Valley 1:Post-Launch Series 2 Release Notes

Beta 1.105

(not released yet; we're still working on it!)

• Removed a debug message that got left in in the last version that specified what the item level was being upgraded to when older worlds were upgraded to the new version.

Beta 1.104 The Victorious Return Of... Levels!

(Released June 28th, 2012)

• 100 More rooms added thanks to Benmiff!

• An awesome new music track has been added for desert interiors and undergrounds. This one is really lively and is a "classical Spanish/Moorish style of music, with obvious modern elements" in Pablo's own words.

• The term "piercing" has been replaced throughout the game with the term "cleaving" instead. With some other in-progress changes we felt that this would be clearest. Spells that are cleaving are able to pass through enemies to hit other enemies behind them, same as before.

• Maze type rooms can no longer be stash rooms (as that was incredibly annoying to then try to find all the stuff in question), however basements and attics at the moment can still be stashes.

• Some changes/additions to the opal guardian store regarding purchasing the 7 core settlement structures:
  • The shard cost of buying a residential and storage tower from the opal guardian store has been reduced from 20,000 to 10,000 (the shard cost for lumbermancy focal stations, aquaurgists wells, and stonebinder tri-towers remains at 20,000 shards).
  • It is now possible to buy centers for technozoologicalism, apothokineticit's towers, and forgical arts workshops from the opal guardian store for 30,000 shards.
  • Note that the usefulness of the buildings is inversely proportional to their cost. This makes it easier for players to get up and going if they have to, while at the same time providing the option for them to spend large amounts of game currency to get the buildings they need less if the random number generator is simply being unkind to them.

• The event log entries for when a continent's tier goes up have been removed, as they now had a 1:1 relationship with the death of lieutenants and thus were just pointless clutter in the event log.

• Previously, bosses of a different tier than you would not drop different numbers of shards based on your relative levels (unlike regular monsters). Now the bosses work consistently with the regular monsters.
  • Thanks to jruderman for suggesting.

• The crafting menu is now split into two sections: Spellgems Ready For Crafting and Spellgems Missing Some Resources. The former category was previously all that existed in the game, and you'd have to go to the Grimoire to see any spells you were missing any ingredients for.
  • Now the new Spellgems Missing Some Resources category shows you any spells for which you have some of the ingredients but not all.

• Previously if you were playing as an industrial age character, bosses would blend in with other monsters on the minimap rather than using the normal boss minimap icon that is used in other ages.
  • Thanks to lavacamorada for reporting.

• Infestations are no longer allowed to seed during rescue missions, as that was far too tough to keep your NPC alive through.
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

• Splashback is now considered purely a defensive spell and does not have tiers.

• All underground cavern systems now go between 8-12 levels deep rather than 3-8 levels deep.

Ghost Copies Of Inventory Items

• Added new in-game keybind: "Create Ghost Copy Of Usable" (this defaults to left alt)
  • If you click-and-drag a usable item to an empty slot in your inventory and hold this key while releasing the item, then instead of moving the usable item to the empty slot it will create a "ghost copy" of the item in the empty slot that can be used to trigger the ability without moving the original item. This can be very useful if you want to use a particular ability from multiple distinct ability bars.
    • If your inventory ever has a ghost-copy item but no identical non-ghost-copy item, the ghost copies will automatically disappear.
    • If you try to drop a ghost-copy, it will be destroyed.
  • Normally when you are looking at ghost copies on your ability bar, they look just like the thing they are a ghost of. However, when your inventory is open you can easily tell the copies because it just says "Copy" under them.
  • This is particularly powerful because it also works on things like wooden platforms; previously it was possible to have a copy of a spellgem in each of your inventory rows, but it was never until now possible to have a copy of your platforms in every row.

• The help text for the usables inventory and enchants inventory has been greatly improved to reflect the current state of available keybinds in the game.

Tiers Overhaul, Including Rename To Levels

This is a pretty large change, so to really understand the full implications (which we think you'll love), you have to digest the entirety of the written information in this tiers overhaul section and all of its subsections. Unless you're very new to the game or have only played it very casually, in which case you can pretty much disregard all of this -- you'll hardly notice the difference, except that thing will be smoother and more fun. And more like you expect.

