SkyShard: City Battler news & patch notes

Units:

• New art:

  • Fatigue Wizard

  • Stockmoore's Warehouse

  • Blind Priestess

  • Bee Hive

  • Thorn Thruster

  • Tiny Rafflesia

  • Nurturing Sprite

  • Vinculi

• Bee Keeper: Nerfed to spread 75% of the health buff instead of 100%

  • This also solves the Mushroom Mender + Bee Keeper combo cleanly without removing the interaction or adding other conditions

Heroes:

• Auris now has her own fancy island!

• All hero islands are now animated

• Zapzap Thriving Trees quest reworded to more clearly state the nature units need to be bought

Bugs:

• Ancestral Keep: would temporarily lose health when selling off units

• Miracle Enchantment: would not always apply start of combat effects of the new enchantments

Other:

• Matchmaking change: Bigger opponent pool and decreased difficulty bumps

  • The most common feedback we receive regarding the ranked system is how there's these hard walls people hit once they enter a new matchmaking bracket, because you'll now be facing mostly opponents of your rank or higher. We're now testing a change that increases the pool of opponents to include the lower rating bracket as well until you're at rank 1400 (where you just face the highest bracket: 1000+). What does this mean? Twice the amount of boards and variety in the pool, half of them from opponents in a lower matchmaking bracket. Games should now feel even more diverse, slightly easier and with a more gradual power curve as you rank up! This is an experimental change and will likely lead to some inflation.

• Tier 1 Enchantment encounter is now a big shop instead of single random

• 16 new encounters and a few changed for every faction, including Basic

  • The encounter system was still very similar to what it was before EA release (with a smaller unit pool). This leads to a strange balance in shops. Another reason some shops have more "single random" options than others was because of their power level when synergies come together. Right now, all shops have a random option on Tier 1 (because of pool size, this only has units from 1 tier while other shops combine units of 2 tiers), and all factions have a triple random shop on every other tier with a variety of appearance rates. Let's see how this plays out!

Encounters

• Most big encounters now have lower chances of showing up

Units:

• New art:

  • Jefferson

  • Bank

• Ancestral Keep: Nerfed effect to no longer gain any Damage on units summoned. Buffed base Damage from 20 -> 40

• Elder Dandelion: Nerfed tree summons when destroyed from 4 -> 2

• Elder Tiger Lily: Nerfed amount from 5 -> 6 nature units needing to be destroyed.

• EMP Mine: Nerfed cooldown increase from 0.2s -> 0.1s

• Altering Stone: Now needs at least 2 Health to trigger

• Efficio: Nerfed Damage buff from +2 -> +1

• Bell Ringer: Buffed cooldown from 5.5s -> 3.5s

• Warden's Flame: Buffed Damage gain from 15% -> 20%

• Cannon: Buffed Damage from 85 -> 90

• Infinity Pool: Buffed Health from 300 -> 330

• Blighted Ballista: Buffed triggers required from 20 -> 18

• Magnus: Buffed Damage from 50 -> 60

• Magic Missile Mine: Nerfed Explosive from 30% -> 20%

• Marketplace: Buffed cooldown from 1.5s -> 1s

• Spirit Torch: Nerfed Damage buff from 15% to 10%

• Cursed Bell: Buffed Health from 160 -> 200

• Weather Machine: Buffed cooldown from 3.5s -> 3s

• Obelisk: Buffed cooldown from 4s -> 3s

• Blind Priestess: Buffed cooldown buff from 10% -> 15% and health buff from 30% -> 35%

• Spirit Fisher: Buff extra spread from 10% -> 25%

• Weaponizer: Nerfed Damage from 40 -> 30

• Pyromancer: Buffed Damage from 3 -> 4

Heroes:

• Zapzap Thriving Trees quest: Changed to require five Tier 1 Nature units instead of 4 Trees.

Bugs:

• Powerplant could trigger on non-cooldown tinker units (mainly Weaponizer)

• The extra weapon encounters on round 3 and 5 did not yet check the inventory for weapons for the threshold

Other:

• Gravekeeper info reworded for clarity

Features:

• New solo adventure: Rise of Emergus

• Unit trigger animations are slightly updated

Units:

• Grave Keeper: Nerfed chance to summon from 10% -> 7%

• Cloaked Witch: Nerfed negative lifesteal from 5 -> 4

• Piranha Plant: Nerfed projectile speed from medium -> slow

• New art:

  • Rusty Sentry

  • Bakery

  • Saloon

  • Blacksmith (updated)

Bugs:

• Scarecrow would flip its sprite on the enemy island

• Dandelion and Toy Store summons could block Watch Tower at the start of combat (they now correctly trigger after)

• Spell Eater would gain health when newly summoned units got destroyed, even if they didn't have enchantments

• Firestorm Shelter had some strange behavior when adjacent Town units had the Second Chance enchantment

• Entering a shop too quickly after just leaving a shop could result in the island not rendering properly

• Weaponizer would not display its projectile speed

Other:

• Bot Buff enchantment no longer spreads to summoned units (similar to Second Chance)

• Units in your inventory now count towards shop odds (instead of just units on your island)

  • We guarantee a weapon shop on round 1, 3 and 5 if you're behind on weapons. People would hold a weapon in inventory on round 2 and/or 4 to get that guaranteed shop regardless.

