Valley 1:Post-Launch Series 1 Release Notes

Beta 1.003

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

• Fixed a bug in the last version that broke loading old worlds that had progress towards the unlocks that were tied to elites and are now no longer used.
  • Thanks to psychogears, Omosh, and freykin for the report.

Beta 1.002 Upgraded Elitism

(Released April 27th, 2012)

• An echoing, melancholy new track has been added to some of the underground areas of the game. It's called Sad Cave. :)

• Fixed bug where it was possible to warp out of a boss chunk (with the boss still alive) by standing in front of the warp gate (it was already preventing actual entrance into the warp gate).
  • Thanks to Penumbra for the report.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Eagle: Eagle Diver.
  • These have a higher maximum speed, always use the diving attack pattern (normal eagles only do it when tier 5), hit a bit harder, and have a bit more health.
    • Normally we aren't making the elites "tougher" stat-wise (relying on continent scaling for that), but we actually defined the Eagle Diver months ago and it just hasn't been in the game for a long time. So here it is, mind the beak! :)

• The dungeon and region maps can now be resized based on a new "Dungeon And Region Map Scale" slider in the game tab of the settings menu. It allows you to adjust them from 50% to 400% of normal size.
  • Thanks to Revannefarious, Nypyren, mathemagician, dis astranagant, Zaggeh, and DesiQ for suggesting.

• The wind shelter missions no longer include a miniboss in each of their outdoor chunks. Instead each chunk includes three microbosses, which tend to be far easier to avoid.
  • Thanks to Professor Paul1290, Terraziel, Penumbra, Toll, Hyfrydle, zebramatt, Misery, Wanderer, and Quaix for weighing in on this one.

• Previously, the mission text on the world map in windstorms would flicker. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Hyfrydle for reporting.

• Previously, monster health bars behind the chunk map or inventory would flicker. Now they are drawn on top of both.

• Previously, the tier increase from windstorms in regions was applying only to monsters on the ground level. Now it applies to interiors and undergrounds as well.
  • As an added note, this means that the overlord likely starts out as tier 6/7 and you have the choice of whether or not you want to build a wind shelter to lower his threat level.
  • Thanks to Bluddy for suggesting all of the above.

• Now whenever a settlement's chunk is loaded off disk it:
  • If there is no hearth guardian stone, adds one.
  • If there's more than one hearth guardian stone, strips out the extras.
  • If there is no adviser guardian stone, adds one.
  • If there's more than one adviser guardian stone, strips out the extras.
  • If there is no crafting bench, adds one.

• All existing hearth guardian stone NPCs have been removed (but as noted above, a hearth guardian stone is added to the settlement chunk when it is first loaded, but it is not an NPC). There wasn't anything in the game left that cared about these being NPCs, so there shouldn't be any impact on the player, but the stone may be in a somewhat different place now.

• Crafting benches and guardian stones no longer collide on the same layer as some background objects (like trees or fences, couldn't tell which, probably both).
  • Thanks to jabrazelle for reporting and providing a save where there was literally nowhere to seed a crafting bench in the settlement.

• The damage of forest rage has gone down from 23 to 13, bringing its power more inline with other basic ranged spells (thanks to its recently increased firing rate it was definitely overpowered).
  • Thanks to AlexxKay for unintentionally inspiring this change.

Overhaul to Enchant-acquisition and Enchant-inventory-management

• The "quality progress" of enchants (the number of each enchant type that have been generated for you, which controls how many extra effects the next enchant of that same type can have) is now tracked globally for the world, not individually for each player.
  • Older worlds being loaded will start with the highest progress for each enchant type found among the existing players in that world.
    • So if one player has gotten 20 Cooldown-reducing enchants and 10 Jump-increasing enchants, and the other player has gotten 10 Cooldown-reducing enchants and 20 Jump-increasing enchants, after loading in this version everyone will move forward as if they had previously generated 20 of both of those types.

