Hello everyone!
We’ve made good progress on the first part of our Road Map. However, we’ve been delayed quite a bit by the numerous bug patches and by upgrading our Game Engine, which was mandatory to let everyone play the game.
Releasing The Prison Update as a whole in July is unfortunately no longer an option for us. That being said, we’ve decided to cut it in half so we still plan to deliver actual new (and hopefully fun) content by the end of the month.
The Prison Update was supposed to be:
- New Feature: Breach Events
- New Endgame Content: The Tower of Despair
- 5 New Enemies
- New Act (New Story Missions and Bosses) - Delayed
- New Ancestral Tree Tier - Delayed
- Increased Level Cap - Delayed
Basically, we’re going to cut it in half, and deliver the new Feature, new Endgame and the new Enemies in time for July and take the month of August to work on the new Act.
We’re sorry about the delay. We definitely made a mistake by announcing the release date of an Update even before the actual release of the game and without a single clue of the amount of feedback and bugs and issues we were going to get.
The July Update should be available anywhere between July 26 and 31. Depending on the time we need to polish things out. The rest of the Update should come around August-September.
Now, I’d like to develop on bit on what’s to come in July, and what we have in store:
The Endgame Content: The Tower of Despair
First thing first, this was a placeholder name and it has been renamed to “The Slorm Temple”. It still kind of is a Tower, but there’s Slorm instead of despair in it…
That would be a different story if the game was called The Despairmancer…
Anyway. At first, it was supposed to be a basic “ladder” kind-of content where you could just endlessly grind environments and climb up harder and harder floors to figure out where your character/build stands against others.
It has evolved quite a bit even though the idea remains the same:
You progress through harder and harder floors of The Slorm Temple but unlike Battlefield Expeditions, floors reached are “unlocked”, meaning that if you reach Floor 32, you can come back to Floor 32 whenever you want from the Expeditions menu. There’s actual progress to be made.
Enemies there benefit from various multipliers for most of their stats based on the Floor you’re in so it shouldn’t be as straigthforward as climbing Wrath Levels.
The Slorm Temple also has its own unique environment. It wasn’t planned but we had cool ideas we wanted to try, so we did! It is an ancient Temple that builds itself along the way so you never know where you’re going or where it ends.
Your goal in The Slorm Temple is to get to the end of a Floor where you’ll find a Slorm Shrine containing Pure Slorm. Which brings me to my next point:
We are introducing two new Endgame currencies that will be used to access and upgrade Endgame modes.
- Elder Slorm (Black Slorm): it is found on Elite enemies and allows you to access The Slorm Temple.
- Pure Slorm (White Slorm): It can only be found by completing floors in The Slorm Temple. The more you progress in the Temple, the more Pure Slorm you will find.
Now here’s the twist:
Olorin the Archmage (an NPC that will become available with this Update) is the one that can open The Slorm Temple, and he has to stay inside the Temple for you to make progress. However, he is also the one selling the various Upgrades that you can purchase with Pure Slorm. Which means that in order to purchase Upgrades, you have to get Olorin back to the Village, causing The Slorm Temple to collapse and your progress to reset (basically, a “Prestige” mechanic, if you’re familiar with the idea).
If you make good progress in The Slorm Temple, and if you use the right tools and upgrades, you will then be able to climb back up faster and find better Rewards along the way.
This means we’re also introducing Olorin as a new “Merchant”. He does various things:
- Selling Upgrades for Elder Slorm and Pure Slorm: Purchasing those will let you get back faster in The Slorm Temple and also get better Rewards.
- Selling Upgrades for Pure Stats: We’ve introduced Pure Stats in our latest update, and Olorin will let you upgrade the Drop rate of Pure Stats but most importantly their Max Roll. Basically a Pure Stat was able to roll between 101 and 110% of a regular Roll. Olorin sells a +0.45% Boost to that roll, that you can purchase up to 200 times for a +90% upgrade on Max Rolls. Meaning that if you bought all the upgrades, you will be able to roll Pure Stats up to 200%.
