Hello everyone!

After months of adding new content I had planned to take this update real easy fixing bugs, tweaking and polishing some stuff and adding a few simple sub-zones. While I did do a bunch of odds and ends type stuff, I also ended up going down the rabbit hole of rebalancing a significant amount of the equipment and drop system.

After making the pretty major changes described below I had to play through about 20 complete runs and so ended up tweaking the balance on a whole lot of other stuff along the way. Some of these changes had a lot of thought behind them, others were just seat of the pants, gut feeling type things so please let me know if you think I've done something really dumb :P

EQUIPMENT REBALANCE:

OVERVIEW:

For the last few months I've been giving a lot of thought to the way I'd like the equipment to function in RF-IV. Previously, your character was defined mostly by your talents with equipment performing only a supporting role. At a rough guess I would say we had a 75%/25% impact between Talents/Equipment. Also, each new piece of equipment did not tend to change the way a build would play in the same way that getting a new talent would.

I've being trying to shift this emphasis to a more even 50/50 split between Talents/Equipment by making each piece of equipment both more interesting and impactful. Equipment drops are completely randomized between runs so having equipment play a more prominent role creates much more diverse builds from run to run.

PROBLEM:

One major place I figured could use some improvement was the way that equipment is broken into tiers and dropped throughout the dungeon. Previously we had 3 + 1 tiers of equipment:

• Tier-0: The equipment that characters start. This gets replaced with the first drop that comes along.
• Tier-1: Drops in the early game and is by design very weak. Exists to fill slots until being replaced.
• Tier-2: Drops in the middle game. This is where the equipment gets more impactful and interesting. Many of these pieces have interesting effects, abilities or at least solid stats. This is where attribute points start showing up.
• Tier-3: Drops in the late game. The best equipment in the game with the most interesting and impactful stats and effects.

So 2/4 tiers of equipment existed with the soul purpose of filling slots until something better came along. They were, by design, supposed to be uninteresting and unimpactful. The way that drop counts worked, we dropped a lot of this stuff in Zone1/Zone2 with the idea being to help the player fill out all of his item slots but with the assumption that he would then quickly replace them with something better.

So we had a lot of items dropping early in the game that really didn't have much impact on the player. When he would eventually find another item of the same slot, it was almost always an upgrade (since it would be from a higher tier), but the amount of upgrade was smaller since he was going from Tier-1 => Tier-2 equipment.

SOLUTION:

The idea I'm testing out with this update is to:

• Remove the entire Tier-1 equipment list by increasing their power and merging them into Tier-2.
• Begin dropping Tier-2 equipment right from the start of the game.
• Decrease the total amount of equipment drops, especially in the early game. One way to look at this is that we removed the old Tier-1 equipment from the early game and then simply spread the Tier-2 equipment more thinly across the levels.
• Rename the players starting equipment to Tier-1 giving us 3 proper tiers: Starting Equipment, Early Game Equipment, Late Game Equipment.

By doing this, the player begins to get meaningful equipment immediately. Right on the very first dungeon level you can now find items that give a pretty drastic swing in power and have the potential to change the way you play, at least for a few levels. We also 'remove' a whole bunch of items that previously had no real use beyond the early game and replace them with stuff that can totally be carried right through to the final boss.

Moving forward, when designing new items or redesigning existing ones, since Tier-2 is now the lowest power level I need to deal with, I can try to make every item the player finds, both impactful and interesting. I have more 'power room' to make interesting items and I no longer have to support a whole table of items whose sole purpose is to be 'uninteresting'.

IMPLEMENTATION:

To implement this equipment rebalance, the following changes have been made:

• All Tier-1 equipment moved into Tier-2 with increased stats (see below)
• In the cases where we would have duplicates ex. Long-Sword/Broad-Sword, Long-Bow/Compound-Bow I've just removed one of them.
• Number of drops in the early game have been significantly reduced. Expect to have empty slots for longer but for each slot to be filled with something stronger.
• I've done a bunch of preliminary rebalancing and fiddling with equipment stats now that I only need to think in terms of 'Good Equipment' and 'Even Gooder Equipment'.

These changes result in a pretty significant power gain by the player early on and so some additional rebalancing has been made to roughly maintain the overall game difficulty. Note, that as with many balance changes, the goal right now is to change the overall game difficulty as little as possible.

• Increased monster HP by about 20% in the early game.
• This scales to an increase of about 10% in the late game (these changes have less impact later on).
• All monsters in Branch-2 have had their levels increased by 1. This is partially in response to a longer standing issue I've noticed where the player is often so kitted out by Branch-2 that it actually becomes the easiest zone in the game.

