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Rogue Fable IV

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Rogue Fable IV is a traditional rogue-like game which combines the depth, complexity, and challenge of the genre classics with a shorter, more tightly focused game length.

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Update 1.9 Major Talent Rework

May 11

Hello everyone! A pretty major and game changing update this time. You'll have to use your imagination for the click bate thumbnail saying 'BIGGEST UPDATE EVER!!!' with a bunch of random red arrows :P

As was hinted at last update I decided to take the plunge and do the big talent rework that I've been planning. This turned out to be a bit of a nightmare as I had to touch a ton of crusty old lower level code that was written years ago and very poorly. It took the 2 weeks of just hammering on the engine to get it to even support the new features and so I only had the last week to actually implement the new content. So this is going to be one of those 'part 1' updates with the remainder of the work coming with the next update. This is also definitely one of those things (like ranked-mode) that is going to be slowly iterated on across the whole course of development so, though I think the system that is in place now is actually very good, we should expect this to change and morph a lot over time before final release.

TALENT REWORK:
The tldr of the change is that instead of talents simply upgrading to a generic Rank-II the player now gets to choose between (currently 3) different and unique upgrades.

I'm really trying to make each of these upgrades distinct and play very differently. I have included plenty of upgrades that have a large boost but coupled with some kind of penalty which tend to make the upgrades more narrowly powerful. I'd like to eventually have a mix of simply upgrades, bigger upgrade w/ penalty, and then some upgrades that drastically change how the talent functions. Some of the things that I want these changes to do are:

Character development is more varied:
Every class generally takes a lot of their talents from their core set and previously this meant that 2 characters of the same class would heavily overlap. With the new system even characters with the same talents can still differ quite significantly based on which upgrades they choose.

Character development is more complex:
The player can now pick upgrades to make talents fill different gaps or perform different functions as part of their build. Cross-class talents may suddenly become much more attractive to certain builds due to a specific upgrade synergizing much better. For example short range versions of spells might be more tempting to melee characters.

Talents can be more interesting:
Because the player now has choices and we can include penalties to offset extreme bonuses, this opens up a much wider variety of possibilities with how talent upgrades can be designed. With the option to just choose something else its now possible to make upgrades that drastically change the function of a particular talent.

Way more content:
When all the upgrades are eventually added this is essentially the same as having 3 times as many talents/abilities. Again, as per the previous point, there can be a much wider variety of talent content since many of these upgrades can be really 'weird' since were not forcing anyone to take them.

MAX LEVEL CHANGE:
I've changed the max level of both the player and monsters from 16 to 12. This is something that I've also been thinking about for a long time and seemed even more relevant with the talent rework. In RFIV the only thing that levels give is talent points and attribute points as there is no static bonus for gaining levels so this change simply removes 3 talent points and 1 attribute point from the game. I've also changed attributes to be granted on levels 2,5,8,11 which smooths out progression a lot.

Even before the talent rework I was not happy with the number of talent points the player eventually gets as I've always found that the last few were never really strictly necessary. I found that I always had enough talent points to get whatever it was that I wanted with a few more to spare. There were almost never any hard choices and I always ended up putting the last few talent points 'wherever'.

By reducing the number of talent points we, somewhat counter intuitively, actually increase the number of choices available to the player as suddenly he actually needs to 'choose' between different talents rather than just getting them all.

Furthermore I found that with equipment, enchantments, attribute potions and fountains, merchants, librarians, crystal chests, tomes of knowledge etc. There are just way to many times the game stops and expects the player to make a character development choice. With the new talent rework, the complexity of these choices just increased significantly. Given the relatively short game length I think that its better to offer the player less choices over all but to make them more meaningful.

I would like to do for talents what we previously did during Alpha with attributes: less of them but make them more powerful and impactful. So since we are losing about 20% of the total talent points, the goal when balancing the talent upgrades is to get them to be roughly 20% more powerful. As with a lot of balancing, the goal here is neither to make the game harder or easier. The goal is that once the balance gets settled it should be roughly the same as before.

CLASS TALENTS:
As mentioned above I haven't really finished all of this yet and I definitely haven't begun to really balance or fine tune it but these are the current talent upgrades. I'm focusing mainly on the ability talents right now rather than the passive ones. I have also not gotten to Enchanter yet so he's just got the old Rank-II as his only upgrades.

All of the names are just sort of generic place-holders right now and many of the upgrades themselves are essentially just place-holders that I was using while trying to get the actual underlying code working.

