Hello everyone, this is the first major patch for Across the Obelisk since its Early Access release 2 months ago. Here we will explain all the changes and new features. Madness Levels The Madness levels are the extended difficulty levels of AtO (replacing the old NG+ system). These consist of several levels of difficulty progression and additional corruptors that you can activate whenever you want (selecting both will get you a final number of Madness level and a multiplicative bonus to the final score). Within this system, one of the corruptors that deserve a special mention is the option to activate "random enemies" for non-event combats. By choosing this option, the enemies for the combat will be chosen randomly from a pool of difficulty based on the node area (and that we will increase over time). There is also the probability that a champion monster appears in any combat to spice it up a little more. In the process of creating the Madness levels we have reviewed all the enemies of the game. Because of that, the game in normal mode will be a little easier than before, and as we have levels of difficulty the cards of the normal mode have lowered the damage/charges. In addition, the change from normal to Madness 1 will be much smoother than the current change from normal to NG+ (note that from normal to Madness 1 there is still a noticeable change). Keep in mind that this is the first implementation of the Madness system. During the Early Access we will continue tuning it, improving it and adding more options to the system. Improved Events We have revised all the events in the game and added some new ones. Now the rolls in the events will include the number shown as valid roll (instead of higher than 6, now it will be 6 or higher). Also, character rolls will now ask for a card type instead of a number. When a group roll is made on an event, it can now result in a critical success or critical failure (these occurs when the number rolled is greater/less than 3 points from the number that was asked for). We have moved almost all group injuries to when a critical failure is made, so now narrowly failing an event no longer results in as large a penalty as it did before. To give it a more role-playing touch, from now on the rolls for specific characters will ask for a type of card instead of a number. As a general rule, character rolls are the option with more risk vs. reward, if you pass with success, you can evade a combat completely, get better rewards or open some interesting options later on, but if you fail, it usually results in an injury for that character. Finally we have been able to implement a feature long requested by the community. Next to each roll there will be an icon with a dice, when you move the mouse over it you will be able to see the percentage of success probability for that roll. The percentage still depends entirely on the cards you have in your decks, so if you see that a percentage comes out high or low, it is mainly because of the cards you carry. Special Cards Although special cards already existed in the form of cards used by pets or the fish cards you got by rods (items), we have introduced many other special cards that you can earn during events, many of which are exclusive to certain heroes. In addition, to give heroes more uniqueness and personality, each hero will now start with a special card of his own at the beginning. Special cards are cards that can not be crafted and, therefore, you can not save a deck with special cards obtained during the adventure. The exception is the exclusive card that comes by default with each hero (which appear as character cards when you right click on them). We know that you have asked and want to have a way to edit saved decks or save new decks for free, and it is one of the things we are thinking about how to do it and we will do it as soon as possible. Corruptions We have added 4 new corruptions and we have reviewed the current ones with the following changes: - The corruption UI has been improved to try to show the corruption difficulty in a more visual and understandable way. - New corruptions: Heavy Weaponry, Thorn Proliferation, Hexproof and Putrefaction. - Increased the score reward of all corruptions. - Winds of Amnesia, now is uncommon(from rare) removed the all resistence bonus and added +1 to all damage. - Armagedon and Subzero, removed the fire / cold damage and made it +all damage. - Melancholy, reduced the increased hp and the all resistence bonus. - Noxious Parasites, greatly reduced the hp of the parasites summoned(15hp in Act 1), in addition to now the parasites have a green color, to differentiate them from the hatchlings. - Ressurection, temporarily disabled due to a rare bug. Aura and Curse changes In this patch we made a big change to certain auras/curses. From now on the following auras/curses cannot be stacked from different sources, and when you cast one on top of another the higher value will prevail: -Buffer Courage Daze Decay Disarm Evasion Fast Fortify Haste Insulate Reinforce Shackle Silence Slow Taunt Weak In addition to the ones that already worked like this: Paralyze, Invulnerable and Stanza. This means that, if you have 1 Fortify on you and cast Guard (1 Fortify), Fortify will stay at 1. If you cast Safeguard (3 Fortify) then you will have 3 Fortify. If monsters cast multiple cards that do the same effect, f.e. 2 AoE Reinforce, the Reinforce will not stack. There are 3 main reasons for this change: 1. This applies also to enemies so when you have multiple enemies using the same card, f.e. 2 harpies using Windblessing (Aoe Evasion / Fast) these buffs will not be stacked, resulting in 2-4 evasion(depending on the act) for each enemy. The same happens, for example, with enemies that apply Daze to the frontline (spiders, goatmen etc...). There were many times that Daze got stacked way to much and made the tank too slow. Another example would be with the hardest curses, such as stacking several Shackle charges (Web / Webweaver, Entangling Root) or even several Silences or Disarms (in rare combinations) and finally having the bad luck to receive 2 Death's Door in the same hand, stacking 2 Weaks. This will no longer happen. 