• Nature's Aid shop has been removed (Random Nature Defense Tier 3)

• Matchmaking change: everyone now has max 2 boards on each turn in the pool instead of 3

  • This should add even more variety to the opponents you face, which will also make matchups in the highest tier bracket easier on average. If people just above 1000 rating still get too many tough opponents, we can take further measures.

Features:

• When going to a shop, units that have the same tier as the shop cost are now twice as likely to show up than the units that are 1 tier lower

  • This will improve the quality of higher tier shops and make them feel more rewarding to visit. It also makes it slightly easier to find specific high tier units.

Units:

• Vinculi: Nerfed health buff from 50% -> 35% / Changed Type from Defense to Utility

  • This unit had too much potential. I'm keeping it on tier 1 for now because this unit is meant to be easier to get multiple of, but I'm decreasing its scaling and removing some of its more broken buff synergies (I'm looking at Excubitor). If this change is not enough, it gets bumped to tier 2.

• Topaz: Nerfed tier from 1 -> 2

  • This crystal plays a more supporting role and should be less likely to find compared to the other crystals, especially since this one requires other crystals on board to work.

• Azurite: Nerfed speed buff from 5% -> 3%

• Emerald: Nerfed health buff from +30 -> +15

  • While the previous buffs were fine before, the addition of Topaz greatly shifts the potential and scaling of these crystals. A single Topaz already makes these nerfs insignificant compared to the power level they had before

• Suppressor Rod: Nerfed tier from 1 -> 2

• Mill: Buffed tier from 2 -> 1

• Dynamo: Buffed tier from 2 -> 1

• Force Field: Buffed health from 400 -> 500

• Big Red Button: Buffed health from 380 -> 500

• Bamboo: Nerfed tier from 3 -> 4

• Infinity Pool: Buffed health from 140 -> 300

• Tree: Nerfed health from 60 -> 50

• Brick Arcus: Buffed health from 250 -> 350

• Shrub: Nerfed health from 50 -> 30 / Nerfed health buff from 20 -> 15

• Prismatic Mirror: Buffed health from 550 -> 600

• Weather Machine: Buffed health from 270 -> 300

• Schola: Trigger amount nerfed from 25 -> 30

Bugs:

• Crystals highlights on hover when next to Topaz weren't updated correctly with the latest patch change

• Transferon could still move Health over a second after the unit got destroyed

• Crash when trying to transmute a unit (specifically after returning to a game)

Units:

• New Art:

  • Mine Field (previously named Dig Site)

• Topaz: No longer works on other Topaz crystals

• Elder Tiger Lily: Nerfed from 4 triggers -> 5

• Extra Voltage: Buffed from tier 3 -> 2

• Mini Turbine: Buffed from +1 extra damage -> +2

• Better live-updating info text:

  • The Big Tree

  • Knowledge Compositum

  • Shrub

  • Lumberjack

  • Aequaliser

  • Taron the Enchanter

Heroes:

• Zapzap: New island art!

Bugs:

• Grand Canopy no longer gives its enchantments to the summoned Town units

• Mana Refinerium info text no longer switches left/right wording when on opponent's island

• The hide/show tooltip key wasn't always working properly

• Specific Vinculi + Transferon setups could cause loops that end up crashing the game

  • There is now a soft gate that stops health buffs below 1 from spreading, which keeps the loop interaction but cuts it off quickly

• Bristlecone will now unlock in the library after surviving the Zapzap solo adventure

Other:

• Mouse-clicks now have an animated cursor sprite

• The combat log button on top is now kept in the same place during/after combat

• The public github repo got updated with a lot more data

Units:

• New art:

  • Marketplace (previously Bathhouse)

  • Crystal Mine

  • Blacksmith

  • Scarecrow

Bugs:

• Dig site could summon town units

• Furarium would remove too much health from summoned units

Other:

• Pacifist can no longer offer these units:

  • Cloaked Witch, Weaponizer, Bee Hive, Pyromancer, Carpenter, Muncher, Efficio

• Ancestral Keep typo in text

• Performance fix: the new island textures now get compressed differently, and audio takes up less memory

  • For some reason we had more people having crashes and performance issues with the early access version than when they played the demo. After some digging it turns out that some of the new textures didn't go through the old import pipeline, requiring more RAM to load them in. Hopefully this improves the game for everyone!

• Mossy Shield, Current-Edge Shield and Conjured Shield's wording is now more broad (not just Weapon damage)

Enchantments:

• Better temp art for most new enchantments

  • These are still bad paint drawings, but should make them visually more distinct

Bugs:

• Doomsday Dial would not reset after 5 Charges

• Crystal Core typo

• Ruby and Azurite crystals now correctly highlight further away when next to a Topaz

• Topaz now correctly counts towards the Mining Expedition quest

• Topaz now only appears once you have other crystals on board

• Haunted Mine can now be summoned by Dig Site

• Grand Canopy can now correctly summon Pyromancer, Carpenter and Muncher

• Mana Refinerium on opponent's island could generate Solid Mana for the player

• Magnitudon would not switch left/right for the opponent

• Transmuting units now returns their enchantments back to inventory instead of destroying them

Other:

• When steam fails to connect after pressing "Retry" in the main menu, a little helper shows up

Patch 1.0.0

Early access release!

