passives and counter" page in the character information box to be in the correct order and work better with right-stick selection.
• Adding a Simplified Chinese font to the available game fonts and updating the language system to allow modders to reference it.
• Increasing the internal max amount of units from 10 to 16 for the player. This means that modders can make/tweak maps that will allow for 16 user units. No max on enemies.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing an issue with Turkish locale.
• Fixing an issue that gave higher chance to land a status effect when the caster was lower level than the target.
• Fixing various small issues that made the game less stable.
• Adding more information to error logs to help diagnose errors more easily and fixing an issue with errors during initial loading of the game not always showing in the log. Also adding more logging for mod support.
• Fixing a bug in the UI when selecting "Cancel" after trying to change resolution.
• Fixing an issue with selling "the last items of the last category".
• Fixing issue with patrol levels not being correct after clearing the very last map of the current build.
• Preventing enemies to be generated with a gender that clashes with their selected class (for the rare classes that have a gender restriction).
• Fixing issue with Bat Swarm showing a floating weapon when used to go onto a water tile.
• Fixing an issue with Focus ability when used by Blargers/Bzils.
• Fixing visual glitches with many of the gadgets.
• Fixed Arpia ability "Opportunist" not working as intended.
• Fixing the sleep status (and some other statuses) persisting through cutscenes.
• Fixing an issue where most badges entries as "rare loot" had some typos. The "rare" badge drops should be less rare now.
• Fixing a bug with Blood Mark that made its damage grow to terrifying heights for the AI.
• Fixed a leak when browsing the class menu back and forth over Kyrie.
• Fixing issue with Impetus's bonus only affecting distant turns in the future rather than apply immediately as intended.
• Fixing a leak when switching resolution or language.
• Fixing an issue where the dialogues file wouldn't be reloaded with the translation when switching language until the game was restarted.

[ 2018-09-26 14:09:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another big week for us. We put out another Early Access build this week, in part to fix an issue for Turkish users and to get a few new features out, the biggest one being a fan request for a system to reset your character to level 1, so you can redo their stats growth if you’re agonizing over previous choices. It’s definitely not something that’ll be required in the normal game flow for most players, but there was a high enthusiasm for the feature from the Community, so we brought it in. :) For the rest of the week, we’ve been working on more improvements from fan feedback, including a system to speed up spell effects in combat, some UI polish and improvements and adding new sound effects. I expect we’ll have another build out next week with these new features and improvements.

Art Side

On the art front, our artist just posted a small tutorial about our animation workflow process when creating monster sprites. It has a lot information and a lot of nifty images too! If you're interested in Pixel Art, you might want to give it a look. You can check it out right here! And we have another spell for the secret class we mentioned last week, although it’s not quite finished yet:
We’ve also just finished the sketch for our next map, a dark and foreboding tomb area (well, it’ll be dark and foreboding when it’s complete!):
And lastly, we started work on the final boss sprite. It’s looking pretty cool! We’ll share a spoiler free version of it when it has a little more details done! :)

[ 2018-09-21 21:15:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just released 0.3.1 a few days ago, so it's a bit early for a new build, but we've been adding many fixes and it seemed appropriate not to hoard them for ourselves!

Highlighs

Most of the changes we're adding were suggested by the community. Here are some of the highlights:

• Adding a system to "Reset a character's level to level 1", by popular request. Head to the guild and hit the "Reset Level" option. For a fee, your level will be reset to level 1.
• Updating 'buffs' descriptions to include the help text tied to the buff that is granted.
• Lowering the cost of Bzil skill tree abilities significantly. Will keep monitoring this to see if more adjustments are needed.
• Changing equip UI so a 2H can be selected while a shield is equipped. The 2H will be equipped and the shield unequipped automatically.
• Slightly lowering the power of sniper shot and making Sniper Shot and Assassinate acquired by enemies at a later level than other abilities of the same tier.

Changelog

Version 0.3.2 Including notes from hotfixes 0.3.1b and 0.3.1c, for clarity.

New Content and features:

• Adding ambient pops to a few more maps.
• Adding a system to "Reset a character's level to level 1", by popular request. Head to the guild and hit the "Reset Level" option. For a fee, your level will be reset to level 1.

Balance:

• Changing the way Elemental Mastery calculates its values. It should be more consistent in general and a little stronger.
• Changed the caps for elemental resistances. Enemies with very low resistances should take quite a bit more damage from the right element now.
• Updating level caps for story encounters and patrols, generally raising them a little bit.
• AI won't try to Collect Bounty/Pelt a target if it won't kill the target.
• Reducing chances of enemies using Gold Steal a little more.
• Enemy healers with charm will no longer try to remove charm from themselves specifically (they will still try to Panacea themselves from other conditions and might thus remove charm as collateral-removal).
• Increasing a bit chances of healers trying something different than healing as their first choice.
• Swapping Scout and Collect Pelt around on the Ranger skill tree.
• Changing gambler damage ability to do "target current-hp - 1" damage to the target on "critical success", with a min/max value, rather than 500, 200 and 100 as previously.
• Lowering the starting AP of recruits from 60% to 50% of "max average AP of 6 highest AP characters."
• Slightly lowering the power of sniper shot.
• Making Sniper Shot and Assassinate acquired by enemies at a later level than other abilities of the same tier.
• Lowering the cost of Bzil skill tree abilities significantly. Will keep monitoring this to see if more adjustments are needed.

UI:

• Changing equip UI so a 2H can be selected while a shield is equipped. The 2H will be equipped and the shield unequipped automatically.
• Reworking Mystic Shield, Smart Casting, and other descriptions.
• Changing Execute to only apply to offensive abilities. Also lowering the damage bonus from 50% to 40% for now.
• Reordered the weapon categories in stores/menus to group similar things better.
• Updating 'buffs' descriptions to include the help text tied to the buff that is granted.

Bug Fixes:

• Changing the way we read config files to force UTF-8 rather than "default user locale", as it seems it can cause issues with languages using completely different alphabets.
• In a hotfix, we reverted our changes to the "dimming the music" system we added last patch. The system was an improvement, but it surfaced a Unity engine bug that can crash the game. We sent a bug report and hope they will fix the issue. We'll restore the "cleaner music volume dimming" afterwards.
• Fixing an issue when switching resolution from the menu.
• Fixing a leak from accessing options from the Title Screen.
• Fixing a bug when pressing keys while the menu is opening from the battle placement screen.
• Fixing various typos in abilities, weapons, etc.
• Fixing a leak from accessing options from the Title Screen.
• Fixing a bug where items could be used with doublecasting under specific circumstances.
• Fixing many (fairly benign) internal exceptions.
• Fixing an issue that gave a lot more mvp points than intended when attacking an enemy.

