Patreon Weekly #63 - Aug 17th, 2020

Hey Patrons!

Content Poll #8.5 just ended, here are the results:
On Diet:                      100% Support
Pharmacophobia:     69% Support
Faith is My Armor:    50% Support
I’m very happy with the results for On Diet and Pharma, but FiMA only just passed. The primary concern I heard was that people didn’t want the challenge to be softened up too much, so I’m going to make the following tweak: Armor will have +0/+1 scaling, down from the +1/+1 offered in the poll. This means armor will still be stronger when upgraded, but the impact of getting a lucky +3 mail from the ghost will be lessened a bunch.

v0.8.2a and v0.8.2b also just released, which means I’m now finally starting implementation work on 0.9.0! For now I’ve got more concepting to share, but hopefully there’ll be some early interface work in another week or two.

The First Layer in Detail

Right now I’m planning on having the first layer be focused around the prison, going from levels 1 to either 5 or 6. I’m currently aiming for each hero to have 4 skills, 2 of which I shared in last week’s weekly. Here’s where I’m at for the other two skills for each hero. Note that these are still WIP, I’ve not even named them yet:

Warrior:
- The warrior heals (3 | 5) HP whenever he identifies a potion.
- The warrior's max shielding is increased by (1 | 2).

The warrior gets another two defense-focused skills, in keeping with his theme. I really like the concept of linking some benefit to IDing items, as it both encourages experimentation and naturally keeps the utility bound to the earlygame.

For the shielding skill, I’m also planning on reducing his base max shielding by 1. This means that one point in this skill would put him at v0.8.2 levels, and 2 points is an overall increase. The warrior ends up getting the least power here, as his earlygame performance is already really strong.

Mage:
- The mage gains (5 | 8) shielding whenever he identifies a scroll.
- The mage's staff gains (1 | 2) charges whenever the mage upgrades an item.

Just as with the warrior, I’ve given the mage an ID-based skill, though his benefit is a bit stronger and more short-term. I’m also giving the mage some utility tied to upgrades, letting him use them to give his staff some extra juice if needed.

Rogue:
- The rogue deals (2 | 3) bonus damage the first time he surprise attacks an enemy.
- The rogue heals for 1 hp every (3 | 2) turns he is invisible.

The rogue currently has the toughest time in the earlygame, so I’m making both of these abilities more about direct power to help him out a bit. The first gives more power to his intended gameplay, while the second encourages him to maximize invis duration in order to get some incremental healing.

Huntress:
- When the huntress hits an enemy with her bow or a thrown weapon, her next melee attack against that enemy deals (2 | 3) bonus damage.
- The huntress gains 2 armor of barkskin for (3 | 5) turns whenever a plant is activated in her vision.

While these might look similarly powerful to the rogue, there’s a catch here: I’m also going to pull the base damage of the Huntress’s gloves down from 1-6 to 1-5. This puts them in line with other fast weapons, and also makes her earlygame require a bit more strategy to reach her current level of consistency. She also gets some defensive power when using seeds, encouraging the player to use more of them in the earlygame, rather than hoarding them for later.