UPDATE 1.25:

PLAYER BALANCE:

General

• Reverted Strength 10HP => 8HP. I had to make the choice of either keeping this change and spreading it across all the items and talents (HP increments should match the STR increment), or else reverting it. The point of this change was to make STR a more balanced attribute compared to INT/DEX but I feel like it failed to really do that while just inflating HP totals. I don't think any amount of HP inflating is going to cause more skilled players to sink points into STR so I'd rather just leave it as it was.
• Tier-2 Spells: 6MP => 5MP. Tier-2 talents are generally not significantly more powerful than Tier-1 talents and so should not have such a higher cost (CD abilities don't have this). We now have a nice spread of 4MP/5MP/6MP for the tiers of spells. Further talent discussion on Discord can reflect these changes.

Talents

• Rogue: swapped Sleep-Bomb/Bear-Trap from Tier-1 to Tier-2.
• Bear-Trap (Damage): only 1 trap (was set at 2 by mistake)
• Bear-Trap (Long): double duration
• Shadow-Step (Extended): 5Range => 7Range

Power-Shot:

• Base and Upgrades: 6CD => 8CD in order to nerf the talent overall.
• Name change: Power-Shot (Damage) => Power-Shot (Heavy).
• Power-Shot (Heavy): 1/2 range, bonus damage, crits when adjacent.
• Power-Shot (Heavy): crit when adjacent now works with non-physical attacks (fire, shock, poison).

Sleep-Bomb:

• Sleep-Bomb (Long): 6-Range => 5-Range.
• Sleep-Bomb (Long): 6CD => 10CD
• Sleep-Bomb (Big): 3DUR => 4DUR
• Sleep-Bomb (Big): now spreads like a Poison-Cloud.
• Sleep-Bomb (Smoke): AoE of smoke that spreads like Poison-Cloud. Does not put enemies to sleep but blocks LoS. 6DUR to start.
• Boss Escape-Blink now removes sleep just like it removes Freeze and Net. Stun will be retained after blinking.

ITEM CHANGES:

This is really just the start of an overall item rebalance following on from the changes to item tiers. Trying to make each piece of equipment more impactful and more distinct. In some places I've removed 2nd or 3rd stats on an item in order to make the primary stat more distinct. I'm also trying to move away from having quite so many abilities on items. I still definitely want to retain this mechanic but I want to use it more sparingly. An item with an ability on it should be both really useful and really interesting.
Weapons:

• Blunt weapon damage has been decreased overall to match Swords (what I consider the default). I feel like the Armor-Penetration is a valuable enough property to not also have these be the highest damage weapons.
• [X] Mace-of-Shielding: 12DMG => 8DMG, +1Shield => +3Shield. Trying to make this weapon more unique.
• Mace-of-Shielding now adds shield when using Cyclone-Strike and Shields-Up. Each is counted as a single attack.
• Staff-of-Shielding: 9DMG => 7DMG, +1Shield => +3Shield
• Power-Blade: instead of Power-Ability will innately add +10%AP after each standard attack (max 30%) until using an ability.
• Power-Maul: instead of Power-Ability will innately add +10%AP after each standard attack (max 30%) until using an ability.
• The poison damage from Poison Staves will now take into account the actual damage dealt in the the first hit (ex. crit or mitigated)
• Increase level of dancing blades XL:4 => XL:6
• Maggots from necrotic staff should pop in 5T
• Pike-of-the-Guard: +1DMG/Turn (Max 5) => +2DMG/Turn (Max 4)
• Pike-of-the-Guard: knockback now removes the buff
• Hammer-of-Crushing 14DMG => 12DMG. The crush is very strong and pretty easy to pull off consistently. This is likely still the highest damage weapon in game, just not by such an extreme amount.
• Blood-Stinger: Ability-Heal => 1-Melee-Life-Tap
• Soul-Reaper: Ability-Heal => 1-Melee-Life-Tap (also made it 1-handed)
• Scythe-of-Reaping: Ability-Heal => 2-Melee-Life-Tap
• Serpent-Fang-Dagger: 10DMG => 8DMG, 2xPoison-Damage/5Turns => 4xPoison-Damage/8T
• Assassins-Blade: 10DMG => 8DMG, 2xPoison-Damage/5Turns => 4xPoison-Damage/8T
• Slime-Covered-Harpoon: 11DMG => 9DMG, 2xPoison-Damage/5Turns => 4xPoison-Damage/8T
• Blood-Stained-Axe: Ability-Heal => +8HP. I don't want to drop an Item-Ability so early in the game and having 1-Melee-Life-Tap seems excessive at this point. Probably need a better redesign for this item.
• Goblin-Swift-Bow: 5DMG => 6DMG
• Sharp-Shooters-Bow: 4DMG => 5DMG
• Whip: 3DMG => 4DMG
• Staff-of-Energy: 2MP => 4MP

