Reminiscence & Stat Changes

Hey there, heroes!

This week, the Six Heroes story continues! After taking on the plucky Falwynn as your apprentice, you encountered Faust, the mysterious fighter from the Tournament of Champions, and became curious about his origins and power. This week, head over to Ash in Book 3 Falconreach to continue the Six Heroes story with this week's quest: Reminiscence!

This week also sees some bug fixes, engine updates, and combat changes, specifically regarding Glancing Blows, Immobility Effects, STR, and DEX.

Fixes:

• Fixed a pair of disembodied knights in Book 3 Falconreach
• Fixed a bug where completing the quest Forest Hunt from Symone's Castle would lead to a black screen.
• Fixed a bug where a critical hit bypassing B/P/D defenses would not apply on hit specials.

Updates:

• Adjusted initial character loading sequence to reduce (and hopefully eliminate) loading stalls.
• Ruby the Adventure Chef in Book 3 Falconreach now sells upgraded Zard Cuisine options. Zard Cuisine+ applies Stuffed for 10 turns, down from 30.
• Ruby the Adventure Chef in Book 3 Falconreach now sells Moglinberry Candy. Moglinberry Candy increases Immobility resistance by 50 for 2 turns, and Stuffed for 10 turns.

Combat Changes:

• Guests no longer affect enemy HP. However, they still increase enemy damage.
• Glancing Blow damage has been reduced to 10% of normal damage, down from 25%.
• DEX no longer affects Glancing Blow damage.
• DEX now allows your skills to bypass DEX/5 Immobility resistance. Enemies with DEX can also bypass your Immobility resistance using the same formula.
• Immobility effects on the player only (NOT enemies or guests) now have a 66% chance to not immobilize the player on their turn.
  • For example, if you are stunned, on your turn, you have a 33% chance to lose your turn, and a 66% chance to be able to act. This does NOT purge the stun.
• Immobility effects will now notify you when they are applied, rather than when they are resisted.
  • This is to make it more clear when you are immobilized by an attack that hits multiple times. This does make it harder to tell if an enemy is trying to immobilize you with a specific skill if you have enough resistance, and this may still be reworked in the future.
• STR no longer applies a multiplier to all stat damage.
• STR now increases damage done by non-critical attacks by STR/25 damage.
  • For comparison, previously at 250 STR, attacks would gain approximately 12.5 damage per hit from the STR multiplier. This damage would also be multiplied when considering critical hits.
  • Now, at 250 STR, attacks that do not critically hit will gain 10 damage per hit from the STR bonus. Critical hits will not have this damage added in.

The goal of these combat changes is to a) make immobility effects easier to deal with, and b) balance out the "main" stats of STR, DEX, and INT, as previously, STR was too general and restricted build choices.

There was no goal to make the game or challenge fights any more difficult or any easier. Simply more generally fun.

The reduction in effectiveness of Immobility on the player make Immobility effects less of a death sentence when applied. This, combined with the new addition of Moglinberry Candy (+50 Immobility resistance for 2 turns), means that it should not be as necessary to train STR as before in order to survive agaisnt enemies that can immobilize.

STR, DEX, and INT now each have "balanced" effects. Before, STR's bonus damage to all stat types meant it was always more powerful offensively than the other stats.

Each main stat has 3 functions:

• Bonus damage to their corresponding type
  • STR: Melee
  • DEX: Pierce
  • INT: Magic
• Bonus damage to a situational type
  • STR: Non-Crits
  • DEX: DoTs
  • INT: Crits
• A situational bonus effect
  • STR: Immobility resist
  • DEX: Immobility resist bypass
  • INT: Bonus to hit

As the game continues to grow and challenges evolve, some of these effects may become unbalanced or more favorable than others. For instance, if enemies start tending toward having higher base defenses, then INT's Bonus to Hit starts becoming less situational and more general.

Another concern that players may have is that it seems like STR's situational bonus damage punishes players for having high crit. However, I would argue that outside of intentionally boosting critical chance (which on its own will do more damage than the bonus damage gained), you still won't have an extremely large number of crits compared to non-crits. This bonus damage is also applied per hit, which can be extremely powerful on multi-hit attacks. It's not punishing you for not getting crits, but rather slightly normalizing the damage between crits and non-crits.

As always, I read and appreciate all of your feedback.

What could be coming next for Falwynn, Faust, Sophie, and you? Looking forward to the next quest in the Six Heroes story? Have feedback about the new combat changes? Want to talk about all things DragonFable?

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