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

New Build:

• 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:

Change log:

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.

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.