HotFix: 1.09.28

-Changes-

- Reverted Smoke Clouds to their original visibility only obstruction. Allowing them to prevent "Shoot Through" had unintended results with shout based skills not landing. Note with this version the AI tends to cheat with targeting and it's less reliable. Sadly it's one or the other.
- Leech Talent has been re-scripted to ping surfaces a bit quicker.

- Added a secondary check to Perseverance armor restore skill for enemies.
- Fixed Sabotage skill from not penetrating armor for certain statuses.
- Fixed Mass Sabotage damage listener from capturing more than the intended number of damage types.
- Fixed Two King United not allowing Perma Frost's Piercing Chill to occur on a fresh status target.
- Fixed Thing from Beyond AoE toggle issue causing it to not deal damage. Increased visual height to improve visibility.
- Forced Rupture Tendons to abide by Physical Armor resistance. Normally this is engine control.
- Escapist will now show as a Talent on enemies.

HotFix: 1.09.27

- Fixed Hit API layer conflict with Leech on Cursed surfaces causing damage absorption due to improper order or operations.
- Increased Primary Strike of Spark skills to 20% from 15%.

HotFix: 1.09.26

- Fixed a few Conflux skills for NPCs calling scripting twice creating odd behavior.
- Fixed a math calculation with Living on the Edge causing it to proc Soul Ward early.
- Weighted Talents added by the NPC Talent difficulty option are more broad and reduce some defense talents.
- All Talent features added by the NPC Talent difficulty option will show as character statuses when combat starts. (less inspecting required)

Patch: 1.09.25

-New-

- Conflux Config Orb has an additional Difficulty feature which adds Talents to enemies based on a pool for their Archetype i.e Defender, Caster, Melee, Ranged. This feature is intended to add an additional layer to both normal Conflux play and Enemy Upgrade Overhaul play. Talents added are weighted and increase in number as the game progresses.
- Conflux Config Orb's Enemy Talent feature has enhanced support for enemy stats, skills and weapons. As an example if a character rolls Thaumaturgy Warlord they will be given a sparks skill and other skills of the element their weapon damage type changed to. If they roll Elusive they will have increased Dodge chance and potentially gain the Evasion skill. Grenadier Talent will add extra Grenades to the character's inventory. Runic Arsenal will grant random perks of the runes such as Cleave, Reduced first hit of Physical/Elemental damage per turn or Rampant Growth. This feature is intended to add more player-like design to enemies rather than just tacking on talents.
- Conflux Config Orb now has an option to remove annoying loop NPC dialogs in cities that serve no purpose in the game (You know the ones).
- Conflux Unique items will now display they are a "Conflux Unique" so players know which items are coming from what mods.

-Changed-

- Reviewed ~2,000 NPC for newer skills, improved their skill priority usage, encountered skill synergy and brought up dips in difficulty at various parts during the game. Overall Strategist is a little more difficult than before at base.
- Roughly 30% of NPC On-Death Action: Curse, Necro fire or skills like Void Glide have been removed or replaced with non-curse versions.
- Duelist's Clash will only Taunt on it's primary Shield strike instead of both strikes. This was causing issues with Defensive Talents.
- Grips of Despair's debuff proc rate has been reduced to every 1.0m of movement from 0.75m.
- Brand of the Arch Magi's Elemental Strike will always fire bolts as lvl 17. Conflux Uniques were not originally designed to be leveled.
- RindRazor's Hit and Run skill damage multiplier reduced to 75% from 85%.
- Killing Field had improper damage values set. It was intended at 65% x2 but was doing 80% x2. This skill has been changed to only hit once per trigger for 90% damage and will no longer trigger when an enemy leaves the area (Leaving was buggy anyways).
- Mirage Arrow damage reduced to 80% from 100%. Shadow Clone's base damage reduced to 70% from 80%.
- Thing from Beyond's scaling Crit stat reduced to 2 from 3. The creature now has more range of 15m from 13m and greater sight. Its tooltip is improved to explain it's talent feature and now requires Summoning 1 Necromancy 2.
- Removed the weapon swap preset feature from Combat Reflexes. This was mostly flavor and confused some players. It also served little purpose when players could just hotbar their weapons instead.
- Nullify will no longer iterate Spark Aura or sub-Aura statuses due to changes in Sprak Aura mechanics.
- Rallying Cry's base healing increased to qualifier 75% from 50% and Magic Armor restore increased to 35% from 20%.
- Pyro + Aero skills intended to produce the Conflux status Accelerant will no longer stun an enemy leaving it to the player’s decision to progress to Stun or not.
- There can now be only one Idol of Rebirth per playthrough from Dorya via Chrysalis option. If you kill her she will not have it.
- The Phoenix Heart reward from the Trial of Seasons will now grant the player who eats it one self Resurrection at full HP and Armor once. This effect has a warm up time of 10 turns to prevent mid-combat panic buttons but will last afterwards until triggered.
- Cromdor has been buffed and should produce a greater challenge for the last Conflux boss in Act1. He will now drop his loot like all other Conflux bosses.
- The Great Guardian in the Act 3 arena will now break free from stun and become immune after 3 turns. Have fun =D
- Bryagh's Tortured Soul beam damage increased to 600% from 500%.

- Spark skills have been toned down considerably. This was a gross underestimate on my part with layering. Primary Strikes now deal 15% Weapon damage from 50% and their surface transforms have been removed. In many cases this could cause CC on a single strike with the Lightning variant. Magic based Projectiles now deal 30% multiplier damage from 50%. Keep in mind Thurmagury Warlord will add STR or FIN values to the Magic Projectiles of Sparks and unlike Vanilla versions which were already questionable all Sparks Crit and apply status for free. This should keep the bonus damage Vs AP more in-line, esp when layering AoE / Multi-Strike attacks.
- Group based Aura Spark skills now have a limit of 10 procs per turn they can produce. This limitation is only placed on characters who are not the status owner. Each proc will reduce the number until the counter buff is removed. A tracking buff remains for it's intended duration and at the start of the status owners turn the number of charges are refreshed.

