Hostile Champions | Patreon Weekly #68

Hey Patrons!

I’ve been spending this week getting talent details polished and implementing that new challenge! The release of v0.9.0 is now imminent! Read on for some more details in advance of the blog post…

A New Challenge: Hostile Champions!

As voted for by you guys, the new challenge coming in v0.9.0 is one that focuses on enhanced regular enemy variety and danger! When Hostile Champions is enabled, each regularly spawning enemy will have a 1 in 15 chance of being a champion. Champion Enemies can’t spawn asleep, are immune to corruption, and are announced to the player when they spawn.

Since the poll, I’ve expanded on the premise of the challenge a fair bit, and there are now six types of champion enemy, each with a different color aura and impact on gameplay:

• Blazing Champions have an orange aura, deal +25% melee damage, ignite on hit, and spread flames on death. This is a type of champion that you definitely want to keep at a distance, but they can also be mitigated with water
• Projecting Champions have a purple aura, deal +25% melee damage, and have +8 melee range. This champion seriously changes how the player usually interacts with enemies, by allowing them to almost always attack you with vision!
• AntiMagic Champions have a green aura, take -25% damage, and are immune to magic. For all the wand lovers out there, this champion forces the use of regular damage or items.
• Giant Champions have a blue aura, take -75% damage, have +1 reach, and cannot move into tunnels. These champions are very hard to kill, but have limited mobility as a tradeoff.
• Blessed Champions have a yellow aura, +200% accuracy, and +200% evasion. The extreme accuracy and evasion of this champion type forces the high of high damage, surprise attacks, or magic.
• Growing Champions have a red aura, +25% accuracy/evasion/damage/HP, and gain an additional +1% every 2 turns. This champion type mainly exists to ensure players never feel comfortable when there’s a champion about. Sure maybe it’s a giant that you can just avoid, or maybe it’s growing…

These champion types should ensure a nice variety, and some added challenge! I’ve purposefully set them up with two offensive types, two defensive types, and two mixed types.

Beta When?

Unfortunately v0.9.0 didn't end up going to beta last week as some other work popped up which I had to address. I have gotten lots of Shattered work done this week regardless though!

In addition to implementing Hostile Champions, I’ve been spending the last week finishing up implementation and refining on Talents and other content. There have been some talent balance tweaks, some QoL adjusts, and more bugfixes. For talents, probably what’s most notable is that testing revealed that granting the rogue/huntress a +2/3 to damage was absolutely busted, so I’ve scaled that back to +1/1-2 for the beta.

I’m expecting the beta to arrive tomorrow! I just need to finish up implementation on Hostile Champions, polish in a few places, and finish writing the beta blog. This will also be the first blog that people will get an in game notification for, I’m very excited to see how that goes!