Hey gladiators! Patches have been arriving at a pretty rapid rate over the last few weeks as I work to improve, balance and bugfix the game. Since it's a long weekend here in Oz, we won't see any new patches until probably Tuesday of next week, so hopefully this one is pretty stable.

A lot of tweaking of skills and a few experimental things in this patch, most noticable the reworking of elemental skills (fire,frost,lightning etc). From here, they will not be very powerful when you buy them with low intellect, but as your int scales, so too will the damage they do. Higher tier spells like Fireball III, IV etc will scale significantly. This will probably need a bit of tweaking but I think it's a fairer system.

Also in this patch, a lot of new random items will start appearing in the shops. Previously only gear whose base armour/weapon level was near yours would appear in the shop, but that doesn't make for much variety of weapon / item use, so I've now made it so now items of lower levels (earlier armour or weapons for example ) can appear in shops with higher damage / armour value and enchantments.

Some of these items will still be pretty low level or inferior to what else is available but they provide interesting and cheaper options for gladiators while shopping.

Enjoy!

Oli

---- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---

• Redid how elemental spells (fire/lightning etc) cause damage and use essence (experimental, may be too OP.) They now start off not very powerful but scale greatly with intellect and also with the tier of the Elemental spell.
  
• Greatly reduced the essence cost for walking - it is linked to Agility so high agility builds were being punished unfairly. (Higher agility still means walking will be more expensive as you walk /jump further, but it will not be as noticeable at all
  
• Reduced the essence cost for firing bows greatly.
  
• Bloodpact returns 50% of essence when used (up from 33%)
  
• Increased Sluggish's hit chance from 50% to 75%
  
• Changed Aria of Respite's Essence return to 40%
  
• Stupify and Repugnus now lower enemy stats by 20, not 10
  
• Knight's Heart of Valour now triggers at 20% instead of 10%
  
• Two handed weapons now scale at 2.1 down from 2.5 damage (over regular weapon)
  
• Switch Weapon was moved down to become a tier 2 skill
  
• Reduced movement per agility point by 25%
  

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES --

• The training dummy's base stats now go up by +2 per character level your gladiator is on to make training a bit more realistic.
  
• Changed the colour of frozen gladiators to a lighter blue
  
• You can no longer use Aria of Respite while Essence Shield is on ( to fix an exploitable infinite essence loop)
  
• Whirlwind now moves you forward at a larger rate, covering more distance when attacking.
  

---- SHOP FIXES CHANGES------

• Bows and polearms are now available in shops from level 3 onward ( down from level 6). All bows/polearms have been level scaled down a little.
  
• Improved item range available at higher levels. You will now start seeing enchanted versions of lower tier gear for sale. It is often not quite as powerful as higher tier armour/weapons but may be valuable.
  
• Increased the amount of items for sale in shops
  
• Renamed Legendary armour to Seraphim armour
  

---- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES --------

• Fixed a bug with characters gaining talents from multiple classes
  
• Fixed an exploit with mini adventures on the overworld map
  
• Fixed a typo in the Shield Block duration
  
• Fixed a bug where pressing RESET TALENTS button after resetting your talent allowed to potentially leave the talent respec area without resetting your talents. (This button is now hidden once respec is complete.)
  
• Cleared Training Dummy's skills and talents so they have none.
  
• Fixed an exploit where you mini-adventures respawned too often