We recently gave the combat prediction system a little overhaul to iron out some of the long-standing issues with death protection and lifesteal. We like to think that the results are pretty cool: not only is the first-hit damage prediction (hopefully) more accurate, but the long-term projections for factors such as the burn damage on fireball should be quite a bit more precise for multi-hit predictions. This should speed up decisions on more combat scenarios.

In balance news, the fireball retaliation trait has been globally adjusted to make it slightly less punishing. This should indirectly increase the effectiveness of a certain new item (though a certain other new item has been adjusted, too).

There seems to be generally positive feedback about the crash fix we tried last week, so this will be the first blog post in aaaages that doesn’t concern itself with regaling the trials and tribulations surrounding the once-terrifying Content Load Error (well, except for what’s just been written in this paragraph. Dangit). Hopefully it won’t raise its ugly head to terrify us anymore, and we’ll be able to focus on more normal working stuff again, like horribly broken game design or whatever.

There is, however, an occasional crash bug related to pulling up the god boon menu using the “CTRL” shortcut. We spotted it just before deployment and would urge players to temporarily avoid using this method of boon management until we can solve the issue. Don’t worry, this doesn’t make any part of the game less playable. There’s a temporary fix in place that should triage the issue, but the problem should be gone next week.

Ahhh, butterflies! We’re so relieved to have the nastiest stuff behind us. The dungeon goatlords are feeling well-appeased. Changelog follows:

Fixes:

• Damage simulation changed to take into account anything that should change fight outcome. This is a new system, so there are bound to be some problems.
• Retaliate: Fireball and Mage Fist fireball retaliation reduced to half the enemy’s attack.
• Naga Cauldron adjusted: 5% per debuff type, wider range of debuffs applied
• Added more checks to prevent saves being written during loading.
• Potential tutorial crash fixed
• Gold amount reflected correctly in puzzles