One immediately obvious change is that now "tiers" have been renamed to "levels." This may seem like a silly superficial change, but given the style of mechanics shift we are making the mechanics are now a lot more like levels in other RPG-like games and we felt it would be confusing to continue calling them by a nonstandard name. Additionally, the shift in name should signal to existing players immediately that something is different even if they haven't read the release notes. And lastly, the entire point of our using the word "tiers" previously was to set ourselves apart from RPGs, since we were diverging so sharply from that genre at the time. Now that there's a bit more of a meeting-in-the-middle, the preferred moniker returns.

Relating To Characters, Settlements, And Per-Continent Stuff

• Previously, tiers were always per-continent and this had a number of drawbacks; it meant that you very much felt like you were on a treadmill when you moved to a new continent, since you were starting over and having to craft the same gear again and again.
  • Now there is an overall world level that never goes down, and which matches the level of the highest available continent at the current time.
  • However, older continents won't continue increasing in level along with the rest of the world.
    • In other words, continent 1 goes from tier 1 through 5, using the same mechanisms already established in the game. When you reach continent 2, the world tier jumps to 6 since continent 2 goes from tier 6-10.

• Missions (and their rewards) always match the world level. This means that you can continue to do missions even on an old continent to improve your character and get better gear, etc, which is pretty cool.

• The concept of a "settlement stockpile" has been replaced by a "crafting stockpile" instead. These look pretty much identical except for the name, but in fact are very different.
  • The first difference is that these are cross-continent. So if you've collected a lot of something on continent 1, you don't have to re-collect that on continent 2, which was just plain annoying.
  • The second difference is that these are now per-player. Previously this was global for all players, and each player could spend a "copy" of each ingredient that anyone else picked up. This was confusing in many ways, and many players didn't even realize that was the case.
  • Now if you pick it up, it goes into your personal crafting stockpile just like any of your other inventories, and that's that. You can use each such item once, and any other players will have to pick up their own materials.

• Upon upgrade into the new version of the game, your personal stockpile will get all of your unspent resources from all continents put into one. So essentially it's just combining the counts of what you'd have seen if you went to each continent and opened up the settlement stockpiles and added those items up.

• Previously, some guardian power scrolls required you to spend resources such as cedar logs or granite in order to cast them. That has been done away with. Now if you have the scroll and an NPC of the appropriate skill level and profession to cast the scroll, you can cast the scroll.
  • Among other benefits, this prevents players from having to scrounge around for a lot of granite at the start of each new continent.
  • This means that granite and cedar logs will be just treated like any other common crafting ingredient, rather than as separate building ingredients.

• As a reminder, ingredients were previously grouped into three categories: common, building, and arcane. Now it's just common and arcane, since the building ingredients (consisting solely of cedar logs and granite) have been moved to instead be common crafting ingredients).
  • Common ingredients are found through freeform exploration, just as they always were. They use a whitelist system: any player who is in the chunk at the time the tree is felled or the granite outcrop is broken can pick up a copy of the ingredient.
    • This is the new way of preventing "ninja loot stealing," since the old way -- having a common store of materials from which all players could spend -- has now been displaced.
  • Arcane ingredients, historically, have always been rewarded by completing missions. Now instead these are only found in stash rooms (which of course raises the question of what you get for completing missions, but that will be covered further below).
    • Arcane ingredients, like most other things in stash rooms, use a blacklist system: any player can pick up the item once, and they don't have to have been in the room at the time of its spawning in order to do so. This has always been the system for items in stash rooms, and now arcane ingredients simply follow that established pattern.

• The strategic difficulty, which now did nothing thanks to the removal of the tier orbs (see further down), has been removed.
  • A citybuilding difficulty, which currently does nothing but which portends things to come soon, has been added in its place.

• Previously, caverns could never go higher than tier 10 no matter how deep you went. This restriction has obviously been removed since it no longer fits.

Procedural Spells And Rewards From Missions

• World Map missions previously used to give you rewards that were a mix of tier orbs, arcane ingredients, and/or guardian power scrolls. These all went into the global settlement stores for that continent.
  • Now world map missions only give you spells, rather than any of that other stuff. The spells are always the current world level + 1.
  • Only players who are actually in the mission at the time it is completed will get the spell that is being rewarded, but all of them will get it.

