Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark update for 15 March 2019

A new secret encounter.

New Build:

Hello everyone!

We have a big update today, our biggest yet!
With our Release date just around the corner, we're wrapping up all the content we want to get in and this update has (almost) all of it!

We also have important news about the price tag. The price for the game will be increased on Monday 18th from $19.99 USD (16.99 EUR) to $29.99 USD (24.99 EUR). This price is final and will remain the same even after the game leaves early access. With the current 10% off and lower price, there has never been a better time to get the time than NOW!

Let's list what it's missing, as that will be a much shorter list:

• The current build stops a short ways before the game's end, which means our 2 different ending are not accessible. Those will only be accessible in Release.
• We have a big 7 levels secret dungeon in the works, with a special boss, special loot, etc. That will only be added at Release as well.
• Steam cloud saves and achievements. That will be added either for the Release build or a little before.

And that's it for the missing content. Everything else is in this build.

Now, onto what we're adding today! Here are the highlights:

• Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
• Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
• Optional Content: We're adding 3 secret optional battles with special rewards.
• Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
• Special Enemies: Adding special enemies that will randomly spawn during Patrols. These enemies will award a big bonus of AP or components if you manage to defeat them before they flee the battle.
• Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.

With all this content in, the game experience should be pretty close to what it'll look like on Release day, barring the balance changes we have planned. We'll be very eager to get everyone's feedback during our balancing/polish phase, to make sure everything is as great as it can be!

So please, don't be shy, and let us know what you think! :)

Progress Report:

With Release approaching so fast, we've been focusing on handling any loose ends we have.
We're adding polish to cutscenes, abilities, menus, etc. We're hunting down and fixing any bugs we have in our list that haven't been fixed yet.
We also started work on the first wave of big balance changes we have planned, although that isn't ready for primetime yet.

Starting today, our main focus is going to be polish, balance and bug fixes. This includes various UI improvements that we've add planned for a while too.
Second to that, adding the Steam Integration (cloud saves, achievements) and finally, wrapping up our optional secret dungeon.

New Content Preview:

Here's what some of the new optional content looks like, to help everyone get started!

The first Obelisk you can find.

The Zotzits give a big AP bonus based on the monster tier. This story battle is the first time you can encounter one. They will start randomly spawning in Patrols from then on.

Change log:

03/15/2019 - Version 0.9.0

New Content:

• Story-Character Events: Adding 5 new story-character events.
• Reiner: Reiner's story class is in. It will be unlocked through a special story event.
• Secret Character: It's possible we added a secret character that's fairly difficult to unlock...
• Optional Battles: We added 3 secret optional battles with some quests to unlock them.
• Patrols: Adding a lot of new patrols.
• Iirzk'tara Gorge: A new enemy was added to this map. Normally you would encounter him during your story battle there, but for people already past that content, you might want to go back there and check it out.
• Obelisks: A number of obelisks are hidden throughout the world in some battle maps. Each one of them yields a part of a large riddle. Finding all of them, and solving the riddle, will lead you to a big treasure.
• Zotzits: We added a special enemy, the Zotzit, that randomly spawns during patrols after a specific point in the story. If you manage to defeat them before they run, you will be awarded with a large AP bonus.
• Bandit Kawa: We added another special enemy that randomly spawns during patrols. Defeating them before they flee will yield rare crafting components and weapons.
• Extra Enemies: The "extra enemies" difficulty option has been fully setup. All maps that should have extra spawns now have them.
• Outfits: Adding some outfits/hats that only become accessible after completing certain quests in game.

Balance:

• Bosses: Bosses (and some other special characters) will now ignore the "extra gear" flag when it comes to generating accessories in empty slots, to prevent them from spawning with boots and status immunities they are not supposed to have.
• Somier: In a battle involving Somier, some adjustments were made to make sure his level always matches the player's. Also weakening a few enemies and ensuring some of them will not spawn with boots when they shouldn't on any difficulty setting.
• Encounters: Many encounters have had small tweaks made to them, usually to make them a little easier. The "Extra Enemies" option brings all those maps to the same difficulty as before, or higher (usually higher, haha).
• Counter: Mute: Changing the counter so it works on attacks from all ranges instead of only "ranged attacks". The goal is to make the trigger conditions of counters more uniform across the board.
• Weapons: Crossbow "Willam's" now gives +10% accuracy.
• Arena: Changing the arena fight bonus from +50% GP to +33% GP/AP, to account better for the increased difficulty of the battles. Let us know how that works for you!
• AI: Adding new functionalities to the AI weights system so different weights can be added to specific targets (this helps get the AI to prioritize certain allies for heals/buffs). These will be made available to modders soon.

UI:

• Next/Prev Enemies/Allies: When using the buttons to quickly switch to the previous/next enemy/ally in combat, if the cursor is already on a valid target, the cursor lookup will start on that target. This eliminates the issue where the "next target" is the same as the "current one" so the button press does nothing the 1st time.
• Abilities: Cleaning up the description of a few abilities to be more accurate.
• Extra Enemies: Enemies spawned by the Added Enemies difficulty setting will show "Extra" on their information panel in combat rather than "Enemy", for clarity.

Bug Fixes:

• Crash: Fixing a very rare crash that could happen when canceling a cutscene.
• Visual Glitch: Fixing a rare visual glitch where a dagger using enemy could spawn with a weapon with no name and a missing icon.
• Infused Edge: Fixing an issue where the predicted damage from the spell part of the attack would account for the critical damage (so the player could tell if the spell was going to be a critical hit).
• Learn Ability: The list where all known classes are shown could sometimes show the wrong selected class at times after a lot of class had been unlocked by a user.
• Flying and Water: Fixing some visual oddities when flying in/out of water without the Float status.
• Revives: Enemies that started their turn in water would revive other enemies in their starting position if they decided to revive on that turn.
• Water: Not applying anymore the bonus/malus to being in water if having the status Float.
• Sprite Priorities: Fixing various priority of drawing for sprites/maps on various maps.

Modding:

• Errors: Adding more error checking for spawning enemies through Encounters.txt.

• Encounters.txt:

  • Adding "shield" as an argument for spawning humans, to decide their shield (true, false, "item code"). This was already covered by "weapon2", but it's a little clearer now.
  • Changing the "shield", "helmet" and "armor" tags so that putting an accessory in them will now work.
  • Adding "noitems:true", to make a specific enemy unable to use items.

Edit: Hotfix notes:
03/15/2019 - Version 0.9.0a

Hotfix:

• Ekidna Falls: The Seal there got its orientation changed at some point. Fixed.
• Plains01: Missing a collision on a tile there. Fixed.
• Bandit Kawa: They were using the wrong AI script. Fixed. They might be a little hard to catch now though. Let us know what you think!