Magecraft: Spellbuilding news & patch notes

Change log:

• Spells that were gifted to you, such as the Summon Marionette spell obtained at the start of the game, can now be deleted from your inventory if desired.

• Managing to defeat the tentacled "Beast" enemy present in one of the Twilight Woods boss fights now brings a small change to the Workshop. (This only applies going forward, so if you’ve already beaten this enemy, you’ll need to do it again for this change to happen.)

• Slightly buffed the final boss of the Abyss mode (increased damage/duration of a few attacks, added an extra attack, and they no longer lose all buffs at a certain point in the fight). May make more balancing updates to this boss in the future, depending on feedback.

Change log:

• Added guardrails around saving and loading data. This should help protect against corrupted save data if something goes wrong, like the save process being interrupted.

  • Backups of the previous save data are also created now, and will be loaded automatically if the original save data fails to load.

• Fixed an issue where spells with a mana cost higher than your current mana couldn’t be discarded even after gaining the “Fate” status.

• Fixed an issue where your supply of spell materials was ignored when duplicating a spell.

It's been a while since the last update, but this one brings a new dungeon, a new character + starting background, a couple of new Sigils, and more.

New Dungeon: Twilight Woods

A dark, haunted woods beset by an ever-present twilight moon.

This dungeon is available for characters that have cleared the third dungeon.

New Character: The Spellsword

The Spellsword character appearance comes with a wide variety of styles, sporting different sets of armor and blades.

The Spellsword background power allows you to change your stance at will, favoring offense (increased attack, but increased damage received), defense (decreased damage received, but decreased attack), or neither (no status changes). You also have a limited-use parry that activates when the damage of one of your spells exactly matches the damage of an opposing enemy attack.

Both the appearance and background are available by default.

Unrestricted Unique Backgrounds

Previously, unlockable characters would come paired with a unique background power that could only be used by them.

This update removes that restriction, allowing you to freely mix all unlocked character appearances with any unlocked background.

Additionally, all unlockable characters now have a few more styles to choose from.

Other Updates

Enhancements

• The Summoner specialty and Necromancer background now have the ability to direct the attacks of their Summons by dragging and dropping the Summons' attacks onto other rows. (Summon attacks cannot be removed in this way, however.)

• Added a new Magecraft color: Deep Blue

Balancing

• The Dread and Parasites Sigils can now be obtained as Midboss rewards for the new Twilight Woods Dungeon, rather than being bought from the workshop shop.

• The gold payout from the “Sell Out” ending has been reduced to 1,000 gp, to balance it (at least a bit) now that there’s additional content beyond the ending. This has no affect on save files that have already obtained the gold from this ending.

Change log:

• You can now load a duplicate of an existing spell into the Spellbuilding menu, allowing you to easily duplicate spells or create modifications of existing spells.

  • This is available from the spell Inventory, via the third button that appears when hovering over a spell.

• In Spellbuilding, hovering over a buff or debuff Sigil will now show whether its the status effect is stackable on enemies.

  • This also is shown for the Hex and Ignition Sigils.

  • If there is a max # of stacks a target can hold, that is also shown in the hover.

Change log:

• Typo fixes for the Fairy Core drop and for dialogue in the Occult Manor

• Corrected the hover display for Poison when you have the Poison Stacks power (it now says 1/2 of the stacks are lost each turn, rather than 2 stacks each turn).

• Critical Hits or the Lucky status will no longer be triggered by self-inflicted damage

• The self-damage effect of the Life Force scroll no longer increases when the scroll is enhanced at a Shop

• Updated description of the following status effects:

  • Dread (to note that damage specifically from attacks is increased)

  • Invisibility (to note that AoE attacks can still hit)

  • Sneak Attack (to note that it goes first, before the player’s spells)

  • Venom (to note that up to 3 stacks get expended at once)

Change log:

• Fixed an issue where enemies wouldn’t die upon being brought down to 0 HP in certain situations.

• The halfway point of Dungeons will now always have a Midboss. (Previously, some paths may not have had a Midboss encounter.)

• Minor wording fix in the ending cutscene and the Sell Out ending description.

• Spellbuilding updates:

  • If you remove a sigil from your spell while you already have a sigil selected, the selected sigil is now correctly cleared, preventing you from placing that sigil in an invalid slot.

  • If you have a spell with multiple Damage sigils and the Area of Effect modifier, removing one of the Damage sigils will no longer automatically remove the Area of Effect one. (Area of Effect will still be removed if you remove all other damage sigils on the Spell.)

  • Various sigils that have no extra effects when stacked can no longer be added to a spell multiple times.