POWER STRIKE:

Knock-Back: 1 => 3
Kill Reset: CD: 6=>10 but kill strikes reset the CD
Damage: DMG: +4 => +10 but removes the knock back component

FORTITUDE:
As part of making talents generally stronger: base HP 8 => 16

Upgrade: HP: 16 => 32
Strength: +1STR

SHIELD WALL:
Need something more interesting here.

Damage: DMG: +0 => +4
Buff: a lingering 2T buff that raises Shield-Block

RECOVERY:

Greater Healing: Healing 50% => 100%
Reset: resets cool-downs when used
Speed: restores 2 speed points when used

CHARGE:

Damage: simple damage bonus
Cruncher: more damage for crunching, reset CD on kills, -1 Range
Extended: +1Range but longer cool-down

WEAPON MASTERY:
As part of making talents generally stronger: base DMG 1 => 2

Upgrade: DMG: 2 => 4
Strength: +1STR

CYCLONE STRIKE:
Really just placeholders atm.

Damage: +0 => +4
Knock Back: 1 => 2

BLOOD LUST:
Now the Tier-3 talent replacing Berserk with a standard 10T cool-down.

Long: increases the duration
Reset: resets cool-downs when used

POWER SHOT:

Knock Back: 1 => 3
Short-Damage: DMG 6 => 9, 50% Melee Crit, half max range
Sniper-Shot: DMG 6 => 12, no knockback and cannot shoot at enemies 2 tiles or closer

RANGE MASTERY:

Ranged: 1 => 2
Perfect Aim: allowing you to shoot through enemies

ATHLETICS:
I'm currently unhappy with Sprint (Jump as well to a lesser extent). I find that on paper they are decent abilities but they are just sort of clumsy to use and so I don't end up really using them. I'd like to rework both abilities to work more naturally with just the standard speed point system (hopefully not needing to actually be an ability). Until then I'm replacing Sprint with Athletics which is a simple +2 speed points. A bit boring but is at least very useful and tempting for pretty much every class.

Upgrade: 2SP => 4SP
Dexterity: +1Dex

TUNNEL SHOT:

Fast: CD 8 => 6
Short-Damage: DMG 4 => 6, +50% damage per enemy hit, half normal range
Speed-Restore: +1SP when hitting 3 enemies or more

STORM SHOT:

Knock-Back: adds +2 Knock-Back
Short-Damage: DMG 4 => 8 but half range

PRECISION:

Critical: 20% => 40%
Penetration: allows physical damage to bypass protection

LUNGE:
I think the duelist generally needs a rework. I've increased the lunge CD from 1 => 2. I'd like to generally increase the power or usefulness of Disengage/Lunge while increasing their CDs a bit. The problem right now is that the duelists combat loop is so tight that he really doesn't need (nore can he really use) any other talents.

Kill Reset: no CD and no SP when dealing a kill shot
Damage: 4 => 8

DASH ATTACK:

Speed: restores speed points on kills
Damage: 4 => 8

SLEEP BOMB:
This is one of the places where the upgrade system actually lets us nerf a bit of what was previously a massively powerful upgrade. The change from single target to potentially 5x targets is enough to warrant a penalty imo.

Big: AoE but half duration
Long: 4Dur => 6Dur and 10CD => 6CD

SNEAK ATTACK:
This has been moved to a Tier-II ability (see Shadow-Step below). All characters now innately will crit hit sleeping enemies and this talent will immediately grant physical damage crits to unaware enemies. This gives a bit of a power boost to all characters and makes the rogues early game with sleep bomb much easier while making him feel more like a rogue getting those crit hits.
BEAR TRAP:

Damage: DMG 5 => 10
Double: can place 2 traps and CD 10 => 6

SHADOW STEP:
Shadow-Step and Vanish have been merged together into a single Tier-III ability that both blinks you towards an enemy and causes enemies to forget about you. This has a standard cool down so we're getting rid of more once-per-level abilities.

Fast: CD 20 => 10
Hidden: you remain hidden for 5T

FIRE BALL:
I'm not sure if I want to keep the 'Greater' upgrades that are currently added to all the Tier-I magic spells. I'm sure we can come up with more interesting upgrades in the future.

Greater: MP 4 => 6, DMG 12 => 16
Extended: +1 Range
Short Damage: -1 Range, DMG 12 => 15, 25% more damage at center

MENTAL CLARITY:
As part of making talents generally stronger: base MP 3 => 6

Upgrade: MP 6 => 12
Intelligence: +1INT

SHIELD OF FLAMES:

Resistance: 20% => 30% and immune to flaming clouds
Damage Shield: +6

BURST OF FLAME:
Now innately will preserve the flame source 50% of the time. I'd like to have a Burst-of-Flame that is a little weaker but more generally usable.

