Thrall

Enemies

First, let's go over some of the changes that have been made to enemies. Starting with the Spider boss, I've removed the slimes that spawn in with him. While I do believe it's necessary for bosses to have minions due to how many Kill Skills you can unlock, it's not necessary for such an early game boss to have them, at least not on the first playthrough. In addition, I've modified how the HP is displayed for this boss. Instead of fully healing between each phase, his HP properly reflects how much damage you've done throughout the fight, but he does have the same actual HP that the first version had. This just makes it clearer that you're actually making progress towards killing it, but doesn't actually change the gameplay.

In addition, I've added a chance for weapon wielding enemies (Thralls mostly) to spawn with an elemental weapon. Now, Thralls may have a chance to inflict elemental damage and status ailments, increasing the need to actually use status healing items.

Loot

Now, moving on from enemies to talking about loot. I've increased the drop rarity during the prologue to provide a better variety of loot, instead of useless common items. In addition, I modified the levels of dropped loot to a 10/80/10 ratio. What this means is that 10% of the time, the dropped item will be one level below the average party level. 10% of the time it will be one level above, and 80% of the time the dropped loot will be at your level. This means a lot less waiting around to use the items you find, and you can just equip them right away, but you can still find something that you may need to work for on rare occasions.

Also, I've nerfed the drop rate for loot. By like, a lot. It used to be that EVERY enemy you killed would drop 2 items. This means that if you fight 3 enemies, you're getting SIX items after EVERY battle. That's a lot of time spent in menus, looking at and comparing loot, most of which is complete garbage. Now, every enemy only has a 10% chance to drop ONE item. After testing this out, it actually seems to work just fine. The majority of loot now comes from chests and item bags. You're still not hurting for loot, and what you DO find is typically actually worth using. This means a lot less time spent in the menu and equip screens, and more time spent playing the game.

And while we're on the subject of comparing loot, I've modified the loot tables to better reflect game mechanics. Now there are large button prompts in the label windows that actually describe what you can do in those windows. L and R to scroll between categories, and X to compare. In every stream I watched, I don't think I saw ANYONE compare loot in the table even ONCE. So, now it's blatantly clear that you can actually do that.

OH! And I realigned the loot tables and equip scenes and changed the text color for stats. Now it's much more readable, properly aligned, and it's much clearer when an item is better or worse than what you've currently got.

Visual Language

Speaking of clarity, I noticed that a lot of players tended to ignore the chests in the first dungeon. That's my fault. The chests looked exactly like every other decoration in the area. Now, the chests are bright red, same as the items bags scattered throughout the dungeon. Basically, red means interactable. It should now be very clear what you can use and what's just for decoration.

But that's not all. I've also modified the tutorials. Instead of the characters blatantly shattering the fourth wall, the characters will say something relating to the game world, and a system message will pop up explaining the mechanics, assuming you've enabled tutorials. I've also made an effort to properly tutorialize mechanics that are unique to this game (such as what DEX does).

However, since I know a lot of players will tend to skip tutorials or forget them, I've included one other feature to help players learn the game. A guide. In the map room of the Hollow Keep, interacting with the bookshelf will open a guide that explains just about everything you could possibly want to know about the game. What do the status ailments do? How is loot generated? What do my stats mean? What does KNOCKBACK on this sword mean? What are the exact details on how this passive skill works? All of that is available in the Guide, and it's available at any time after the prologue.

I've also made some modifications to the Colorblind mode to fix some oversights regarding stat comparison and anything relating to text colors. If someone is actually colorblind and plays this game, I would love to know how effective this setting is, since I have no way of really knowing whether or not it works as intended.

Characters and Skills

Moving on to the characters, I've made some adjustments to both character personalities and skills trees. Mel was pretty bland as a character, so I've altered some of her dialogue to hopefully fix that. Problem is, I know how the character sounds in MY head, but not how she sounds in someone else's head. I had intended for her to be kind of a nerd. Really into research and sciency stuff, almost to the point of being oblivious to her current situation, but not so much of a nerd that she has no social skills. I wanted her to have empathy with both her friends and foes, but have a burning curiosity that can sometimes override that empathy. I hope I was able to successfully communicate that this time, but it might take more diving into the story to really flesh that out.