2. There was an especially annoying combination of balancing Evasion on heroes. Scouts could get up to 20+ (more like 40+) stacked Evasion charges and placing them on the frontline would negate 90% or more of the enemy's damage cards attacking the front. With this change, a scout with his cards/perks/talents/equipment can have something like 4-6 Evasion per turn (which is still really powerful) but he is not 100% immune to everything, and if he wants to be the front character he must combine it with other deffensive things (block / resist / life). 3. We believe that it adds an extra component of strategy and thinking about when to cast certain buffs/auras since now that they are not stacketed it matters more when to cast them. To summarize, we believe that this is a good change for the game in the long term, and also as a side benefit it allows us to create new interesting items. More changes to Auras/Curses: - Dark, charges needed for the explosion are now 25(24) the damage has increased to 55(48) and 35(26) to sides. - Sanctify, now also reduces the holy resistance by 1% per charge, the healing is now affected by Decay and healing received. - Regeneration, the healing is now affected by Decay and healing received. - Chill, the charges needed for the speed reduction have been reduced to 5(6). - Bless, no longer increases the healing received by 1. - Insane, now reduces the mind resistance by 2%(1%). - Stanza I, II, III, removed the piercing damage bonus. Stanzas can't be purged now (so that you can plan well your songs for turn 2, 3... without having to worry about a purge or a Tabula Rasa). - Evasion, fixed a bug that didn't trigger evasion with cards that did damage sided (f.e. Fireball). - Fortify, now will be removed at the end of the round (instead of at the start of the turn) causing the block not to expire at the end of the round effectively, regardless of when the fortify was applied. Heroes & Traits - Shielder (Ottis) & Voodoo (Malukah) will be affected by Decay and healing received stat from the target. - Shielder (Ottis) & Voodoo (Malukah) the healing produced by these traits will trigger the items that are activated "when you heal a hero" (Minotaur horn and new cool items that we did based in this concept). - Unbreakable (Heiner) this trait will now grant 6 block (scales with items / perks) to all heroes at the start of the combat, also Heiner will start the combat with 2 Fortify. Cards We have added 2 new cards. - Black Hole, for healers. - Plague Shot, for scouts. By changing many of the auras / curses most of the cards have undergone small changes especially in the number of charges and some small balance tweaks of +- 1o3 to damage. High cost cards have received more charges than they had. There are too many cards tweaks to list them all, but most of them were really small tweaks, in the first reply of the post we will name some of the most notable card changes. General Changes - 15+ new items added. - Removed the items and cards that could not currently be obtained from the Tome of Knowledge. - A card search bar has been added in the Forge (crafting). - In multiplayer, added an option to give gold and shards to other players. - A HP bar has been added that shows the remaining life of each character when you are on the map or in the town (also shows your color in multiplayer games). - A cap of 500 has been added to supplies, if you had more than 500 these have not been removed, they remain, you just don't earn more. - Now you can buy more than 1 pet, the first one is free and the following ones cost money. (The next step will be to make a pet-only item slot). - Upgrading cards is faster. - The sound of the hammer has been changed in when upgrading cards and when removing them, for a softer one. - Many other sounds have been smoothed out in the user interface, such as when looking at cards in crafting. - Changed the "Beeehhh" sound in the melee atacks and hit sound of the sheep, they still do it with Tantrums. - Changed the sound of Ottis being hit(although at first it was funny... too many times it was annoying). - Fixed several bugs that have been reported in recent days. Closing Comments We believe that with all these changes the game is taking good shape. The first games won't be as hard as before, considering the changes in the events (not getting so many injuries and seeing the success % more directly) plus the balance changes we have made and that with the new difficulty levels we can now afford. The game is a bit more forgiving, but it still has its point of difficulty and learning, and there's still Act 4 to go! As a reminder, if you were waiting for this patch or a sale to buy the game (or gift it to a friend) this Thursday 24th, coinciding with the Steam Summer sales, we will offer a 15% discount (like the one we did on the Early Access release) so, it might be a good time to buy it! As always, thank you all for your feedback, support, and understanding. We hope you enjoy the patch.