I am releasing a new patch today that will fix the bugs/crashes/loops/whatever else that were introduced in the most recent update. Once again, I cannot apologize enough for this sloppy release. Ironically, this was the most I've ever tested a patch but it seems some things still slipped through. The UI is intended to work the way it does now. This isn't a bug or anything. The way it worked before involved stretching the UI which distorted all the graphics, text, and touch controls on any device that wasn't running on a 16:9 aspect ratio. However, I recognize that the font is still too small for some users and the touch controls could use some more work. To that end, I am focusing on a few major things right now: 1) New touch controls. By default, the current touch controls will be enabled, and you can switch over to new controls in the options menu. There will be no on-screen graphics for the alternative controls. Instead, the A button will be activated if you press anywhere in the top-right half section of your screen, and the B button will be activated if you press anywhere in the bottom-right half section of your screen. Movement and menu navigation will be done with intelligent swiping and should feel very natural. 2) A new UI. This is going to take a while but it'll be worth it. Text should be larger and the interface itself should be more aesthetically pleasing. For example, when a creature gains experience points in battle, a window will appear that has a graphical bar to represent the amount of experience gained, the amount needed until your creatures level up, and things like that. The UI overhaul won't happen overnight so please don't be upset if it's not included in the next few patches. We'll get there as quickly as possible, I promise! 3) Balance changes. Obviously this isn't a very pressing issue since for the most part, the game is reasonably balanced as it is. But even so, several lackluster battle conditions are being improved (such as Poison damage) or revamped entirely (such as Immolate, which now deals damage to creatures adjacent to your target). Many creature abilities are being adjusted, and several are being revamped to become more interesting. The biggest focus of these changes is to give meaning to your creatures' positioning in battle. For example, here's one of the abilities that has already changed: Red Eyed Friend (reworked): Name changed to Death's Advance. This creature gains additional attack equal to 30% of the friendly creatures' attack to the left and right of this creature. The net result will be a more strategy-oriented game with more options to play the way you want. 4) New graphics are coming. We are on the hunt for a new graphics artist and many of the ugly tiles and sprites will be redone. Walls will now look like actual walls instead of Minecraft blocks. Knights won't look like astronauts anymore. Creature sprites in the overworld will have more animation than just their arms bouncing up and down. Don't worry - I'm going to keep a close eye on these changes to ensure that the spirit of the game isn't ripped away. At the end of the day, it's still a retro Gameboy-style RPG and that will not change.
Thanks for all your hard work and your open channel of communication regarding what's next. It all sounds great and I am very happy to see that one of my favorite titles this year will receive a lot more love and get even better! Please let me know if there's any way I can offer support, aside from purchasing the game across all platforms of course. I'm also working on a very comprehensive review that I'll post on reddit and a few other sites. Personally (on ipad mini retina) I have adapted to the new UI scaling and it's fine. The font size is still a tad small but I'm glad to see that it will be considered in a future update. My creatures are almost level 60 now and since the last update, the game runs even smoother with zero hiccups. I've only had one crash so far, so it's not too bad. I apologize for asking you yet more questions, but here goes: 1 - When the does the game auto-save? Is it when I create a portal back to Siralim? I'd like to know so I can force a save once in a while (in case of crash) without having to exit the game 2 - Spells - I personally don't cast spells very often, rarely in fact. I find that most of the time, it's not worth spending an action to use. If I am not alone in this, perhaps spells can be beefed up a bit to encourage their use? It could very well only be me, and my style of playing; not sure if you've received any other feedback or what other players here at TA would think. 3 - Nether egg - I now have all the facilities built and almost have a total of 15 gems, enchanted already and at level 9. So next, I need a nether orb, right? What comes after and how to I ensure that I don't end up messing up the process? I have 3 gems of each type (15 total) and at my current level I should be able to use them all for a nether orb. Note that this particular game does NOT have castle quests enabled. Cheers!