• "Enchant charge" is now tracked individually for each player.
  • Picking up an enchant container grants points to you and each other player in the same chunk (as opposed to everyone in the same world like it previously did).
  • However, picking up an enchant container also now gives a check for a new enchant to everyone in the chunk (as opposed to previously, when only the player actually picking up the container had any chance of getting an enchant right then).
  • Older worlds being loaded will start with all players having 0% progress to the next enchant, but this is a pretty minor inconvenience compared to the temporary advantage gained (in MP at least) from the quality-progress-tracking change.
    • Happily, this lets us clear out the 1000s of percent accumulated enchant charge that was piling up on some players in multiplayer, and that looked really weird (it's still possible to pile up extra charge by collecting containers.
  • Thanks to silverhound, hyfrydle, Terrazeil, Bluddy, and Martyn van Buren for providing feedback on how enchant charges should work in multiplayer.

• Most enchants, when dropped, are instead (after player confirmation) "reabsorbed":
  • Reabsorbing an undroppable enchant gives you 10% progress towards the next enchant, but this process completely and irrevocably destroys the reabsorbed enchant. There is no way to undo this, and so should only be done with enchants you'll never need again.
  • The basic light-emitting enchants, seeker, and diluter enchants can still be dropped (and cannot be reabsorbed).
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor, zebramatt, Rx09, AlexxKay, Bluddy and others for suggesting this.

Overhaul to Upgrade Stone Mechanics

• Previously, the first health upgrade cost you 16 and then it would go up by a power of 2 from there for each further upgrade (32, 64, 128, etc). Mana and Attack were the same, except starting at 8 (so then 16, 32, 64, 128, etc).
  • Now the fee is flat for all upgrades: it's 20 stones for a health upgrade, and 10 for attack or mana.
  • After much discussion on this subject, it became clear that being able to apply 10 upgrades to your character is an important avenue for player choice, but not something that should be prohibitively time consuming to do. Even if the upgrades past the 8th were a "bad value" to encourage players to consider conserving stones, some players would push all the way to 10 upgrades no matter what and then be encouraged to save-scum to protect that character.
  • Further, not having 10 upgrades on the primary character was creating a disincentive to create a stable of other characters for various purposes.
  • Lastly, it was tricky to balance the game because if players used a full 10 upgrades then things could be far to easy; but with no upgrades it could be far too hard. Now we can balance around the general expectation of roughly 10 upgrades being on most characters; and these upgrades being more about choice than they are about a long-term slog through getting thousands of stones.
  • The reason for keeping a cost to the upgrades at all is to maintain that sense of loss on death of characters; aside from the vengeful ghosts, upgrades are the one thing that is lost when your character dies. That has seemed a very popular thing (and in fact upgrades were originally added when beta players felt there was not enough of a penalty for death), but we have been aiming to balance it so that the penalty is noticeable but not harsh.

• Previously, each upgrade that you applied in the health, mana, or attack categories would give you a flat bonus every time you used an upgrade. That made sense when the costs of each upgrade went up exponentially. However, now that the costs are flat (not even linear, but literally flat), we chose to instead make the bonuses from each upgrade decay so that they remain balanced.
  • Applying 10 health upgrades now gives a maximum 5.57x bonus (so 20% decay) compared to 10x previously (0% decay).
    • With a character of base health 141, that gives the following progression: 141,282,395,485,557,615,661,698,728,752,771,786
  • Applying 10 attack upgrades now gives a maximum 1.65x bonus (so 10% decay) compared to 2x previously (0% decay).
    • With a character of base attack 85, that gives the following progression: 85,93,100,107,113,118,123,127,131,135,138,141
  • Applying 10 mana upgrades now gives a maximum 2.63x (so 30% decay) compared to 6x previously (0% decay).
    • With a character of base mana 100, that gives the following progression: 100,150,185,210,227,239,247,253,257,260,262,263
  • Cumulatively, these changes do help to encourage players to choose characters with base stats that somewhat mirror what they want the final stats to be -- because the changes you can make to a given character are somewhat less extreme, although still really notable. The penalty for diversification is also a lot less now compared to what it was, but the penalty for stacking everything into one stat is now a penalty of effectiveness rather than of cost.