Developer Update:

SkyShard has now entered Early Access! Today we're dropping a huge update in this patch with a ton of new units, solo adventures, art, features, and more. Throughout the rest of the year, we'll be adding even more content and putting the final touches on the game. You'll find a roadmap at the bottom of these patch notes with our future plans!

Features:

• Steam Achievements

• Steam Cloud Syncing

• Toggling island stats (info button bottom left) now also shows the enchantments on all units

• Island stats button now also appears when the game ends, so you can see the enchantments of your final build

• Matchmaking improvements to increase opponent variety

  • The server now stores max 3 boards on each round for each user, which will guarantee that you face a wider range of boards even if some players play more at a given time during the day than others

• New Solo Adventures:

  • The Wall

  • The Weaponsmith

  • Merus the Pure

  • The Fallen Archmage

  • The Grove

  • Ambrose

  • Auris

  • ZapZap (significantly updated)

• New Default island art

• New Ambrose island art

Units:

• New units:

  • Blind Priestess

  • Haunted Mine

  • Grave Keeper

  • Mana Refinerium (+ Solid Mana)

  • Fabrication Factory

  • Cloaked Witch

  • Ancestral Keep

  • Nurturing Sprite

  • Grand Canopy

  • Explosion Device 300

  • Magnitudon

  • Furarium

  • Transferon

  • Aequaliser

  • Spirit Fisher

  • Doomsday Dial

  • Anti-Stun-4

  • Cogwork Tower

  • Entombed Dread

  • Sprawling Fossil

  • Weaponizor

  • Spark Supplier

  • Extra Voltage

  • Holomancer

  • Tiny Rafflesia

  • Bell Ringer

  • Prismatic Shard

  • Mini Turbine

  • Elder Tiger Lily

  • Bee Hive

  • Pyromancer

  • Thorn Thruster

  • Carpenter

  • Excubitor

  • Muncher

  • Suppressor Rod

  • Emergus

  • Hole

  • Sloth Totem

  • Topaz Crystal

  • Power Cell

  • Vinculi

  • Efficio

• New art:

  • Brick Arcus

  • Solaris Saber

  • Knowledge Compositum

  • Chamaeleontis

  • Haunted Clocktower

  • Shrapnel Mine (previously Sonic Mine)

  • Enchant Weaver

• Balance:

  • Cannon Keep: Buffed Cooldown from 1.4s to 1.3s

  • Velmir the Wizard: Nerfed Cooldown from 2.5s to 2.7s

  • Materia Contrarium: Buffed Damage buff from +25% to +30%

  • Leech: Buffed Cooldown from 1.5s to 2s (friendly fire)

  • Tesla Coil: Nerfed Cooldown from 1.1s to 1.2s

  • Necromancer Hut: Buffed Damage from +1 to +2

  • Foundry: Buffed Damage from +2 to +3

  • Knowledge Compositum: Buffed Cooldown from 4s to 3.6s

  • Bathhouse: Buffed Cooldown from 2s to 1.5s

  • Firepot Trebuchet: Nerfed Damage from 70 to 65 and nerfed Explosive from 20% to 15%

  • Mill: Buffed Cooldown from 3.8s to 3.4s

  • Lumberjack: Buffed Cooldown from 3.6s to 3s

• Updates to various ability texts for clarity and consistency

• Updates to various Synergy Units and Lore

Enchantments

• New Enchants:

  • Pierce Modifier

  • Explosive Modifier

  • Regeneration

  • Well Oiled

  • Miracle

  • Mossy Shield

  • Cutting-Edge Shield

  • Conjured Shield

  • Bot Buff

  • Power Creep

Bugs:

• Toy Turret with lifesteal would never destroy itself

• Closing your inventory during the tutorial would soft-lock

• Random units disappearing on board after a move (I put more safety measures in, but I still need to keep monitoring this)

• Taron the Enchanter would stop giving enchantments to Enchant Weaver

• No music when playing the first tutorial

Other:

• Demo leaderboard is now frozen in time. Thanks everyone for participating and helping us improve SkyShard :)

• Enchantment trigger order now favors the player

Early Access Roadmap:

• Final art for all units, enchantments, heroes, and islands

• Refined combat animations and idle animations

• New Heroes and Quests

• New Units

• New Solo Adventures

• New Game Modes

• Duel Mode: Challenge the islands of other players using build codes

• Offline Mode: Play without needing an internet connection

• Beta art unlocks

• More balance adjustments, bug fixes, and system improvements

Features:

• New Sound effects:

  • Visiting encounters

  • Removing units

  • Opening, switching and closing menus

  • Quest finished / selected

  • Round win / loss

  • Game win / loss

Units:

• New art:

  • Black Cavus

  • Holos Replicator

  • Iris Refractor

  • Schola

  • Intervallum

• Updated art for: Vile Totem + Powerline

• Toy Production: Buffed from Tier 5 -> Tier 4

Bugs:

• Most remaining bugs have been hard to track down and seem to happen very inconsistently. I put a lot of extra safety measures in the code, and improved our tracked diagnostic. So if you encounter a bug, use the bug-report feature!!