[ 2018-09-18 21:22:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've just released our first content update! We're adding 4 new story encounters, 1 new patrol and a brand new boss battle. We're also adding a slew of new features and improvements, most of which came directly from user feedback from the Steam community. A big Thank You! to everyone who took time to send us their feedback and suggestions! Some highlights include:

• A rework of the Druid and Plague Doctor skill trees.
• Adding a second set of Keys for keyboard mapping.
• Redoing the way the sound volume 'ducks' during spell casting.
• Adding a count of chests/gatherable available on the map, shown on Patrol nodes.
• A lot of balance tweaks.

The full patch notes are at the end of this post. We also realized we haven't yet posted our Early Access Roadmap, so that will come later today on the forums! edit: Hotfix 0.3.1a just went out. We're fixing a few quick minor issues there were found by users and, more importantly, removing some of the changes we made to the gamepad system, as many users have reported that their gamepads weren't being recognized anymore. Let us know if it resolved it! :)

Weekly Progress Report

We've mostly been working on getting the newest build ready this week, so: bug fixing, testing, wrapping up new systems, etc. We added a 2nd set of Key mappings for Keyboard/Mouse users, redid the way the gamepad/keyboard system works (you can now switch input sources on the fly), added new individual volume sliders for UI/Ambient sounds and redid the way the music dims during spell effects to be a lot smoother. We wrapped up a new system to show treasures/gatherables available on a map. Here's how it looks:
Our artist has been working on a new map, new spells and on adding visual customizations to the Bzil races w/r to which class they are using. Something like so:
Lastly, we have a secret class in the works that should be available fairly soon. Their spells will be quite impressive! Here's what you can expect from them:
Update 0.3.1 Full Notes

New Content and features:

• Adding 4 story battles, including a big boss fight and 1 patrol battle.
• Adding treasure opened/max and gatherables to Patrol nodes information on the world map.
• Adding visuals for Night Embrace, Thrown Dagger, Charge, Electroconstrictor, Alicorn.
• Adding a new option to the character customization to force use the default outfit for the class (similar to the class hat behavior).
• Adding a button to use "default looks" when customizing a character's looks. It will use the default hat, outfit and color but retain other selections.
• Adding support for other languages. The game still only has English built-in (until release, where we'll have a lot more languages), but fans can now create new languages instead of simply replacing English.
• Adding a new effect for maps: heavy rains. A few maps will use the effect randomly.
• Updated many dialogues from community feedback, to make them clearer.
• Updated most dialogues from "Yate's Cabin" story events. We'll be collaborating with a writer named Scott Hamm when it comes time for our final polish phase, and this is a preview of what his help will bring to the game.
• Adding a 2nd set of key bindings and changing default bindings.
• Updating Unity version. Should be transparent to users.

Balance:

• Significantly changing Druid and Plague Doctor skill trees from feedback from the community and, especially, from Starsinger (thanks a lot for the awesome ideas!).
• Moving Insight to Alchemystic.
• Changed Reiner's starter class to Scoundrel.
• Changing MVP AP bonus from 25% to 35%.
• Applying various changes to the MVP formula to make it a little more likely to trigger.
• Reducing the MP gain of Boon from 20% to 12%.
• Adding Scoundrel 4 to Reaver requirements.
• Increasing MP cost of Poison from 4 to 6.
• Increasing difficulty of the Restful Stones encounter by increasing the minimum enemy level from 12 to 14.
• Updating the patrols min and max levels of many maps (especially early maps as the story progresses).
• Updating default patrol ranges for maps without information, to better match other values.
• Lowering gold gains from battle rewards a little bit.
• Updating the passives of many monsters and any Bzil that might use them.
• Updating "dodge type counters" and "counters that don't buff self" to not trigger when the user has sleep on them.
• Counter Critical Mirage will not activate if the target already has mirage on before the attack.
• Items will no longer bypass all counters.
• Lowering Evasion passive from 25% to 20% for real (it was previous lowered to 20%, but a bug kept the value to 25% anyways).
• Changing Sorcerer's spells to hit "all enemies" rather than "all targets". This will remove their perpetual need for Smart Casting (and prevent possibly overpowered heal+dmg all builds).

UI:

• Adding an error message when trying to equip a passive/counter while not knowing any, to make it clearer one could be equipped at a later time.
• Adding volume control for UI and Ambient sounds. Changing default music volume value. Adding 'default' setting to options. Resetting previous settings.
• Redoing a lot of the internal works of the sound engine. When the music gets dimmed during abilities, it should feel a lot smoother than before.
• Adding an error message upon starting the game if there was a problem parsing the custom data.
• Adding an error message upon starting the game if there was some weird critical errors with reading/writing config data.
• Renaming Slow to Mass Slow to be more consistent. Renaming "Counter" to "Counterattack" so it's less confusing with "counter abilities".
• Making selecting a class sprite in the class selection menu easier with the mouse.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing an issue with many tunable values being read incorrectly and having a much higher 'minimum possible value' than intended.
• Fixed a bug where the "You have AP to spend" arrows in the menu would show in weird locations on resolutions below 1080.
• Fixing "you have AP to spend" arrows being misplaced with a very large army in the menus.
• Fixing Know Weakness II's description displaying the wrong %.
• Fixing a few more small issues with some gamepads.
• Changing the way gamepads, KB/Mouse are handled in game. Now, whichever the last output that was used (KB or Gamepad) will dictate which icons are shown. The mouse will need a KB/Mouse press to be shown again if the last input was a gamepad.
• Fixing 'reset key bindings' not working correctly in the key remapping menu.
• Fixing issue where the world map would use the "pixel perfect" setting for battles if it was changed from the world map.
• Changing default value for "pixel perfect battle" to YES.
• Fixing a crash when using debug option to show enemy traps with maps that start with pre-created traps.
• Fixing a visual glitch when accessing the Class Change menu with a very large army.
• Fixing issues when using Dual Wielding passive with Focused Rage passive.
• Fixing a rare issue with some spells acting weirdly.
• Fixing missing icons on key remapping menu and in some other menus.
• Fixing missing title in key remapping menu.
• Fixing a bug where Flash Strike would not correctly bypass Mystic Shield.
• Fixing bug where AI would use the wrong range for attacks after using a "teleport tile".
• Fixing an issue with reading text files saved using a different encoding than UTF8.
• Fixing various issues with Patented Usage.
• Fixing an issue with Bzaro's class information about flying/floating not being shown correctly on the 'top information box' in the class selection menu.
• Fixing an issue where Bzaro could equip the same passive 2x under special circumstances.
• Fixing an issue where badges names would become 'visible' in the crafting menu even before you discovered them. The fix is not retroactive though: if your badges are 'discovered' on your save file, they will remain so after the fix. But the issue won't happen in a fresh game.
• Fixing issue with Critical Counters not updating the timebar visually immediately after activating, as well as counter haste not removing slow correctly.
• Fixing an issue where Guest characters could get an MVP. Really, they should never be MVPs to begin with but... just in case?
• Fixing a leak while using the class change screen.
• Fixing issue with LT/RT buttons targeting an invisible enemy in combat if there are no enemies left.
• Fixing issue with Sunder applying when it shouldn't.
• Fixing bug where Thorns would counter "GP Stolen".
• Fixing issue with the trap-icon showing on top of everything else after the trap is placed.

