AoD v1.2.5 Major Patch
Magic System Overhaul
The biggest headline of this update. We've entirely reimagined how you operate magic, completely eliminating the need for typing server commands and utilizing the brick selector and hotbar for spell management. This was made possible in large part thanks to some custom work Elletra did on bl-liberator for us which enabled some modifications to fxDtsBrickData objects that weren't allowed by default. This interface pattern for using the brick selector and hotbar could be expanded in the future to replace some other things that currently still use server commands.
To use magic, you now simply press B to open the brick menu, which will be populated with all the spells you have unlocked, and pick the spells you want on your hotbar. Just like with building, you can right-click a spell to equip it temporarily without it being added to your hotbar.
You can open the hotbar at any time to enter a 'barehanded' casting mode, from which you can cast any spells you like without the use of a staff. For ease of use, we've removed the requirement to use a staff while in combat; and melee armor no longer prohibits casting spells. On that note, we've also made Recall a regular spells which everyone has unlocked! There is no longer any need to lug a Recall scroll around in your inventory at all times.
Spell picker/hotbar icons were purchased from Snurly's Spell Icon Pack with only minor modifications applied.
Spell Power, Cooldowns, Utility Spells, and You
Since spell casting is being unrestricted for melee, we've also reimagined the 'spell damage' stat into 'spell power', which now influences many utility spells beyond just damage output. Healing spells now have their effectiveness linearly adjusted by spell power with a logarithmic falloff on positive spell power stats. Basically, this means that these spells can only gain a little bit of additional effectiveness from bonus spell power; but will face major reduction in effectiveness from negative spell power stats such as what melee armors have.
We've also introduced a per-spell cooldown system which has allowed us to rethink how certain spells interact with your spell loadout. As a rule of thumb, we've left basic spells with no cooldown so you can always use them; but we've added cooldowns to some higher tier spells that we want you to alternate using with other spells in your loadout. In exchange for these cooldowns, we've increased the power of some of these higher tier spells too.
‣ Cauterize: Now heals 20% of recently taken damage, modified by your spell power. Spell power modifications beyond 25% effectiveness are throttled logarithmically.
‣ ManaStiches: Now heals 30% of recently taken damage, modified by your spell power. Spell power modifications beyond 30% effectiveness are throttled logarithmically. Added 20 second cooldown.
‣ AuroraHealing: Now heals 35% of recently taken damage, modified by your spell power. Spell power modifications beyond 40% effectiveness are throttled logarithmically. Added 60 second cooldown.
‣ Dash: Slightly lowered base effectiveness, effectiveness is now modified by your spell power. Added 5 second cooldown. Element changed from Arcane to Fire.
‣ Alchemy (All variants): Now interactively allows you to pick an item from your inventory to alchemy, instead of using the last item you had equipped. Spell power has no effect on alchemy spells.
‣ Recall: Now learned by default.
‣ ShadowBomb: Increased base damage to 800 (+250 radius), added 20 second cooldown, removed non-linear spell power scaling.
‣ Eclipse: Increased base damage to 200, added 10 second cooldown, removed non-linear spell power scaling.
‣ Bloodstrike: Added 20 second cooldown.
‣ ShadowBolt: Removed non-linear spell power scaling.
‣ FrostShards: (Hologlaxer) Added new casting VFX and projectiles are now spawned in an arch formation above your player.
‣ BloodSpray: (Hologlaxer) Added new casting VFX and projectiles are now spawned in an arch formation above your player.
‣ (Pecon + Darksaber + Hologlaxer) New intermediate Earth spell: Slam
—▷ This spell bounces you upward slightly, right before sending you crashing to the ground to create a large explosion on impact. Cast it from a height and crouch simultaneously for extra effectiveness! 10 second cooldown.
—▷ Unlock scrolls can be found occasionally in the dungeon.
‣ New Light spell: Aegis
—▷ Grants 10 seconds of invincibility.
—▷ Single-use scrolls can be found occasionally in the dungeon. This spell does not have an unlock scroll.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added a couple new learnable legendary spells for you to discover.
Staffs Restatted
Since casting with a staff is no longer primarily a mechanical convenience, we've also introduced some stat changes to them across the board to help re-incentivize using them in the new system.
‣ The Apprentice staff now provides -10% mana cost on all spells.
‣ The Mage staff now provides +10% spell power on all spells.
‣ All the basic elemental staves now provide a -20% mana cost and a +20% spell power modifier for spells of the matching element.
‣ All the legendary elemental staves now provide a -30% mana cost and a +30% spell power modifier for spells of the matching element.
Hybrid Armors Rework
From observation of adventurers using hybrid armors, there were clear signs that one class would still be seen as the dominant one; relegating the other to more niche purposes. Therefore, the hybrid armors have been reworked to introduce passive effects that only trigger when playing as one class which will provide an advantage for the other class; greatly incentivizing to synergize and play as both classes more often.