• Secret missions were recently working exactly like world map missions. Instead, secret missions now only seed guardian power scrolls -- these still go into the global settlement stores for that continent, since guardian power scrolls (like NPCs) are now the only remaining per-continent continent-wide (as opposed to per-player cross-continent) resources.

• Previously, guardian power scrolls did not appear in the game until you had won 4 missions. Since those are now exclusively the domain of secret missions anyhow, they are now unlocked right from the start of the game.

• Note that the one-shot rescue survivor missions still exist, just as they always have, and aren't affected by this.

• The "diluter" head-slot enchants, which have always been a source of confusion in the game, have now been removed as they are no longer needed.

• Spells that are not level-less -- ie, most combat spells -- now have a procedural component to themselves. The core spells that you know are unchanged, but there are essentially some built in spellgem-specific enchant-style modifiers attached to specific spells now.
  • This is really interesting for a number of reasons. For one, it lets players specialize even more. For another, it adds yet another kind of procedural loot. But most of all, it prevents there from ever being "optimal builds."
  • Since the bonuses on the spells themselves stack with the bonuses from your worn-on-the-body enchants, you can still have a good amount of sway over what spells you want to use. However, a particular spell that you might normally overlook can now easily be a really cool and useful spell for a few levels' time at least as you play.
  • Overall we were finding that players were playing in far too small a niche in terms of spells that they used, and that made the game feel shallower since they'd fall into some tactical habits and never have much reason to deviate. You can still do that if you like, by always crafting your favorite spell each tier or doing the missions that reward you with it. But we're using the carrot rather than the stick to entice people to sample more widely than they previously would have done.

• Previously, flash of light and lightning rocket and ride the lightning got cheaper in mana to use with each tier that they went up. That model has been removed now that levels go up indefinitely (and thus this is unsustainable).

• The "Scan For Resources" guardian power scrolls have all been converted into a new "Look For Trouble" guardian power scroll.
  • The functionality is the same now as it always was, except of course missions give you a different reward (a spellgem rather than ingredients) so a re-theme was needed.

• Spells that only have a single level can no longer be granted as mission rewards. They can only be crafted, or in some cases (like battlefield command flares) found out in the world.

• Now that spellgems are unique instead of something you can equip ad infinitum, when you drop a spellgem it doesn't destroy it -- it instead just drops it.
  • Thus you can share spellgems with other players directly, although unfortunately the minor cosmetic issue of clutter is something that has returned. We'll probably make an incinerator that gives you consciousness shards or something sometime in the future.

• The first character of each player account will be given 6 offensive spellgems at random (avoiding giving the same type of spell more than once) if one of the following is true:
  • The world was started as Advanced or Expert (no intro mission).
  • The world level is greater than 1.

Relating To Crafting

• Spells no longer have crafting prerequisites, but now instead have "spell power classes" which are able to accomplish much the same thing (ie, establishing that launch meteor is demonstrably and intentionally better than launch rock).

• For the first time, spells are now able to be unlocked directly rather than relying only on their crafting materials to keep them locked.

• All craftable spells have had their crafting costs completely redone. In many cases they are similar to what they used to be, in many other cases they bear little to no resemblance to what they once were.
  • There is now only a single crafting cost for spells regardless of level, now. As the world level increases, any spells that you craft or otherwise acquire will be given to you at World Level + 1.

• Previously, the crafting interface of the game was split into two subsections: Equip Known Spell and Learn New Spell.
  • This was needlessly confusing, but it had the benefit of letting you learn a spell (of a tier) once on a continent and then equip it as many times as you wanted to forever after.
    • That also easily let you equip multiple copies of that same spell into different ability bars, which many players found handy. In our new approach we're going to accomplish the ability bars thing in a different way that will be more flexible anyhow; letting you do the same with wood platforms and so forth, which under the old system you could not do.
  • Anyhow, now the crafting interface just has one section: learn new spell. Any spell you learn here will automatically be at the world level + 1, and the cost is always the same.
  • There is now more physicality to spells: when you craft a spell it goes into your inventory and that's that. It has a specific level, which will never change, and if you drop it the spell will remain wherever it was that you put it. Before it was more like you had a press for printing infinite money once you had learned a spell, but now spellgems are clearly a more physical object that you don't want to lose (if you want further use of it, anyhow).