[ 2018-09-14 19:16:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week was very busy for us, as we wasted no time getting back to work after our return from Gamescom. We released our very first Early Access update. It's not yet the awaited big content update, but it was a big one nonetheless, with a lot of fixes and improvements from the community feedback. The full notes can be found right here. We've been focusing on new content this week, with new battles and cutscenes in the works. We've also been adding new spells and a new map:
And we also added an extra hat and accessory to the character customization options. Those were Social Rewards voted on by our Kickstarter backers a bit ago. Here's what they look like in practice:
The monocle also has a bunch of different colors.

[ 2018-09-07 21:35:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some of the stats balance changes (assassin, reaver mainly) in the patch notes had somehow not been exported to the build. This hotfix adds them correctly.

[ 2018-09-06 12:16:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, This update is mostly a Patch. It is fixing a lot of bug found by the community and integrating some of the feedback we've been gathering from the forums. The patch notes are a little long as we were initially planning on only releasing a 'big update' once a month, with new content, fixes, etc, all bundled into one. But after some thought, we decided we'd try to release our fixes faster, while still keeping the monthly "big update". So, the next "big update" should be coming fairly soon and will have new story/map content. Here are the highlights of the build:

UI Improvements

Mouse Improvements: We're adding a new system to allow the player to select overlapping tiles with the mouse: hovering over the tile space will switch the between the possible tiles every second or so. "Zoom" improvement for resolutions lower than 1050: Adding a new graphic config option to select between "pixel perfect" or "proper map zooming" for resolutions lower than 1050. Default is now "proper map zooming" (whereas before it was "Pixel Perfect"). This isn't a zooming option, but it should enable people with a resolution lower than 1050 to see the correct amount of map. Our current feedback notes indicate the vast majority of people that wanted to "zoom out the view" were using a lower resolution that resulted in a very "zoomed in" view to begin with. We'll be monitoring feedback to see if that does the trick or if more love is required on that front!

Balance

Weapons in general, and most notably Daggers, have had their vertical attack range tweaked. Reavers and Assassins stats were lowered a bit. Patch Notes:

UI and visuals:

• Adding a new system to allow the player to select overlapping tiles with the mouse: hovering over the tile space will switch the selected tile every 1 seconds.
• When using the KB to select an entry on an information page (such as a skill), moving the mouse will no longer "deselect" the entry.
• Adding a new graphic config option to select between "pixel perfect" or "proper map zooming" for resolutions lower than 1050vertical. Default is "proper map zooming".
• Adding the ability to delete save files from the save/load menus.
• Updating/adding visuals of many spells. New spells include: Rend, Blood Nova, Fetid Breath, Fellburst, Polestar, Howl and a few more.
• Updating various items/abilities descriptions that were a confusing or misleading.
• Adding owned count next to the item that's being crafted.
• When in combat, showing the information of a new character will always start them on information page 1 by default. Adding a new option to turn this on/off.
• Adding a new hat and a new accessory to the visual customization of characters.
• Adding a lot of names to name pools.

Balance:

• Increasing the vertical range of daggers from 1 to 2. Spear from 4 to 5. Staves from 2 to 3. Rapiers from 2 to 3.
• Increasing the MND value of all rapiers by 50% of more.
• Lowering Reavers' HP and speed growth just a little.
• Lowering Assassin's ATK growth just a little and SPD just a little. Raised HP/MP a little.
• Lowering Reaver's Primal Wave and Primal blow dmg.
• Reducing Pektites MND score by about 15%
• Doubling the boost from scartissue on tangrels.
• Changed Quicken so that it can't be self targeted. We're leaving it as it is otherwise for now, but the next step will be to prevent it from working with Double Cast if it looks like it's a problem still.
• Increasing healing for all Revive abilities/items a little bit.
• Reducing the AI chance to use Steal GP significantly.
• Reducing difficulty level in Timber Roads to compensate for Rogues being more aggressive.
• Making "Mystic Shield" spawn at a later level on enemies.
• When generating enemies class/subclass, the game will now check for a "maximum healers" count from the gameoptions.txt file. It won't generate healing classes if the maximum is reached.
• Adding extra DEF to most shields to make them a little more attractive.
• Bumping Stunning Strike turn reduction up to 0.6 from 0.5.
• Lowering Soul Suck MP cost from 10 to 4. It was never meant to be 10 in the first place.
• Lowering Defensive Hit damage from 1x to 0.95x

Bug Fixes

• Fixing "time played" in save file description not showing hours played passed 24 hours.
• Fixing autosaves not rotating as well as they should after using Continue with an autosave as the last save.
• Fixing a crash when quitting to title from the debug menu.
• Fixing issue where disabled options could still be selected with the mouse in the recruit/customize menu in the Guild.
• Fixing a bug with Scar Tissue and Auto-Rebirth not reseting correctly for Bzaro at the start of a new battle.
• Fixing issue with "ability can be learned" arrows remaining after dismissing a party member from the menu (and other circumstances).
• Fixing issue with Charge ability preventing the enemy from being targeted when used "point blank".
• Fixing various issues when leaving the buy/sell menu by mashing the "leave button".
• Fixing issue with certain users not being able to launch the game and ending on a "victory" screen. The game will now start correctly, although the error will be a concern (ie, unable to write to the save folder due to various reasons, such as no more space or permissions, etc).
• Fixing Heavy Hit having 100% accuracy always. This fix should have fixed other abilities that shouldn't have had 100% as well.
• Fixing bug where player didn't get EXP from putting a trap down (and enemies got some). Now everyone gets EXP.
• Fixing a "special class" abilities not correctly draining HP/MP as indicated and their special "added damage" not triggering when expected.
• Fixing missing frames on tangrel/bzil when using Defensive Hit.
• Some abilities description would show a status effect that wasn't listed with the 'help key'. Fixed.
• Fixing a potential "weird autosave file" issue when skipping chained cutscenes.
• Fixing issue where "Equip All" passive only affected armors and not weapons.
• Fixing a bug where 2 specific maps were saving their treasure chests information oddly. This fix will result in those chests being available again this one time.
• Fixing various issues with the gamepad input system. If you were having a problem with a gamepad, it might have fixed it :)
• Fixing bug where one could use open/gather from a location that "wrapped around the sides of the map".
• Adding prefetching of Sounds for spells, which should help prevent any slowdowns during spell playing.

