Abalon update for 16 August 2022

Version 0.76.1 Release Notes

Hi everyone -

Thanks so much for your feedback and support! This is shaping up to be just the kind of collaborative Early Access I had hoped for. Over the past couple weeks, I've carefully reviewed your game balance suggestions as well as our Steam gameplay data and painstakingly recalibrated the game with a new difficulty curve that I hope will satisfy most players' desires.

I've also added a ton of new content to the game, so let's dive and see what's new!

New Content in Masters and Minions

As the name suggests, this update focuses on bringing new enemies to the game - a whole lot them - including 3 new bosses and 3 new elites (the Masters) and 15 new enemy encounters (the Minions). That's one additional boss per each of our current biomes, totally 9 bosses (3 per biome), plus new lore to boot!

In addition, Masters and Minions will allow you to unlock one of the game's bosses, the Liche King, as a playable Summoner. It's prestigious to play the boss, so to receive this reward, you'll first need to claim a bunch of souls, prove yourself in battle, and defeat the Liche King in adventure mode to unlock the Revenant Regicide achievement. Doing so will reward the Liche King as a playable character in adventure mode as well as unlock a new All Star deck in Battle Mode.

Big Balance Changes

Every aspect of the game's difficulty curve has been carefully re-tuned to create a more rich experience for beginners and advanced players alike:

• The desert biome can now surface in the first chapter so that any biome can now appear in any order. The experience of each biome will be different depending on which chapter it is played on. For example, deserts in chapter 1 will not have heatwaves and deserts in chapter 2 introduce sandpit arenas.
• Each biome has been re-calibrated with chapter-appropriate minion encounters: easier enemy groups in the first chapter and harder enemy groups in successive chapters.
• Elites now have a progressive health distribution. This means the difficulty of each elite fight will escalate with each new elite encountered during the chapter.
• Elites now have chapter-specific Minions. Elites in chapter 1 will have fewer minions so they're more evenly matched to the player's available resources and additional minions when they are encountered in higher chapters.
• In novice mode, we've introduced a "mana curve" to Elites (-2 mana starting mana in Chapter 1, and -1 in Chapter 2) to help new players better onboard to the mechanics.
• In advanced and hardcore mode, the final chapter adds further additional Minions to Boss and Elite encounters for extra challenge, plus much harder minion mobs!
• Improved enemy spawn logic now prefers placement of ranged units at the rear.

Additional Improvements and Fixes

*This update is also applied to our free demo version.

• Improvement: Expanded the radius of a looting treasure chests to a 5x5 area around the player’s hero so that’s easier to collect the gold from sets of 3 chests if you don’t click the center one (Thanks Abaddon)
• Improvement: Further improved parallel animation system to allow more concurrent unit movement and attacks where possible and fix some issues where newly created units could move/attack before they were finished being summoned or walk through units that were knocked back.
• Balance: The Freeze mechanic has been changed to fix the OP perpetual lockdown Cora and Ice units could previously achieve on bosses and provide more tactical utilty. Details here. (Thanks all players who engaged in our discussion)
• Balance: Dreadnought Spellweavers gain ability Inflict -2/-0 until end of their turn
• Fixed bug where unit cards cast by Zenon or summon spells that were countered would remain momentarily stuck on the screen instead of being removed on cast.
• Fixed bug where resetCardPositions() might try and act on disposed cardViews resulting in exception TypeError: Error #1009 at com.d20studios.aura.animation::Animate$/killProcessArray() at view.smartAssets::HM_CardHandView/positionItem() (Thanks LittleLionMan)
• Fixed bug with localization where game state was storing the literal name of encounters rather than the localization id. This meant that if the language setting ever changed, the name would remain the same, and if the new language didn't support the characters, it would show no name.
• Fixed bug where some elites (ex: Gremella) were showing the Sprintshot or Farshot keyword twice on their card. (Thanks RyuSage)
• Fixed bug where equipment keyword was showing on some Elites (ex: Wight)
• Fixed bug where clicking twice to interact with a chest would result in the game showing the nearby chest's gold removed before the animation to doober the gold had played.
• Fixed bug Error #1009 at view.screenLayouts::TitleScreenLayout/jumpDevButton() (Thanks Baffledtoast)
• Fixed bug where some unitViews were still lingering after disposal of the game view. Hopefully this also helps with performance and memory leak problems. Any unit views that were getting trapped in memory should now be getting disposed at the start of each new battle.
• Fixed bug TypeError: Error #1009 at view::HM_UnitView/toggleLifebarStats() that could appear upon exiting game to return to the title menu (Thanks cxp032, Vindi008, fantom0020 and TheBaldr)
• Fixed bug TypeError: Error #1009 at Main/handleExitToCamp() that appeared after the game crashed on entering the portal to complete tutorial (Thanks Cheschire)
• Fixed bug where "I am currently unable to interact with the cosmic tortoise at the end of the tutorial." (Thanks tacocat and Squashbelge)
• Fixed bug where units still lingering in the mist from past world saves (before our units in mist fix) would still show on the board.
• Fixed bug where clicking on a goblin in the mist would result in the goblin party being repositioned away from their cake. They can't party without their cake, afterall ;)
• Fixed bug where retreating from a goblin party and then returning would result in the goblins being repositioned and no longer around the cake. Let them have cake!
• Fixed bug where TypeError: Error #1009 at hm.gameLogic::GameState$/getGameStateObj() could appear after retreating from a battle after having visited a map containing a shopkeeper. (Thanks 巷羽Azarisa and zyeast2005, scottoconnell30)
• Fixed bug where TypeError: Error #1009 is called on PointValidMove(). (Thanks Muppet and 堵塞)
• Fixed bug with Chinese translation of Ryu Sage Pendant (Thanks typiglet)
• Fixed bug where hero could become "stuck" and have the screen jitter on last tile after clipping an obstacle such as a tree. (Thanks Wesley)
• Fixed bug where some of the game server messaging (such as notification of in-game feedback being sent successfully) was not displaying.

Coming Next

Up till now, I've delivered regular weekly updates since launch to address most players' immediate concerns and keep everyone engaged. The next goals I'm working on include remaining QoL issues such as keyboard mapping, gamepad support, performance plus continuous bug monitoring and fixes and additional cards per our road map. There's quite a bit of work involved, so I'd just like to communicate that I'll be doing the best I can, but going forward, please don't expect regular changes every week ;)

Gamepad support, in particular, is new for me, and I want to make sure I spend the time to get it right. I'm aiming for another update between end of August and mid September - and I'll keep you posted in our discussions if I plan to change that as I work through the process.

Show You Care with a Steam Review

All these changes take a ton of work, and it's my pleasure to deliver regular new experiences for you to enjoy in the game. Help me out by taking a moment to write a Steam review and let me know what you think of the progress :)

And of course, I'm always available for regular communication via our usual means below:

Join the Discussion:

• Steam discussion board: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/
• Discord: https://discord.gg/d20studios (RossD20Studios#2359)

Thanks so much!

~Ross