  • Shield Modifiers, such as Ward / Spiked / Guardian Shield, will automatically be removed from the spell if all Shield sigils are removed.

• Updated spell effects:

  • Echo Shield no longer counts the shield-based damage from Barrier Bash when shielding the user, to prevent exponentially-stacking shield and damage when combining the two. For example:

    • With 10 shield, a Barrier Bash + Echo Shield spell will deal 10 damage and increase shield by 0. (Since all damage came from Barrier Bash)

    • With 10 shield, a Barrier Bash + 5-Damage + Echo Shield spell will deal 15 damage and increase shield by 5. (Since 5 damage out of the total came from sources other than Barrier bash.)

    • With 10 shield and 1 stack of Power, a Barrier Bash + Echo Shield spell will deal 12 damage and increase shield by 2. (Damage buffs like Power will still count towards the Echo Shield amount.)

    • A 5-damage + Echo Shield spell will be unchanged, dealing 5 damage and increasing shield by 5.

  • The Dread status can now be stacked multiple times.

  • When stacked, the Ignition sigil now only displays “Grants 1 stack of Ignition to self” once, matching how the Spell actually works. (The damage stacks, but not the Ignition status.)

  • The Witchcraft and Judgement scrolls will also increase the stack limit of statuses, if they happen to increase the number of stacks past the status' usual limit.

An additional note: I won't have as much time to work on updates during the next few weeks, so the next patch likely won't come until the weekend of November 22nd.

Change log:

• The Wolf can now show up in the Workshop even if you’ve chosen the Offering ending.

• The Ignition buff granted by the Fire Rat’s Grave Gift status now has a max of 3 stacks, matching the standard Ignition buff.

  • For other status effects, if there’s a difference in stack limit between the status you already have vs a status of the same type being newly applied, the overall stack limit will update to match the larger of the two limits.

• Fixed how special effects (like Hex, Charged Spell, Poisonblight, and Barrier Bash) combine with each other. Combinations of these effects will now only deal damage once (while still combining the special effects, such as the extra damage from Hex, Charge Stacks, etc.).

• Fixed an issue where adding more than one Multi-Attack effect to certain Spells would continue to increase its damage.

  • For example, Multi-Attack + Hex deals 9 damage twice, but adding another Multi-Attack is meant to deal 9 damage three times rather than deal 14 damage three times.

• If an enemy with 1 stack of Undying is defeated by a damaging attack that remove the Undying status (such as Sister Jeanne’s Smite attack or spells enhanced by the Blessing power), the enemy will no longer revive.

  • (Previously, the enemy would be defeated and use Undying to revive before the “remove Undying” effect could be applied.)

• Fixed an issue where the Leech scroll would remove an enemy's "Summon" status.

• An an informational hover appears if you open the Dungeons popup without a valid deck, directing you to create more Spells in Spellbuilding and add them to the deck before you’re able to enter a Dungeon.

Change log:

• The damage from Blood Magic will no longer put you in a strange state of being alive yet at 0 HP. (Blood Magic damage is meant to always leave you with at least 1 HP, even if you already have 1 HP when using a Blood Magic spell.)

• The Rat and Sister Jeanne can now show up in the Workshop even if you’ve chosen the Offering ending.

• Spells using Ignition no longer get stacked with similar Spells that don’t have Ignition.

A small update in the spirit of Halloween, with a New Game Plus mode, a new unlockable character (the Pumpkin Knight), two new Sigils (Dread and Parasites), and some patch notes.

New Game Plus

After beating the main game mode (clearing the third dungeon and choosing an ending), you’ll be able to use New Game Plus.

This allows you to carry forward the Spells, Sigils, items, and such from a base save file that has beaten the game into a new save file, making it easier to try out new characters and builds without having to collect Sigils and items all over again.

Things that carry over with New Game Plus:

• Spells

• Decks

• Materials (Parchment, Grimoires, and Jewels)

• Sigils

• Gold

• Items

Things that do not carry over:

• Mana (you start over at the standard 3 mana)

• HP (you start over with the standard HP for your chosen background)

• Dungeon progress

Currently, New Game Plus is mainly meant for convenience, and doesn't include any increases to difficulty, but I might look into further updates to New Game Plus in the future.

New Character: Pumpkin Knight

A new character with a unique power, the Pumpkin Knight is unlocked when you’ve beaten the game with at least one character (which applies retroactively if you already have a save file that’s already beaten the game).

The Pumpkin Knight's power switches them between Pumpkin Form (+2 damage reduction) when HP is 50% or more, and Wraith Form (+2 damage dealt) when HP falls below 50%. Additionally, the first time Wraith Form activates in battle, 1 stack of Charge is gained.