[ 2018-09-05 14:55:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're finally back from Gamescom! Now that we're back, we should get more active on the forums again. We didn't have a very good access to the internet during our trip >.<

Progress Report

There isn't as much as usual to report, as we ended up spending about 2 weeks in Germany. We got back home early on Friday and spent the rest of the day catching up on the Steam Forums and fixing bugs from the Bugs report section. For the coming weeks, our plan is to focus on the first Early Access update, which should be out mid September. It'll have more story encounters, bug fixes and updates from the community feedback we've gathered so far. On that note, we'd like to thank everyone for the great feedback we've been getting on the forums. We sincerely hope you guys will keep it coming, as it's been immensely useful! :) We'll resume our regular progress reports next week, as we should have a lot more to show then!

Gamescom Pics

For anyone interested, here are some pictures from our Gamescom booth, which was within the 1C Media Booth section.
A big poster of Fell Seal from outside the 1C Booth.
Our general setup within the booth. We met with a lot of press/streamers/journalists and the reception was great! We gathered a bunch of feedback/notes from the event as well, which we'll be integrating soon.
Up-close view from one of our demo stations. Our publisher brought some Fell Seal energy drinks, which made for awesome swag!
A Fell Seal t-shirt we had made for Gamescom. Those were surprisingly popular with the press. Our color scheme was liked a lot we were told! :)

[ 2018-09-01 15:02:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi guys, we will be attending Gamescom this year and we would love to see you there. We can play the game, chat and maybe take a selfie together? We also have a lot of swag ready for you guys so don’t be a stranger :) You can find us at Hall 10.1., booth D92!

And now, for this week's dev log:

We spent most of the week preparing for our Early Access launch, by adding polish to the game and fixing last minute bugs. It's been a very busy week indeed! On the programming side, other than getting everything ready for the EA, I've wrapped up our next story map events and fixed a few issues that were found from thoroughly testing our worm boss battle. That one is now truly and fully finished at last (it took at least a full week to get the custom AI, custom abilities and special visuals just right!). Here's what it looks like:
Otherwise, our artist has been working mostly on polish as well, but we do have a few new spells to show this week, mostly focusing on weapon skills:

We most likely won't be putting up a devlog next week as we'll be at Gamescom, but we'll gather some pictures of the events for the next update! Thanks again for the support!

[ 2018-08-17 17:44:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi guys, it is finally happening! After your support through our Kickstarter campaign and months of hard work we are ready to start a new chapter in the development of Fell Seal! Early Access! Ever since our Kickstarter, we've had solid lines of communication with you guys and your comments/suggestions have been invaluable to us. That feedback and communication is the main reason we're here in Early Access after all! Our official position is always to try to answer all fan inquiries and comments, wherever they are posted. That being said, with all the various social platforms out there, it's easy to miss some. So, we're going to focus our efforts and attention in one main location primarily, which is going to be the Steam forums. Thus, we'd like to encourage everyone to post their comments and feedback right here, on Steam. We'll be able to get to it more easily and quickly, and it should foster more conversation, which ultimately should lead to even better feedback and suggestions and thus, to a better Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark! The EA version is in a great state currently and pretty much all of the games systems and mechanics are already in place. There are 21 Story encounters in the current version and around 30 optional non-story encounters. There are over 25 playable classes, 200 abilities and a crafting system. We have the ability for players to use custom portraits, to mod the game to add abilities, classes, languages and even customize core systems via a simple (but very large) customization file. If we're looking at what's missing, it would be more story battles, about 50% of the sound effects, a Hard Mode and optional story-characters events. And, of course, your feedback! The above systems are all created and in game, but we're very eager to get your feedback to tune and improve them! With all that being said, the most important thing in the end is that you enjoy the game :) With regards, 6 Eyes Studio and 1C Company

[ 2018-08-16 16:01:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've been running a devlog on our website for a bit now and we're already up to weekly update 54! We recently had a fan discover our site through our Steam page and mention they felt a little sad they'd been missing out on all our devlogs previously and suggested we bring them to Steam as well. Thus, starting this week, we'll be bringing our weekly devlog to Steam to showcase the progress we're making every week on Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark.

Progress Report:

We're still hard at work adding polish to the current build. We've been adding ambient sprites and sounds to most maps, updating items, maps and classes descriptions, fine tuning abilities and revamping dialogues. It's really shaping up! We've also added a new UI element to our main menu, which puts an icon next to any character that has enough banked AP to purchase new abilities. The quick visual indicator should cut down on the amount of menu-ing the player has to do in between battles to make sure their troops are "up-to-date". It's a small addition, but we think the quality-of-life improvement it brings is actually pretty awesome. We're also wrapping up the last of the secret classes and we expect to be done with those come the week-end. It will bring our playable classes to: 20 normal classes, 6 secret classes and 4 story classes, for a grand total of 30. That's a lot of classes!

Now, unto the new and exciting art!

We have another new map ready. A good old-fashioned "arena" map. Really, one can't have a proper RPG without one of those I say!
And we already have our next map in the works, in the form of a basic sketch. Here's the general looks of it:
And finally, we have some new story characters completed. I think they look absolutely great!

Hmmm, yes. Not ominous in the slightest, friend. And once again, a big thank you to our Discord community for their continued incredible feedback and support! You guys really rock! :)

[ 2018-08-10 21:12:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just released the next Beta Backer Build. This one is a little different in that there is no added maps this month. We've been focusing solely on new assets, polish and balance. The highlights are:

• Lots of added sound effects.
• Redid crafting, crafting components, stores, treasures, loot, steal tables, poach tables.
• Added a lot of small animated props to most maps to make them more lively.

