Greeting everyone!

While the development of the first minion skill is going very well it's still not in a state i'm comfortable to release yet, but there are plenty of other additions which were asking for a new build, so it's now there for download.

So what is changed in this new release?

First off it got some minor to major bug fixes, for example a z-fighting issue was fixed, so you'll no longer see a flickering texture when an enemy is chilled. A nasty navigation issue was fixed in the city level, so you'll no longer experience stuttering when you enter in a hospital building while followed by enemies.

Players reported there was a significant performance drop on the sewers level compared to other level types on older machines, so i've looked into this issue, and by reducing draw calls performance seems more stable now.

Since i'm preparing the skill sheet for more active skills including the new minion skill i decided to rename the Weapon skill tab to Masteries and moved the Elemental Mastery skill there, which seems more fitting along with other passive skills, opening up a room for a lvl10 skill in magic tab. It's still possible i'll separate these categories even further if there's gonna be more active skills.

As for the new features:

Hotbar elements can now be customized, you can move around your skills to whatever button you are comfortable with, this is also a preparation for more active skills. You can just click on the skill icon on the skill sheet and then drop it on a hotbar slot.

Along with this change, i've finally added a 0.5 sec shared cooldown on every active skill, so you can't just spam one or piano on the hotbar. The cooldown is rather small, it was never intended to limit your ability to cast a lot of spells, but casting them all at once or macroing was definitely not intended.

I've also reduced the movement and attack speed of monsters getting per difficulty level, and while their toughness remained the same, i think this is making the fights more manageable at higher difficulties while it still feel a lot harder than normal difficulty.

I was quite unhappy with the fact that Dash seemed to be superior to Sprint, so i gave Sprint a new functionality: you can now damage objects and enemies along your path, and it will also knock back non-boss enemies. This change also seems to open up new build possibilities. I felt like Stength also needs some love, so i added a stamina regen rate per point bonus, and it will increase your charge damage too. On top of all that, the movement speed bonus of sprint has been increased to 200% from 100%.

Ever felt lost on a level which was mostly cleared by you? Now here is a solution for you: Whenever you killed more than 66% of the monsters in a level you can just press ALT, and a visual guide to the exit will appear, you no longer have to wander around, while nothing really happens!

A progress bar around your minimap will show how many monsters you've killed already.

And to wrap things up, there was an oversight from me which is gonna be fixed by this update: There were no monsters in the game which are dealing fire damage, making fire resistance useless, but to fix that i've changed the damage type of Abyssal Imps from physical to fire damage, which also makes up for picking different item bases than before.

Anyway, here is the full list of changes:

- Hotbar can be changed by clicking on active skills and then on a hotbar element.

- Added a 0.5 sec shared cooldown on skills.

- Weapon skill tab renamed to Masteries.

- Moved Elemental Mastery skill under Masteries tab.

- Fixed a navigation issue at the hospital in city levels.

- Monster attack and moving speed got reduced to 10% per difficulty level from 25%.

- Changed the damage type of Abyssal Imps to fire from physical.

- A progress bar around your minimap will show how many monsters you've killed in a level.

- After reaching 66% of progress you can press 'alt' for a guidance to the exit.

- Fixed a Z-fighting issue with the chill effect.

- Sidearm slot typo fix on it's hint.

- Sewers optimization pass.

- Strength also increases your stamina regeneration rate by 2% per point from now on.

- Sprinting into enemies deals damage to them and knocks them back.

- Sprinting grants a 200% movement speed bonus instead of 100%.

See you next time, with a more technical and detailed log on minion AI, and hopefully with a new build which includes them, along with new interesting features.

If you are interested on more regular updates follow me on twitter:

https://twitter.com/alternalo

Regards,

Alternalo