It saves any time you use a portal, use a teleportation shrine, or use "save & exit". I'm thinking about adding a few other areas for it to save as well, but that's it for now. The PC and Mac versions have the luxury of the game saving any time you exit the game, but Apple made that a technical impossibility for iOS, unfortunately. Spells are kind of in a weird place at the moment. On one hand, they're overpowered when fighting bosses, but a lot of them aren't very good in normal battles. I'm not quite sure how to handle that yet. Your next step is indeed to find a Nether Orb. After that, you'll need to activate it using the Arcane Vault which requires several rituals. After that, you'll just need to find the Nether Creator who randomly spawns in a dungeon and he'll create the egg for you.
At which point during this process are the gems assigned to the orb or creature? I guess that's the part I'm not clear on.
The gems are assigned right when then the egg is created. You'll give the orb, gems, and particle to the Nether Creator all at the same time, then you'll receive the finished egg. The only thing left to do with the egg is to hatch it.
Thanks for the almost instant responses! I'm at the point now where I'm diving down in the dungeon as deep as I can manage to go in order to increase the chances of finding an orb. I must say that I like the fact that they are more rare and difficult to acquire. I think my odds are pretty good. I've recently found a legendary crafting material that allows my creature to absorb 65% of the enemy's max and current health if he kills it. So naturally I put it on my tank, who also happens to have the innate skill to regain 70% of his HP when defending (and going to sleep). I also loaded up the artifact with tons of defense and HP so he should be a tough cookie to bring down!
Here are the patch notes for the upcoming patch: http://thylacinestudios.com/forums/index.php/topic,238.0.html
Still loving it! Most creatures sitting around level 90 now. I just reached 80 something. I'm at realm level 35. Found two nether orbs already since patch! Now I need gems sigh. Thy: is 12/12 slots the max for artifacts or will this continue to grow? I mentioned this before but being able to see a description of the enchantment in the actual enchantment window would be super helpful. Any reason we cannot reroll stats on a legendary soul bound item? I also find spells lacking, except bosses because you can abuse stun lock. Sorry spoiler! I got the clairvoyant creature that gains 80% attack when I have full mana so now I really have no use for spells. I have to say I love the creatures that synergize with one another. I can't wait for the stable changes so I can make teams. I want to try out a team of diabolicals, a team of all bats, of all gargoyles etc. seems like you can make some pretty killer teams sticking with the similar creatures.
The maximum number of slots will continue to increase forever. Do you think Nether Orbs are too common now? You can't craft soulbound artifacts because it would be too easy to continue updating an artifact forever. Plus, the legendary crafting material is supposed to be a big deal and should signify the "finishing touch" for your item. You could argue that since the number of stat slots increases, that's an incentive to continue to create new artifacts, but I like the idea that you're always forced to make tough decisions with the current system. I really don't like the Clairvoyant Spirit's ability, so that'll probably be changed when the rebalance patch comes out. It'll probably do the opposite of what it does now, where it increases stats based on the percentage of mana you're missing or something like that. I don't like the fact that it currently forces you into a playstyle that revolves around not casting spells - you're a mage after all, so you should be casting spells! That's also why I need to take a good look at some of the current spells and adjust them to make them seem more tempting. If you think the creatures synergize well now, just wait until you see the new ability changes Once a preliminary list is complete I'll post them on Siralim's forums for everyone to check out. It's going to make battles way more interesting.
I don't really use enemy synergies, I should try it out in a new game. One thing that confuses me (it's probably simple) is the imler and imling things. Not sure I follow how that whole thing works. Do I need one of each in my group or? I have not encountered any bosses yet. Where do you see them? Also - I have pages up pages of spells. It would be cool if we could trade 5 spells in for one random spell with random charges, just to sort of have something to do with them. Or something of the sort.
Yes, you need an Imler and an Imling in your party for their abilities to take effect. You can mix and match any combination of Imler/Imling based on their abilities, though. You can't have more than one Imler and one Imling in your party at the same time, though, or their abilities won't activate (they'll get jealous or something). Bosses include the Pandemonium King, Major Sigil leaders, Minor Sigil leaders, and some duties involve fighting a boss. You can tell there's a boss based on the battle music playing.
Ok, I have fought bosses then but just didn't realize it lol. Those are typically fights where you cannot use the diffuse function, correct? Good to know about the imling and imlers.
