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!

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

Some more upgrade tweaking and some general balancing based on feedback and my own playtesting. Big thanks to Random595, Dragon_of_Celts and everyone else giving feedback on talents. I'm not hitting caster talents in this hot-fix, not because I think their in a good place but simply due to time constraints.

TALENT UPGRADES:

• POWER-SHOT (Knock-Back => Fast): 6CD = 5CD and 1SP on kill shots
  
• POWER-SHOT (Short-Damage => Damage): No range penalty, 2KB => 1KB, still has 50% Crit at melee range
  
• POWER-SHOT (Sniper): removed the melee range restriction and made CD:6 (the loss of knockback is big enough), added perfect aim.
  
• TUNNEL-SHOT (Short-Damage => Damage): 4DMG => 8DMG and 50% more per enemie hit (no range penalty)
  
• TUNNEL-SHOT (Speed-Restore + Fast => Fast): 8CD => 6CD and 1SP for every 2 enemies hit (this might be too much taken together).
  
• POWER-STRIKE (Kill-Reset): 10CD => 8CD
  
• CHARGE (Extended) => 8CD, 6Range (what happens if we just keep pushing range?)
  
• CHARGE (Cruncher) => 6CD, 3Range, Kill Reset, 300% Crunch (this is potentially a massive damage output ability so should lose the range for initial engagements and repositioning)
  
• CYCLONE-STRIKE (Damage + Knock Back = Heavy) => 8CD, 4DMG, 2KB
  
• CYCLONE-STRIKE (Fast) => 6CD
  
• Life-Spike Healing: Range:3 => Range 4

MISC:

• Early game leveling is faster and late game leveling is slower so you get more of your levels quicker.
  
• Reduced the XL of the Upper Dungeon boss 5 => 4 as the player is not quite as capable as before.
  
• Tome-of-Knowledge now spawns in Orc/Elf1-3 instead of 1-4. I'm debating the merits of adding another Tome-of-Knowledge right into the Upper Dungeon to give the player a bit more of an early game boost.

Another really big change, this time to global balancing. Please refer to https://i.ibb.co/SwTF1Y3/Crms-Pf-Qr-QACS-RQwfm-GUkw.jpg which BRNx93 has kindly provided!

Until now there has been only loose control over what I'm terming Good-Stuff, namely Enchantment-Scrolls and Attribute-Potions. I've also now added Potions-of-Knowledge for talent points to round everything out. Each of these Good-Stuff is practically worth a full experience level.

The current system is mostly random and works out to a range of 2-8+ per run which is a massive spread. The game is essentially randomly choosing the max level to be 2-8+ higher each game. The drops were also only somewhat guaranteed to be spread out across the zones so they could cluster up at the very end which made early game very hard.

The new system now has a strict range of Good-Stuff that is guaranteed to drop. Furthermore, the system now guarantees a more even spread of these drops across the zones. We also guarantee a minimum of each type of Good-Stuff. All of this can be tuned easily since its all now controlled from the same place.

Even more interesting is that I'm going to try tying this to the Rank of the game. So before we had a huge range of 2-8+ across all games. We will now have:
Base: 7-9
Bronze: 6-8
Silver: 5-7
Gold: 4-6
Platinum: 3-5
Master: 2-4

All of these ranges are still within the bounds of what was possible so we're not getting anything drastically different balance wise. What we are getting however is a guaranteed scaling difficulty that gives you way more resources in lower rank games. You have way more resources to spend, more than enough to get whatever you want, and are more free to experiment and mess around. High rank games on the other hand will need to be much more strategic with their limited resources.

All of this will also be much less swingy while still having some decent variety and variation possible.

TALENT CHANGES:
Still just balancing the existing upgrades. Some of this is almost certainly going to be replaced as I have lots of more interesting suggestions to try out. Right now I'd just like to get at least 2 options for each talent that are good solid upgrades and different from each other. Once we have some safe options in place we can spend a lot longer iterating on the more interesting ideas.

• LIFE-SPIKE (Healing) +1DUR
  
• LIFE-SPIKE (Stackable) +1DMG
  
• LIFE-SPIKE (Greater) Removed (going to remove all of these I think)
  
• FIRE-BALL (Short-Damage) 25% Crit => 50% Crit
  
• CONE-OF-COLD (Greater) removed
  
• CONE-OF-COLD (Short-Damage) 8DMG => 10DMG
  
• FREEZING-CLOUD (Extended + Long = Extended) Longer Range and 4DUR => 6DUR
  
• FREEZING-CLOUD (Fast-Damage) 5DMG/3DUR => 6DMG/3DUR
  
• LIGHTNING-BOLT (Short-Damage) 14DMG => 15DMG
  
• LIGHTNING-BOLT (Greater) removed
  
• BURST-OF-WIND (Base) DMG 5 => 8 (remember we've increased the MP 4 => 6 here)
  
• BURST-OF-WIND (Strong) DMG 8 => 10

GENERAL BALANCE:
Reduced the highest enemy damage bracket a bit to make it less likely to get one shotted.

BUGS AND CRASHES:

• Fixed level-gen crashes caused by the Good-Stuff messing up with undefined item names
  
• Fixed: Item Gen was using your current rank (not the rank of the game you had started)
  
• Fixed dominate giving you NaN mana
  
• Added a switch to the Orc-Arena in case you fall down