Features:

• New UI:

  • Custom tooltip frames for shops

  • Start of Combat order indicators are now little flags

  • Game ending UI got updated

  • Unit lore tab got updated

  • Library UI layout changes

  • Quest + Hero info UI got updated in the Library

  • Enchantment info UI got updated

  • Selected Quest UI got updated (top left)

  • Enchantment shop UI got updated

• Added a bunch of new lore

Units:

• New art:

  • Powerline

  • Altar of Decima

  • Cursed Bell

  • Soul Engine (previous Soul Slinger). Now also dynamically changes its art when you have more ancient units

  • Scarlet Leech

  • Vile Totem

• A bunch of name changes

• Obelisk: Can no longer target Weapons

• Emerald: Nerfed Health buff from +50 -> +30

• Forest Spirit: Buffed Cooldown from 1.2s -> 1.1s

• Soul Engine: Buffed Cooldown from 1.5s -> 1.3s

• Cannon Keep: Buffed Cooldown from 1.5s -> 1.4s and Health buff from 400 -> 450

• Warden's Flame: Buffed Health from 350 -> 400

• Red Sun Shine: Buffed Damage buff from +10 -> +15

Features:

• Updated UI:

  • Island Stats

  • Combat Stats

  • Inventory

Units:

• Kudzu: Nerfed Summons from 5 times -> 3, Health buff from +2 -> +5 and Cooldown from 4s -> 3.5s

  • Kudzu has been a tricky unit to balance, because its effect can become so distuptive. We've exeprimented with different approaches but are going to test out less summons right now.

• Velmir the Wizard: Nerfed Explosive buff from +1% -> +0.5%

• Warden's Flame: Buffed Cooldown from 1.8s -> 1.5s

• Red Sun Shrine: Buffed Cooldown from 1.4s -> 1.3s

• Firepot Trebuchet: Nerfed Damage from 75 -> 70

• New art:

  • Infinity Pool

  • Spirit Torch

  • Derelict (previously Ritualist)

Heroes:

• Zapzap: polished art!!

Bugs:

• Right-clicking on the enchantment encounter didn't filter the library properly

• Kudzu's final spawns kept their cooldown instead of stopping after 1 trigger

• You could open a shop right after clicking find opponent and get stuck

Other:

• Second Chance Enchantment: no longer spreads to summoned units during combat

Features:

• Library now has 2 extra filters: In Shop and Discovered. The In Shop filter is automatically toggled when accessing the library popup by right-clicking an encounter

Units:

• Kudzu: Nerfed Cooldown from 3s -> 4s, Health Buff from +5 -> +2

• Stone Column: Is now added to the game (The unit spawned by Jefferson)

• Mecha Dragon: Nerfed Damage from 90 -> 80

Heroes:

• ZapZap:

  • Thriving Trees quest: From needing 5 trees -> 4

  • Overgrowth: From needing 6 Nature units -> 5

• Ambrose:

  • Infrastructure quest: From getting 1 powerline -> 2 powerlines

Bugs:

• In-game bug report would sometimes close on click

• Island stats UI blocking the unit UI

Other:

• In-game bug report will now send extra server related logs to us to fix an ongoing matchmaking issue

• Combat-end damage animation will now speed up if opponent has more units

Some live developer gameplay of SkyShard :)

Units:

• New art:

  • Big Red Button (and size change from 4x4 to 5x5)

  • Dynamo

  • Toy Production

• New units:

  • Kudzu

  • Solar Saber

  • Jefferson

Bugs:

• Refractor wasn't mirrored on the enemy board

• In Library -> Builds, the selected arrow didn't update properly after selecting a different build / patch

Other:

• End of combat damage counter updated

• Combat speed slider updated

• Random hero select now updates the right-side page

• Tutorial got a slight update

• Fire particles on damaged units now only show when they're below 70% Health

Features:

• Right-clicking the inventory button will reset its position

• Projectiles from weapons now have particle trails! These are temporary, let us know how you feel about them

Bugs:

• Even when the inventory went invisible, you could not interact with what's beneath it

• Library would not display previous builds correctly (and break when you had too many)

• Resummons during combat wouldn't work if the space was previously occupied (Altar of Decima, Mini black hole ...)

• Right-clicking a shop to open up the library will now correctly select the filters (so you can uncheck them)

• Inventory would sometimes expand down instead of up after moving

Other:

• Inventory can now only be moved when dragging the top "Inventory" title

• Island stats are now displayed in the bottom right corner instead of the center so it won't block the island anymore when zoomed in

As we're getting ready for steam next fest within a week, most of our time goes into getting the game as optimized as possible! We also finalized all the new units and enchantments for our early access launch that will follow shortly after (currently 170 total units!). Feel free to leave any feedback, thanks for playing our game and being part of this journey :)

Features:

• Updated end-combat animations

• UI for zapzap in the tutorial / tips has been upgraded

• Right-click on shops will now open the library with those shop filters

• You can now drag and move the inventory around

• Easier matchmaking for players rated 300 or lower

• Extra buttons next to inventory:

  • Open the library

  • Zoom in / out of your island

  • Island info (displays tiles and stats, same as to pressing spacebar)

  • Open the game menu (same as pressing escape)

Units:

• Chamaeleontis: Damage Class bonus from 0% -> 10%

• Replicator: Can no longer target Weapons

• Dynamo: Health from 10 -> 40

Bugs:

• Inconsistent leaderboard rank icon sizing

• Added all start of combat and passive effects to the combat activation logs

• When in the library -> builds tab, clicking on the little arrow next to the patch now correctly shows the patch options

• The header tab for previous builds in the library is now sticky on top (doesn't scroll with your builds)

Units:

• Well: Buffed Health from +5 -> +8

• Wardens Flame: Nerfed Health from 625 -> 350 / Explosive from 25 % -> 10%

• The Pillar: Changed Health from 200 -> 400 / Health Buff from +50% -> +25%

  • The biggest issue with Pillar + Wardens flame is how easily it scales out of control, especially with superchargers. Giving this the same treatment as previous strong combos: better baseline stats but less scaling potential, making it useful to pick up without support and limiting its ceiling.