As for skill trees, almost everyone has had a bit of an overhaul. Lionel and Brutus are mostly the same, save for some buffs and nerfs to existing skills, but Damien has had a couple skills switch places entirely. His mid-tier and capstone abilities have switched places in the right tree, and Mel has had her entire right skill tree almost completely remodeled. Her focus on her personal skills is now based on RESISTING status ailments, and gaining buffs when she successfully does so.

Speaking of status resistance, I've actually modified the armor resistances of elements and statuses. Now, instead of halving the damage or chance of application for each armor piece, it reduces it by 20% instead. Cumulative, instead of multiplicative. Just balances things out a bit more.

Mechanics and Misc.
Now, moving on to some of the more fun stuff. I've implemented a simple crafting system for this game. Once you unlock the blacksmith, you can ask him to craft you a new weapon or armor, free of charge. Well, sort of. Crafting does not cost money. It DOES cost Materials, however. How do you get Materials? By Salvaging any leftover loot. Now, when you discard loot from a chest or enemy, you won't simply "Discard" it, but rather "Salvage" it into a generic Material. The higher the rarity of the item, the more Materials it will produce. You can also now Salvage weapons and armors from the menu, instead of needing to enter a loot table to do it.

When you take these Materials to the blacksmith, you can trade them in for a new item. Here's the cool bit: you get to choose the rarity. Got 1000 Materials? You can make a Legendary weapon or Armor, free of charge. Got only 250? Make a rare one instead, maybe it'll be better than what you've currently got.

The idea behind this is that you could technically go hours between finding a good loot drop, since everything is random. It's not likely that would happen, but it could. Now, even if you don't FIND anything good, all the stuff you discard can be turned into something good that you can make yourself. It's a way of balancing the odds. Oh, you went six hours without finding a legendary? Well, now you have enough materials to go ahead and MAKE one. Feel like save scumming for a specific one? Who am I to tell you that you can't? You've earned it.

So, that's crafting, but there's still more. I've added a Difficulty slider to the Settings menu. I've had a wide range of feedback regarding difficulty. Some people died the moment they entered the first dungeon. Others just mashed space bar until the won. Some found it too challenging, and not fun, and others found it too easy, and not fun. Uh... games are supposed to be fun. So, to that end, there's now an adjustable difficulty. Enemies slaughtering you every turn? Tone down the difficulty a bit until you find some better stuff. Are you yawning through every battle? Crank that difficulty up! There's actually an incentive to do so! Higher difficulty means tougher enemies. Tougher enemies means better loot! The higher your difficulty, the higher the rarity of enemy item drops.

I've also modified the damage formulas. The old default RMVX damage formulas are fine for a typical RPG, but in a game like this where you can have WIDE stat ranges, it's easy to buff your DEF stat so high that you're literally not taking any damage from enemies. Now, damage formulas are a little more balanced. No matter how high your DEF or RES stats get, you'll never fully eliminate the damage dealt to you. Likewise, no matter how high an enemy's DEF stat gets, you'll always be able to damage them. Oh, make no mistake, you WANT high DEF stats. It does a lot to reduce the amount of damage you take. But you can't become invincible anymore. While that can be fun at times, it's not really intended for this game. As mentioned above, however, you can change the difficulty at any time if you find yourself taking too much damage.

Also, speaking of enemies and dungeons, I've modified the level requirement to trigger the Auto Kill function. You used to need to be 5 levels above enemies. Now, if you enable to function, you just need to be one level above enemies. And yes, enemies do scale to your level, but only to a certain point. Dungeons have a max level that enemies can spawn at. If you exceed the max level of the dungeon, you'll be able to trigger Auto Kill.

And finally, the last major change has to do with sound. I've replace all the sound effects in the game. No more RTP sounds. I bit the bullet and bought a sound effect generator so that I could create my own unique sound effects for this game. Personally, I've never played a game that used these effects, but maybe someone else has? Let me know. Either way, they're used a LOT less than the typical RTP sound effects, so hopefully it won't feel too samey.

And finally, I've fixed a large variety of bug fixes, graphical issues, and overall quality of life issues that were present in the initial release. No need to really go into detail with them, but you can check the Devlog blog post for more information if you're really curious.