Unlocking this character will also make their appearance available in the Abyss.

New Sigil: Dread

Dread is a 1-mana cost debuff that increases the damage an enemy takes by +2. It can’t be stacked, however.

This Sigil can be bought from the Shop after clearing the first dungeon, the Fae Forest.

(This Sigil isn't counted towards the base 64 that are part of the Sigil Seeker achievement.)

New Sigil: Parasites

Parasites is a 2-mana cost debuff that can be stacked up to 4 times on an enemy. This status's effects are:

• Reduces an enemy’s damage dealt by 1 per stack

• When the enemy is defeated, the parasites burst and deal 5 damage per stack to each of the enemy’s allies

This Sigil can be bought from the Shop after clearing the second dungeon, the Occult Manor.

(This Sigil isn't counted towards the base 64 that are part of the Sigil Seeker achievement.)

Patch Notes

General

• Expanded the max amount of save files from 16 to 24.

• When creating a new character, a hover will tell you which unlocked characters are tied to a specific unique Background.

Game Balance

• Buffed the Skeleton’s “Undying Mage” power so that Undying can trigger once per battle, rather than only once during the entire dungeon run.

• Buffed the Revive status to heal users back to 20% of Max HP, rather than 10%.

• Buffed the "Vampirism" power so that attacks against bleeding enemies heal you for their full Bleed amount.

  • For now, the “Vampire” starting background remains at healing half the enemy’s Bleed damage, since this power comes with permanent Regeneration and no Blood Craving downside.

• Enemy attacks that use the Sneak Attack effect no longer have the chance of scoring a critical hit.

  • The critical hit effect was originally added to buff the Sneak Attack Sigil, but shouldn’t have been applied to enemy usage of the effect.

• Updated the Empowering Beam rare scroll to have a limit of 30 base damage (not counting buffs like Power).

Spellbuilding

• You can now go directly to your Decks from the Spellbuilding menu.

• The Spellbuilding menu now prevents you from adding two Summons to one Spell (which has no extra effect anyway).

  • The same applies to the “Summon Atk Up” and “Summon HP Up” effects.

• In the Spellbuilding menu, Elemental Sigils are no longer automatically removed when you remove one of the other Sigils.

Other UI

• The Venom buff now simply says it strengthens the next poison inflicted, rather than saying “2x stronger” specifically. The way that Venom works (this is unchanged from before) is:

  • Poison has a “rank” system that determines how much damage it deals. Poison starts at rank 1, and Toxic Poison starts at rank 2.

  • Each stack of Venom increases the rank of the next instance of Poison applied by +1, up to a maximum of Rank 4.

  • The damage dealt for each rank is:

    • Rank 1 = 2 damage per turn

    • Rank 2 = 4 damage per turn

    • Rank 3 = 6 damage per turn

    • Rank 4 = 10 damage per turn

Change log:

• Fixed a bug where buying the Grimoire or Jewel materials in the Shop wouldn’t respect the discount

• Buff removal now only removes 1 stack of Undying at a time, rather than all stacks at once

• Fixed the wording of the Vampire power to state that it heals half the enemy’s Bleed damage

• Fixed a typo in the Dark Slime summon’s Life Drain attack

Change log:

• Added the ability to view Inventory and Decks from the Spellbuilding menu

• Fixed an issue with certain Spells causing the player’s turn to restart while the Spell was executing

A couple of balance updates and bug fixes. I'll still be keeping an eye out for additional feedback and suggestions.

Change log:

• Balance updates for the first area of the Abyss:

  • Immortal Knight midboss: Reduced his number of revives by 1, and slightly lowered the base damage of his attacks.

  • Vampire Lord boss: Lowered the damage of some attacks. In Phase 2, the “Elusive” and “Mobile” status effects will only last a few turns, and Evasion won’t be used as much.

• Fixed a bug where removing the Undying status from the enemy in the Occult Manor's Vampire Maid event could result in an unwinnable battle.

• Made a fix that should hopefully prevent spells from getting stuck in a semi-transparent, unusable state.

• Fixed the way the Multi-Attack sigil would combine with certain other sigils, like Barrier Bash.

  • Some sigils, like Hex or Poisonblight, will gain +5 damage from being combined in this way, because Multi-Attack normally deals 5 damage itself.

  • However, for balancing the Charged Spell and Barrier Bash sigils will not have this extra damage added.

The full release is out now, with 3 main dungeons, several unlockable characters, more than 64 spell sigils, and the rogue-lite Abyss mode.

In addition, version 1.0.0 brings with it a handful of updates:

• When you're defeated during a dungeon run, roughly 1/3rd of your gold and items will now be saved.

