Content Update 4: “Bastion Battle Update”

Hello, friends! Project Director Luke here again to bring you the largest new gameplay and content update to MythForce to date. The update is so big that it gets a bump from major version number 0.3 to number 0.4! There’s a lot of exciting stuff to talk about, so I’m going to highlight a few items and encourage you to view the details below. Welcome to the “Bastion Battle Update.”

Before we get into Bastions and Battles, I’d like to mention a feature that you’ve been asking for since the start—a better way to communicate with other players. Communication can be tough when all you have available are jumping, swinging your weapon around, and hoping the other players can decipher what you’re trying to say. Thus, we’ve added two new communication features: a ping system and a communication wheel. Now, when you tap the ping key (default TAB), you can place a marker in the world for other players to see, accompanied by a voice line from your character.

For more nuanced communication, you can also briefly hold the ping key (default TAB) to open the Communication Wheel, which includes ten handy-dandy phrases that you can use to communicate with other players. We hope this greatly improves your multiplayer experience.

Now let’s talk about the “Bastion” part of the update. Up until now you’ve been adventuring through the first version of the ancient ruins of the Wardens of Dawn fortress in the Thicket of the Cursed Lands. Especially for those of you who’ve been with us from the start, you’ll have gotten familiar with a lot of the sights and sounds. I invite you to enjoy the audio-visual overhaul to the Thicket.

Not only have we visually improved every corner of the rooms you’ve come to know and love, but we’ve also added visual progression from floor to floor. You’ll traverse the placid wilderness before experiencing an ominous dusk and the cursed “blood moon” night. We’ve also added a new junction and treasure room, improved visuals on some of the shrines and VFX, and kicked up the overall visual presentation another notch.

This update doesn’t just bring the pretty, and it’s not called the “Battle update” for nothing. We’ve added new combat mechanics and overhauled the infusion system to realize its original intention of allowing you to customize your build and spec into a specific subclass. Your “passive perk” is now a class perk that you choose at Rank 1, and there are two new starting class perks for each hero in addition to the one you’ve already been using, each encouraging a different style of play.

For example, in addition to Maggie’s “Mage’s Moxie” perk, which is now the starting perk for the Archmage tree, she gains “Spellsword” in her Battlemage column, making her a devastating melee fighter with elemental weapons, or “Channeler” in her Quickmage column, allowing her to cast channeled spells like fireball and blizzard faster and for lower mana cost. We’re excited to see how you decide to customize your hero’s infusions. For information about the rest of the classes, check below.

That’s not all for character customization. We’ve also unlocked the second column of ability upgrades, giving you even more ways to customize your character. Upgrade Rico’s Pocket Sand to become a 360-degree blinding smoke bomb that also grants him a temporary burst of speed, or fire a fan of three arrows at once with the second upgrade to Hawkins’s Phantom Shot. With eight new class perks and 12 new ability upgrades, there are many new combinations to try out.

Once you’ve customized your character, there are also a couple of new tricks to add to your combat moves. Some of you were sad when we “nerfed” the dagger and reduced the ability to make infinite shield blocks. Well, your tactics get a boost today with “perfect defense.” When you block with good timing, you can drastically reduce the cost of blocking and either stagger your opponent (with a shield) or unleash a powerful counterattack (with a dagger).

Read on to see the massive list of additional updates, balance changes, and bug fixes, and then hop into the game and enjoy version 0.4.0.0!