Equipment:

• Orb-of-Flowing-Thought: no maxMP reduction.
• Dusty-Tome: +1INT.
• Cloak-of-Stealth: lowered ENC and no protection.
• Spring-Sprong-Boots: 2Range => 3Range, no protection.
• Brass-Shackles can now be enchanted.
• Boots-of-Stealth: 2ENC => 1ENC and no protection
• Minotaur-Hide-Armor: made lighter ENC and switched SP + Protection => SP + Melee-Damage.
• Orc-Battle-Armor: made heavier ENC and raised the protection.
• Gi-of-Flowing-Thought: gain 1MP every time you sprint (no other stats.
• Gloves-of-Draining: 3-Melee-Life-Tap => 2-Melee-Life-Tap. The Melee-Life-Tap stat can now be enchanted.
• Gauntlets-of-War: no protection.
• Festering-Boots: no protection.
• Helm-of-Telepathy: no protection. The enemies are now also made visible on the main game screen.
• Rocket-Boots: no protection.
• Boots-of-Vampirism: no protection.
• Clockwork-Power-Armor: 1STR, 8ENC-Capacity => 2STR. Lets just let this be the BiS melee chest.
• Lockjaw-Hide-Vest: 2Prot, 3Melee, 30%rTox => 2SP, 2Melee, 30%rTox
• Leather-Armor: +1Protection
• Cloth-Armor: +10% Ability-Power
• Goblin-War-Shield: 4ENC, 2Prot, 8HP => 5ENC, 3Prot, 2Melee-Damage
• Spiky-Shield: 2Prot, 4DS => 3Prot, 6DS
• Ring-of-Health: 8HP => 16HP
• Ring-of-Mana: 2MP => 4MP
• Ring-of-Speed: 1SP => 2SP
• Ring-of-Slaying and Ring-of-Archery: 2DMG => 3DMG
• Ring-of-Protection: 2Prot => 3Prot
• Ring-of-the-Vampire: 1Life-Tap => 2Life-Tap

DUNGEON:

Added both Slime-Pits and Frozen-Frost-Keep sub-zones prior to the relevant boss. Amusingly this was supposed to be the main part of this update before the big rebalance kind of grew out of control :P

Monsters:

• Frost-Giant-Warrior: Melee-Attack, Grab, Berserk
• Frost-Giant-Priest: Throw-Hammer, Heal, Haste
• Frost-Giant-Knight: Melee-Attack, Overheal-On-Hit, Blink-Ally
• Frost-Giant-Magi: Ice-Projectile, Ice-Shield, Ice-Wall
• Overheal-On-Hit: 10%HP => 20%HP but this will only trigger on adjacent allies.
• Wobi-the-Warlock HP: MLOW => MED
• Porecsa-the-High-Priestess HP: MLOW => MED
• The-Lich-King HP: MED => MHIGH
• All Cloud-Bolts: 5Range => 4Range. These are already pretty devastating. They don't also need to be really long range.
• The Battle-Spheres summon by Magic-Yendor have no duration (they must be destroyed).
• All enemy heals -1CD. I want to really make it obvious that these guys are healing and encourage the player to deal with them.
• Totem-of-Healing (the stationary level ones) Heal: 3CD => 1CD. I'd even consider making it 0CD and forcing the player to not fight in their range.
• Pirate-Powder-Monkey bomb fuse 2T => 3T (same as goblin miner)
• Giant Leech: DMG: MED => MHIGH, HP: MED => MHIGH, Fast-Swimmer (make it a much harder single monster).
• Yendor-Flame and Yendor-Storm will summon 6 => 4 Vortices but they will be XL: 10 => 12.
• The Repair-Module on the Clockwork-Train now has less HP. Making it easier to kill first.

Levels:
Working to reduce the size of a bunch of levels that were above the rough 450 open tiles I've established as the standard size. I'm also slowly shrinking boss arenas to fit the new standard I found in the recent round of boss creation which is that the arena should roughly all fit onto the screen when standing in the middle.