• Bakery: Buffed from triggering adjacent town once -> twice

• Dig Site: Nerfed Tier from 3 -> 4

• Prismatic Mirror: Nerfed Health from 600 -> 550

• Scarecrow: Nerfed Cooldown from 1.7s -> 2s

• New art:

  • Cannon Keep

Bugs:

• Auris was called Ambrose in the library

• DPS was broken on the unit UI

• Library sorting after selecting filters would change initial relative positions (Basically: Ballista would normally be displayed before Spellbound Rocket in the library. But after selected a filter like Weapons, the Rocket would now display before the Ballista)

• Small and Tiny Bamboo were still Tier 2 instead of Tier 3 (like the main Bamboo)

• Clicking on the combat logs after clicking "Continue" would get the menu stuck on screen

• Transmute encounter would not spend 1 mana towards quests

Other:

• Changed encounter appearance odds, mainly lowering Faction specific shops on tier 4 / 5

• Different highlight color on the Leaderboard for your name

Features:

• When a unit hits their minimum cooldown, the cooldown number in the unit UI will be colored yellow instead of white

• Rank icons!

• Lots of new pretty UI (Profile / Leaderboard, Options, Game Modes, Library)

Units:

• New art:

  • Time Dilutor

  • Power Plant

  • Bot Buffer

  • Atomic Timekeeper (previously Atomic Clock)

• New animations:

  • Weather Machine

  • Firepot Trebuchet

  • Wardens Flame

• Infinity Pool: No longer turns its target into Magic units

• Toy Turret: From 100 Health to 120 Health

• Powerline: From 10% cooldown decrease to 15%

• Velmir: Cooldown from 2.1s to 2.5s

Bugs:

• EMP mine was still highlighting friendly units on hover

• Tutorial still used the old Quest UI

• Mecha Dragon could trigger itself with accelerate

• Atomic clock would speed up units when destroyed

• Research Facility, Taron the Enchanter and Post Office will now trigger Start of Combat Enchantments when they're given to a unit

• You could accidentally click "find opponent" right after pressing "continue" after a fight

• Extra shops could still spawn even if you don't have the mana for them after Replicator triggers (shop spawns now wait until all actions have resolved)

Other:

• Fixed various small typos

• Small details added to other UI screens

• Hero shows up on end screen

Units:

• Materia Contrarium: Now splits the Damage only between the targets that can buff their Damage (before this change, the damage would also try to get put on non-weapons, lowering the total amount that could go on a single weapon)

• Mecha Dragon Rework: Now triggers whenever it gets a speed buff!

• Weather Machine: Damage buff from +1 to +0.5

• Scarecrow: Now only targets cooldown unit

• EMP mine: Now only targets enemy cooldown units

• New art:

  • Red Sun Shrine (changes when it takes damage)

  • Mecha Egg

  • Mecha Dragon

  • Magnus the Miniscule

  • EMP mine

• New sound effects:

  • Weather Machine

  • Warden's Flame

  • Toy Turret

  • Soul Slinger

  • Rusty Sentry

  • Myrria Cursebinder

  • Mecha Dragon

  • Forest Spirit

  • Firepot Trebuchet

  • Entombed Terror

  • Toy Production

  • Mechanic

  • Graveyard

Heroes:

• Zapzap: now has increased chance for Nature shops

• Auris: now has increased chance for Novus shops

• Ambrose: now has increased chance for Town shops

Bugs:

• Clicking "Tips" on the unit UI in the library would close the library

• Dragging enchantment from the inventory didn't always get put on units

• Altar of Decima and Mini Black Hole can no longer resummon units that are permanently destroyed

• Refractor would not register some units properly

Other:

• Quest select screen now has a darker background

• Selecting the "random hero" option now needs confirmation

• Custom mouse cursors are now slightly bigger

• Changed button sound effects

• Vile totem info text changed to "Reflects back to the source"

• Transmute can now only appear once every round

Features:

• New pretty UI in most places! (more to come)

• Buttons got some extra animations

• Custom mouse cursors

Units:

Besides some fixes, there are also lots of balance changes. These mostly center around making Weapons with the "Normal" Damage Class more relevant.

• New unit: Enchant Weaver!