Improvements

• Bastion of the Beastlord levels received major aesthetic and functional improvements
  • Improved the visuals of each room, adding more variety to room variants.
  • Added a new special treasure junction to the pool of rooms.
  • Added a new treasure room to the pool.
  • Added VFX to the environment to make the levels feel more vibrant.
  • Added a “Dusk” visual style to the second floor.
  • Added a “Blood Moon” visual style to the third floor.
  • Added ambient soundscapes to each floor.
  • Implemented additional safeguards to prevent players from accidentally escaping the playable area.
• Added Ability upgrade II for each hero ability
  • There are now two upgrades that can be applied to each hero ability from the Ability Upgrades menu using Ability points.
  • Victoria now has access to the following ability upgrades:
    • Vanguard II: Deal extra damage based on distance traveled.
    • Sling Shield II: Bounces an additional three times and can bounce back to previously hit targets
    • Lion’s Roar II: While active, reduces the cooldown and increases the damage of Victoria’s other two abilities (Vanguard & Sling Shield).
  • Maggie now has access to the following ability upgrades:
    • Snap II: Maggie causes a blast of fire damage in an area around the location she teleports to.
    • Familiar II: The familiar deals increased damage with higher accuracy at a lower rate of fire.
    • Barrier II: Barrier is smaller but stays centered around Maggie as she moves.
  • Rico now has access to the following ability upgrades:
    • Pocket Sand II: Becomes a 360° smoke bomb that also grants Rico increased movement speed for a short duration.
    • Deadly Thrust II: Damage is reduced but, if Deadly Thrust successfully deals a killing blow, its cooldown is instantly refreshed.
    • Backslash II: No longer instantly kills normal enemies, but can be used a second time within three seconds of initial use.
  • Hawkins now has access to the following ability upgrades:
    • Spectral Detour II: Passing through allies grants a bonus to their damage for a short duration.
    • Phantom Shot II: Fires three projectiles in a fan instead of one.
    • Rift Arrow II: No longer pulls enemies in but creates a zone of damage and can be detonated early for extra damage by reactivating (default R).
• Introducing “Perfect Defense”
  • When you perfectly time your defensive action, activating an offhand defensive weapon’s defense at the moment of impact of an incoming attack, you perform a perfect defense action.
  • Perfect Blocks with shields cause enemies to be knocked off balance when blocking melee attacks.
  • Perfect Parries with daggers perform a counterattack when blocking melee attacks.
  • Less stamina is spent if the perfect defense action is successful.
  • A number of new effects have been added to daggers and shields, triggered by or modifying perfect defense actions.
• Added a melee charging attack
  • Now, clicking and holding the attack key (Default Mouse 1) after sprinting for a short period (Default “Shift”) raises the equipped melee weapon and begins to charge.
  • Release the attack key while charging to deliver a heavy strike that will knock enemies off their feet and, if wielding a mace, throw them back a distance.
  • While charging, rotational movement is reduced and stamina drains quickly
• Added Elemental enchantments to shields
  • Shields have a chance to spawn with an element attached, like other weapons.
  • While blocking, elemental shields grant resistance to their associated element (receive half damage from that element and a chance for that element’s status effect not to activate).
  • Now all elemental shields grant a bonus to Magic Defense, while non-elemental shields always grant a bonus to Physical Defense.
  • Added a number of new effects to shields to support new elemental enchantments.
• Introducing the “ping” system
  • You can now press the ping key (Default TAB) to notify other players of the position of points of interest. Players upgrading from an older version of MythForce may need to map ping from the key bindings section of the options menu in order to use it.
  • Players will be notified with an on-screen indicator that includes distance to the pinged item and an accompanying voice line describing what has been pinged
• Introducing the communication wheel
  • Holding the TAB key opens the communication wheel.
  • The main Communications Wheel gives you quick access to ten useful “quick-chat” commands that can be used to communicate with your party.
  • Available quick-chat barks are:
    • Hello
    • Yes
    • No
    • Enemies ahead
    • Attack
    • Follow me
    • Group up
    • Stop
    • Help me
    • I’m sorry
• Added a visible timer element and stack indicator to status effects on the HUD
• Did a VFX pass on fire effects to unify the visual look across the game and improve visibility in situations where large amounts of fire on screen could obscure the view.
• While in (blue) water, characters gain Fire Resist status, causing them to take reduced damage from fire and become resistant to ignite.
• Improved the targeting indicator for the fireball spell.
• Improved the channeled ice spell (Blizzard). Now it adds up to three stacks of chill to enemies inside its AoE while active. An ice spike or other source of ice damage is still required to freeze.
• Did a VFX pass on first-person chill effects to make it more obvious when you are affected by chill or freezing status.
• Added visual improvements to the Healing Fountain and Mystic Forge.
• Added new attribute selections to level up to support “multiclassing.”
  • All Rounder: Adds Melee, Ranged, and Magic attack
  • Inspired: Adds Melee and Magic attack
  • Persistent: Adds Melee and Ranged attack
  • Focused: Adds Ranged and Magic attack