Here are the full details: Version 0.2.7

New Content:

• Adding a lot of new sound effects to the game. We're just getting started!
• Redid the items list of all stores, from the very start of the game. Balance should be better. "Shoes" accessories have been removed from early stores and are now primarily crafted (or purchased later).
• Created proper crafting ingredients and crafting recipes.
• Created the content of all chests and created proper drops for all maps and enemies.
• To go with the above, resetting all treasure chests (so they are all flagged as not obtained yet and you can get them again).
• Created proper StealTable and PoachTable for all game content.
• Adding a bunch of ambient props and effects to maps. Everything should look more lively now :)
• Adding parallax effect to the BG of many maps.
• Adding proper merchant sprites and portraits to stores.

Updates:

• A great many tweaks left and right. A big thank you to our Discord community for the feedback!
• Fixed a hack in our main shader on OpenGL/Metal based setups. Should increase performance, but realistically, probably won't be noticeable. Still, if anything is weird on Mac or Linux, please let us know!
• Updating save default slot to favor the last slot used (saved or loaded) rather than 'last loaded'.
• Removing chest tutorials in first forest map if player has tutorials disabled.
• Changing poaching so it replaces the potential regular drop, rather than add to it.
• Adding a lot more options/flexibility to poaching/stealing tables.
• Rebalanced many items as part of the crafting/components update.
• Lowering Warmage Burst abilities damage a bit (1.25x to 1.15x).
• Made Highlands encounter easier by lowering the level of enemies by 1 and increasing the level of a guest by 2.
• Updated patrols descriptions.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing thorns on target still doing damage even if target is dead.
• Fixing absorption numbers showing over the target rather than the caster if the target is punted into water and dies.
• Removing the floating status on characters during cutscenes.
• Fixing issue where weapons were drawn under the main cursor on the battle map.
• Fixing many entries in encounters.txt having a typo that prevented patrols from having the correct level range.
• Enabling patrols on Oldebzar map, as was intended.
• Fixing help tooltips about buffs displaying the wrong one for affinity buffs.
• Fixing visual issue when teleporting on water without the 'floating' status.
• Fixing an issue with flying/teleporting units that broke their pathfinding if they were too far from anyone.
• Fixed teleport/displacement actions sometimes giving 2x EXP to the caster.
• Fixing the vangals in Ekhidna Falls spawning on hills of which they can't escape. They are meant to be a different enemy.
• Fixing help tooltips being displayed at a weird location for many resolutions other than 1080.
• Fixing information popups being really small in resolutions higher than 1080.
• Fixing bug with Heal I spell sometimes using Mass Heal I selection.
• Fixing rare issue with some lists being incorrect in resolutions higher than 1080.
• Fixing projectiles having wrong starting and ending point in higher resolutions than 1080.
• Fixing map scrolling too fast at higher resolutions than 1080.
• Fixing issue where some spells would act weirdly when used with Infused Edge.
• Fixing issue with Gadgets not showing as "acquired" in the menus (but still working in combat).
• Fixed an issue with equipped items duplicating for story characters joining your ranks.
• Many other small fixes.

[ 2018-08-02 17:39:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Latest beta build is out! Quick highlights: - The Bzil race has been added to the game, including a recruitable character. - 3 new story maps - 5 new patrols - New recruits now start with some AP already. Here are the detailed notes: Version 0.2.6

New Content:

• Adding the Bzil race to the game (player usable).
• Adding 3 new story battles.
• Adding 5 new patrol battles.
• Adding new shops.
• Adding starting AP to 'new recruits', based on the amount of AP the 6 characters with the most AP have.
• Adding new monsters to the game.
• Adding color variations to the beards/new hair styles that were added last build.
• Tweaking beards/hairs to remove layering oddities that were happening.
• Adding system for a new map objective: reach the safe area within the turn limit.
• Adding icons for Xbox One, Ps4 and Steam controllers. The game should show the correct one depending on your used controller. Using any other controller will show Xbox360 icons.

Updates:

• Lowering Forceful Strike damage from 0.95 to 0.85
• Lowering the amount the timebar starts filled at when you take no action during a turn from 25% to 20%
• Changing sandpits teleportation behavior to be 'instant' rather than at the end of the turn.
• Updating Vicarious bonus so it only applies to non-story/non-special classes.
• Updating various monsters abilities to their correct version (rather than place holders) in terms of game mechanics. They still need their visuals created.
• Lowering Blind Powder damage to 0.6 (from 0.8). Lowering Sleeping Powder damage to 0.5 (from 0.6).
• Changing gunner Blinding Bullet to Slowing Bullet.
• Updated Oasis cutscene to add fires left and right to highlight things are wrong.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixing KB/mouse issues with selecting different pages in the gear select screen (and some other screens).
• Fixing bug where "One for All" would trigger for all attacks, rather than only 'single target' attacks.
• Fixing a nasty bug with Arpia's Skyjack that was introduced last build where it fails to check for terrain correctly when deciding where to drop target.
• Fixed an issue with worldmap pathfinding where search could be very long, when it shouldn't. Also fixed an issue where paths not yet available would still be used if faster than the current path.
• Preventing summoned enemies (zombies, etc) from being raisable in combat after they die.
• Fixing a bug where when Dual Wielding a 2nd weapon with shorter range than the first would make the 2nd weapon have the same range under special circumstances.
• Fix bug where cutscene actors dual wielding would start combat with both weapons shown after a cutscene.
• Fixing some issues with gamepad icons when using more than 2 controllers at once.
• Anadine's "punt" move should now correctly punt.
• Fixing a bug where an enemy portrait could be shown when receiving loot from killing an enemy.
• Fixing small visual oddities with some spells when receiving loot.
• Fixing an issue that prevented some spells to show up in the doublecast list.
• Fixed an issue where flying enemy could land on "blocked terrain" if their wanted destination was already covered by another unit.

