Hello everyone!

I'm quite pleased with how this one has turned out! We've got a first stab at the new Bard class which is actually working better than I had anticipated along with a new sub-zone for The-Crypt: The-Graveyard. There are also a bunch of other tweaks and bits of polish along with the usual bug fixes. I hope you all enjoy the update!

I haven't posted links in a few updates so here are a few notable ones:
Random595s YouTube channel with lots of play throughts, tutorials and challenges: Random595
Rogue Fable IVs official Discord: Discord

THE BARD:

DEVELOPMENT:
The inspiration for this class started as I was toying around with ideas for hybrid classes along the lines of the Duelists STR/DEX loadout. Initially I was trying to figure out how to do some kind of Arcane-Warrior using STR/INT but was struggling to find a way to make this not just a copy of existing melee abilities but with mana costs instead of cool-downs.

I'd like each new class to add something substantially new to the game, both so that the class itself plays differently and also so that other classes are encouraged to cross-talent into their talent pool. I'll be returning to this Arcane-Warrior idea some time in the future for another round.

At some point I had the idea of doing a bard that uses songs that work as constant 'auras', ticking their effects each turn. Imagining how gameplay would work with a damage aura type song made me realize it would likely look very mobile and kitey as the player moves about trying to keep enemies within the aura while not just getting completely surrounded and flattened. And so the basic concept of The Bard as a DEX/INT hybrid was born.

Not wanting the class to be quite so passive (just running consant songs in the background) I hit on the idea of using the new talent upgrade system to have some upgrades that add some additional, powerful, effect on the first turn of casting. So while the player can leave songs running for their duration, restarting a song in order to pulse the initial 'Power-Chord' provides a much higher skill ceiling.

I should point out that the idea of a Bard class has a pretty special place in my heart as I spent much of my teenage years maining a Bard in EverQuest from roughly 2001-2006 clocking up a ridiculous number of hours.

CLASS CONCEPT:
My vision for the Bard class is a highly mobile caster that relies almost entirely on movement and positioning to get the most of his spells (songs). The songs themselves effect a relatively large area and continue to tick for multiple turns after they have been started even as the player continues to move and attack. To balance this out the songs effects themselves must be quite weak and the Bard main weakness should be his completely inability to burst down priority targets. Currently we have melee classes that want to get up close and range/caster classes that prefer to remain at max distance. The Bard should play at a unique new 'middle distance' as he tries to maximize the number of enemies in song range while staying outside of immediate danger.

PRIMARY ABILITIES:
DIRGE OF DESTRUCTION:
This is really the ability that I had in my head when I was imagining the Bards gameplay. Simply deals damage each turn in a fairly large aura around the player. All bard song effects apply immediately at the end of the players turn (this is different from other status effects). This allows you to, for example, step into range of an enemy and have the aura actually hit him immediately before he has a chance to move. Dirge-of-Destructions aura uses a 'flood fill' but capped to a maximum radius. This means it can bend around corners and hit things that are out of LoS.

I've only really made one proper upgrade so far Power-Chord which stuns (single turn) and deals double damage to all adjacent enemies on the first turn. I played around with the balance on this one a bunch as it is absurdly powerful to spam and stun lock groups and have currently settled on a simple 1T CD to prevent just dumping your whole mana pool into stun locking and killing enemies.

PSALM OF PROTECTION:
I'm a little less sure of this one as it doesn't directly play into the whole 'kiting caster' arch-type I'm going for. Nonetheless it does at least support this style of gameplay by allowing the player to shrug off some chip damage. Psalm of Protection provides a small HP shield that absorbs damage (like Shield-of-Ice) and refreshes each turn. I see this as a song the player casts while at max range to help survive the initial engagement.

First upgrade is Pure-Tone which makes the player invulnerable to damage on the first turn of casting. Basically functions identically to Shields-Up without reposting damage. I'm not really concerned with the player spamming this one as A) the MP cost is higher and B) your really just stalling by 1T each cast.

SYMPHONY OF STORMS:
This one works with a cross (+) shaped aura and damages and knocks back enemies hit each turn. I'm not necessarily convinced that knockback is the best effect to put on this but I do definitely like the use of a differently shaped aura. By stacking Symphony and Dirge the player has at least some ability to deal increased damage though this obviously requires more careful positioning. I haven't come up with a decent first upgrade for this yet as I'm still not sure if knockback is the best base effect. Suggestions and feedback are welcome here.