• Tier orbs are no longer needed (indeed, no longer make any sense), and so have been removed from the game.

• Four new "rarity" orbs use altered graphics of the old tier orbs and have now been added to the game:
  • Uncommon Orb
    • Can be used at the crafting workbench to directly craft an uncommon quality spellgem. Occasionally found in stash rooms of buildings in any region with a level greater than or equal to the world level.
  • Rare Orb
    • Can be used at the crafting workbench to directly craft a rare quality spellgem. Much less occasionally found in stash rooms of buildings in any region with a level greater than or equal to the world level.
  • Epic Orb
    • Can be used at the crafting workbench to directly craft an epic quality spellgem. Sometimes dropped by slain lieutenants of the overlord.
  • Legendary Orb
    • Can be used at the crafting workbench to directly craft a legendary quality spellgem. Always dropped by slain overlords.
  • The higher the rarity of the spellgem that is produced, the more random procedural bonuses get applied to that spell.

• Killing overlords now gives a 100% chance of dropping a legendary rarity orbs.

• Killing lieutenants now gives a 50% chance of dropping an epic rarity orb, and a 1% chance of dropping two epic rarity orbs.

• Design Notes to explain the above:
  • Crafting has become relegated to somewhat the secondary way of getting new spells, now that world map missions give you spells directly (as opposed to giving you arcane ingredients).
  • This also means that all ingredients (common and arcane) are found the same way: free exploration. Common ingredients might sometimes be found as part of a mission, but generally arcane ingredients are just in stashes outside of missions.
  • That said, the crafting is still very important to the game because it's a way to take control of your own equipment if the random number generator hates you. It's also a great way to get rarer versions of various spells by crafting a spell with a rarity orb added in.

• The Crafting Grimoire subsection "By Tier" has been removed, since that no longer has any meaning with the new way of crafting spells (and their new partially-procedural nature).

• An important new section has been added to the Crafting Grimoire: Spells That Can Only Be Found By Crafting.
  • This is slightly a misnomer since some of the spells can be found in the intro mission (storm dash, for one), but those are rare exceptions.
  • In the main, the 16 spells in this category don't have levels and thus don't show up as mission rewards ever (since they would be kind of a raw deal, eh?). This is out of the 53 total spells in the game at the moment.

Relating To Character/Monster Stats And Attacks

• The level of your character (and by implication the world level) is now shown in the escape and pause menus.

• Previously, there was a very confusing concept called "Shielding From Continent Tier" that most players didn't even know existed but was in the stats in the escape menu. Now we don't even need to bother explaining it to you, because it's gone!
  • It was something for players and NPCs only, and in fact was probably not working properly with summoned monsters or other allies (again, leading to various problems at higher tiers that are now inherently solved).

• A new stat, "Shielding," has been added to both characters and monsters. The shielding stat is higher on higher-level entities.
  • For monsters, if you are playing on combat difficulty 6 or 7 then they get a little extra shielding.
  • For characters and their allies, if you are playing on combat difficulty 6 or 7 then they get a little less shielding.

• A new stat, "Attack Penetration," has been added to both spellgems and monsters. The AP stat is higher on higher-level entities.
  • For monsters, if you are playing on combat difficulty 6 or 7 then they get a little extra AP.
  • For characters and their allies, if you are playing on combat difficulty 6 or 7 then they get a little less AP.

• As the level of characters, allies, and enemies increases, so too do their stats increase in minor ways.
  • In the case of monsters and allies this manifests in terms of both gradual health increases as well as gradual attack power increases.
  • In the case of characters this manifests just as health increases, since the gradual attack power increases manifest in spellgems of higher levels instead.
  • By "gradual," at the moment we mean a linear 5% increase per level. This gives a standard-RPG feel to the progression of stats as the world level goes higher and higher, but without the exponentially-ballooning stats that we had troubles with early in beta.