Damage: 14 => 18
No-Consume: DMG 14 => 12 but 100% chance to preserve fire.

FLAME PORTAL:
Now has a 10CD for the base version

No-CD: self explanatory
Mana-Restore: restores 5MP when used.

FLAMING BATTLE SPHERE:
I'm planning to eventually move this to a summoner class and give the Fire Mage something more explosive as their Tier-III ability.

Power: raises the level of the battle sphere (more damage, more HP)
Long: duration 5 => 10

LIGHTNING BOLT:

Greater: MP 4 => 6, DMG 10 => 14
Extended: +1 Range
Short-Damage: DMG 10 => 12, 25% more damage at tip, and -1 range

SHROUD OF WIND:
This is another one of those places where I think the old Rank-II was actually too powerful so has been split.

Reflection: 10% => 20%
Levitation: +5 Levitation

BURST OF WIND:
Now has a damage component again as it is the only Tier-II attack spell (see Shock/Infusion below).

Knock-Back: 2 => 3
Point-Blank: the first example of complete change of mechanics. A larger AoE, more knock-back, but the spell is always cast around the player.

INFUSION OF STORMS:
I don't want classes to have 4 attack talents in their starting kit as this makes it highly unlikely that they will ever take a cross-class talent (or else they will simply ignore one of their starting talents). So we're bringing back Infusion as a means for the player to regain mana (it has a standard CD). The player must either have open space all around or else a single water tile in range to use this ability. Nicely adds to the storm mages affinity for water.

Mana: MP 4 => 8
Power: Adds a 1T boost to AP after casting

SHOCK:
Moved to Tier-III and no longer has any limit to number of targets with the base version. Now has a 5T cool-down (most Tier-III abilities should have cool-downs).

Stun: adds a 1T stun
Extended: Range 2 => 4

CONE OF COLD:

Greater: MP 4 => 6, DMG 6 => 8
Extended: Larger AoE but removes the knock-back
Short-Damage: Smaller AoE but more damage and crit hit at melee range

ARMOR OF FROST:
Removed Ice-Lance (same reasoning as Shock/Tornado above). Pretty boring. Probably needs to be replaced with something else.
FREEZING CLOUD:
Freezing cloud has been changed to use the same targeting as Cone-of-Cold i.e. close range. This helps to differentiate it from Poison-Cloud and gives the Ice-Mage a very distinct close range feel with his core talents.

Extended: larger Aoe
Long: duration 4 => 6
Fast-Damage: DMG 4 => 6, DUR 4 => 2

SHIELD OF ICE:
Moved to Tier-II as we have removed Ice-Lance.
FREEZE:
Freeze now has a 5T CD like most Tier-III abilities.

Extended: range 2 => 4
No-CD: removes the cool-down
Long: Duration 4 => 6

LIFE SPIKE:

Greater: MP 4 => 6, DMG 3 => 4
Healing: You get 100% healing from damage dealt but range 6 => 3
Stackable: can be stacked multiple times on same enemy

AURA OF DEATH:

Life Tap: 1 => 4
Resistance: 20% => 40% and immune to poison clouds

POISON CLOUD:

Big: bigger spread
Fast-Damage: DMG 3 => 5, DUR 5 => 2

SUMMON SKELETON:
Now has a 5T CD to prevent the player from simply spamming these in combat. The skeletons are naturally a little stronger since their level is the same while the game has been rebalanced around max level 12.

No-CD: removes the CD
Stronger: XL 4 => 6

STAFF ATTUNEMENT:
As part of making talents generally stronger: base DMG 1 => 2

MISC UPDATES:

Duelist talents are now DEX/STR which opens up his build quite a bit.
Summoned monsters (like skeletons) now have their level adjusted down if the players Ability-Power drops. I'd like to have more abilities that temporarily raise the players AP but this would otherwise open up really tedious gameplay where you use these abilities before summoning each skeleton and fiddle around waiting for cool-downs.
Adjusted the colors on some of the text and buttons to make them more visible.
The Tome-of-Knowledge in the wilderness zone will now appear on levels 1,2,3 instead of 2,3,4.
Dervish-Minstrels now cast single target haste instead of group (same as orc drummers)
Clockwork-Pyro doesn't explode on death. I really don't like these sort of surprise deaths.
Fixed the portal traps in Palace-of-Shadow not actually working.

