Version 0.599i (+ivy+inca+ipman+irl)

[Teddy]

Patch 0.599inca

Additions

• The Smash skill now has its proper graphics
  
• The Shadow Clone skill now has its proper graphics
  
• The Static Touch spell now has its proper graphics
  
• The Spirit Slash gold charge has gotten its graphics touched up
  
• The Frosty Friend gold charge now has a small impact effect on its regular attacks

Bug Fixes

• Smashing enemies into walls should work a bit more consistently now
• Getting smashed by a Smashed enemy should no longer cause certain enemies to become immortal
  
• Frosty Friend no longer takes orders while being knocked out - let the poor guy rest!
  
• Silver charge Plants have received sensitivity training and will no longer hurt their friends from the north
  
• Static Touch now actually have a chance to stun enemies at Silver and Gold charge!
  
• Getting hit with Static Touch now only removes your own cubes, and not everyone else's
  
• If you get hit out of your Whirlslash, enemies that have died during it actually dies

 

[Own]

You're not supposed to be able to give him commands when he's knocked out, but a bug allows you to do all kinds of things

Judging by the sudden new ridiculously high scores in Arcade for 2P and 3P (for people who I've not seen near the top before) despite gold charges being impossible, and the fact that Pope Hats are involved, I'd hazard a guess that this bug was put to good use unsummoning / resummoning him.

I could be wrong, though.

 

[Teddy]

Judging by the sudden new ridiculously high scores in Arcade for 2P and 3P (for people who I've not seen near the top before) despite gold charges being impossible, and the fact that Pope Hats are involved, I'd hazard a guess that this bug was put to good use unsummoning / resummoning him.

I could be wrong, though.

Quite possibly! Now I regret not having the NSA-level foresight and adding info about main skill usage in the metadata

If things are too messed up on the high scores at release I guess we'll just have to wipe them.

 

[Own]

Correction:

It may be that.

Or

Snowbuddy is broken as heck in Arcade Mode now. Jesus. Enter room, Snowbuddy -> Right, sit back and watch the fireworks happen. He destroyed everything in 1P like that, the only thing that stopped me from double S-Ranking Season Temple was the fact that Winter's blizzards grazed me a few times. How many instances of damage taken on a floor = A, B, C and D? It seems like if you get grazed by any of Winter's blizzard spams twice you're doomed to an overall A rank?

In short, it's no wonder people are setting insane highscores in 2P and 3P Arcade. With 2-3 Silver Rank snowbuddies how can anything stop you?

If things are too messed up on the high scores at release I guess we'll just have to wipe them.

You could also do 'seasons' of score lists. If you make it to the top 10 of any season, people can look back through the seasons and see your name upon the high scores there. Awesomenauts does something like this, archiving the entirety of old high score seasons.

Reset the board to a new season whenever a new major update happens.

 

[Teddy]

You could also do 'seasons' of score lists. If you make it to the top 10 of any season, people can look back through the seasons and see your name upon the high scores there. Awesomenauts does something like this, archiving the entirety of old high score seasons.

Reset the board to a new season whenever a new major update happens.

To literally wipe the board on steam leaderboards is (or at least was) notoriously buggy, so I'm already doing something like this behind the scenes! New leaderboards are created rather than old ones being cleaned out.

In other words: we have everything we need, archive wise, to add such a feature at some point!

Snowbuddy is broken as heck in Arcade Mode now. Jesus. Enter room, Snowbuddy -> Right, sit back and watch the fireworks happen.

Hm, that's pretty bad. He might be a bit too powerful in Story Mode, even, but I think Arcade Mode amplifies his strengths, or at least diminish his weakness by a lot. With the new easy to use regenerative skill, it's entirely optional to let him die as well. Although by the sound of it his health isn't much of an issue?

I'll probably have to do a Frosty run myself to get some bearings at how strong he is.

Potential nerfs I can think of:

Lower MATK-ratios now that he's stronger in other aspects
All skills start on cooldown when you enter a new room in Arcade Mode
Damage to Frosty Friend counts towards floor damage rating

 

[Own]

Lower MATK-ratios now that he's stronger in other aspects
All skills start on cooldown when you enter a new room in Arcade Mode
Damage to Frosty Friend counts towards floor damage rating

1. Possibly.
2. This would ensure you never get even an A-Rank with Snowbuddy, if he's your main skill. He takes 14 seconds to recharge and if you're taking 14 seconds to clear a room, RIP ranks. As a secondary skill I suppose he would be good against bosses still.
3. This would completely destroy FF as a tool for getting anything more than rock bottom ranks and make him unuseable, unless your goal was to get far at any cost. You can't control him and so you can't prevent him from taking damage.

