The patch v0.11.3 has been released in the Testing branch. Due to my focus on development, I couldn't catch the opportunity to write articles for each update in the Testing branch. However, let's discuss them now! This update is currently in the "Testing" beta branch on Steam, and not available on the main branch. You can play this branch and give suggestions to help get it ready for the v1.0 release. Your feedback is valuable!

New Hero: Freya

Freya, a hero located in one of the cells in the Factory, is equipped with the new Crossbow and Shield weapons. The Crossbow operates on two main principles: Bolts and Shots. Bolts modify your attacks in various ways, such as increasing their impact, making them lightweight for low energy consumption, or imbuing them with different damage types. With these modified effects, Shots can be used to inflict damage on enemies in diverse ways.
The Shield revolves around Block mechanics and group defense. It allows you to acquire and provide Block and defense to your allies, redirect damage towards yourself, and utilize different Stances to transform your defense into various advantages. Additionally, you have the ability to shield your allies from harmful conditions and absorb them to restore your own health.
The Crossbow was one of the weapon ideas suggested in our Discord server, thanks to @Ammako for the contribution! As a prominent weapon often seen in survival games and movies, the concept of a weapon with retrievable ammunition felt perfectly suited for DoD. On the other hand, the Shield was introduced to address the need for defense-focused combat and to support the underdeveloped block mechanics that were previously spread across different weapons.

New Hero: Echo

With the inclusion of all these new weapons, there has been a popular request to add a character who can utilize all of them. Echo is unlocked once you have unlocked all the other characters, granting the ability to equip any combination of weapons and build decks with synergies that were previously impossible. The only drawback is that Echo does not possess any unique perks and can only equip shared perks.

New Companions

In addition, two new companions have been added to the game: Mascot and Reverend. To unlock these companions, you can assist the injured Mascot found in the Streets and complete tasks for the Old Devout located in the Lair.
Mascot specializes in using the Flashlight and Shield, serving as a powerful support character who can initiate combat and provide additional resources to your survivors through their unique perks. On the other hand, Reverend wields the Dark Weapon and Flashlight, combining burn damage and dark damage in formidable ways. Reverend excels as a support character with timeline and deck manipulation moves while also being capable of dealing heavy damage when the situation calls for it.

Move Upgrades

Along with deckbuilding, DoD contains RPG elements to make the characters stronger over time. Since card upgrades allow for interesting modifications to the cards and put more emphasis on deckbuilding -also with many suggestions coming from you- I've decided to implement it. Now, you can upgrade your moves at the Rest screen, between each area. This addition requires you to carefully consider how to allocate your Dust, as it is also used for card removal and character healing. Moreover, there are more opportunities to upgrade your cards. You can utilize the new "VR Headset" event to merge move copies to upgrade them, or upgrade all your "Starter" moves at once. There is also a new consumable called "Darkness Remains", which serves as another method to upgrade moves. Keep in mind that, you cannot directly upgrade equipment-tied moves. Instead, you need to upgrade the equipment piece, which will also upgrade its move.

More Synergy

Balancing deckbuilding and RPG progression is a challenging task. If one aspect becomes too dominant, the other may lose its relevance. In Draft of Darkness, you have the potential to achieve power by both improving your character's attributes and enhancing your deck. Success can be attained by strategically selecting the optimal path for character leveling, making wise equipment choices, and effectively managing resources. That being said, it became evident that certain decks lacked the synergistic edge necessary to unlock their full potential and provide emergent complexity. Taking your feedback into account, we have made adjustments to several cards and items to foster more synergy during deckbuilding. Particularly, we have reworked and added new cards to older weapons such as the Pistol, Knife, Flashlight, Syringe, Spray Gun, and others.

• Pistol: Added new, more synergistic cards. Changed Dodge to Block for some of the cards to demote Dodge stacking.
• Flashlight: Changed staggering mechanics to be more balanced and synergistic. Added some powerful support moves that can be used both for party support and for supporting other weapon moves in the same deck.
• Knife: Reworked "Stealth Blow" card to demote Stealth stacking. Added more synergy possibilities with Stealth, weapon switching and hit count.
• Syringe: Merged seperate condition manipulation effects together (into Cleanse and Demoralizing Drug). Reworked some of the cards to be more synergistic. With the newly added "Refill" move, Syringe is now both a good secondary weapon for a character, as well as a good main weapon for a support character.
• Chainsaw/Axe: Improved self-damage themes, making them much more powerful. Reworked "Injury" condition to be both a debuff and a way to inflict percentage-based damage.
• Spray Gun: Added a possibility to craft resources on the go. Added more synergy with card creation. Reworked "Stir" into a more easy to use card draw alternative.
• Shotgun: Added more synergy with other weapons.
• Dark Weapon: The new "Ritual of Darkness" card can be used to use cards by paying Health, which can be a way to conserve resources or synergy with self-damage. Added more timeline manipulation combo possibilities.
• Unarmed: Reworked hard to use moves into more synergistic and easier to use ones.