CONCLUSION:
Whew, that took a long time to type up :P So there's still a ton of work to do here both in the short and long term but I think this is a pretty drastic step forward that will really start to pay off over time as we get more interesting upgrades implemented and get everything balanced up.

I'd love to here suggestions for new upgrades or changes to the existing ones. I have no problem letting the interface get kind of crusty with more than 3 upgrades for awhile if we want to test out some ideas. The whole thing will get redone at some point anyways.

Hope you all enjoy the update!

Hot Fix 1.9.1

Just a bunch of quick buffs to various upgrades. Please let me know what else is still lacking. Some of the upgrades will likely need a complete rework (or just replace with something from the big document full of suggestions I'm accumulating), but I think at least some of them might start to shine if we just keep pumping their stats up.

Charge (Cruncher): no range decrease.
Charge (Damage): 4DMG => 6DMG
Cyclone Strike (Knock Back): 2KB => 3KB
Recovery (Healing): 100% Healing => 125% Healing
Recovery (CD Reset): does not reduce healing from base
Recovery (SP Gain): does not reduce healing from base
Power-Shot (Short Damage): 1/2 Range => -1 Range
Power-Shot (Sniper): 1/2 min range => just can't use in melee (this still needs perfect aim added).
Tunnel-Shot (Short-Damage): 1/2 Range => -1 Range
Tunnel-Shot (SP Recovery): now gives +1SP for every 2 enemies hit
Storm-Shot (Damage) no range reduction
Storm-Shot (Knock-Back) now has the 1/2 range reduction
Sleep-Bomb (Long) gets an additional +1 Range
Sleep-Bomb (Big) 2DUR => 3DUR
Fire-Ball (Short-Damage) 15DMG => 16DMG
Flame-Shield (Damage-Shield): 6DS => 9DS
Flaming-Battle-Sphere (Long) => Fast 10DUR/10CD => 5DUR/5CD
Lightning-Bolt (Short-Damage) 12DMG/25% Crit => 14DMG/50% Crit
Shroud-of-Wind (Reflection) 20% => 30%
Burst-of-Wind (Knock-Back) => Strong 3KB/5DMG => 3KB/8DMG
Cone-of-Cold (Extended) does not remove the KB component
Cone-of-Cold (Short-Damage) 7DMG/1KB => 8DMG/2KB
Freezing Cloud (Fast Damage): 6DMG/2DUR => 5DMG/3DUR
Poison Gas (Fast Damage): 5DMG/2DUR => 5DMG/3DUR

Rogue Fable IV

Not a fan of the May 12th update

I was just getting used to the old game mechanics (with a few wins), then got slammed with the new update. Now I feel completely powerless and can barely reach lvl 10 before Yendor with only a "key" few skills (that are always the same because the new ones are terribly balanced), and pitiful stats. The second optional dungeon was removed and only got a single merchant so if I get out of food/healing mid-game that's Game Over for me. Adding negative traits to skills is a terrible idea IMHO, most of th...

tit0saurusm4n

5 hours ago

General Discussions

Update 1.8 The Arena

Apr 19

Hello everyone! Another update, another sub-zone with some additional balancing and tweaking. Was a bit run down and burned out for the first half of this update so didn't get as much done as I'd hoped for (was shooting for two new sub-zones) but I'm feeling much better now and am eager and excited to get onto the next update.

The slow down was definitely totally unrelated to the fact that after 4+ months of working on a tiny laptop after my main PC died I finally finished building a sparkling new gaming rig that's an absolute beast. So I've been catching up on my own gaming a bit :P I'm gonna just assume that any lost time was made up by re-inspiring me in my work and move on...

LINKS:

Twitter
Discord[discord.gg]
Random595 YouTube

DESIGN NOTES:

Balancing:
A quick note on balancing for those who may be unfamiliar with my work process. Balancing for me is an on going progress that tends to be quite experimental and comes more from my 'gut feeling' then any sort of overall plan. I tend to change things around quite a bit as I'm playing and testing, sometimes just to see what happens. Things pretty much always get changed again or else just reverted (sometimes multiple times). So my tweaks and fiddling shouldn't be treated as anything permanent or even part of some grand vision. Its just me poking at the mess of systems and seeing what happens.