• That's where the Shielding and the Attack Penetration (AP) come into play: each level is supposed to be about 1.5x harder to fight against if you are a level lower than that -- but of course if the base stats of health and attack power reflected this, then by the time you reach level 100 on a boss with 10,000 health they instead have around 49 trillion health. Uh, yeah -- exponential gets big FAST.
  • Shielding and AP are a linear system just like the actual base stat increases are, but by working together they are able to achieve both goals:
    • The goal of the RPG-style visible increases in stats (that don't shift around their numbers as you level up -- we tried that before, too, where spells would degrade in power over time in terms of their visible stats and that was not fun either).
    • And the goal of the Metroidvania-style "the next area is substantially harder than I can handle until I level up" type of feel. Which is very fun, and has been working just great in the game, but which was not compatible with infinitely-increasing levels or the idea of stats ever going up for the player in general.
  • Basically, Shielding and AP are a representation of the relative level of your character and the enemy. Whoever is higher-level gets major bonuses against whoever is lower-level, or if they are both the same level then the Shielding and AP cancel each other out and mean nothing. It's as simple as that, for practical purposes.

2 New Unlockables And Changes To Ingredients

• Previously, White Witch Hair was unlocked when you progressed to continent 2. Now there is a new unlockable that requires you to kill all the monsters in an ice age (woods or plains, but not thawing) surface chunk of level 3 in order to unlock it.

• Previously, Deep Sea Essence was not used at all. Now it is used by Ice Burst, and a new unlockable has been added which requires you to reach depth 5 in an ocean region -- which is a lot more reasonable with the new level system rules, but still is going to take you until about continent 2 unless you are very wily.

• The following unlockables have been changed to make more sense in the new level system:
  • Find Stash In Tier 5 Deep House is now Level 10 instead.
  • Find Stash In Tier 3 Lava Tower is now Level 8 instead.

• Clay, iron ore, copper ore, cherry, plums, sea essence, earth essence, cat's eye, and coral are now unlocked from the start of the game rather than being tied to unlockables that you must complete first.
  • This makes the variety of the spells you can craft and find via missions right from the start a lot higher, and it also means that you don't run into problems where you visit all these areas that would have common ingredients only to have them not appear due to your not having yet unlocked the ingredient -- and then potentially getting stuck wihout a source of that ingredient until the next continent.

• The spell "Summon Rhino" now requires that the unlockable "destroy all monsters in level 2 grasslands chunk" be completed.

• The spell "Water Shield" now requires that the unlockable "reach depth 4 in ocean shallows" be completed.

• The spell "fire Shield" now requires that the unlockable "reach depth 4 in desert" be completed.

• Copper Ingots must now be unlocked by reaching depth 6 in a desert, rather than depth 4.

• The spell "earth Shield" now requires that the unlockable "reach depth 4 in evergreen forest" be completed.

• Iron Ingots must now be unlocked by reaching depth 6 in an abandoned small town, rather than depth 4.

• The spell "air Shield" now requires that the unlockable "reach depth 4 in abandoned small town" be completed.

• The spell "lesser teleport" now requires that the unlockable "destroy all monsters in level 3 abandoned small town" be completed.

• The spell "douse monster nest" now requires that the unlockable "find stash in level 4 ice age building" be completed.

• The spell "flash of light" now requires that the unlockable "find stash in level 1 townhouse" be completed.

Intro Mission Improvements

• Rather than creating the minor living fires to chase the player around the red slimes and the red/yellow slimes in the tutorial now hit them with a fire whip instead (and actually the red/yellow one uses a lightning whip just to make it clear that it is even more different from the first slime). This gets the message across that "hey this is dangerous" without making the entire screen suddenly dangerous because of fire chasing you.

• In one of the lower tutorial caverns, there is now an ice cross spellgem to let you get past the last slime without having to craft anything.
  • And this also has the added benefit of letting new players experience a more unusual spell (compared to a straight-shot spell) earlier in the game.
  • Oh, and this particular spell also would help them accidentally discover granite outcrops if they have not already.

• The tutorial signposts in the caverns about gem veins have been updated to be a bit more specific about how crafting works.

