Greetings!

We have collected a lot of interesting feedback from the first players of the Early Access version. We would like to talk about the balancing specs and challenge level of Lords of Xulima, since it has been a common theme among community discussions.

Balancing Vs Difficulty level

First, while balance and difficulty often go hand in hand, they are a little different in their meanings. A lack of balance would mean that the game has mechanics and rules poorly implemented, which can damage intended gameplay. For example; a class might be much more powerful than others; some specific sets of equipment might make the party invincible, while others might be less effective; some skills might outshine the rest of what a character can learn, others may prove less satisfying; the in-game economy (too little or too much gold for the player), which is delicate to balance in a large game, could be off.

A game can be balanced, and still offer have a high level of challenge to the player, which is our goal with Lords of Xulima. The Classic difficulty setting is similar to what could be experienced in the good old days. If you are still building your familiarity with the RPG genre (which means Lords of Xulima should also be for you), it is normal to experience a bit of difficulty as you encounter everything the game has to offer. Especially in the beginning, when players have yet to learn various mechanics and understand all the tricks at their disposal.

You can now change the difficulty level

In order to adapt the game a little better to general player expectations, we have renamed the difficulty modes in order to allow everyone to pick a mode better adapted to their preferences. The 3 difficulty settings are now: Normal, OldSchool Veteran and Hardcore, respectively.

Also, we understand that some players love to simply jump right in, and so have added an option to lower the difficulty setting without having to restart your game.

Many players are opting to go with the Classic setting, expecting it to be the smooth Normal mode they are used to. But, this was always meant to be for RPG veterans, and we admit that perhaps the choices offered were perhaps overly punishing to new players. We want you to enjoy a modern take on the old-school gems, and perhaps contribute to raising awareness on the great traditions of a great genre.

Here is the list of changes for this new version:

Improvements

• Help tooltips now appear when the mouse is over the elements (for one second).
• Combat Screen: Now it is displayed the time needed for the combatants for their next turn.
• The enemy presence detector now emits an animation when its state changes.
• The difficulty level can be changed in the options screen. WARNING! You cannot increase the difificulty level onces change it.
• Item Container Box: [Enter] Key now takes all items.
• Party Creation: A random name is pregenerated when creating a new character.
• Improved multimonitor support.

Balancing and Game Mechanics

• Changed the names of the difficulty modes to be more clear for the new users.
• Explorer Venom Strike now have attack rating bonus.
• Evasion (“blocking”) rating of a few creatures has been lowered.

Bugs Fixed

• Some minor crash bugs have been fixed.
• Fixed: Crash when typing backspace with no characters when entering a word in a text box.
• Fixed: Exploit when equipping and unequipping items with HP/PP bonus.
• Fixed: Achievement progress updating.
• Fixed: HP/PP class Ratios did not take in account the Difficulty modifier.
• Fixed: Crash in combat when the character's name has less than three letters.
• Fixed: Spells non identificated showed their description on the help tooltip.
• Fixed: Some cells on the map had wrong zone assigned.
• Fixed: LoX icon in taskbar is now displayed correctly.

See you soon!