Really in my mind, my only goal with balancing throughout development is to keep things basically playable while exploring the interactions of the system. There are so many major changes planned for the game that any attempt to zero in on anything approaching final balance is futile. Final balance is really something to be hammered out in the last few months of development once everything else has settled.

Talent Rework:
More and more I feel that I want to get the Talent Rework implemented soon rather than later. Playing around with the existing talents has become very limiting and I'm really itching to get the new system working. The basic idea will be for each talent to have multiple options for Rank-II only one of which the player can choose.

I'm quite inspired by DRGs overclock system which has stable, balanced and unstable upgrades. Basically a stable upgrade is a small stat boost with no tradeoffs. A balanced upgrade will significantly increase some element but comes with some sort of draw back. An unstable upgrade tends to drastically change the way the ability works. I don't intend to copy the names, or even explicitly identify upgrades as belonging to one of these categories but the general idea I think is solid. I really like the idea that the player can really focus in on what slot a talent is filling in his overall build.

As an example consider a Fire-Ball upgrade that increases the damage, blast radius, or perhaps adds the center damage bonus but decreases the range. Charge could have an upgrade that increases its range but with a longer cool-down making it better for the initial engagement. The opposite could be a shorter range but reduced cool down or more damage or more crunch damage (or some combination), making it more effective as part of your core damage loop. Something like confusion that has a MASSIVE boost when its AoE suddenly lets you target 5x as many enemies could be coupled with a higher mana cost or perhaps a short cool-down.

There are lots of exciting possibilities and honestly I'm getting annoyed at the limitations of the current system. So my current plan is to do one more update focused on sub-zones, hopefully completing the final 2 needed for Palace/Fortress and then take a break from that and do the initial implementation of the new talent system. I'm planning on just adding a ton of upgrades for each talent (will definitely need some suggestions here), and letting us all play with them for awhile. Eventually I will likely narrow it down to something like 2,3 or 4 per talent.

UPDATE 1.8:

Orc Arena
A pretty elaborate, heavily 'scripted' level. I'm not sure yet what the exact ratio will be in the finished game between standard levels and these more 'gimmicky' levels within each run, but I definitely have lots more planned. I think the right balance will come with a large enough number of different gimmick levels and having them not spawn to frequently so that the player does not encounter a specific level type very often. These are intended to be something special, unique and surprising to break up the core gameplay loop rather than replace it.

The player rings a central bell which begins a round of combat. Enemies spawn in around the arena on hatches staggered into 3 waves. So unlike most combat encounters the player is guaranteed to be surrounded, at least initially. After 3 rounds the locked gate will open allowing the player to progress. There are colored flags around the arena that will change color every 10 turns during the fight. Each color provides a different effect to all the enemies.

Red: increased damage
Green: regeneration
Yellow: haste
White: slow and unstable

Based on my testing this might actually be a bit to much complexity for a single level. It might be worth splitting the flag mechanic into its own level type and leaving The Arena to be simple waves.

Orc Gladiators are a new enemy typing appearing in The Arena that attack with a polearm type attack (technically a trident) and throw a net at the player at short range.

The Minotaur Champion
Renamed the minotaur boss to make him the Champion of The Arena. There's a joke somewhere here about him being the 2nd place champion since of course we all know Yendor is the true GOAT. The Arena will currently generate as the level prior to the Minotaur boss level and the boss level is itself an arena type level though it has only a single hard wave. Added a new ability to the Minotaur Champion which is a fast, instant charge along the orthogonal.

Warrior Rework
Played around quite a bit with reworking the warriors talent set and made some similar adjustments to the Barbarian. I have a number of goals with this reworking.

I generally think the Strength classes are a bit overpowered compared to the other classes while also being more straight forward to play. So some of this is just trying to reign them back a little.

As a general rule for the future, I'd like for Strength based talents to be the weakest talent types since Strength based equipment (heavy armor and melee weapons) are the best class of gear. Because heavy equipment requires a significant investment of strength, it should be the best equipment in the game and all characters should want to wear it if possible. Of course the question of how much they are willing to divert into strength is the balancing act. So Strength focused characters should be getting a lot more of their power from their equipment instead of their talents.

A related rule for the future would be to buff up INT based talents to be the strongest with the same idea that all characters should want to get INT based talents with the question being how much they want to divert to build up a reliable mana pool.

I'm also generally trying to stream line the class and have it be much more focused on pure defense in order to encourage the player to branch out into other talents to fill gaps. At the same time I've removed one active ability to again, encourage the player to find and make use of more.