Change To Scaling Of Monster Health In Multiplayer

• Previously, monster health went up by 1x the largest number of players who had ever been together in the chunk of the monster (since the chunk was last loaded from disk).
  • This made it so that, player per player, the same amount of damage needed to be dealt as if there was one player. However, the perception has repeatedly been that it is better to journey solo rather than together, despite the fact that it is numerically identical and indeed tactically advantageous to stay together (given that you can flank monsters and they can often only shoot at one of you at a time).
  • As a concession to the perception, the multiplier is now 0.85x the largest number of players who have ever been in the chunk, so that now it's numerically advantageous to stay together as well as tactically so.
  • Thanks to MouldyK for reminding us about this at the moment, and to TechSY730 for repeatedly reminding us about it.

Official 1.103 Hotfix

(Released June 21st, 2012)

• The pursuit range of jellyfish was incredibly larger than it should have been (8x larger), and has now been reduced to its proper range.
  • Thanks to Cinth for reporting.

• The way that light works is now more natural/fluid. The light sources illuminate their surroundings close to immediately now, so the lights no longer seem to lag behind. Simultaneously, the way that darkness creeps back in after a light source has passed is now a little slower than before, making it so that light trails are left a bit more and it all feels better to play in.
  • Thanks to Cinth for reporting.

• The "What's New?" link in the game now points to this page rather than to the older beta series 1 page.
  • Thanks to NyQuil for reporting.

Beta 1.102 Stop Wiggling!

(Released June 20th, 2012)

• Fixed a "screen shudders when paused" bug in the recent fix that helped the screen scrolling keep you on the screen even if being blown around by windstorms, knockback, etc.
  • Thanks to leb0fh for the report.

• Fixed a bug from a recent version where placing an ocean buoy would not provoke the recalculation of whether each region on that continent is connected via land or non-turbulent-water to a settlement or non-stormy-port. This was causing the "marooned" message to show in some cases where it should not have been after placing an ocean buoy.
  • Thanks to lavacamorada for the report.

• Fixed a bug where the underwater mission portals could not be entered and would not display the "press E to enter" text when you walked in front of them.
  • Thanks to lavacamorada for the report and save.

• Fixed a bug where the game could fail to properly insert a settlement NPC into a settlement chunk because it thought its remembered position was valid when it was not.
  • Thanks to Misery for the report and save.

• The "Douse Monster Nest" ability is no longer usable in an NPC-rescue mission.
  • Thanks to jruderman for inspiring this change.

• The base shrapnel damage has been adjusted for the following entities as follows:
  • Mossy Barrel from 22 to 8.
  • Urban Crawler from 22 to 8.
  • Thanks to CodexArcanum, Cinth, jruderman, Ipkins, AlexxKay, Lancefighter, CodexArcanum, Omosh, and Ghost Matter for suggesting.

• The frequency of how often the minimap updates is now based on how big the chunk in question is; in order to avoid lag, we previously had it set to 1 second between minimap updates. However, in smaller chunks (actually most chunks) that really was excessive.
  • The new logic makes it so that in most chunks it will update more like every half second, and in smaller chunks it will update every quarter second if need be. Only the really excessively large chunks still update on a 1-second interval.
  • Thanks to jruderman, TechSY730, and NyQuil for suggesting.

• For all chunks, the minimap now updates as soon as you enter the chunk, regardless of how long it has been since the last time you entered a chunk.
  • Thanks to jruderman, TechSY730, and NyQuil for suggesting.

• Previously, the collision profile of explosive bear traps was completely wrong; such that it seemed to float above the ground, and its collision box was very tiny. Fixed.

• Previously, NPCs and monsters would shoot at dangerous background entities that they could not hit anyway (like mossy barrels). Fixed.
  • Thanks to lavacamorada and Gemzo for reporting.

• Previously, summoned monsters and even sometimes players could step in bear traps and get hurt. Fixed.
  • Thanks to jruderman for reporting.

• In recent versions of the game, bear traps were not being triggered by monsters. Fixed.
  • Thanks to GauHelldragon and Misery for reporting.

• In recent versions, deploying regular bear traps (as opposed to explosive bear traps) did not even work. Fixed.
  • Thanks to jruderman for reporting.

Previous Release Notes

AVWW - Post-Launch Series 1 Release Notes