Thy: 1. How do I get more power! It's the only resource I'm consistently lacking in...I can't even gamble for it 2. I think the drop rate is fine. I have only gotten 1 since patch the other was pre patch. Regardless the remaining steps are still so long that even if I got 10 orbs today I couldn't use them for days or weeks...plus the fact that you need 6 particles to get a creature is time consuming as well! 3. Nether creatures. The game promises these are stronger but how much so? Are we sure investing in them is worthwhile? Is it double a normal creature of same level? More? Less?
1. You can exchange gems for power if you find the power dwarf, but please see the end of this post because I have a question related to this. 2. Sounds good. But just so you know, you only need 4 particles in total: 3 to summon the creature so you can create gems, and 1 to create the actual egg. 3. It all depends on how much effort you put into them, what kind of gems you use, what orb color you use and how many activations it has, and things like that. Don't cut any corners and you'll be rewarded Now, a question for you. Some people complain that everything is still too expensive and they can't ever get ahead, and that the grind is just too much. I haven't noticed this at all, but it's not something I want to just ignore. Aside from power like you mentioned, do you ever feel like there's not enough of any of the other resources to the point that it's imbalanced? If anyone else sees this post, feel free to jump in with your opinion as well. I don't want the game to just hand everything to you on a silver platter, but I also don't want people to feel like they have to grind for 3 hours just to summon a new creature.
I've decided to post my team. I'm lvl 70 now, my unicorn was created using 3-4 gems, I've gotten these nether orbs blue, pink, indigo, violet, red, ranging from 10 activations to 5 activations. Combat is well, not that hard.. def needs mini bosses type enemies. Essense is the hardest material to get, I'm on realm 32 now and the amounts per duty and battle don't seem to be enough to do gems and artifact enchanting. I've got to constantly stop go farm and come back. What lvl can u destroy a particle to get that monster to appear in the wild. What lvl can u create sigils? How many creatures tiers are there? I'm on 11 now I haven't seen a nether creator since the new patch, maybe make a scroll that warps him to the realm your currently in or a quest to summon one. How does enemy scaling work. If I swap out two creatures in my 70 lvl-ish party for 2 lvl 1s.. How will that effect everything? I dislike power spells. It's often a particle I've already gotten I've only seen 5 unique ones from it so far. Nightmare golem, shogun x2, ect 3-5 emblems w a major sigil, shards, scrolls which I have an insane amount, or 5 random rare materials. I was expecting something more from it.. Maybe more variety, or a special chest, def needs to give Essense, enchant gem scroll to lvl 9 ect. The cost has gone up to 110k power. Just spilling my thoughts on to the paper here, maybe I'll come back and edit later.
Sadly it feels like I cheated a bit- since I was gaining the bigger resources before you patched it I had already gotten about 1 million of every resource. Then you lowered the cost of everything essentially making me very wealthy. Although I have a ton I have also spent a ton. Right now for me it costs about 100k of 3 resources to summon a creature. When I enter even level 1 realm I make roughly 10k (EDIT ITS MORE LIKE 5-6k) per fight on each resource. It only goes up as you progress. I imagine there are about 5-10 fights per realm so you essentially get a "free" summon as you clear every realm. That only includes the fights and not the pick ups and chests and use of pandemonium tokens. Also, I've died so many times and the 10% was killer and now people don't have to deal with that!!!! I spent about 3-4 days grinding level 1 realms just to get resources. The cost of enchanting and forging is fine in my opinion. The biggest drain for me seems to be power. I've been doing orb enchantments, power spells, and enchanting (legendaries) and I'm all bit capped out now. I need to "grind" a bit more. Not sure how anyone can complain since the description of this game sums up what is expected "rpg rogue like" = lots of grinding. I'm very pleased with the grind this game provides I've never felt it too much even pre balance resource patch. I learned log ago that getting everything too quickly - quickly makes a game boring.
You can sacrifice particles at level 30 onward to make them appear more frequently in the next dungeon. You can combine 3 particles to create a Minor Sigil starting at level 20. There are 20 creature tiers, and some creatures can't be unlocked without power spells or buying them with emblems. Enemies each scale to your creatures' levels individually. So if you swap to two level 1s, there'll be two enemies that scale to those level 1s.