• Mana upgrades have been the least useful of the three kinds of stat upgrades for a while. Part of that is because most of the really high-mana-cost spells that we have planned are not yet in the game. So some of that is just a matter of intent for later stuff.
  • However, to address this imbalance in general, we made it so that mana upgrades also simultaneously upgrade mana regen rates. Normally all characters have a flat 83.3 regen rate for mana unless they have had some mana upgrades via upgrade stones; given that upgrade stones are the only way to increase mana regen, that makes this suddenly a lot more interesting.
  • Applying 10 mana upgrades now gives a maximum 1.3x bonus to mana regen (so 10% decay on 1 5% boost per increase) compared to 0x previously.
    • So the progression for any character is: 83.3,87.3,91.3,94.3,97.3,100.3,103.3,105.3,107.3,109.3,110.3,112.3.

• The logic for how you find upgrade stones has been changed up somewhat:
  • Places that previously dropped 8 upgrade stones now drop 5. Places that dropped 16 now drop 10.
    • Except in the intro mission, where the caches of 8 are now caches of 50, and the caches of 16 are now caches of 100. This lets players explore these mechanics a lot more right in the intro mission.
  • Places that previously dropped 4 upgrade stones now drop 5, and those that previously dropped 3 now drop 1.
  • Now when you kill a miniboss, you get 5 upgrade stones. When you kill a microboss you get 1.

• Thanks to Purlox, TechSY730, Terraziel, martyn_van_buren, khadgar, GUDare, Penumbra, MouldyK, zebramatt, madcow, jordot42, Drjones013, KingIsaacLinksr, LintMan, and bvchaosinc for weighing in on how upgrade stones should be balanced. Ultimately we pulled something a bit out of the hat on this one, but it incorporates ideas from a lot of things being tossed around in the (long) discussions. Thanks all!

Overhaul to Elite Monsters

• Elites are no longer associated with any unlocks.

• Instead, the game starts with no elites being eligible for seeding, but as CP increases the overlord gets "escalation" points which can then be spent on "elite upgrades". Right now that means randomly picking an elite type for which the prequisite base monster type (and, for higher elites, the preceeding lower elite type) are already eligible for seeding.
  • These picks only apply to that specific continent.
  • Each overlord starts with 800 * (continent's number - 1) escalation, so the "overall complexity" doesn't go down as you go to the next continent, but the elite picks are "reshuffled" so you won't see the same elite types there (unless there's enough points to pick all of them, but that will become increasingly unlikely as we add more elite types).

• Elite upgrades no longer cause 100% of the base monster type to be seeded as the highest available elite upgrade for that monster type.
  • Instead, if an upgrade is available, there's a random chance of it being applied per monster, according to tier:
    • Tier 1: 20%.
    • Tier 2: 30%.
    • Tier 3: 40%.
    • Tier 4: 50%.
    • Tier 5: 60%.
  • If the upgrade happens, and a higher upgrade is available, the roll is made again. So on tier 1 with both Frost Leaper and Frost Hurler available an Icicle Leaper has an 80% chance to be an Icicle Leaper, a 16% chance to be a Frost Leaper, and a 4% chance to be a Frost Hurler. On Tier 5 the chances are 40%, 24%, and 36%.

