Hello!

The combat and stat progression update is here! Thank you all for the amazing feedback these last couple of weeks, this update wouldn't be possible without it!

Here is a list of all the new features, changes to existing ones and some bug fixes. I will go into details regarding these changes so you can get a better understanding of why I added them.

Combat

Health

• Removed square and diamond health gems
• Removed color picking mechanic

One of the most requested change no doubt! By removing the different gem types, I have removed a few extra clicks needed for every combat round. This makes combat faster and less tedious.

Modifiers

• Removed "Ignore" modifier. Attacks no longer stop, but can now jump on gems with different colors.
• Added new "Augment" modifier mechanic. Every unit, gear and items now has augmented battle actions.
• Drain modifier mechanics have been reworked. Now when you attack the enemy with the Drain modifier, all your health gems are healed by 50% of their total value.
• When using the "Area" modifier, your next combat move can't miss.

Every unit, item and gear now have additional "augmented" values that can be triggered during combat by using the Augment Modifier.

RNG

• If the enemy is doing a special attack, it can't crit and battle conditions will be disabled for that round.
• If a unit has the attack condition that multiplies damage by x2, they will not crit that round.
• Enemies can't miss their buff/heal moves in general.
• When the speed gem difference goes above 10 it will yield diminishing returns until it hits the new crit/miss limit.
• The chance to miss is now limited and can't go above 35% in total.
• The chance to crit is now limited and can't go above 50% in total.

There were certain scenarios where units could rack up to x8 damage values which would one-shot their opponents. Also, the difference between your and the enemy's speed gems sometimes caused a snowball effect where you couldn't claw yourself out of high miss chances.

Action Calculations

• Buff/Debuff and other status effects have been reworked and are more important now.
• Buffing Attack (red) gems increases the damage you deal, debuff reduces it.
• Buffing Speed (yellow) gems increases your chance to land a crit and lowers your chance to miss. Debuff does the opposite.
• Buffing Defence (brown) gems reduces incoming damage, debuff increases it.
• Removed miss calculation when health gems reach zero for Attack and Defence gems.
• If Attack gems reach 0, damage output is halved.
• If Defence gems reach 0, healing output is halved.
• If Speed gems reach 0, you can't crit.
• Damage and healing values can't go bellow 1, meaning each attack will always deal at least 1 point of damage and healing will always heal 1 point of health.

Another issue was that by only picking damage upgrades you could easily brute-force your way through most combat scenarios. Certain enemies and bosses now have special abilities where they buff their speed or defence. Now it's very difficult or near impossible to kill them without proper buff/debuff management. The goal is to stock up on important items or equip your team with specialized gear that can handle these new combat scenarios.

Character Stats Progression

• Changed the current 11 stats to 6.
• Now they are: Attack, Speed, Defence, Damage, Healing and Utility.
• At the start of each battle, your party member initiatives are sorted by the amount of Speed gems they have. The unit with the highest amount of speed gems goes first and the lowest goes last.
• The skills menu now has two points pools to use: Health Points and Skill Points. Whenever you level up you will get 1 point for each pool.

The old stat system was needlessly complex, so I reduced the amount of stats and made the remaining ones more important.

Status Effects

• Consecutive status effect stacking increased from 30% to 50% of original values, lowest possible value that will always be applied is 1.

This is just one of the supporting mechanics that is making buff/debuff management more important in the new combat systems.

Power Bar

• Every enemy now has a "Power Bar Buildup" value range. For example, the value can be 1-5, meaning that every turn a roll happens that takes a value between 1 and 5 and adds that much power points to the enemy to get closer to their special attack.
• The power bar gain on crits was overpowered, reduced additional point gain from 3 points to 1 point.
• If you attack during your turn, you get an additional power point.

In the old system, due to ridiculously high crit output, most of the time you would finish off an enemy squad before they can trigger their special attacks even once. Now power management is much more important and enemies can quickly power up their special attacks. This encourages you to think ahead and plan around the enemies special attack timings.

Combat Features

• Reduces feature damage bonus from 20% to 10% per feature.

Combined with crit and battle conditions, a lot of times it lead to overpowered values.

Items

• Items now have additional augmented values that can be activated during combat by using the new Augment Modifier.
• The values of all items now scale with the party level in three categories: normal, non-directional and augmented.
• Normal = value +  (party_level * 0.35)
• Direct = value +  (party_level * 0.3)
• Augmented = value +  (party_level * 0.2)

The goal is to make items useful throughout the journey, not just in early levels of the game. These multipliers will be adjusted if need be, depending if this new scaling system is either overpowered or underpowered.

Gear

• Artefacts now has additional augmented values that can be activated during combat by using the new Augment Modifier.
• Artefacts can no longer be shared. Now only one artefact can be equiped per party member.

While it was an experimental feature, it was too overpowered and lead to pure damage scenarios that are boring to play.

Tutorials

• Only three tutorials now, the rest can be accessed via the game menu.
• Remaining tutorials have been drastically reduced, up to 70% in most cases.

Now that the systems are less complex and easier to understand from the get go, there is no longer need for lengthy and complex tutorials, which in most cases bothered the player more than helped them.

User Interface

• The Skills and Gear menus has been reorganized to implement the new Augmented stats.
• The Skills and Gear menus now have two left/right arrows indicating that you can change your party members when assigning skills and equiping gear.
• The Defend battle condition icon has been changed from a shield to a healing cross. The Defend battle condition gives x2 healing, but the shield icon can lead one into thinking it reduces incoming damage which is not the case.
• Unit count orbs now display a unit's total health and show small up/down arrows on them if that unit has any buff/debuffs on them. It's now easier to track if your party members are severely debuffed or very low on health.

Some quality of life changes to the user interface.

World

• If the player dies during combat, the Game Over screen is now shorter and gives the player the option to load a save file right away instead of going back to the title screen.
• The wait period when healing your party on lodestones has been removed and I've added a short dialogue message when healing.

Some quality of life changes to the overall gameplay experience.

Bug Fixes

• There were a bunch of healing glitches when using the "Area" modifier.
• Fixed a bug where you could stack features in the same feature category.
• Fixed status effects not being applied in certain situations.
• Fixed a few dialogue typos.

Conclusion

There are a lot more minor changes to internal calculations, small graphical improvements to graphics and lighting, user interface cleanup etc. Combined with the new major combat changes, I hope they will provide a more enjoyable experience.

Of course, I will apply any necessary balance patches and bug fixes if needed.

Going forward, I will now focus all my attention and free time on developing Chapter 2.

Best regards,

Stroj