Hey guys,

Now that v1.0 has been tested and released, I wanted to give you guys an idea of what is to come in in the final major revision of Dark Eternal (v2.0).

Vacation:

I will be taking the summer off, and active development of v2.0 will begin sometime Fall 2020. Planned release date is Fall 2021.

Continuity:

Save files from Dark Eternal v0.4, v0.6, v0.8 and v0.9 will work; but it is highly recommended that you either begin a new game or begin a NG+ as v2.0 will have a huge rebalance and old save files may retain some aspects of the old balancing.

Length:

New content planned for v2.0 in the form of an expanded chapter 2. This will bring the total gameplay to around 55-60 hours.

Chapter 2 Rework:

You may have noticed Chapter 2 ends a bit abruptly for both Zenogias and Nahla.. The transition from chapter 2 to 3 maybe doesn't seem very smooth? There is a reason for that.

The original Chapter 2 was created back in early 2007, but was completely lost due to a harddrive failure. There was no backup except for the original Chapter 1 release, so because of that I took a very long break, and eventually came back to recreate chapter 2 in 2013. Due to this gap, and with aim to finish the game as soon as possible, Chapter 2 ended up significantly different and a bit shorter than the original lost version.

The main point of v2.0 will be to restore Chapter 2. Both Nahla and Zenogias will have a new level in addition to the existing levels in chapter 2, and these new levels will contain significant plot and expand upon some early plotlines that weren't fleshed out as well as they were supposed to be.

New Locations (Chapter II Rework):

Obsidian Plateau
Niprima
The High Castle
Enchanted Village

NG+ Content:

Although NG+ is fully implemented in its basic form, I want to do a bit more with it. To this end, I will be adding a litany of new "key" chests that will only appear in NG+ (Sturdy Iron, Singularity, etc.). In addition, there will be a new tier of essence that will only be available in NG+, called "Moonlight Essences". You can think of them as Tier 4+, as they will be significantly more powerful than Tier 3 and have unique abilities that will help you defeat NG+ valorous encounters.

Essence Refactoring:

I Will be removing over-abundant element types and replacing them with under-abundant element types, in addition there will be totally new essences. In addition, I will be removing several duplicate essences. (There was never meant to be multiples of any essence, as they are intended to be unique).

The idea is to add more boss counter tactics and combat diversity to early-game, as right now options are pretty limited up until around chapter 3-4.

Weapon System:

As a part of the major rebalance coming in 2.0, the weapon system will be greatly expanded. Currently, each character has roughly 2 - 5 weapons depending on which chapter they are introduced. This typically translates to 1 weapon per character per chapter. This has led to big spikes and drop offs in the power of physical attacks as you go through the game, as each new weapon gave a significant attack power increase.

The cure to this problem is simple, more weapons with gains spread out more evenly. The plan is to essentially double the amount of weapons available throughout the game, and also make finding these weapons a bit easier. (Currently, a lot of weapons are hidden behind side content and difficult puzzles that many end up skipping).

Battle System:

There will be many tweaks and improvements to the battle system, but the main addition will be new limit breaks and new transformations. Currently, only a few characters have a transformation. In v2.0, most characters will have a transformation (but not all). Some elite transformations will only be available in NG+.

Currently, most characters have 3 limit breaks and much like weapons they are hidden behind puzzles and side content. I plan on increasing the amount of limit breaks to around 5, and also making some of them easier to find.

Difficulty System:

The difficulty system will be expanded to include map mechanics. Example: Haunted Wood

In the Haunted Wood, you must avoid ghosts floating around the map that will teleport you back to a random location. In the very low (easy) difficulties, mechanics like this will be toned down significantly to match the toned down battle difficulty. In addition, the super high (NG+ only) difficulties may have these mechanics made even more fierce.

In addition, Valorous Encounters will be updated. In all NG+ difficulties (Extreme, Savage and Nil Seeker), valorous bosses will start out with their "super" versions previously found only in the city of rejects. The Final Valorous Boss will gain it's own "super" version as well, which too will only be available in the NG+ difficulties (Extreme, Savage and Nil Seeker).

Miscellaneous:

There will be a lot more smaller updates that aren't listed above, including a remake of the pre-title intro. In addition, there are many system improvements I'd *like* to do but cannot promise they will make the cut due to time constraints and potential difficulty in implementation. The two biggest that come to mind is re-ordering the battle inventory so that late-game items don't appear at the very bottom of the list and a "Status Effect Compendium" that lists the details of all buffs and debuffs you can find throughout the game.