-Fixes-

- Nether Dominance should no longer have a small chance of failing if the caster is in an elevated or cramped location.
- Fixed Enemy Blade Dervish from not properly showing it's skill name in the notification UI.
- Pact of Shadows will no longer apply it's buff to temporarily allies to due Charm.
- Slime Coated Harpoon will now properly only Backstab with melee attacks and its own throw skill.
- Fixed Grips of Despair not checking for the hit to land before applying Drowning Despair.
- Fixed Miasma Spire showing it's full terrain range regardless of obstacles. This didn't affect projectiles as they'd still be blocked.
- Fixed Troll Troll script in Act3 from repeating. This was one of the many small character interaction scripts for veterans.
- Added redundancy check for Spark sub-Aura status before allowing a primary strike proc.
- Fixed visual lighting loop on Hailstorm Insignia.
- Added better description to Sursia's Phasing mechanic for non-Super D&D nerds.
- Fixed Sursia's Dome helpers from showing up in combat at times.
- Fixed a potential crash caused by Brownie Throne allowing status to apply causing a Giftbag 5 bug to occur.
- Improved AI-Grid layers in Amadia's Temple to hopefully prevent eternal falling damage.

HotFix: 1.09.22

- Fixed a Giftbag 5 crash caused by Creeping Death and Cremation statuses applying to non-characters.
- Fixed AP timing on Blade Dervish so insure the 5th attack goes through. (This skill is due for some newer script tricks)
- Fixed Whirling Steel + Executioner working a little too well for it's 3rd hit end-turn prevention causing an extra turn.

- Sorry about the frequent updates. I seem to have that "back to work from 2 weeks off" syndrome.

HotFix:

- Thing from Beyond will now last an extra turn. It's damage has been slightly reduced as part of this. Fixed some tiepos.
- Status text for Living on the Edge has been properly updated for the new mechanics.
- Affliction Overload Talent has been buffed to 7% per status up from 5%.
- Rain Blood now costs 1 AP for those non-Elf Necros out there. Are they out there?
- Apotheosis now costs 1 AP for real this time.

Patch: 1.09.20

-New-

- New Skill Necro + Pyro "Cremation".
- New Skill Necro + Hydro "Creeping Death".
- New Skill Necro "Thing from Beyond".

-Changes-

- Corpse Explosion is now a Necro 2 Req instead of 1 Pyro 1 Necro.
- Mass Corpse Explosion is now a Necro 4 Req instead of 2 Pyro 2 Necro.
- Mass Corpse Explosion now costs 2AP from 1AP and cooldown increased to 4 turns from 2 turns.
- Both Vanilla Corpse Explosion skills are now considered Necromancy school for affinity purposes and their icons changed accordingly.
- Resonating Globe now has an aura effect to better show it's reactive AoE hit radius.
- Swallow Man's Airborne Plague status will now debuff -10% Armor/M.Armor and -10% Vitality instead of -4 CON.
- Apotheosis reduced to 1AP cost from 2AP.
- Living on the Edge has been reworked. The primary reason for this change is due to problematic design of the original. That is scaling to X + 1. Generally anything scaling to the potential of infinite is problematic. The skill will now prevent death as before then trigger a Soul Ward. The Soul Ward's current value is measured in % on it's status Icon and has a value of the character Maximum Physical and Maximum Magic Armor combined. This is not a snapshot effect. Adding Max Armor value such as Fortify, Magic Shell, Potions or Bone Cage after the Ward is produced will improve its ability to absorb damage. The Ward has a duration of 4 turns.
- Living on the Edge now has a duration of 4 turns from 2 turns.

-Fixes-

- Updated some older Unique item scripts such as Torq of Serenity and Band of turmoil. Improved Icy Serenity FX.
- Thanks to Giftbag 5 it seems Immune flags from custom items don't apply so they're now being manually applied via script.
- Fixed Ice King's freezing trail from working outside of combat.
- Weapons still tagged by Thurg Warlord's Elemental transform will be un-equiped when the talent is removed.
- Encourage will now do a quick script check on the character's Vitality changes to potentially re-apply Perfectionist.
- Fixed Whirling Steel from ending abruptly if it was the last AP used in a turn.
- Improved End Turn timing on Incendiary Tempest if it was the last AP used in a turn.
- Fixed Odin's Umbra Smoke Bomb from not creating smoke clouds due to previous global changes to smoke surfaces.

-Notes-
I'm attempting to push out most skill concepts, fixes, making sure NPCs use new skills properly and balance changes. After which I'll be going through all NPCs in the game refreshing their skill lists, adding bosses and new group tactic AI functions.

HotFix:

- Fixed a Lua Client/Server communication issue to reduced AP for Sabatons of Living Flame.
- Corrupted Blade / Serrated Edge statuses explain their effects better.
- Fixed a API Hit layer conflict between the new Sanguine Blades script and the Global Backstab script which was causing less than intended damage.
- Improved Sanguine Blade's impact FX.
- Increase speed of character iteration for Thurg Warlord secondary sparks which should mitigate nill results on enemies at similar distance.
- Fixed Greater Spark Auras from stacking when cast on different characters.
- Off-hand attacks with the %Weapon Damage portion for primary targets of Sparks will properly deal 50% less damage. This does not apply to Projectiles.

HotFix:

- Accidentally broke Perfectionist Hit flag patch before last. Fixed Perfectionist.
- Grenadier now also grants a 25% chance for "Quick Assembly" to quickly duplicate a thrown grenade at no material cost.