Monsters:

• Some Lizardfolk have received an upgrade with new special abilities by subclass.
  • Lizardfolk Archers gained the following new abilities:
    • Septic Shower rains three poisonous arrows down in a high-arcing volley.
    • Bow Breaker is a ground-based attack when knocked down that does damage in a wide arc and gets back up on the archer’s feet quickly.
  • Lizardfolk Rogues gained the following new abilities:
    • Razor Rush dashes forward rapidly, doing a heavy slash that inflicts Bleed.
    • Shoulder Slice is a counterattack that does damage in a wide arc, triggered when hit from behind.
  • Lizardfolk Tanks gained the following new abilities:
    • Spartan Stinger thrusts with the Tanks’ sword while holding up their shield for defense.
    • Punishing Thrust is a heavy thrust counterattack that triggers when their shield is attacked multiple times while blocking
• Slightly reduced movement speed of Sporefolk.
• Sporefolk now have sound effects that play when they aggro on a player, and when they initiate various attacks.

Perks & Artifacts:

• Introducing class perks, which improve upon the passive starter perk:
  • Added two new starter “class perks” to each hero. They can be chosen at the new Rank 1 in the infusions menu to further customize your character loadout and add more identity to each infusion tree
  • Victoria’s Bulwark class keeps Stalwart. The other classes now offer the following new class perks:
    • Dauntless gains Power Lifter: Reduces the stamina cost and movement penalty of power attacks.
    • Paladin gains Inspiring Defense: On perfect block (see above), grants temporary stacks of physical defense to the whole party.
  • Maggie’s Archmage class keeps Mage’s Moxie. The other classes now offer the following new class perks:
    • Battlemage gains Spellsword: Melee weapons now use mana instead of stamina, and elemental melee weapons do extra damage.
    • Quickmage gains Channeler: Reduces the time and mana cost of the alternate fire of spellbook spells (Fireball, Blizzard).
  • Rico’s Duelist class keeps Nimble Blade. The other classes now offer the following new class perks:
    • Assassin gains Slash and Dash: When defeating an enemy with a critical hit, Sprint speed is temporarily increased and sprint cost is temporarily reduced.
    • Trickster (Formerly Musketeer) gains Arcane Acrobat: Dodging uses mana instead of stamina, and the cost to dodge is also reduced.
  • Hawkins’s Ranger class keeps Hunter’s Soulbond. The other classes now offer the following new class perks:
    • Survivalist gains Vitality Link: When drinking a healing potion, your Max HP increases and the potion also heals all allies for a portion of the potion’s healing amount.
    • Realm Walker gains Magic Marksman: A percentage of Ranged Attack is added to Magic Attack.
  • Now, upon achieving Rank 10, each hero now grants all three class perks to the general perk pool (for example, when Maggie reaches Rank 10, all heroes gain access to Mage’s Moxie, Spellsword, and Channeler in the general perk pool).
  • Character infusion class trees have been altered to better support their class identity.
• Added a new perk that can be unlocked via Quests!
  • Clairvoyant: Gain more perk choices on level up at the cost of fewer attribute choices.
• Added the following new perks to the general perk pool to support perfect defense:
  • Training Montage: Increases the timing window to perform perfect defense actions.
  • Dagger Mastery: A successful Perfect Parry with daggers always crits, and all crit damage with daggers is increased.
• Buffed the Rusted Locket artifact. It now gives you double the shown attribute bonus to offset the reduction in perk choice
• Renamed “Tier 4” perks to “Mythic Tier” to better communicate that they can only appear under special circumstances, like using The Four Irons, or Let Fate Decide.
• Improved Mythic Tier Let Fate Decide. Now it grants a choice of two Mythic Tier perks when selected instead of one.
• Improved the Combat Veteran perk: Reduced the number of enemies needed to gain a HP bonus from 5 to 3.
• Added a stack indicator to perks that have stacking effects, like Perfectionist and Combat Veteran.
• The Merchant now offers Perk Shards!
  • They can be purchased at the Merchant’s Table for gold
  • Perk Shards offer a selection from a themed set of perks. Available shards are:
    • Warrior’s Shard: Grants a melee combat-focused perk.
    • Magician’s Shard: Grants a magic combat-focused perk.
    • Ranger’s Shard: Grants a ranged combat-focused perk.
    • Defender’s Shard: Grants a perk that increases survivability.
    • High Roller’s Shard: Grants a random Tier 2 perk or upgrades a perk.
  • Purchasing a Perk Shard immediately grants you a perk choice from that category of perk.
  • Perk Shard prices are increased when the player is using an artifact or perk that increases perk ranks, like The Four Irons.

