Hello Erenshor community!
Erenshor launched almost 2.5 months ago, and from day 1 the community has been providing feedback and ideas for the game's future. I believe I've read just about every single message that has come my way and there have been some pretty consistent themes in there.
Some recurring themes:
The game plays too fast
The combat is unclear and hard to read
The endgame gets too easy
The middle game gets too hard
We want an Archer / Bard / Summoner / Buff class etc.
WHERE ARE RAIDS??
Using that info, and aligning it with my own vision for the game, I've come up with a development plan for the rest of 2025.
Increased Party Size: Erenshor players may notice that the game expects certain party roles to be fulfilled: DPS, Heals, Crowd Control, and Tanking. Limiting the party to 4 characters prevents players from expanding on one of these roles to fit their playstyle. You can't bring two healers without sacrificing something else. You can't stack DPS without losing CC or Heals. etc. Adding an extra party slot will allow players to customize their builds more, without punishing themselves.
It goes without saying that this will also require a full game rebalance.
Smoother Combat Flow: One player put it best to me: Combat in Erenshor just comes down to "Can you out-heal the NPC damage". This stems from:
Mana is 'unlimited' right now with duelist mana restore spells. Mana pool doesn't matter. I plan to address this by removing the duelist mana restoration spell line completely. In-combat mana regeneration will be reduced greatly, and out of combat mana regeneration will be increased greatly. The size of your manapool will matter.
Spell mana costs and SimPlayer spell usage will be tweaked to support this change. An able party should be able to complete encounters without running out of mana through careful mana management.
Healing spells heal for too much right now. You can plan on the max level heal spell 'fully healing' just about any player in the game once you get it. Heal spells will shift to faster cast, lower amounts. You'll be able to decide to top up the tank right now, or wait until he's lower and hit him then.
Damage is too spiky. Currently, NPCs hit for huge amounts of damage, and can "2-round" a tank in some cases. That's not fun, that's hoping RNG is kind to you. I want to stretch combat out - NPCs will hit for less, but they'll hit at a quicker pace. You'll be able to predict incoming damage and plan your stategy around that.
NPCs will be getting cast bars so players can plan to interrupt spells. Damage spells longer casting time will help facilitate this.
MOBs die too fast in many cases (not all cases). With the addition of a 5th party member, their HP pools will need an increase.
Itemization: Anyone who has played to endgame knows that getting blessed items and ascending them to "purple" is the be-all-end-all of class gearing. Purple items use a formula that adds value to every stat on an item. This ends up making a very select few items BIS for every class.
In this update, purple items will only enhance stats that already exist on items. So your DPS ring will be better at DPS. Your tanky armor will be better at being tanky. You'll be able to pick and choose which items you want to ascend based on your playstyle.
Zone Reworks: The dungeons of Erenshor will be expanded in many cases to allow for new named mobs, items, and exploration. Some earlier dungeons (Island Tomb, Krakengard) will need full rebuilds. They're crowded with a party of 4, and 5 will be worse. Expect some renovations.
During this combat rework this summer, patches will be far less frequent than they've been since launch. This is the first huge content patch Erenshor is receiving, and the game build will not be in a state where I can quickly patch and fix things for the duration of this work.
The Goal of these reworks is to set the stage for raids: I want to have Erenshor's first raid live by the end of this year. It's really important to me that I start developing raids from a good starting point of game balance.
I worked for a long time to make all my items purple and now they're being nerfed? TL;DR; Yes, many will be 'less good' than they are now. I understand players have put in a lot of hours to get their characters to build completion and the new purple items may no longer be your BIS. There will be dev commands in game to add Planar Stones and Sivakruxes to your inventory to ascend new items. If you feel that you don't want to do the grind again to get your characters to BIS, I will share those dev commands with you. It's a single player game, we can do things like that :)
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