• Piranha plant can no longer trigger itself (causing infinite loops)

• Weather Machine now divides its lifesteal between the 5 targets instead of stacking

• Research Facility now gives an Enchantment even when it has no adjacent units

• New art:

  • Weather Machine

  • Spellbound Rocket

  • Conjured Clock (previously Bonfire)

  • Firepot Trebuchet

  • Warden's Flame

• Balance:

  • Rusty Sentry: Health / Damage from 85 / 120 to 100 / 150

  • Cannon Keep: Damage from 75 to 85

  • Entombed Terror: Damage / Speed from 100 / 1.6s to 80 / 1.3s

  • Soul Slinger: Damage / Speed from 140 / 2s to 100 / 1.5s

  • Tesla Coil: Health / Speed from 325 / 1.0s to 280 / 1.1s

  • Red Sun Shrine: Damage / Speed from 120 / 1.8s to 80 / 1.4s

  • Towering Shadewood: Health / Damage Reduction from 275 / 10% to 300 / 15%

  • Mushroom Mender: Health from 320 to 350

  • Brick by Brick: Health / Bonus Health from 100 / +40 to 250 / +25

  • The Pillar: Health / Bonus Health from 100 / 60% to 200 / 50%

  • Sunrise Flower: Health Buff from 10% to 20%

  • Artillery Repeater: Damage / Speed / Explosive from 40 / 1.2s / 40% to 50 / 1.6 / 20%

Heroes:

• Quest icons!

Bugs:

• Shelter could become invulnerable

• The enemy Rocket would target the furthers biggest unit instead of the closest

• Level up enchantment worked on units that shouldn't be getting damage buffs (Weather Machine etc)

• Fixed an exploit to duplicate Enchantments

• Random Soul Slinger could appear in the combat logs

• Units could still take damage from projectiles after combat has ended (leading to lost hitpoints by destroyed units)

Other:

• You can now click outside of most UI to close it

• Inventory will now hide itself when there are no items inside / show itself when you have items

• Hovering over the Damage Class in the unit UI will now display a tooltip to explain the class

• Matchmaking now has new brackets, these will slowly be integrated as more people play games to replace the old ones on the server (new brackets: 0-200 / 201-600 / 601-1000 / 1001-...)

• Losing and gaining rating for matches is now HALVED! This will hopefully limit the big swings up/down in rating from a few matches. You still get +10 for 16 survived rounds.

• In the Ranked mode you are now guaranteed a Weapon shop on round 3 if you only have 1 Weapon and on round 5 if you only have 2 Weapons or less (this is to prevent very unlucky cases where people don't find Weapons for multiple rounds, falling behind. We currently guarantee at least 3 Weapons by round 5)

• Ratings got new colors (work in progress, they will also get icons! )

• Library filters got improved

Features:

• In combat, units that give random enchantments (Research Facility, Taron the Enchanter, Post Office) will no longer give Weapon enchantments to non-weapons and cooldown enchantments to non-cooldown units.

Units:

• Blighted Ballista: new art!

• Firestorm Shelter: new art!

• Atomic Clock: is now a Start of Combat effect (0.2s cooldown increase)

• Latchwood Spore: now adds 7 lifesteal instead of 10

• Tesla Coil: no longer gets triple Health gain from lifesteal

• Big Red Button: now triggers 5 friendly Tinker units instead of 3

• Compound Knowledge: Cooldown is now 4s instead of 5s

• Ritualist: Could target non-Weapon units

Heroes:

• Ambrose Protectors quest: Now needs 4 Defense units to complete, and rewards 1 Defense unit + 2 Jeffreys (instead of needing 2 Jeffreys and rewarding 1 Defense unit and 1 Jeffrey)

Bugs:

• Rating could go below 0 in an edge-case

• Piranha plant would turn into a machine gun (counting its own lifesteal)

• Trees would not buff adjacent units after they were changed by Refractor to the Nature faction

• Ritualist could target non-Weapon units (like Magic Missile Mine)

Other:

• Level Up Enchantment now scales infinitely instead of 10 times max, but gives 0.5 Damage on trigger instead of 1

Features:

• You can now select a random Hero and get a free tier 1 unit as bonus

• While holding spacebar during combat you can now see a combat / fatigue timer

Units:

• New art:

  • Mana Jar

  • Corrupt Alchemist (previously named Corrupt Shaman)

  • Spell Factory

  • Taron the Enchanter

Bugs:

• Portal could generate conditional units

• When checking extra info holding spacebar, the Start of Combat numbers would appear behind the Enchantments, making them not readable

• Units in the background of the main menu could overlap with different islands

• Not all online modes were disabled if you couldn't connect to steam or the server

• Shelters could not stack on 1 unit

Other:

• Damage logs now more accurately show the damage Weapons deal

  • The logs will no longer report overkill or missed Damage, and take into account enchantments and other passives

• Lifesteal rework

  • Lifesteal used to just be a flat number that heals a Weapon whenever it triggers. Now it's an extra damage number on top of your normal Damage, it will only steal the life once the projectile landed and will conform to the actual Damage you did.

  • Example 1: You have 10 damage and +10 lifesteal, you fire a projectile with a total of 20 Damage. The target takes the 20 Damage and the weapon heals for 10 from the lifesteal after impact.

  • Example 2: You have 10 damage and +10 lifesteal. The target has 80% damage reduction, so it receives 4 Damage total from this projectile. The weapon only heals for 4.

  • Example 3: You have 10 damage and 10 lifesteal again, but the target only has 1 Health. The projectile only deals 1 damage and the weapon heals for 1.

Heroes:

• Ambrose: full art!