[ 2018-07-01 19:39:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just updated our beta build! We're adding 4 new story battles, 4 patrol battles and a lot of new spells and various additions. We have a brand new world map and new customization options for characters (mainly, beards, but also new hats and such). There's also a wiki created for the game, where game mechanics and such should eventually all be explained in detail: https://fellseal.gamepedia.com/Fell_Seal:_Arbiter%27s_Mark_Wiki Here are the full notes for this release: Version 0.2.5

New Content:

• Adding 4 new story battles.
• Adding a story battle before the 2nd temple fight (which was the previous end of the demo). Savefiles will automatically have their progress moved to right before this battle.
• Adding 4 new patrol battles.
• Removed the old temporary world map and using the real world map. It's much bigger and looks a lot better!
• Adding spell effects for 9 gadgets and 9 new spells.
• Adding a large contingent of beards for male characters. There might be a few issue with beard layering right now, but we'll get it fixed asap.
• Adding "Infused Edge" to AI possible actions.
• Adding a new mouse cursor graphic.
• Adding code to support "happens next turn" abilities, including mortar shots from the giant turret demon, the Aeoth.
• Adding code to prevent generated cutscene actors to spawn with certain outfits/hats (mainly, special stuff).
• Adding new ability shape: 'charge'. A charge will move the attacker right next to its target, regardless of distance, as long as there is a clear path to it.
• Adding new buff "adaptive aegis", which protects the user from the last element they were attacked with by increasing their elemental resistance to it.
• Adding multiple new enemies, including: Helhund, Bzzerk, Niwot and advanced forms of existing monsters.

Bug Fixes:

• "Weird sprites" visuals that were happening on Mac should now be gone. Let us know if you spot anything weird!
• Adding missing passives to Anatomist skill tree.
• Many small bug fixes.
• Pektites did not spawn with the correct stats (high RES, low DEF) before. Also lowered their speed.
• Added story classes to class lists (melee, mages, etc) so the AI recognizes them properly.
• Some Sorcerer portraits weren't showing on NPCs. Fixed.
• Fixing descriptions in the Ability-Setup menu so they trigger the help screen correctly.
• Fixing Counters description so they correctly trigger the help screen.
• The battle cursor duplicating at times during battles should be fixed.
• Fixed some (rare) spell visuals where effects where shown over targets when they should have been under.
• Only showing 'counter debuff spell animation' if a debuff was applied (this was always intended, but a check was missing).

Updates:

• Revamping Highlands map and removing a part of the map that was confusing.
• Changed the way the shadows behave while jumping. Looks much better now.
• Added new knobs to maps information to prevent characters from being shown over/under some terrain when they shouldn't.
• Updated the directions characters "get out of the way" when allies "walk over their tile" as there were oddities in there.
• Changed visuals for Defend skill.
• Changed Thunder 1 to new spell visuals.
• Redid most tutorials and added a few ones.
• Changed the camera position during spells to show the target better.
• Changed damage predictions to account for "bonus punt damage" on the main target where applicable. The secondary target still isn't shown since it isn't part of the "regular ability range".
• Changing Poison spell damage from 0.8 to 0.9
• Lowering Marked abilities damage from 1.0 to 0.95 for "hybrid damage" spells, as well as other hybrid spells.
• Fixing enemy snorkel having weird frames.
• Renamed many XML status effects/etc to be consistent with game terms.
• Now showing map objective when 'pausing' the battle (by showing the options).
• Adding an icon for the "natural weapon" of monsters in their equip list.
• Enemies spawning with +HP gear will now have their current HP filled correctly at the start of the battle.
• Characters with lower levels than the map average level will receive more MVP points.
• Fixed the "start of battle" effect on the worldmap not centering correctly in 4:3 (and other resolutions).

[ 2018-06-01 23:16:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

The next big update is now live with Beta Build 0.2.4. The biggest changes are added story battles and added haircuts for sprites, but there's a LOT of changes left and right.
One of the new town maps. Here's the complete list of changes (including changes from the 0.2.3 experimental build at the end).

Detailed Changelogs:

Version 0.2.4

• Many new story encounters.
• Adding a slew of new haircuts to the game.
• Updated the class selection screen. Now showing character information panel and Growth stats of the class. Redid the layout for the class information.
• Exported all classes and abilities to new XML files. This allows modders to modify existing jobs/abilities as well as create new jobs/abilities easily.
• Updated cost of all weapons, armors, accessories.
• Adding story class Anatomist and all its spells.
• Adding story class Marked and all its spells.
• Adding story class Demon Knight and all its spells.
• Adding story class Bounty Hunter (but not most of its spells).
• Adding new spells (lost track of all the new ones, but some monster spells, Pile On, Refresh, trap Icons and a few more.)
• Adding/updating many existing spells visuals.
• Adding world map "battle start" effect.
• Adding new maps Oasis City, Lava Map and Greek style City.
• Adding various tweaks/tutorials/etc on issues gathered from our PAX East feedback.
• Ignoring gamepad Stick input while moving the cursor on the map by default (there is an option to override that) as repeated tests show people don't like it, whereas the d-pad feels natural.
• Updating crafting menu with cleaner layout and information about the crafting result (specifically useful for "crafting by ingredient").
• Updating various other UI elements with added clarifications and small cleanups.
• Adding a graphical box around the name for "portrait-less" textboxes.
• Minor balance tweaks to some maps (updating map layout).
• Adding L/R keys to navigate the cursor to nodes on the Worldmap directly.
• Adding a 'projectile effect' to the Thorns ability when it reflects damage.
• Fixed an issue with the AI often not doing anything when on low HP.
• The wrong map rewards were used in many story battles. This is fixed.
• Adding anonymous telemetry through Google Analytics. We are mainly tracking which classes/abilities are used and party composition after victories/losses. The goal is get data to help balancing difficulty/classes/etc.
• Moving Encounters.txt and GameOptions.txt to the "customdata" folder within the "My Documents/Fell Seal/" folder for consistency (since it's customdata stuff).
• Adding new options when creating enemies on the map, including staying dormant until the player is "close enough", or enough turns have passed.
• Adding new enemies, including the Pektite
• Renaming multiple spells and passives to more appropriate names. Ongoing process.
• Removing code to convert old save system to new save system (the new system has been out for several months, nobody should still be using old files at this point).
• Adding the possibility to create enemy traps on the map before a battle starts. This can be used from the encounters.txt file for modders.
• Balance:
  • Adding Fleet Footed magnitude and duration to the options file.
  • Adding Lifefont and Manafont amount restored per step to the option file.
  • Adding a lot more such values to the option file (lost track >.<).
  • Favor jumping over single 'hole' tiles rather than jumping in and out.
  • When attacking a target, if they are sleeping, their evasion will be ignored (the attack could still miss for other reasons, such as the caster having blind, etc).
  • Making most Templar chants use "mixed atk/matk" values rather than only atk or matk. This results in stronger values in general, so we lowered their ratios a bit to compensate.
  • Moving Gambler's passive "All In" to a secret class. Moving Scoundrel passive "Lucky" to the Gambler. Moving Gunner passive "Atk Expert" to the Scoundrel. Adding passive "Height Advantage" to the gunner (bonus damage per amount of height above the target).
  • Increasing damage of Health Siphon for Fellblade.
  • Changing how the passive "Quick Fingers" works. Old: automatically open chest/gather components in range at the end of the turn. New: any situation command (open, gather, climb, activate) won't use up the character's action for the turn.
  • Updating many monsters abilities as we create their proper abilities (many of them have placeholder abilities right now.)
  • Changing protect so it doesn't activate if the protector is asleep.
  • Armor values across the board were higher than intended. Reducing them by 25%.