- Selling “Visions”: These are buffs that you purchase and that are triggered whenever a condition is met. Example: “Vision of Purity” is triggered whenever you loot an item with Pure Stats that says: “The next Pure Item you find will have at least 2 Pure Stats.” They are quite expansive but they’re also quite strong, and their effect can also be upgraded with Pure Slorm.
- Trading Slorm and Pure Slorm for Elder Slorm: So if you’re sitting on a huge amount of Slorm, you will be able to trade it for Elder Slorm and get into The Slorm Temple as soon as possible. Rates are horrible though (but can be upgraded), so make sure you have nothing left to do with Slorm.
The New Feature: Breach Events
We’re introducing various Events that can occur when you open a Breach, to cut with the monotony of Expeditions / Grind. We’re starting with the following additions with more to come.
Breaches Types:
There are 3 kind of Breaches that you will be able to find:
- Standard Breaches: The ones you’re used to. They will remain the most common type of Breach you can find.
- Cataclysmic Breaches: Enemies inside the Breach will come with 1 or more unique effects called Cataclysms that you will have to take into consideration. We will start with about 15 Cataclysms and expand from here. You can expect this kind of effect:
- Reincarnation - Enemies are revived once upon dying.
- Avengers - Enemies gain +10% Increased Damage whenever you kill an enemy nearby.
- Explosive - Enemies explode when dying, dealing Skill Damage in a small radius.
- Unified - Enemies have +5% Increased Damage for each other enemy within a small radius.
- Jetlag - Enemies are immune to damage during 2 seconds upon spawning.
On top of that, Cataclysmic Breaches will also grant Loot once you close them.
- Exalted Breaches: Closing an Exalted Breach will grant you an Exaltation for a set duration. These are superstrong bonuses that will last for a small duration. We will also be using these as an introduction to “Imbued Attacks” since some of these Exaltations will add Elemental effects (the cool-looking attacks you can see on the Trailers) to your skill (and modify their look). You can expect this kind of effect:
- Fire Exaltation - Fiery Weapon is equipped and at Max Rank, meaning your Skills will Burn enemies and deal Fire Damage. The Exaltation also grants quite a large Elemental Damage bonus.
- Lightning Exaltation - Electric Overcharge is equipped and at Max Rank, meaning your Skills will cast Electric Arcs toward nearby enemies.
- Speed Exaltation - Will grant you +70% Attack Speed.
- Resilience Exaltation - Will grant you +1000% Retaliation and +100% All Damage Reduction.
Additional Waves:
On top of new types of Breaches, each Breach will now spawn a set number of waves of enemies ranging from 1 to 3. Each completed Wave will trigger the Breach Reward (Slorm and Goldus).
Additional Waves will also grant you % Gold Reward and % Slorm Reward Multipliers for the rest of the Expedition, meaning that the longer you stay inside an Expedition, the better the Rewards are for closing Breaches.
At the moment of this Slormite Chronicle, we have nothing but prototypes so we have no screenshots or footage to show for it.
New Enemies
Five new enemies are on their way and will be available for the Update in July:
- The Entangling Spider: casts a Web that roots its target. The Elite version also spawns eggs that will then spawn new Spiders unless destroyed.
- The Howling Bat: continuously casts an Area of Effect dealing damage and applying a strong knockback.
- The Executioner: Stays idle and applies a strong buffs to his allies if surrounded by at least 3 allies. If left alone, he will relentlessly hunt you down, dealing quite a bit of damage.
- The The Suffering Soul and The Condemned Prisoner are the last two enemies we are working on so I have no fresh screenshots. The Suffering Soul is a ghost that can get past through enemies and walls, it is immune to Crowd Control and knockback. It will try to get past through you and it will deal damage over time if it does. The Condemned Prisoner is a cute little fella stuck in a door throwing boulders. His door will absord the next 3 hits he receives before breaking, at which point he will be defenseless.
That’s about it!
If something is not clear, or there is something that you don’t understand, feel free to ask questions!
Sorry again for the delay on Act 2. We’re doing the best we can to deliver this Update as soon as possible.
Cheers!