Units:

• Community Cauldron: art + animation

• Piranha Plant: art

Bugs:

• Stockmoore's Warehouse could give some new/unavailable items

• Elder Dandelion and Toy Store could still spawn an overlapping unit

• Refractor could sometimes not find the unit on the right

• When looking for an opponent, it displayed the last opponents' name for a split second

• Closing the window while in main menu instead of pressing exit could cause issues with your saved game (this was caused by the new autosave feature in the latest patch)

• Mechanic would still highlight Solo units

• Units could teleport and overlap by hovering over them quickly and clicking (especially at lower framerates)

• You could take damage from an enemy unit that got destroyed in the final frame of the fight

Other:

• Cleaned up the UI a bit

• Main menu islands now show more depth

• When a bug causes you to lose a game on round 1, you only lose -30 rating instead of the maximum

  • There have been a few bugs that put people in situations where a new game they start makes them lose all their rating. This is simply a failsafe in case that would occur again in the future to minimize the loss, without incentivizing people to concede games on round 1.

Features:

• Pause menu and game ui now also have custom buttons and animations

• All stone buttons now have sound effects

• Some units are getting small animations, most of these are temporary placeholders and experiments (can be toggled off in the settings)

• Unrated now has soft matchmaking (it will prioritize opponents with a rating lower than yours or higher by 200)

  • We have a lot of high rank people playing in unrated, this simply prevents most people that aren't high rated themselves of facing them, while high rated players can still face anyone. Unrated should be a place for casual and experimental play.

Units:

• Refractor is back! Now changes the Faction of all adjacent units to the Faction of the unit on the right

• Infinity Pool: Health from 80 to 140

• Myrria Cursebinder: is now Ancient instead of Magic

• Compound Knowledge: Cooldown from 3.5s to 5s and buff from 1 Damage to 0.5

• Corrupt Shaman: Health stealing from 5 to 3

• Entombed Terror: Damage from 140 to 100

• Atomic Clock: now increases Cooldowns by 0.3s instead of 0.2s

• Spirit Torch: Damage buff from 10% to 15%

• Ruby: Damage buff from 3 to 5

• Haunted Clocktower: is now Tier 2 instead of 4

• Towering Shadewood: now works on all adjacent units instead of just Nature units, is now Tier 3 instead of 2

• The Big Tree: Health from 550 to 350

• Town Hall: Damage buff from 1 to 0.5

• New art:

  • The Big Tree

  • Forest Spirit

  • Arborist

  • Mana Machina

  • Towering Shadewood

• New sound effects:

  • Assembolator

  • Chamaeleontis (changes based on its random Damage Type)

  • Magnus the Miniscule (changes based on target size)

  • Blighted Ballista

  • Piranha Plant

  • Spellbound Rocket

  • Stone Gorgon

  • Unstable Tesla Coil

Bugs:

• Some lore text and synergy units were mixed up

• Tree was still buffing for +10 instead of +5

• Loading a game back in didn't always show encounters

• Rare crash when conceding the tutorial

• Dragging units while looking for opponent could cause issues (you can no longer do that)

• Dragging units while board is loading after combat could duplicate that unit

• Enemy/Shop units will now correctly swap "left" and "right" in their info text

• Multi-drag could in some cases overlap units (this seemed to only happen when spam-clicking a multi-select, especially on a lower framerate)

• Casino didn't trigger properly

Other:

• All summons in combat now have a tiny delay between them instead of happening at the same time (Toy Store, Elder Dandelion) and happen last

• When closing the game window, it will check if you're in a valid spot to save instead of always conceding the game (Valid spots are during the encounter phase. To make sure, just press escape and check the menu)

• General duplication/cheating protection

  • We're putting in more checks and failsafes in case exploitative bugs appear. Of course the goal is always to fix the root causes of these bugs, but this will be a nice preventative measure. Also people looking for ways to cheat will be stopped in their tracks. This is an ongoing process.

Features:

• When hovering over the unit UI, you can now pop open a window with synergy units and lore!

• When holding spacebar you can now view "Start of Combat" units. Hovering over the tag will show the order they will trigger in.

• New main menu buttons!

  • We're going to add more custom buttons, animations and sound effects to the whole UI in the next few patches, this is a little teaser :)

Units:

• Crystal Core: now always gives a free Crystal when bought from a shop.

• Scarlet Leech: Faction changed to Ancient

• Cannon: name changed to Cannon Keep

• Sun Altar: name changed to Red Sun Shrine

• Voodoo Totem: name changed to Vile Totem

• Thanathos' Altar: name changed to Altar of Decima

• Sequoia: name changed to Towering Shadewood

• Rafflesia: name changed to Giant Rafflesia

• Homing Missiles: name changed to Firepot Trebuchet + temporary art change

• Proliferator: name changed to Elder Dandelion + new art!

• Glow Berries: new art!

• The Portal: new art!

• Latchwood Spore: new art!

• Jumpstarter: new art!

Heroes:

• Auris: finished art!

Bugs:

• Stacking small shields could lead to Health gaining (negative Damage was possible)

• Toy Turrets could collide with Proliferator (now Elder Dandelion) summons

• Lots of bigger bugs will be addressed in the next few patches

  • We've hit a point where most small bugs are patched out, and the few remaining ones are less common and pretty deeply rooted. I've spent a lot of time rewriting systems (like how the game saves/loads data etc) and will slowly start replacing the current code. But of course this process will take a bit more time, any mess-ups could have big ramifications. So don't worry if you don't see your bug being fixed in these notes, all your feedback is noted and actively being worked on!

Other:

• Rewording a lot of unit info for more clarity and uniformity.

• New logo!