Version 0.2.3

• Updating weapon description in combat to show range of weapon.
• Adding lots of new spells visuals and updating others.
• Updating error.log system to add timestamp to file name. Removed errors that should have been warnings. Updating error logging to not log identical errors multiple times (since unity can get spammy if something bad happens). Also enabling error logging on the MAC build and moving the log to My Documents/Fell Seal.
• Showing a short lore description of each patrol area as well as the maximum enemy level for the patrol.
• Quick optimization pass to reduce draw calls in the UI.
• Updating "Details Button" in battle to show healthbars: now shows buffs/debuffs of all targets as well as "points of interest" on the map, such as ladders, treasures, gather points, etc.
• Fixing issue where game could have crashed/acted weirdly with non-english language OS (maybe).
• Fixed the illusive issue with dead characters sometimes still countering after getting hit by Forceful Strike (as well as Rebirth not proccing under the same conditions).
• 4k support should be finished. Needs more testing.
• Mouse input should work much better for resolutions other than 1080 and especially higher than 1080.
• Menu unit selection with the mouse should be easier and more intuitive.
• A big rework of the way we handle graphical assets has shaved off 500MB from the build size and about 200MBs of RAM and VRAM usage.
• Balance:
  • Adding 'hybrid' style of AI. They will favor a mix of magical/physical attacks.
  • When landing the killing blow on a boss, there will be a bonus to the EXP gained by the character (currently, 100).
  • Adding new AI style for enemies: focus fire. The unit will favor attacking low HP units. 15% chance of AI spawning with that AI style.
  • Each Double Cast spell only does 75% of its regular damage/healing. This was always intended but not implemented before.
• Added stealing and poaching systems and cleaned up loot drops. Most of the tables aren't finished, but the systems are all in place. And it's all moddable.

[ 2018-04-30 14:43:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

To access this build, you need to opt in the "Experimental Beta - Latest Beta Build" on Steam for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, if you haven't done so already. To do that, you go into Fell Seal's properties from the Steam games list, select the BETAS tab and select "Experimental Beta - Latest Beta Build" from the tab. You might have to shutdown and restart Steam for it to pick up the change though. The biggest change to this build is actually under the hood, as we redid the way we handle our graphics significantly. This reduced build size (by about 25%) and RAM usage considerably and should have better visual quality as the images are now mostly uncompressed. If anyone is seeing weird images/colors, let us know (but it really shouldn't happen, haha)! We've also fixed issues that were unique to Linux and to Mac builds, so if you're using those systems, let us know if you encounter any trouble. Here's the complete list of changes:

Change List

Version 0.2.3

• Updating weapon description in combat to show range of weapon.
• Adding lots of new spells visuals and updating others.
• Updating error.log system to add timestamp to file name. Removed errors that should have been warnings. Updating error logging to not log identical errors multiple times (since unity can get spammy if something bad happens). Also enabling error logging on the MAC build and moving the log to My Documents/Fell Seal.
• Showing a short lore description of each patrol area as well as the maximum enemy level for the patrol.
• Quick optimization pass to reduce draw calls in the UI.
• Updating "details button" in battle to show healthbars: now shows buffs/debuffs of all targets as well as "points of interest" on the map, such as ladders, treasures, gather points, etc.
• Fixing issue where game could have crashed/acted weirdly with non-english language OS (maybe).
• Fixed the illusive issue with dead characters sometimes still countering after getting hit by Forceful Strike (as well as Rebirth not proccing under the same conditions).
• 4k support should be finished. Needs more testing.
• Mouse input should work much better for resolutions other than 1080 and especially higher than 1080.
• Menu unit selection with the mouse should be easier and more intuitive.
• A big rework of the way we handle graphical assets has shaved off 500MB from the build size and about 200MBs of RAM and VRAM usage.
• Balance:
  • Adding 'hybrid' style of AI. They will favor a mix of magical/physical attacks.
  • When landing the killing blow on a boss, there will be a bonus to the EXP gained by the character (currently, 100).
  • Adding new AI style for enemies: focus fire. The unit will favor attacking low HP units. 15% chance of AI spawning with that AI style.
  • Each Double Cast spell only does 75% of its regular damage/healing. This was always intended but not implemented before.
• Added stealing and poaching systems and cleaned up loot drops. Most of the tables aren't finished, but the systems are all in place. And it's all moddable.

[ 2018-03-21 15:45:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

We just released the next big update to our current build.

Summary:

We added 3 new story battles, 1 patrol battles, idle animations to all characters in the game (except a few monsters which are still in the works) as well as a slew of UI improvements and some QoL changes. We also added the correct weapon sprites for all weapons in the game (each weapon has its own battle sprite). There's also a big rework to the AI and it should be a lot smarter and varied. Finally, we've been tuning the balance from everyone's feedback.

Detailed Changelog:

Including changes for both version 0.2.1 and 0.2.2 since the last non-experimental build was on 0.2.0: Version 0.2.1:

• Updated to newest version of Unity. Probably shouldn't make any big difference to the end user, but there should be some bug fixes.
• Changed save format from binary to XML, as it will be easier to maintain backward compatibility. [strike]This broke the current save files though (sorry!).[/strike]. This preserved existing save files.
• Fixed many small issues with save/load UI.
• Adding rotating autosaves so you can't mess up your save file if there's a string of contiguous battles (which there isn't right now).
• Many AI tweaks, including:
  • Knights not defending as much.
  • Last enemy not being overly defensive.
  • Enemies more frequently using defend/heals/traps at the end of their turn if they couldn't do something during the turn.
  • New optional guardian AI for Knights to try and protect allies.
  • Bug fixes.
• Many new tunable values in the GameOptions.txt file, especially pertaining to AI.
• Adding all weapons sprites. Different weapon tiers will now have different sprites.
• Adding idle animations: all humans and most monsters will have an idle animation (rather than walking in place). Some monsters still have the old walking in place.
• Fixed a memory leak that could get pretty big over time.
• Updated gamepad plugin. It could fix the crashes some Linux users have been getting when plugging/unplugging a gamepad while the game is running.
• Adding more spells (many are still missing though) and fixing an issue with mirroring of spells that caused their position to be slightly off at times.
• Fixed mouse being innaccurate on the worldmap for any other resolution than 1080.
• Fixed many small bugs.
• Fixed the custom portraits not working anymore.