CONCLUSION:
Overall I think the basic concept actually works really well. Obviously balancing and tweaking are needed and I'd love some feedback and suggestions on the existing ability set. I'm pretty happy with the overall class concept but I'm not really convinced that the current 3 abilities are the best way to express it, if that makes sense. I think there's plenty of time to try out other abilities and we definitely still need 3 proper upgrades for abilities so looking forward to what you all think.

TALENT ATTRIBUTE CHANGE:

Testing this change out to see if it works better/smoother so feedback is appreciated. Talent upgrades no longer have a higher attribute requirement i.e. when you first get the talent you can now immediately get the upgrade as soon as you get another talent point. The Tier-III talent has had its requirement raised from 14 => 16. My thoughts on this:

• Much less likely to get blocked in talent advancement in the early to mid game.
• Much more freedom to place attribute points wherever you want since your not getting blocked.
• Player will not unlock Tier-3 talent until later in the game (more streamlined early/mid game).
• Many talents are chosen specifically for an upgrade. You do not need to wait potentially half the game to realize this.
• Heavy attribute specialization is only needed if you really want the tier-3 talent (not all builds may want this)
• It becomes less common for a character to unlock a tier-3 talent outside of their main attribute (as it should be)
• We will probably want to increase the power of some Tier-3 talents to reward such specialization.

THE GRAVEYARD:

Another sub-zone, this time for The-Crypt. Unlike the other sub-zones we've had so far this one will actually replace Crypt:1 in 50% of games. The Graveyard consists of either a wide open graveyard or else a more tight and constrained hedge maze type level. Two new enemies have been added:

• Raven: fast flying enemy that can 'swoop' through the player from a very large distance as long as it is on the same tile row/column as the player.
• Scare-Crow: stationary 'turret' that summons Ravens, throws Life-Tap projectiles and has a new Fear type ability that prevents the player from moving towards it (basically a reverse charm).

LEVEL GENERATION:

• Completely replaced the two tunnels generators in The-Crypt which were holdovers from RFIII with new ones much more reflective of the new level design philosophy. Basically much tighter and with denser placement of hazards and obstacles.
• Added a new Sewers generator.
• Turns out that all tunnels generators across many zones were not spawning their challenge vaults (the ones with monsters in them). This is now fixed and so a bunch of 'new' vault content has now been re-added to the game.
• Crypt will now spawn piles of bones scattered around the level instead of blood.
• Flagged all challenge and boss Side-Vaults as closed so that shrooms, items, traps, obstacles etc. will no longer spawn in them. This typically just resulted in enemies immediately stepping on fire shrooms or consuming beneficial shrooms the first turn they were agroed.

MONSTERS:

• Gorilla (Under-Grove): simple-melee + grab (the first intro to this mechanic)
• Skeleton-Assassin: poison-melee + shadow-step
• Wraith: changed shadow-step to invisibility (making use of that new mechanic from The-Dark-Temple)
• Enemy poison damage will now tick once every 5T for twice as much damage which makes it much easier to seek out a healing shroom. This makes poison quite a bit weaker overall.
• A bunch of reworking of The-Crypts spawn tables and challenge-vaults. Generally just making sure enemies come in mixed groups as much as possible.

USER INTERFACE:

• Implemented a special font file for the status effect glyphs above the players head so we can now make different status effects different colors or even use little, low resolution symbols. This was mostly used to make little colored music notes to show when the Bards songs are active but I've added some colors to some of the status effects as well where it makes sense.
• Clicking on a completely solid (unexplored) tile will now move the player in that direction. Previously nothing would happen. This meant if you had your mouse to the right of your character and were click click clicking, the screen would eventually scroll so that your mouse was in a black space and movement would halt. Movement will now continue until you get to the wall. Its simply finding the nearest passable tile and pathing towards that.

BUGS AND CRASHES:

• Fixed: Burst-of-Flame was throwing an exception in code even though it would work as expected (I think).
• Enemy spearmen will no longer have more range than the player.
• Fixed Magic-Shield-Staff
• Fixed the levitation potion
• If an enemy is knocked back and is killed by a trap during the knockback, the blood will now appear on the trap rather than suddenly appearing on the final knockback tile.

CONCLUSION:

Well that's it for this update folks. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on the new class. I'll be spending the rest of this week hanging out in Discord, fixing bugs, dropping hot-fixes to try out various tweaks and ideas for the Bard. Much like The Summoner, I have no intention of trying to totally finalize anything as we still have a long way to go before release, but I'd like to take at least a couple more stabs at this class before leaving it for the time being. Next proper update will likely return to knocking out a couple more sub-zones in the later half of the game. Possibly reworking or replacing one or more of the less interesting bosses as well.