• Added Slime-Pit generator
• Added Frozen-Frost-Keep generator
• Made levels smaller: Arcane-Force-Floors, Core-Lava-Islands, Sewers-Bridges, Orc-Training-Hall, Crypt-Three-Way, Palace-Round, Clock-Train-Tracks, Ice-Static-Caves.
• Made boss arenas smaller: Cazel-the-Conjuror, Lich-King, Minotaur-Arena, Forge-Master, Wobi-the-Warlock, some Yendor rooms.
• More Necros and Death-Priests should spawn.
• Gave all Cloud-Vents a longer CD so that they spend more time inactive.

MISC:

Mechanics:

• Glyph-Doors are simply removed from the map when they open. This allows Rogue to immediately throw a bear trap into the doorway.
• When an unaware enemy is damaged, the 50% chance shout that he performs will be delayed until his actual turn. This means that cleaving or AoEing into a group of sleeping or unaware enemies will crit all of them.

Mechanics:

• Reduced the volume again so that we don't all have to play at 10%
• Colored item names by tier. Tier-1 = White, Tier-2 = Blue, Tier-3 = Yellow
• Lightning-Bolt (Stun) added desc
• Haste is shown as a yellow H glyph.
• Torment is shown as a purple skull glyph.
• Discord is shown as a purple D glyph.
• You can now always see your allies even when they are invisible

Bugs and Crashes

• Fixed the dungeon entrance cave sometimes appearing on UD:2.
• Added Ice-Breath back to Celtius-the-Dragon.
• Fixed Kocha-the-Enraged ejecting when there was still a single construct alive.
• Fixed a crash when the Ranged-Construct would overheat as the last construct remaining.
• Removed the attack from the Practice-Dummys in the tutorials.
• Fixed: Force-Lance was crashing the game when you quit and reloaded with it equipped.
• Talents w/ 4 upgrades will now hide the 4th upgrade button when holding an item.
• Fixed: crash when Dirge-of-Destruction was playing near a Flesh-Golem and the player summoned some rats (presumably any monster summon). The rats were placed on the same tile as the magot that was spawned from Dirge damage.
• Better Blade-Glyph implementation that should fix a whole host of crashes associated with them.
• Fixed: Blink-Ally being cast at the same time that an enemy dies to a Fire-Shroom was resulting in a weird blocked tile.
• Fixed: a crash where an NPC would shroom blink to the same tile that a Battle-Sphere was being summoned on.
• Mine-Carts now count as conductive so that shock will spread along the tracks beneath them.
• Fixed 18 instances in code and descriptions of misspelling 'Category' as 'Catagory'.
• Switches will no longer be placed in such a way that they diagonally block doors or corridors.
• Fixed Burst-of-Spines not working.

CONCLUSION:

Whew. So that got a bit out of hand. Like I said at the top, I ended up testing this update a whole bunch and made a lot of little minor balance tweaks. I think overall the game plays really nicely right now. Maybe a little bit harder depending on what drops you get early, but the really impactful equipment drops feel good to me.

I'll be continuing to adjust equipment according to this new scheme going forward. Mostly looking to make each and every piece of equipment interesting, impactful, and unique. I also still need to rework the enchantment system so that, for example, a Ring-of-Health should enchant 16HP => 32HP. A Ring-of-Speed should enchant 2SP => 4SP. This helps to make them viable targets for enchantment when compared to a Ring-of-Strength: 1STR => 2STR. I think that weapons likely also need to have +2DMG per enchant to make them good enchantment targets.

The next major update I'll be returning to adding more bosses. Hoping to finish up with getting 3 bosses into each of the branch zones and then likely rework some of the existing ones. Doing so much play testing helped me to narrow in on what I think are the most critical things to add to the game right now.

• More bosses everywhere. They are such a memorable and important part of each run. They are also pretty static compared to the rest of the dungeon so having too few can make runs feel samey.
• More zones in general. I still want to push along with sub-zones but I think its more important to get more completely new zones added. And yes, I now agree that getting another zone in the Orc/Palace section is really important.
• Completely rework Vault-of-Yendor. This is now some of the oldest content in the game and its really showing. I think the whole zone needs a top to bottom rewrite. A complete rewrite of all the monsters. Redo most of the existing levels and add a ton more. We probably need at the bare minimum 3-4 times as many levels as we currently have.

Hope you all enjoy the update! A lot of balancing took place this time and we've opened up a lot of room for future balancing so please let me know your thoughts on this update and any suggestions for items that need to be looked at!