Version 0.2.2:

• Adding 3 story battles and 1 patrol. Adding first Story Boss battle.
• All patrols encounters are now created from data in Encounters.txt. Modders can create/modify patrols for any valid map.
• Lots of improvements to AI (better and smarter casting, many weird behaviors fixed).
• Adding damage ratios to abilities descriptions, as requested by many players.
• Replacing all ability description boxes with the new one that has more information.
• Adding help tooltips to the ability description boxes for each status effects (buff or debuff) that it lists.
• Fixed bugs related to story events (wrong timings, props not despawning after certain cutscenes and potential weirdness at the end of some cutscenes.)
• Fixed an issue with the AI be able to target non-existing "cutscene actors" in story maps.
• Fixed a small leak the dialogue box portrait. Improved UI elemental automated tracking/freeing logic.
• Fixed various small visual issues.
• Adding more tutorial notes, etc.
• Adding help tooltips to buffs/debuffs on the character infobox.
• Fixing bug with raise target appearing multiple times on the list at times.
• Updated the default Unity "Quality Setting" to make more sense with a 2D project.
• Making things a bit better with resolutions higher than 1080 in general (although there are still issues with the UI).
• Balance:
  • Lowered punt damage from 1x to 0.95x.
  • Adding a level min/max cap to every patrol, based on story progression. This is part of creating some patrols which are easier for the player.
  • Reducing AP gains on patrols which are too low lever w/r to the player's used units levels.
  • Adding a flag to change Thorn damage from "all attacks" to "only adjacent attacks". Default is still all attacks.
  • Counter-thorns will now grant the unit Thorns even if the attacker isn't in melee.
  • Removing MP cost of countering with Magic counter.
  • Changing Scounddrel's first ability to Steal Gold from Dirty Hit.
  • Cleaning up many counter abilities to only trigger on damage and updating their description.
  • Stealing buffs will no longer build up the 'steal counter' on a unit nor use it to calculate accuracy.
  • Changed the duration of some buffs/debuffs. Added those to GameOptions.txt so they can be all be controlled by modders.
  • After ending a turn, if the unit has not taken an action, they will start with their timebar 25% filled (controlled in GameOptions).
  • New recruits will have the "optimize gear" command applied to them after they are recruited so they at least start with the best unused gear the player owns.
  • Some encounters were tweaked with balance feedback.
  • Enemies will spawn a lot more skills than before (nasty bug in the generation algorithm was fixed)

As usual, let us know your thoughts!

[ 2018-03-04 21:32:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some Beta backers have expressed interest in getting more frequent updates to the Beta Build, so we created a new Beta branch on Steam where we'll be updating the build fairly regularly with new content. The build will be a little less stable than the regular one, but generally contain the latest and greatest changes.

To opt into it:

- Open your Steam client on your computer. - Go to your list of games (View -> Games List) - Locate Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and right click it, then select Properties - Select the Betas tab (should be the last tab) - Select "experimental-beta" in the dropdown. Not "code" needed. - Done! You're now using the latest beta rather than latest official build. If the "Betas" tab doesn't show, closing and restarting Steam should probably fix it.

Here's the changelog for the build:

Version 0.2.1:

• Updated to newest version of Unity. Probably shouldn't make any big difference to the end user, but there should be some bug fixes.
• Changed save format from binary to XML, as it will be easier to maintain backward compatibility. This broke the current save files though (sorry!).
• Fixed many small issues with save/load UI.
• Adding rotating autosaves so you can't mess up your save file if there's a string of contiguous battles (which there isn't right now).
• Many AI tweaks, including:
  • Knights not defending as much.
  • Last enemy not being overly defensive.
  • Enemies more frequently using defend/heals/traps at the end of their turn if they couldn't do something during the turn.
  • New optional guardian AI for Knights to try and protect allies.
  • Bug fixes.
• Many new tunable values in the GameOptions.txt file, especially pertaining to AI.
• Adding all weapons sprites. Different weapon tiers will now have different sprites.
• Adding idle animations: all humans and most monsters will have an idle animation (rather than walking in place). Some monsters still have the old walking in place.
• Fixed a memory leak that could get pretty big over time.
• Updated gamepad plugin. It could fix the crashes some Linux users have been getting when plugging/unplugging a gamepad while the game is running.
• Adding more spells (many are still missing though) and fixing an issue with mirroring of spells that caused their position to be slightly off at times.
• Fixed mouse being innaccurate on the worldmap for any other resolution than 1080.
• Fixed many small bugs.
• Fixed the custom portraits not working anymore.

[ 2018-02-17 19:39:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Steam version of our Beta Backers build just went live! (Only available for our beta backers)

It includes:

• 5 more story battles and many story cutscenes.
• 7 more patrol battles.
• A lot of bug fixes
• A lot of new assets, including new outfits, portraits, spells, monsters, and more.
• A "skip story" option to skip story events, as to reduce spoilers before the final release.
• Optional debug mode.

And probably a lot of other things we're forgetting... There are also some known issues in the build.

Known issues:

• New idle animations are not in yet (should be in the next build!)
• Weapon sprites don't have their unique sprite art yet (next build as well!)
• Some outfits may act strangely while casting spells
• Some outfits are missing their extra color palettes.
• Most sound effects are missing and/or placeholders.
• We're still missing many music cues, including those for special story events moods.
• There are placeholder sprites and portraits for many NPCs in story events.
• Male beards have clipping issues with some mouth shapes.
• Monsters abilities and stats are placeholders

And probably a few more we're forgetting...

Join us on Discord!

Everyone is welcome to join our community on Discord: https://discord.gg/dF7FbAS It's a great place to ask us any question on the game or let us know about your feedback! We also have added screenshots and bonus content there.

[ 2018-01-31 17:49:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our Kickstarter campaign just went live! Please support us in creating our gorgeous turn-based tactical RPG focusing on storytelling, solid gameplay and deep class customization! Link: Fell Seal Campaign

[ 2017-09-26 19:46:11 CET ] [ Original post ]