The current talent set is:

Power Strike: is now the starting talent as this is a simpler and more widely applicable talent. Its had a pretty big damage reduction as the combination of a decent melee weapon + a bit of ability power was giving it really crazy damage numbers (remember STR based talents are supposed to be the weakest).
Fortitude (same)
Shield Block (same
Shields Up (same but moved to Tier-2 and given an 8T cool-down)
Shield Wall: now a passive ability that grants 5%,10% Block-Chance for every enemy that is adjacent to the player. This is probably currently overpowered and will need tuning but I think the general idea of encouraging and enabling The Warrior to stand in melee helps to define the class.
Recovery: now the penultimate Tier-3 ability. On a 10T cool-down the player can heal himself for 50% of the HP of a Healing Shroom. This consumes the nearest Healing Shroom and is not usable if there are no shrooms on the level. The details and numbers might need to be tweaked but I'm quite pleased at this implementation as I'm mostly unconvinced now of the 'once per level' type talents and this is a neat way to still restrict healing.

So The Warrior now has cool-downs of 6,8,10 making his general combat loop slower. Barbarian was adjusted so that his Cyclone-Strike is similarly 8CD and will be getting a similar rework to merge Blood-Lust and Berserk as the Tier-3 Talent (removing the once per level version).

Player Balancing:

All characters now have +8 base HP. This is part of the ongoing process of making the non-ranked game easier. This is actually a pretty major buff to all non-strength based classes (who never really lack HP). So this is also helping to close that gap mentioned above.
Mirror-Image Range: 2-3 => 5,7
Crown of Slime now grants +1INT (it was the worst boss drop imo)
Dancing-Slippers: 20% Evasion => 10% Evasion and 1DEX. I'm moving in favor of more attributes on late game items with a future reduction in the number of attribute potions/fountains.
Freeze will no longer make the player unstable as this was making it absurdly overpowered.
Base number of beneficial shrooms per level 10 => 12
Blood Portal now allows the player to teleport adjacent to blood rather than only on it.

Monster Balancing:

Gnoll Warriors now have the NPC-Recovery ability in which they go dormant for 3T and then heal themselves (previously they had no special abilities). Helps to flavor The Ice Caves as the tankier zone.
NPC Lunge has been split into tiers so that instead of 5 range across all levels its now 4,5,6 depending on the monster level.
Orc-Drummers haste is now single target (1 at a time).
Bombombers now ignite from further range and more often.
Recolored Chameleons to help make them stand out a bit more on the green background (ironic I know).
Jellys no longer leave slime on Toxic-Waste.

Level Balancing:
I'm tackling these boss levels bit by bit each week. They were all created for RFIII and so are much larger and have more monsters than the current game design is dictating.

Reduced number of slimes in Slime-Boss levels and tightened them up.
Reduced number of monsters in Vampire-Boss levels and tightened them up.
Reduced number of Ice-Giants in the Yendor final boss room from 16 => 12.

CONCLUSION:

That's it for this update! Looking forward to the next step. There's like a 50/50 chance that I'm gonna have one of those uncontrollable design outbursts and be forced to implement the whole talent rework for the next update. I guess we'll see :P Anyways, thank you everyone for all your support and feedback! Thank you everyone for reviewing the game on Steam! Hope you all enjoy the update!

Rogue Fable IV

Update 1.7 The Arcane Academy

Apr 6

Hello everyone! Bit of a mixed update this time. First week was devoted to cleaning up bugs and the second one was spent adding another sub-zone. I'm planning to just keep chugging ahead on adding subzones with associated content for at least the next couple of updates. Pretty much everything else is basically 'on hold' while I work to get the dungeon rebuilt according to this new scheme.

Links:
Random595s channel full of fantastic tutorials and crazy challenge runs: Random595 Youtube
I post to Twitter semi frequently with stuff I'm working on: Twitter
Our discord: Discord[discord.gg]

DESIGN STUFF:

I've done a fair bit of design work as well during this update and have mostly settled on what I'd like to accomplish for the first year of Early Access development at least as far as dungeon content. This breakdown and layout will be a sort of intermediary phase before work begins on significantly branching out the zones and making the dungeon much less linear. The following are the sub-zones I'd like to get implemented along with the bosses they will contain.

The Under Grove:

Corrupted Grove: Spider Queen and Corrupted Ent
Enchanted Grove: Centaur King and Fairy Queen

The Sunless Desert:

Ruins: Mummy King and Snake Charmer
Oasis: King of Thieves and either a mage or minstrel boss

The Swamp:

Froglok Village: Witchdoctor and Giant Frog Mother
Fungus Grove: Mushroom King and Swamp Siren

The Palace of Shadow:
Renaming this to be more general so that the temple proper can be made a sub-zone.

