Upcoming Altars of Pain

[leif.ian.anderson]

This is the last major gameplay update until either Spring or June of next year. All new content after this will primarily be story and area focused.


Difficulty Changes:

Enemies take 25% less damage on Hard Mode

Enemies take 50% less damage on Nightmare

Enemies take 75% less damage on Infinite Nightmare

Initial Enemy Tech Rate is Halved for Hard Mode, Nightmare, and Infinite Nightmare

(difficulty can no longer be changed from NG+)



If a harder difficulty is selected, a new menu will show up.

Hard Mode = 1 Altar
Nightmare = 2 Altars
Infinite Nightmare = 3 Altars


Altar of Darkness:
-100% Accuracy
Enemies Gain 75% Magic Evasion

Altar of Eyes:
Enemies Gain +25% Chance to Crit
Enemies Gain +200% Accuracy

Altar of Fate:
Enemies Gain 50% Chance to Crit
Player Luck is Halved

Altar of Power:
Enemies Gain +50% to All Stats

Altar of Blood:
Enemies Deal Double Damage

Altar of Resilience:
Enemies Receive 75% Less Damage

Altar of Patience:
-75% EXP

Altar of Dementia:
Begin Battles Confused
Doubles Mana Cost and Halves Knowledge

Altar of Depression:
-75% Happiness and Economy
Bank is Closed

Altar of Chaos:
Octuples Crime
Quadruples Weight of Crime on Enemy Tech Rate

Altar of Ignorance:
-90% Research and Artwork
Doubles Mana Cost and Halves Knowledge

Altar of Spies:
Quadruple Initial Enemy Tech Rate
-75% Military

Altar of Solitude:
Violet Gains +25% to All Stats
Alex and Amelia are always down
(ghost potions can't be used)

Altar of Affliction:
Begin Battles Paralyzed
-90% Status Protection

Altar of Attrition:
Double Health
-95% Recovery

Altar of Waste:
Potions and Bombs are Never Kept


Update will arrive in about two weeks.

[Tekker]

What does never kept mean? No living bombs or no potions or bombs in inventory ever?
I also think SOME of these could keep you from ever winning your first battles when you have no skills or gear to counter them, and if they ramped up to their maximum over time it'd be less of a new game brick wall.

That being said, people on IN are probably lunatics that speedrun to the best gear and kill the crying artist in under five minutes of play time.

[Zhantos]

does -100% Accuracy have any effect in magic chance of hitting?

[leif.ian.anderson]

Murda!

Will adjust these as time goes on.

Never Kept means, they will regularly be deleted from inventory.

[errantstar]

no ingame reward for doing any of this except bragging rights, right?

affliction, dementia and solitude are the killers here. i think even if you can take the "immune to lightning debuffs" to not get paralyzed or "immune to psychic" to not get confused, game still might approach unwinnable in trying to actually get those talents.

maybe solitude could be worth 2 altars and the "start statused" ones 3 rather than changing em. solitude is definitely working as intended.

also now i'm writing stuff out, what will happen to golem and ghost ship in solitude? i guess you get them through a legal loophole?

[leif.ian.anderson]

Golem and Ghostship are still used.

Solitude will now give Violet +25% to all stat.

Praise be to the altar!

[Tekker]

Your constant understanding and cooperation with your community and their thoughts is a miracle of gam mak.

[leif.ian.anderson]

Praise be to the gam mak!

[myxlplykx]

as someone who is currently playing on infinite nightmare how will this effect my game? will i get something like the butterfly in town to enable it?

Also are the current effects of the difficulty changing along with tech? such as the 1% experience gain which i assume the 75% one would stack with, and the 8x knowledge and charisma gains?

[leif.ian.anderson]

*rolls out of bed with actual hangover*

murda murda murda..... murda murda.... murda...........

Evening human....

The changes will not affect previous playthroughs... and the... hold on.......... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...


Edit: I has returned!

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... decided to make the changes affect old playthroughs. Next update will include the top portion, which will be up some time tomorrow. Old saves will receive additional talent points due to the sudden increase in difficutly.

As for your question, yes, all bonuses remain the same. Praise be to the bonuses!

[myxlplykx]

Praise be to the bonuses and the additional talent points!

[Tekker]

I've been doing an IN playthrough to test difficulty on the "intended" path. No bomb spam or running by enemies to grab high level gear, etc., and I feel like I've been really chewing on every fight but managing to win. Especially against bosses Alex is being a whiny little ♥♥♥♥♥ about. I got the blessed hammer at like level 8 because I just fought through that arena really good. It was far from easy but with real grit and strategy it was doable until the 4th fight.

Temple of Mezra kept me away with it's high def wind elementals and clerics that have a ton of health and slight regen, but I handled the boss just find. I blame silence and gouge for this. I still haven't gotten any omega gear even though I can see the knowledge chests to get shards.

Suppose what I'm saying is things feel tough but balanced in a sort of "you're REALLY not supposed to be here yet" sort of way when you go anywhere that isn't the "next" step in difficulty. I worry altars will make all this chewy combat impossible without doing some talent/bomb/gear bypassing strats, which are very legit especially if you're playing on the hardest difficulty, and suggest that altars and the tweaks to enemy damage reduction/tech rate be optional.

Right now it feels like IN just made the game harder, but the altars feel like a challenge mode that is unique to "just harder" and normal is definitely too easy after a short time. Altars may turn people off higher difficulties because of how drastically they change everything, you really need a plan to deal with them ahead of time. Normal mode would need a little rebalancing to make mid-late game less of a cakewalk I think.

Or ♥♥♥♥ it, more blood.

[leif.ian.anderson]

Murda! Praise be to the blood!

Goals for the difficulties are...

Romantic = I just want to take my time and enjoy the story.

Normal = I just want to play the game normally.

Hard = I want this game to be hard.

Nightmare = I want this game be a f@#king nightmare. So much so, my therapist is forced to hear about it.

Infinite Nightmare = I got a text at 2 o'clock in the morning. It was from my therapist. The text was only 3 words... "I understand now". They were never seen again. Also, I never had a therapist.

[Tekker]

Hmmmm. Maybe hard mode with altar of power = current IN fights? But you'd get less knowledge and they'd have more damage reduction and bonus tech rate.