• Start of combat ordering is now more streamlined and consistent (and units like Supercharger now correctly highlights adjacent units with Start of Combat effects)

Note: Patches have slowed down a lot and will be less about big system reworks. We're in the final phase before early access, which puts our focus more on polish, smaller tweaks, art and content! (you'll see new units and enchantments appearing in the Library)

Features:

• Unit sprites and shadows reworked! Most units with proper art now have improved shadows and more accurate lighting when flipped. Most units also don't flip anymore when unnecessary. This is purely visual, not a functional change. (This process isn't finished yet)

Units:

• Rafflesia: new art!

• Stone Wall: updated art

• Electrocatalyst: now only triggers 3 random friendly Tinker units (instead of all friendly tinker units) + name changed to Big Red Button

• Root of Life: name changed to The Big Tree

• Magic Well: name changed to Infinity Pool

• Oversized Crossbow: name changed to Blighted Ballista

• Synthetic Leecher: name changed to Scarlet Leech

• Geronimo's Warehouse: name changed to Stockmoore's Warehouse

• Magnus the Enchanted: name changed to Magnus the Miniscule

• Latching Spore: name changed to Latchwood Spore

• Obelisk: Cooldown from 3s to 4s

• Toy Production: Type changed from Utility to Solo

• Materia Contrarium: Damage Buff from 10% to 25%

• Weather Machine: Cooldown from 4s to 3.5s

• Bonfire: Triggers from 25 to 30

• Casino: Speed Buff from 1.5% to 2%

• Infinity Pool: Health from 240 to 80

• Shrub: Health from 30 to 50 and Health Buff for each Weapon from 50 to 20

• Tree: Health Buff from 10 to 5

• Toy Turret: Health from 150 to 100

Heroes:

• Auris Quest Nerfs:

  • Investments: from 15 / 40 Mana required, to 20 / 50 Mana

  • Mini Replicator: can't duplicate a Weapon

• ZapZap Quest Buffs:

  • Overgrowth: now needs 6 Nature units instead of 10

  • Thriving Trees: now need 5 Trees instead of 6

Bugs:

• Compound Knowledge was targeting wrong units

• Board in the Tutorial had an overlapping unit

• Options menu had wrong font sizes

• Fatigue wizard gains speed when atomic clock is destroyed

• Builds in the library now properly sort by patch (the 0.10 patch broke the sorting system)

Features:

• Extra tutorials for every Faction!

• Ambience volume now has a slider in the options menu

• Impact sound effects for most Projectiles

Units:

• Supercharger: can't be resummoned during combat

• Entombed Terror: art now fits better with its "Ancient" tag

• Toy Turret: new art!

• Research Facility now adds an Enchantment to your inventory at start of combat

• Spell Factory now generates 2 random Enchantments

• Latching Spore now gives +10 Lifesteal instead of +5

• Bonfire now gives a 2% Cooldown decrease instead of 1%

• Tesla Coil now loses 1 Damage instead of 2 and Cooldown is 1s instead of 0.9s

• Bathhouse now has a 2s Cooldown instead of 3s

Bugs:

• Crash when pressing spacebar while enemy board loads

• Crash when multi-selecting and clicking in the inventory

• Ambience sound wasn't playing

• Graveyard in Pacifist could still resummon Weapons

Bugs:

• Weapons could be played in Pacifist mode using random generation

• Playing a different mode after Pacifist could hide certain units from appearing

• Transmuting units could give buffs with Necromancer Hut and Styx' Well

• Rare crash when multi-selecting while unit is getting removed

• Units could overlap when dragging quickly (this one is hard to replicate so let me know if you still see this happening!)

• Crash when conceding during Hero select

• Combat Log would not display correctly when 2 units have the same Name and same value (triggers, damage etc...)

• Window settings were still a bit clunky

Other:

• Pain Inverter now stops appearing in King of the Hill

• Shelter now correctly displays "Adjacent Town units"

• Tier 3 / 4 Ancient Encounters no longer appear during Pacifist runs (these didn't hold any units in that gamemode)

• Improvements to the Ambience system

Features:

• There are now multiple different online game modes (more solo content and tutorials are next)

  • Unrated: default gamemode without any matchmaking and ranks

  • Pacifist: no offensive units allowed

  • King of the Hill: 10 rounds with only 1 Hitpoint

  • Tiny Island: smaller island and less resources

• Ambience sounds

  • There are now some Ambience sounds in the background, these get influenced by the Factions you're playing and how many units you have of that Faction

• New steam store & library art!

• Ambrose: temporary art

Units:

• Toy Store: New art!

• Cannon: New Sound!

• Big Laser Pointer: New Sound!

• Foundry: New art + name! (previously Industrialist)

• Homing Missiles: Explosive Damage from 50% to 20%

• Velmir the Wizard: Explosive Damage Buff from 2% to 1%

• New unit: Shelter

Bugs:

• Screen settings didn't apply on startup

• Enchantments disappearing from inventory

• Units in inventory could carry over into next game

• EMP mine highlighting wrong units

• Rare crash when moving/selecting units too quickly

• Tooltip not disappearing

  • Sometimes the tooltip sticks around when it shouldn't. I put a few extra checks in place but there might be more random events that cause this. Please let me know if/when/how this happens again

Other:

• New startup splash screen

• Tether 2000 can now take damage from Weapons that can't be buffed (but it still can't buff them)

• Added "Solo" Role filter to the Library