  • This does not apply to Hard mode, where defeat will still lose you the gold and items you obtained during that run.

• Updates to Anomaly battles:

  • Reworked the buffs that can be applied to Anomaly enemies at the start of battle to better balance them.

  • Added an additional award for clearing Anomalies: Enchanted Gold, which is an amount of gold coins that are not lost on defeat, even in Hard Mode. The amount of gold obtained scales with the difficulty of the battle.

• Replaced the Healer starting class’s power:

  • The new power grants temporary bonuses to damage dealt and damage reduction when you heal an ally or get healed. The latter applies to any source of healing, not just your own spells. This should be an improvement over the previous Overheal ability, which only activated when you managed to heal yourself above your max HP.

  • The Overheal ability still exists as a separate power you can find in the Dungeons or the Abyss.

• Powers that upgrade some of your Spells now mention the increased mana cost of the upgrade.

  • The Toxicity power now applies a 0-mana cost Poison effect to Spells, matching the free poison effect from the Poisonrot power.

• Made the Echo Shield sigil, which deals damage then shields you the amount of damage dealt, available earlier (from the Forest midboss).

  • In return, the Toxic Poison sigil is now available later, from the Manor midboss.

• Updated the Hunter Swarm enemy’s attacks so it no longer is able to start the battle with a 10-damage attack.

• Updated the “Nature Fairy’s Wrath” scroll: it now either deals 10 damage to the enemy or heals them for half damage, instead of either dealing 10 damage or healing 10 damage.

This will be the only major release for the game, but I'll still be making smaller updates as feedback comes in.

Thanks to everyone who played the demo, and I hope you enjoy the full release.

A small update to the demo. Some additional updates will be coming later, with the full game release on September 12th.

Change log:

• Fixed a bug where the second dungeon, the Occult Manor, was sometimes available despite not being a selectable dungeon

• Fixed a bug with Shop Favors where selecting a card for enhancement then canceling would still enhance the selected card

Magecraft: Spellbuilding will be released on Friday, September 12th, 2025, around 5am PDT.

This full release will include:

• A total of 3 dungeons (2 new ones in addition to the demo's Fae Forest dungeon)

• More than 64 Sigils to collect and use in Spellbuilding

• The Abyss - a separate mode that takes advantage of more rogue-lite elements, such as randomized starting characters and decks

The save data from the demo is compatible with the full release, and should be picked up automatically when the game is started.

Change log:

• The Player’s shield spells now last into the next turn, instead of disappearing at the end of the turn that the shield was applied

• Allies can now be dismissed from battle when desired, allowing you to free up space to summon a different ally

  • This can be done by clicking the X that appears next to the HP bar of allies that can be dismissed.

  • This works for all summons and for some other allies. However, certain allies are not allowed to be dismissed.

• Updated the Sneak Attack effect:

  • The description is now more clear (“Bypasses enemy attacks” instead of “Sneak Attack damage”).

  • Buffed with an additional effect: A chance to land a critical hit (which multiplies damage by 2).

  • Receiving the Sneak Attack Sigil now only gives you the Sneak Attack modifier (which can be applied to damaging spells in Spellbuilding), not the status effect (which is being removed in favor of the buffed modifier).

• Updated the Pierce effect:

  • The description is now more clear (“Pierces through enemy attacks” instead of “Piercing damage”).

  • Buffed with an additional effect: Ignores shields when dealing damage.

• Fixed the enemy Fruit Throw attack: the healing effect now matches the Power number shown, instead of being stuck at 5

Change log:

• Removed the limit for how many buffs / debuffs can be applied to a fighter

  • The UI will now expand to show up to 20 status effects. Additional statuses after 20 won't be shown, but will still take effect.

• The Spellbuilding menu now prevents you from adding more than one element to a spell (which has no additional effects)

• Increased drop rate of the Shadow Mote material

• Partially fixed a bug where spells that damage the user did not follow through with damaging the user if the spell’s target was slain

  • Note: If this happens to the last remaining enemy, the player victory will take precedence and still prevent the self-damage from happening. This may be fixed in a future update, but will remain for now as a side effect of landing the winning blow.

• Increased mana cost of Life Force scroll to 2 mana

Change log:

• Spells can now be used in multiple Decks at once, so you no longer need to remove Spells from one Deck in order to use them in another.

  • As part of this change, the Inventory now shows all Spells you own, including those added to Decks.

• Combatants with an elemental affinity now have their element shown in a small emblem next to their HP bar.

  • These emblems also show up in the Elements popup (accessible via the icon with the three circles at the bottom left of the Combat screen).

• Extra Parchment can now be bought from the Shop.