Balance Changes:

• Rebalanced stamina use to make it more forgiving.
  • Stamina regenerates much more quickly.
• Increased weapon damage scaling with weapon level to make levels more impactful.
• Increased enemy HP scaling in the mid-to-late game to balance against weapon damage rebalancing.
• Reduced treasure per-floor by roughly 30% to slightly offset the increase in gold from Kovina’s Crucible.
• Rebalanced encounters in some rooms in Bastion of the Beastlord.
• Rebalanced the Warchief stat scaling in multiplayer to be more effective against groups.
• Slightly reduced damage from enemy archers.
• Rebalanced the Rhythmic, Crescendo, and Dancing effects to require fewer hits before the damage bonus is applied.
• Rebalanced floor-end Rank XP rewards. At the end of each floor, the Rank XP reward is now as follows:
  • Floor 1: 25 XP
  • Floor 2: 75 XP (3x the value of completing Floor 1)
  • Floor 3: 225 XP (3x the value of completing Floor 2)

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the “Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts” and “That’ll Leave a Mark” quests did not track damage dealt to enemies by client players in multiplayer sessions.
• Displayed floor end XP bonus percentage is now accurate.
• Fixed an issue where banters between two of the same character would not play all the way through.
• Fixed an issue where Maggie’s Barrier could stop ice spikes cast by other players.
• Fixed an issue where infrequently a player would be unable to attack after being revived.
• Fixed an issue where the Necrolyte could have a different buff from the one they grant to nearby enemies.
• Fixed an issue where Blizzard audio could persist after the blizzard spell ended when cast by a spore caster.
• Fixed an issue where the end-of-level early retreat selection menu would not appear for players that were in a level-up menu when another player attempted to leave the level.
• Fixed an issue where the perfectionist perk would temporarily grant multiple stacks per kill after leveling up.
• Fixed an issue where melee attack speed buffs would not increase the attack speed of daggers.
• Fixed an issue where infrequently the Warchief could get stuck, unable to attack, after their first attack.
• Fixed an issue where getting too close to the Warchief could cause them to become unable to function.
• Fixed an issue where spellbook and bow idle animations would not play.
• Changed some portcullises to drop into the floor where rising would cause them to poke through wall geometry.

Known Issues

Performance Issues

• As multiplayer in MythForce is peer-to-peer, you may experience lag or “choppiness” depending on your connection to the host and the power of their computer.
• On first launch, performance can be low on mechanical hard drives while building shaders in the background.