Clamping The Ranges Of Player Spells To Avoid Abuse

• Player spells now have a "maximum distance to live" as well as a maximum time to live.
  • This means that spells can only travel so far before disappearing, as well as only lasting so long (since some spells can sit near one location for a while if they are moving slowly against a wall, the time to live is also still important).
  • This also means that enchants that improve the speed of spells don't also increase the distance the spells are able to travel -- it just improves the speed of how fast the spell gets to their maximum distance.
  • In general, being able to kite enemies from very far off screen was something that some of our new players were taking extreme advantage of; and it also created a major disadvantage for those playing on smaller monitors. Now the playing field is more level.
  • Thanks to Bluddy and bvchaosinc for suggesting.

• Specific changes to spell "maximum distance to live" are as follows:
  • Most long-ranged spells now travel for 800px.
  • Splashback and flameout now travel for 600px.
  • Miasma Whip: 224
  • Leafy whip: 320
  • Meteors, rocks, and ice blocks: 1000px.

• The effective range and time to live of the gold boomerang have both been toned down.

Beta 1.001 Arrival Of The Elites

(Released April 25th, 2012)

• Updated the Left-Handed controls preset to correct some duplicate bindings.
  • Thanks to Drjones013 for submitting these.

• Fixed bug where bear traps were not colliding with monsters (and thus weren't good for much).
  • Thanks to freykin for reporting.

• Changed all previous uses of Unity's built-in debug logging to our custom logging to avoid the consequence of Unity's build-in debug logging where the logged strings stay in the program's unmanaged memory until the program closes, and thus can eventually cause out-of-memory errors. This was really rare but it could happen, and now it will be less likely (there are still things that Unity logs itself using its own logging method, we can't change that).
  • Thanks to LintMan for reporting one of the rare cases where this actually became a problem.

• MP: fixed a null exception that could occur on the server if a mission's time-to-expire had elapsed and one of the connected players was in the deep-sea between continents at the time.
  • Thanks to Wanderer and Toll for reporting.

• World map mission seeding (no effect on or consideration for secret missions or missions spawned by powers) now won't seed the exact same mission type if it already accounts for 1/3rd or more of the currently available world map missions on that continent.
  • The idea is to keep your from being stuck too much with a type of mission you don't like as much and then having to wait.

• The Use Mouse Ability 1-7 keybinds are now again visible on the Abilities tab of the View/Edit Controls window so that you can change them (this is necessary if you want to unbind mouse button 4 or 5 or something like that).
  • They can only take mouse buttons, and cannot take keyboard or gamepad input.
  • The keybinds for mouse ability 8-10 are still gone because Unity can only recognize the first 7 mouse buttons in any event.
  • Thanks to Precog for pointing out a case we had missed where rebinding these is actually necessary.

Rejiggered Anachronism Missions

• Now in anachronism missions you don't lose if you kill a native monster, but if they take damage that damage is redirected to you instead (they take none).
  • If you attack a monster and it reflects damage to you, it also starts pulsing red so that you have a constant reminder not to attack it again.
  • This makes the anachronisms a lot less "black and white" in terms of losing the puzzle of them. If you attack the natives too much then you'll wind up killing yourself with your own damage; but aside from that you can't accidentally lose the mission by attacking the wrong enemy anymore.

• To ease new players into the Fix The Anachronism missions more, the following opt-out popup now appears when you go into the staging area of any such mission:
  • You've just entered a "Fix The Anachronism" mission. Kill all monsters from other time periods while the natives whale away at you; if you attack the natives, they'll start flashing red and reflect your damage back at you.
  • This mission isn't about memorization! You can see how many anachronistic monsters remain, and you can test monsters to see if they reflect your damage back at you.
  • Combine those two facts with your powers of deduction to solve the puzzle instead. Deduction is always more fun than memorization, anyway!

• "Fix The Anachronism" missions: Fixed a bug where a monster from the same time period but not "native" to that particular region type would not be counted in the "remaining monsters to kill" total but would also not cause mission failure if killed. They now count as native in both cases (though killing a native no longer causes failure, as noted above).
  • An example of that abandoned-town regions are from the same time period as ocean shallows (not ocean, though), so a sea worm is actually "native" in an abandoned-town anachronism mission.
  • Thanks to Kemeno for the report.

