Greetings Wizards!

Regular development has resumed, and the beginnings of december's Metal Magic patch are now playable on the beta branch.

It is a highly incomplete work in progress. There's lots of stuff I want play around with and put into the next patch which hasn't even been started- but there's enough exciting stuff on there to entice people to play it I think. Specifically, there are new spells and skills, which I want to start getting feedback on ASAP.

A note for those who haven't played the beta branch: everything is highly experimental and open to change. Spells may be removed or reworked, and all of the numbers are probably way off.

You can access the beta branch by right clicking Rift Wizard in your steam library, and clicking properties -> betas -> beta.

I'm actively seeking out feedback on the new Metallic spells and skills. Are they exciting? Overpowered? Useless? What builds do you use them in? Is there some kind of functionality you feel Metallic magic should have, but does not yet have?

Drop a line in #beta-feedback or send me a PM on discord if you have something to say about them. Or post a comment here, but I must admit, I read the steam forums infrequently.

An overview of the changes:

New Spells:

- Mercurize: hexes a unit, dealing physical and poison damage over several turns. If the hexed unit dies, it is raised as a metallic ghost. (Metallic Dark)
- Magnetize: enchants a unit to pull in nearby enemies. Upgradable to deal lightning damage. (Metallic Lightning Enchantment)
- Siege Golems: summons a squad of siege golems which will assemble and operate an inferno cannon for you. (Metallic Fire Conjuration)
- Silver Spear: high single target physical damage to one target. Deals holy damage to arcane and dark units near the path of the projectile. (Metallic Holy Sorcery)
- Spikeball Factory: surrounds the caster with Spikeball gates (Metallic Conjuration)

Spell Changes:
- Shrapnel Blast is now a Metallic spell.
- Protect Minions is now a Metallic spell instead of a nature spell, is now called Ironize, and now adds the Metallic tag to your minions

New Skills:
- Metal Lord: Buffs skills
- Inferno Engines: Whenever you cast a fire spell, grants all your metallic minions a temporary fire aura with radius equal to the level of the spell.

This patch also fixes up various tags and resistance quirks, megathanks to everyone for reporting these!