Gameplay Issues

• The game can crash on rare occasions when playing the game with out-of-date device drivers. Please ensure that your drivers are up-to-date to play MythForce.
• It is possible at Mythic Tier for Combat Veteran not to grant its increase in Max HP on defeating the appropriate number of enemies.
• The effects of Vitality Link do not properly award Max HP or party healing if rapidly drinking a potion while the effects of another potion are still being applied.
• In multiplayer, The Clairvoyant perk behaves as though it is Tier 1 regardless of its actual tier for client players.
• On occasion, rooms will open before all enemies have been defeated, allowing players to progress and leave enemies behind.
• On occasion, enemies will recover from a staggered state sooner than expected.
• Infrequently, Beastor’s animation at the beginning of the boss fight does not play for clients.
• On rare occasions, it’s possible to get stuck in a knocked-down state after being hit by Beastor or being caught in the explosion of a spore pod.
• It is possible to get temporarily stuck at “walk” speed after shield bashing an enemy or breakable. Raising and lowering the shield will fix this.
• On occasion, Beastor will “activate” early in the room before his combat arena and will taunt players loudly from a room away.
• On rare occasions, after falling into a pit the player may permanently lose the ability to rotate left and right.
• In cases where some players have a slow network connection, it can appear during the Beastor boss battle that Beastor is “teleporting” from one location to another after certain attacks.
• Rift Arrow can sometimes cause colliding creatures and players to be launched into the air
• Jumping on top of certain creatures can cause players to be launched into the air.
• It’s possible to exploit a “safe zone” at the entrance door to rooms, allowing you to shoot into a room without enemies’ being able to fight back.
• There are some rare instances in which players can become stuck in the world geometry and be unable to return to the playable area.
• Clients will occasionally get kicked from the lobby while loading into the game.

UI & Text Issues

• There is a typo in the “Cursed Goblet of Glass” artifact description. The description should say “Your Max HP…” not “You Max HP…”
• The “Level Up Available” prompt and gold-gathering HUD elements overlap one another.
• The Floor depth indicator can sometimes misreport the number of total rooms on a floor, causing it to appear as if the player has traversed more or fewer rooms in a floor than actually exist.
• There is no confirmation dialogue on the Early Retreat menu, making it easy to select an undesired choice by mistake with no way to undo.
• Ping indicators persist to the end of their normal timeout even if the pinged object is removed.
• On rare occasions, the hotbar can appear empty after reviving. Picking up or dropping items repopulates the hotbar.
• The item comparison hotbar popup when looking at an item in the world does not compare “like for like,” reducing its usefulness.

Visual Issues

• Some door frames, and walls where door frames could appear, do not appear properly lit, looking darker than expected.
• In certain rooms, it is possible for a group of spore pods to spawn in the same location hovering above a thorn vine pit.
• There are rare instances of sections of grass mounds, rocks, and foliage from outside the playable area appearing visible within the playable area.
• When viewing a higher area from below, it is possible to see enemy shadows on the ceiling below where they are standing.
• Some breakables and treasure boxes intersect with the environment, making them hard to see.
• Some environment geometry is larger than its collision, allowing smaller items to become hidden within environmental elements like stairs and raised flagstones.
• Sporefolk clouds that appear on death are opaque, making it difficult to see through.
• Some status effect particle systems can be difficult to see on Sporefolk.
• Some water is “solid,” allowing players and monsters to walk on the surface and items to sit on top of the surface.
• On occasion, after level transition, the “time of day” may appear inconsistent between players.
• Some seams are visible on ground textures, particularly in connecting corridors.
• Sporefolk can appear to “jitter” back and forth when approaching in combat.
• There is no “key” to pick up when you defeat Beastor. You can just proceed to the final room and use the pedestal.

Audio Issues

• It is possible for the new audio for shrines infrequently to get stuck, playing in the background for the remainder of the play session.
• Sound effects from the Select Your Character screen (for example, Victoria’s polishing her shield or Maggie’s levitating) persist into other menus.