• Fixed a bug that was preventing proper death-processing for non-native monsters in anachronism missions.

Two New Enemies

• New Enemy: Explosive Esper.
  • Like other espers, but fire-elemental.
  • Shoots a smaller, faster fire-shot compared to what most other espers do. This one still pierces, but explodes on impact with grounds and walls instead of sliding along them, which is helpful.
  • Massive explosion on death, which is not so helpful.

• New Enemy: Ice Esper.
  • Like water esper, but hurls chunks of ice instead (faster, but arc with gravity).

Twelve New Elite Enemies

• New Elite Enemy: "Frost Leaper":
  • Unlocked by killing 80 Icicle Leapers.
  • Once unlocked, newly generated Icicle Leapers become Frost Leapers instead.
  • Are like Icicle Leapers except that they apply a slowing frost effect (like Ice Bats) when they hit you.

• New Elite Enemy: "Frost Hurler":
  • Unlocked by killing 160 Icicle Leapers (note that killing a Frost Leaper or any other elite monster "counts" as if you'd killed one of the "base" monster).
  • Once unlocked, newly generated Icicle Leapers become Frost Hurlers instead.
  • Are like Frost Leapers except that they can periodically hover in midair briefly and then throw a lump of ice at you.

• New Elite Enemy: "Skelebot Brawler":
  • Unlocked by killing 80 Skelebot Grunts.
  • Once unlocked, newly generated Skelebot Grunts become Skelebot Brawlers instead.
  • Are like Skelebot Grunts except that they can periodically fire a longer-ranged version of the player's Ice Cross.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Skelebot Sniper: Skelebot Tri-Elementalist.
  • Unlocks when 80 Skelebot Snipers have been killed.
  • In addition to the normal sniper's Flame Pulse spell, these can cast Water Drill and Lightning Cloud.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Skelebot Sniper: Skelebot Hex-Elementalist.
  • Unlocks when 160 Skelebot Snipers have been killed.
  • In addition to the Skelebot Tri-Elementalist's spells, these can cast Luminance Sine, a green-elemental burst, and Miasma Missile.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Rhino: Magma Rhino.
  • Unlocked when 80 Rhinos have been killed.
  • Has 75% Fire resistance instead of 75% Earth resistance.
  • Leaves a huge trail of explosions behind it (like Urban Predator flame).
  • Explodes when killed.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Skelebot Dwarf: Skelebot Kneecapper.
  • Unlocked when 80 Skelebot Dwarves have been killed.
  • Instead of always firing a single ring of explosions at a roughly 300-unit radius, it fires either 2 rings at 300-radius and 200-radius, or 2 rings at 200-radius and 100-radius.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Bat: Sonic Bat.
  • Unlocked when 80 Bats have been killed.
  • Has a ranged sonic (air-elemental) attack.

• Added New Elite upgrade to Bat: Sonic Screamer.
  • Unlocked when 160 Bats have been killed.
  • Has the Sonic Bat's sonic attack.
  • On melee-hit, increases the target's cooldowns by 10% for 10 seconds (stacks as separate effects).

• Added New Elite upgrade to Fire Bat: Flame Bat.
  • Unlocked when 80 Fire Bats have been killed.
  • Has a ranged fire attack (that has the same fire-damage-over-time effect as the bat's melee attack).

• Added New Elite upgrade to Ice Bat: Frost Bat.
  • Unlocked when 80 Ice Bats have been killed.
  • Has a ranged ice attack (that has the same movement-slowing effect as the bat's melee attack).

• Added New Elite upgrade to Dust Storm: Repulsive Dust Storm.
  • Unlocked when 80 Dust Storms have been killed.
  • Repels nearby projectiles (basically it's the inverse of the will-o-wisp's gravity well, but only applies to spell projectiles).

Previous Release Notes

AVWW - Beta Series 3 Release Notes