A suggestion of my own:

- Rage fades when Snowbuddy kills an enemy. This means he's good for quickly pounding down one enemy. Or maybe the rage buff length is decreased for each enemy killed? This would nerf him in Story Mode to compensate for Arcade, though...

 

[Teddy]

Soooo I just started a run with the little fellow, and as you say, the moment you hit rank 5 with only decent magic items, he absolutely goes to town on everything. Haha, who would've thought? The day Snowbuddy became king of Arcade Mode, at least for a few days!

I feel his MATK ratios are too generous as it stands... the core of his horribleness before in my opinion was that keeping his HP up (with desummon-wait-summon) was super tedious, and if he died, that was it. Even if I play pretending Frenzy didn't exist he is decently strong right now. There's nothing wrong with being decently strong, but even if we nerf Frenzy a bit, it will still be a good ability for him...

Since he's bringing stuff like aggro tanking to the table, his strengths doesn't stop at dishing out damage, so it's kind of doubly disgusting how he just rips everything to pieces

I was a bit unclear with #2! I didn't necessarily mean full cooldown, just something that emulated actual use cases for the spell. Something like half cooldown, or that his cooldown was saved at room cleared and stopped counting, even if you resummoned him.

Yeah, the more I think about #3 the more I feel it would only be a worst case emergency change, and I don't think we'll have to resort to that.

I like your suggestion for the buff. Maybe I'll try that out! I'm going to do some focused testing to see how he fares with different tweaks.

 

[Own]

the core of his horribleness before in my opinion was that keeping his HP up (with desummon-wait-summon) was super tedious, and if he died, that was it.

The reasons I stopped using him in Arcade, outside of gimmick runs, were:

1. EP. He takes up 50 EP at Silver Charge. His rate of damage wasn't worth taking up half the base EP bar.

2. Boss unreliability. VS Gigaslime, he can't be hit by anything but jumps. That's good. VS Pumpkin King, he gets torn to pieces instantly by bats. That's bad. VS Helloweed he doesn't get hurt by the thorns and can draw aggro. That's good. VS Phaseman and Gundam, bullet hell swarms slay him within seconds. That's bad. Also during the Toy Factory boss battle he can get stuck on the left side, trying and failing to attack the thing, which is unfortunate.

3. HP. In most rooms he'd just die before you managed to get to the end of it.

4. Unrevivability. I was never quite sure why Snowbuddy couldn't be revived in Arcade Mode, or still can't automatically revive. If you're needing to revive him or wait for him to revive, you've already tanked your time for the room and are sacrificing a fair amount of battle time to getting him up again - leaving you vulnerable.

5. Unrevivability+EP. I've sank enough points into him to get the Silver Charge. Now he's dead and he's taken half my EP bar with him. I'm fighting with one arm tied behind my back.

6. Bubbles. Snowbuddy doesn't care if an enemy is bubbled with an invincibility shield, he'll still attack them if they're close. Ideally priority would be Unshielded Nearby Enemy > Shielded Enemy (until an Unshielded Nearby Enemy appears, then switch targets) but I don't know how easy that would be to code.

I don't know if letting Snowbuddy auto-revive aftera long period in Arcade would mess the balance up that much, or freeing up his EP cost when he dies. It would pretty much only affect long bossbattles where he gets ripped apart, I think.

And on a completely random summon-related note, I can't wait for you to add two-handed mage weapons to the game. I've been wanting to try out Snowbuddy+Cloudbuddy+Manaburn+Berserker for a while now. The Manaburn+Berserker synergy with summons seems wonderful.

 

[IHeartPie]

Haven't tried out the new snowbuddy in Arcade yet [Totally will when I get home now ;3], but I think from the sound of it, a good nerf would be to knock cheesecake out of enrage when he gets hit. That way, you need to actually time his enrage to maximize it's damage instead of activate and forget. Alternatively, make the enrage ramp up [like beserker style]. That way, if you use it when he's gonna get hit stun a lot, he barely gets any atk speed. [Making him take double damage during it might be good too, to balance offense/defense of the left and right skill.]

 

[Own]

After experimenting with Static Shock, I'd like it if the cooldown between activations was applied per-enemy and not a flat delay, if that wouldn't somehow break the skill.