Small Improvements with Big Effects

There have been several smaller changes that can be classified as important quality-of-life upgrades or gameplay improvements.

Improved Alternative Weapon Switching

Previously, when you had weapons equipped in your secondary weapon slots, you had to click a separate button during encounters and spend 1 Energy to switch to that weapon set. However, with this new change, that extra step is no longer necessary. Now, when you use a weapon move that requires a weapon from your alternate slots, the character will automatically swap to the alternate weapons. These moves will be marked with a "weapon swap" icon next to their energy cost, and the displayed energy cost will include the cost of swapping weapons. This eliminates the need for manual weapon swapping and makes these mechanics much easier to use.
Furthermore, cards associated with the weapons equipped in the alternate slots will now be added directly to your deck. This removes the unnecessarily complex mechanics where moves from the same slot would transform into each other when you switched weapons.

Equipment Levels Syncing to Characters

We have received frequent feedback showing that, despite various improvements made to the equipment system during the Early Access phase, it still felt burdensome for some players due to the frequent equipment drops and minimal attribute changes caused by equipment level differences. To address these concerns, we aimed to remove the "level" factor from the equipment system and simplify the deciding factors to two: the type and rarity of the equipment. Equipment loot will now automatically synchronize with the character's level. In the Level-Up window, any attribute changes caused by the equipment the character is wearing will be highlighted in blue. The frequency of equipment drops from encounters and chests has been significantly reduced. In order to balance the economy, the selling prices have been increased from 15% of the item's cost to 40% (the exact percentage may vary depending on the difficulty setting). To summerize, our aim is to maintain the impact of equipment while minimizing the need to constantly change gear to match their level progression. Once you have equipped the weapon and clothing that you are satisfied with, there should be little requirement to alter them unless you desire different attribute bonuses or come across equipment with higher rarities.

Encounter Trigger Improvements

When enemies display the "Disabled" icon during exploration (such as when you use a Smoke Grenade or when you Flee), you have the option to manually trigger them by moving towards their exact tile. This allows you to ambush them, inflicting the "Blinded" and "Weak" statuses on all enemies. In addition to being a tool for avoiding enemies, Smoke Grenades become a useful item for gaining an advantage over enemies.
Another improvement has been made to merging encounters. When you trigger two encounters simultaneously by moving into their shared tile, any enemies exceeding the "3 enemy" limit will be added with the "Horde" status effect. Defeating an enemy with the "Horde" status effect will summon these additional enemies.

Encounter Timing Overhaul

There has recently been an overhaul in how the timing of different effects in encounters is handled. While this may not be immediately noticeable, it has two significant effects. Firstly, it resolves long-standing bugs that would occur when two conflicting effects, such as conditions or item effects, would trigger at once. Secondly, it enables the implementation of card queuing. When you play cards consecutively, the next card will be queued and automatically triggered once the currently played card resolves. Currently, this queuing feature is limited to one card, but I should be able to expand it once all potential issues are addressed.

Other Additions

Furthermore, there have been several smaller non-gameplay changes. These include: * The addition of 58 new models and decals to enhance the scenery of each level. * New sound effects for enemies during exploration, allowing you to better sense their presence while exploring the map. * New sound effects when enemies are injured by attacks. * New music tracks for normal and boss encounters in each area, along with a track for the final bosses. Given the length of this post, I will omit including the detailed changelog here. However, you can join our Discord Server for a comprehensive view of the changelogs. It's worth noting that there are many other changes that I haven't delved into detail in this article, including item charge counters, new Lair area bosses, and starter deck size increase up to 12 moves. We are rapidly approaching the v1.0 release, and during this time, if you don't mind spoilers, feel free to try out the "testing" branch by switching to the beta on Steam. Your feedback is always greatly appreciated. Thanks for your support!