Patreon Weekly #62 - Aug 11th 2020

Hey Patrons!

Firstly, there’s a new content poll! This is a second attempt at poll #8 with improved voting options and design tweaks that I’m happier with in terms of complexity.

v0.8.2 released on Thursday last week and has been doing really well so far! Feedback has been hugely positive on the 5th equip slot, and while winrates have increased a bit they’re still well within acceptable bounds. For this week I plan to release v0.8.2a with a bunch of fixes before moving on to v0.9.0!

Some More v0.9.0 Details

As mentioned in previous weeklies, Shattered v0.9.0 will begin the rollout of a skill system (name is still WIP)! Let’s quickly recap what’s been covered so far:

• The skill system is primarily designed to make levelling up more interactive and fun, and secondarily to deepen gameplay and player choice.
• The system will be layered, with each layer being mostly independent. This way there’s a feeling progression without also needing to plan out your build.
• I want to focus on skills that mix up gameplay a bit without also giving the hero a lot to manage. This mainly means triggered effects, but a few stat changes and full abilities are on the table too.

With that in mind, I’m going to share some more specific ideas I have for some skills. At the moment I don’t have specific layers where these skills will fit (just generic terms like ‘earlygame’), and I’m going under the assumption the player will get one skill point per level. All of these skills are currently designed to accept up to two points, so I’ve included text for the base effect and the upgraded effect.

Firstly, one obvious set of earlygame effects I’d like to add is tied into eating food. This is a nice way to give all classes an on-eat effect, and to prod new players toward rationing properly a little more by tieing the effects to current health. These skills would replace the innate effects of the warrior and mage. I’m fairly happy with all of these, with the only possible worry being that the huntress’ effect is pretty short-term:

Hearty Meal: Eating at below ½ health heals the Warrior for (5 HP | 8 HP).
Energizing Meal: Eating at below ½ health grants wand recharging for (4 turns | 6 turns).
Rationed Meal: Eating at below ½ health increases the value of food by (20% | 30%).
Invigorating Meal: Eating at below ½ health takes 1 turn and then grants (2 | 3) turns of haste.

Another great fit for the earlygame would be skills tied to equipment identification, as that is most valuable in the earlier stages. The huntress gets a more generic effect as thrown weapons aren't identifiable currently. Scholar’s intuition would replace the mage’s current wand ID passive:

Armsmaster’s Intuition: The Warior identifies weapons and armor (67% faster | on equip).
Scholar’s Intuition: The Mage identifies wands (67% faster | on use).
Thief’s Intuition: The Rogue identifies rings (67% faster | on equip).
Survivalist’s Intuition: The Huntress identifies all equipment (40% | 60%) faster.

Lastly, here are four more random skills that are probably more appropriate for the midgame. I’m focusing most of my design on the earlygame portion of the system atm, but I think all of these are promising inclusions:

Strongman: The Warrior needs 1 less strength to use (Armor | Armor and Weapons).
Runic Shield: The Mage gains a (12 HP | 18 HP) shield whenever he uses a scroll/stone/spell.
Quiet Steps: The rogue is (67% | 100%) less likely to wake a sleeping enemy when not next to them.
Heightened Senses: The Huntress gains mind vision on enemies that are (2 | 3) tiles away from her. (this would replace her current mind vision passive)