If you're fighting a few mobs at once with a magic build that delay is killer.

 

[Own]

Oh, I forgot to say, the lag is completely fine after the Gundam rebalance, at least in single player.

And even abusing Snowbuddy in the fight against winter, it does appear to be genuinely impossible to double S-Rank Season Temple. Even if you S-Rank the first floor and take no damage on the second, circumstances arise that will ensure you take at least 2 hits of damage.

A) Winter spams spikes everywhere in his super attack, giving you a split second to try and figure out where they're going.

B) Even if A doesn't get you, if you get boxed within a tiny cluster of spikes, his ice fists will get you due to your being unable to move. Either you run into spikes, or you get hit with the fist. I was just locked inside of a tight spike cluster and took 2 ice fists for my troubles.

C) This is more of a matter of skill than RNG, as A or B, but his massive screen blizzard storm while showering you with 3 hands makes it nearly impossible to avoid both the hands and not get grazed by the blizzards at the same time given the tiny box you're allowed. If this were going to be balanced, I'd say having blizzards apply a slow on you for the first second, then doing damage if you're (with increased damage to compensate) still in the blizzard past that would be fair. Because you rarely get hit by blizzards just once, it's usually fast enough to hit twice and there goes the S rank.

 

[Teddy]

Patch 0.599ipman

Additions

• Some new mage centric armors have been added to the game (currently found in store)

Changes

• The left side of the in game menu, the Character tab and the icons at the top have gotten new graphics
  
• Frosty Friend can now be revived even in Arcade Mode
• Frosty Friend has had his damage boost at Silver and Gold charge reduced
  
• Frosty Friend Frenzy ability has had its duration reduced from 4 seconds to 2 seconds
  
• Frosty Friend Frenzy ability has had its cooldown reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds

Bug Fixes

• Frosty Friend can no longer get hit by the bullets in Flying Fortress Bullet Hell Challenges
  
• Frosty Friend should now be less inclined to spawn out of bounds when entering a new zone
  
• Bishop's Double Monster-challenge now also doubles the par time for the room
  
• Static Touch cubes no longer gets removed from shielding enemies
  
• Static Touch instances no longer remain after dying

 

[Teddy]

If this were going to be balanced, I'd say having blizzards apply a slow on you for the first second, then doing damage if you're (with increased damage to compensate) still in the blizzard past that would be fair.

That's an interesting idea, which I think sounds pretty fair! Winter will definitely be nerfed a bit when we reach the new Temple content wise, and this is a good suggestion for that. His zone control is very massive as it stands.

 

[Own]

• Some new mage centric armors have been added to the game (currently found in store)

I like 'em! Are they in Arcade Mode shops / fishables / drops as well?

Also, is it Arcmage or Archmage? I've always used the latter, but google shows both in use.

 

[Own]

Question:

Is 'Stun' considered a proper debuff by the game? Because I can't tell if it is. The status effects are always listed as 'Chill, burn, etc'.

I have no idea if Static Touch's stun has any synergy with Crippling Blast or Insult to Injury.

 

[Teddy]

Question:

Is 'Stun' considered a proper debuff by the game? Because I can't tell if it is. The status effects are always listed as 'Chill, burn, etc'.

I have no idea if Static Touch's stun has any synergy with Crippling Blast or Insult to Injury.

I don't think the stun interacts with any of those, which is an oversight on my behalf!

Insult to Injury should definitely interact with Stun.

Not too sure about Crippling Blast, since it refers to magical debuffs and stun is not technically one of those. I doubt the status effect would become super broken from being affected by that talent, however.

 

[Teddy]

Also, is it Arcmage or Archmage?

I vote for archmage - it was a typo!

 

[Teddy]

By the way... could someone competent try a run with the new Frosty Friend and see how he fares? It seems to me he's gone from God-tier to just being pretty decent, but it would be pretty silly if we moved leaderboards and the bastard was still broken compared to everything else

 

[Teddy]

With the Steam Early Access release drawing very close (Monday), I've brought the Stable build up to Frontline again for some more horsepower on finding critical bugs.

 

[Own]

Wait. Waaait. Monday? What?

That's not nearly enough time to test all the skill rebalances out, is it? This is a gigantic update and no one has really had the opportunity to try all the skills out in a normal story mode run, everyone has just cycled through all the gold charges /respeccing. That makes me worry some people are going to stumble across some nasty bugs and get grumpy.