Spider Temple: Drachnid Queen
Arcane Academy: Warlock
Temple: High Priestess

The Orc Fortress:

Keep: Orc King
Arena: Minotaur King
Ogre Caves: Ogre Shaman

The Sewers:

Troll Caves: Kraken
Slime Pit: Slime King

The Core:

Fire Temple: Efreeti
Caldara: Flame Serpent

The Ice Caves:

Ice Fortress: Frost Giant King
Gnoll Village: Gnoll Shaman

The Crypt:
The Crypt will be altered to start with a an 'outdoor' graveyard area which will lead into the boss sub-zone. The zone might need a name change to be more generically undead/horror themed with Crypt saved for various sub-zones.

Haunted Mansion: Vampire
Crypt: Necromancer

The Arcane Tower:

Storm Tower: Storm Boss
Summoning Tower: Summoner Boss

Click Clock Keep:

Train Station: Train Boss (not quite sure exactly how to theme this one yet)
The Iron Forge: Forge Boss (likely a major overhaul of this boss fight)

Layout:
This is how I'd like the dungeon to look at the end of this first year. Basically every single zone will be split in half. The first half will be generic while the second half will be one of several sub-zones leading into the boss. The content I'm implementing for sub-zones right now is really just the first draft as all of these will need quite a bit more content, generators, enemies etc. in order to be able to properly fill 2 full levels. Most of the bosses are also going to get totally overhauled (as the Warlock did this week).

Class and Races:
I'd like to get all of the existing races fully worked out by the end of year and I'd also like to get at least 2 new classes implemented. Final balance and polish will obviously not come about until the game is complete but I'd like to get what we have at least a bit more solid than it currently is.

I'm starting to shift my thoughts on how many classes I'd like to add. Initially I was thinking 3-4 new ones would be good since most of the older classes are being seriously reworked. Now though, with my own ideas and the heaps of suggestions from you guys here on Steam and in Discord, I'm considering that we might end up with something more like 10 new classes (so double RFIII).

The game mechanics have progresses to the point where I think they can support this sort of variety and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of good ideas for new classes. I'm also willing to sacrifice say 20% in terms of balance and tightness if it gives us twice as much new and interesting content. Time will be the ultimate deciding factor, but I am leaning more in favor of 'more' as opposed to 'less' at the moment.

UPDATE 1.7:

The actual update this week, as mentioned above, is a bit of a mix. Spent a bunch of time trying to clear some of the mountain of bugs. Its still pretty mountainous but I'm trying to keep it somewhat in check while I press forward on content. Content such as The Arcane Academy! The new sub-zone for The Palace of Shadows complete with a totally reworked Warlock boss fight.

The Arcane Academy:
This will be the caster focused sub-zone of The Palace of Shadows and will consist of libraries, classrooms, laboratories etc. I'm planning to differentiate this from The-Arcane-Tower by making this sub-zone more 'people' focused as in its the place where Yendors minions study and practice vs the tower is more of Yendors private dude cave full of all his wacky magical experiments.

Much like the previous sub-zones this should be viewed as just a first draft, a rough sketching in of content. I have tons of stuff still in my notes that still needs to be added into this area. I'm planning to continue this sort of rapid sketching until I get at least the majority of the year 1 sub-zones implemented before going back and fleshing them out.

Spawns whenever Danarr-the-Warlock has been selected.
Dark-Elf-Apprentice: basic mage type with magic projectile and slow moving arcane arrow.
Dark-Elf-Librarian: casts Curse-of-Silence that blocks spell casting and Summon-Spectral-Books from nearby bookshelves.
Dark-Elf-School-Master: Force-Shields his allies and summons a Tome-of-Power that buffs the spell damage of all nearby allies until the tome is destroyed (same mechanic as regen/ice totems).
Using the same walls as Spider-Temple with some new level assets but will likely get its own tileset eventually.
Totems-of-Silence and Totems-of-Discord are placed throughout the levels. Planning to add additional totems (tomes probably) that boost enemy spell casting when in their radius.
Totally reworked Danarr-the-Warlock boss fight so that he now has 8 summoning circles that he can blink to and open hell portals on. Remade all his boss levels to incorporate this.

