Locking in Tier One | Patreon Weekly #76

Hey Patrons!

Firstly, the VOD for the first Q&A livestream is now available! You can find a post about it here. I’m really happy with how the stream went, so please go and check it out! I’ve added timestamps for each question/topic, so it’s easy to skip to just the ones you care about.

Unfortunately I’m still a bit busy with that family obligation I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and so haven’t made as much progress with talents as I would like. I’ve spent most of my dev effort this week locking in the changes to tier one.

Finalizing Tier One Talent Changes

With their changes all implemented, let me recap exactly what’ll be going on in tier one when the beta for v0.9.1 drops. As always, the specific balance numbers are subject to change based on my own testing and beta feedback:

• Hearty Meal is still performing notable better than the Warrior’s other T1 talents, so it now heals for 2|3 at 50% health, but still heals for 3|5 at 25% health
• Test Subject now triggers on identifying any item, but the healing effect is reduced to 2|3. My hope is that making the talent less rigid will make it more popular.
• Energizing Meal is being moved to T2, and replacing it in T1 is Empowering Meal, which grants the Mage 2|3 bonus damage on his next 3 wand zaps.
• Tested Hypothesis is being made more accessible like test subject and is also going to grant 2|3 turns of recharging instead of healing, which is more appropriate for its trigger.
• Energizing Upgrade is also being moved to T2, and replacing it in T1 is Backup Barrier, which grants the Mage 3|5 shielding when he runs out of staff charges.
• Rationed Meal is being removed and replaced with Cached Rations. This talent lets the rogue find up to 3|5 caches of small rations placed within the earlier stages of the dungeon.
• Invigorating Meal is being moved to T2, and replacing it in T1 is Nature’s Bounty, which allows the huntress to find up to 6|9 berries while stepping through grass in the earlygame. Each berry restores a tiny amount of satiety and has a 1/3 chance of containing a seed.

My hope is that these changes increase the diversity of talents selection in the first tier a bit, and also reduce the number of talents that experienced players feel compelled to take because of their value in the later stages of the game.

I have a bunch of partial ideas for Tier 2 that I haven’t solidified yet. My plan is to continue working on talents this week and so I should have more to share next weekly.