Dungeon:

Renamed The-Dark-Temple => The-Palace-of-Shadow so that the Temple can be changed into a sub-zone for the High-Priestess.
Smoothed out the danger level in Zone-3 and adjusted all monster levels: 7,8,10,11,12 => 7,8,9,10,11. This removes what was previously a pretty big jump in difficulty in the mid game.

Misc Content:

Added some additional boss vaults to The-Sunless-Desert
Replaced two Pyro-Turrets in Yendor Boss room with Obsidian-Golems as the turrets are now much stronger.
Reworked a bunch of static levels in The-Core, generally tightening them up according to the new level design philosophy.
Tightened up a bunch of The-Arcane-Tower boss levels and reduced the number of monsters a bit.
Added monsters to the Click-Clock-Keep zone line vaults (they were missing).
Bombombers now have an ignite state which makes them move 'fast' for 5T after which they explode.

Player Balance:
Generally just trying to boost any player talents that are not just 'does a bunch of damage'.

Sprint CD: 20,15 => 12,8
Jump CD: 20,15 => 12,8

Graphics

Sunless Desert rocks have better shadow (works on both sand and cave)
Clockwork-Sentry Sprite
Clockwork-Bomber Sprite
Clockwork-Armorer Sprite
Clockwork-Shield Sprite

User Interface

Allow player to still mouse over tiles when dead so you can see stats of enemies.

Bugs and Crashes:

Precision has had its description updated to reflect the armor penetration at Rank-II.
Fixed throwing nets lasting way longer than 8 turns.
The Clockwork-Shredders spawned in the special sentry level will no longer grant exp.
Monsters spawned via portals in one of the Vault-of-Yendor levels will no longer grant exp.
Fixed the rotating sentry clock things sprites getting all messed up when you leave and reenter the level.
Dominated allies will not Force-Shield you every 3 turns unless you are in combat.
Fixed a crash when Spider-Swarm-Eggs hatches on top of Spider-Glyphs (spawns were overlapping).
Fixed a level gen hard crash in The-Crypt.
Fixed the bug where a specific sequence of menu operations would result in continuously losing 100SR in ranked-mode every time you opened/closed the menu.
When the Tough-Bosses modifier is active, Yendor will now correctly start at his max hp.
Fixed the bridges in one of the spider boss levels getting overwritten with walls when leaving/returning.
Out of vision turrets will no longer be able to shoot you without turning. They will continue to turn even when out of LoS.
Killing the last enemy with a speed point strafe attack will no longer result in 1 turn of the 'nearby danger' warning when trying to auto explore.
Speed point strafe attack will now correctly attack with melee when in range.
Fixed Burst-of-Wind not effecting targets that were far away/block by LoS from the player.
Fixed a level in The-Core that had a gate but no switch.
Player will now be able to still mouse over and see the description of tiles/enemies while on the death menu.

That's it for this week! Next update should be another 2 sub-zones, possibly 3 depending on how much detail I want to go into. Thank you everyone for all of your continued support and an extra special thanks to all of you who have positively reviewed the game! The reviews are massively helpful for winning the steam algorithm game! Hope you all enjoy the update!

Rogue Fable IV

character is not regenerating health

playing ogre barbarian, my health is not regenerating outside of comabat, unless it does not do that anymore

MadCrabPrime

17 hours ago

Bugs and Crashes

Food/eating

I don't feel that food/eating adds enjoyment to the game... at best it's neutral... In my current game. I am starting the 2nd floor of the Vault and I'm not going to win because I forgot to buy food... sure, it's my fault... I remembered a second after I went through the one way vault entrance... I won't know if any other choices in the previous hour or two would have won. I love the game and the 200+ hours I've played. I just now realized, I felt this way about the food/eating system. Everyone have a fun,...

jerry.flack

23 hours ago

General Discussions

skeleton pathfinding sucks

they will never go into dangerous areas such as lava regardless of whats going which is always enemy attacks that either create dangerous walls or enemies in dangerous liquids. Can they just you know go through it taking damage of course. But only during combat please....

MadCrabPrime

22 hours ago

General Discussions

Berserker blood lust skill bug

Anyone experiencing this bug where u dont get healed from blood lust ?

Gherghi

May 11 @ 2:44pm

Bugs and Crashes

No one has rated this review as helpful yet

Recommended

47.4 hrs on record

Posted: May 13

Early Access Review

Great game, the developer has added a ton of smart improvements from RFIII and rebalanced the game more accessible. If you are new to Rogue likes or want one that's strategic without asking you to memorize an encyclopedia, this would be a good buy.