Holy Knight
‣ (Hologlaxer) Reduced mana regen stat changed from -60% to -100%
‣ (Hologlaxer) Increased spell power stat from +20% to +30%
‣ (Hologlaxer) New mechanic: True Melee Manasteal — 8% of melee damage dealt is added as mana to your mana pool.
Rōnin
‣ (Hologlaxer) Slightly decreased arrow modifier bonuses
‣ (Hologlaxer) Now has standard -75% stat for mana regen and spell power.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Like all other melee armors, no longer prohibited from casting spells.
‣ (Hologlaxer) New mechanic: Banzai Charge — After landing hits with a ranged weapon, gain Banzai Charge which increases both your movement speed and Melee attack damage for some time.
New: Warlock
‣ (Hologlaxer) Warlock armor: Created with divine crafting by combining Magister Robes armor with Poacher armor, a basic mana crystal, and a golden idol.
‣ (Hologlaxer) -25% armor, +40% spell power, +150% mana regen, +50% arrow recovery, +75 arrow capacity, moderate arrow modifer bonuses, cannot use channeling crystals.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Mechanic: Passive Channel — Any time you are not casting spells, passively gain bonus mana regen stat up to a maximum of +900%. Casting a spell resets your mana regen stat to the base value.
General Changes
New & Changed Equipment
‣ (Hologlaxer + Darksaber) Added a new legendary melee weapon to be crafted.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added a new legendary ranger weapon that can be found rarely in the dungeon.
‣ (Magus + Darksaber) Added a new ranger arrow mod 'Lightning Lacrima'. It can be found occasionally in the dungeon.
‣ Feast & Famine's ultimate effect has been replaced with a stackable temporary +0.1x scale & damage buff that lasts for five minutes.
—▷ Consequently, the Growing Pains curse has been removed from the game.
‣ Body & Mind's ultimate effect has been replaced with one that applies a stackable temporary +100 Max HP & Mana buff that lasts for ten minutes.
—▷ As there is no longer any way to acquire permanent max HP/mana modifications, support for them in the saving system has been dropped. Any players who had permanent max HP/mana modifications will revert to their level's default stats as of this update.
‣ Archangel's Staff's special ability now grants a powerful temporary HP shield instead of invincibility.
‣ Bulwark's Draught now grants only 300 HP for its shield, but the duration has been extended to five minutes.
—▷ Additionally, the potion also grants a non-stackable +0.2x player scale & damage buff that also lasts five minutes.
‣ Tonic Vitæ now also grants a non-stackable +100 Max HP & Mana buff that lasts five minutes.
‣ Focus Distillate now overcharges your special attack energy to 150%.
Other Content
‣ (APX) Composed new original ambiance soundtracks for floors 2, 3, 5, and 6, replacing the unoriginal soundtracks.
‣ The Mind Torn Guard miniboss has learned to DODGE.
‣ (Hologlaxer + Pecon) Added item icons to nearly all remaining items that lacked them.
‣ Wrapping paper re-added to dungeon shop drop tables (Christmas event only).
Quality of Life
‣ (Hologlaxer) You can now wear hats while crowned.
‣ (Hologlaxer + Pecon) You can now properly utilize multiple crowns at once. The world may not be ready for this power.
‣ Added a /alignment command which allows you to check the piety of all your alignments as well as your current prayer power/connection.
‣ You can now enable multiple donor emitters at once. The world is definitely not ready for this power.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added /sort command for interactive inventory sorting.
‣ Significantly reduced the amount of camera shake the Troll Boss's boulder explosion does.
‣ New players now spawn into the game with a rusty dagger, a novice bow, an apprentice staff, a full quiver of arrows, and with the Recall & FlashFire spells automatically unlocked.
—▷ Starting gold reduced from 150 to 100.
Client Data Callback Functions
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added an assortment of client callbacks that communicate game state info that is useful for AoD client mods. Information you can get includes your player stats, quantities + types of damage you deal as you deal them, and boss encounter info.
Client data callback functions are opt-in, to enable them you must listen for the random number sent via the 'AoD_HandshakeReceive' client command, and reply with a 'AoD_HandshakeVerify' server command that passes back the random number. Doing this will disable sending the default bottomprint HUD! Prepend an extra 'true' argument to the verify command to skip disabling the HUD.
Bugfixes
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed poison applied by arrowmods not counting towards your damage contributions.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed some other inaccuracies in how player damage is tracked.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed some issues the Oathbreaker's AI could run into when affected by an interrupt effect.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed melee weapons hitboxes not scaling appropriately with your player scale.
‣ Fixed miniboss music frequently ending very early.
‣ Fixed some cases where certain enemies could keep you stuck in combat despite not actually being engaged.
‣ Fixed some incorrect tips, fixed the town NPCs sometimes spouting some wildly inaccurate nonsense.
Magic System Overhaul
The biggest headline of this update. We've entirely reimagined how you operate magic, completely eliminating the need for typing server commands and utilizing the brick selector and hotbar for spell management. This was made possible in large part thanks to some custom work Elletra did on bl-liberator for us which enabled some modifications to fxDtsBrickData objects that weren't allowed by default. This interface pattern for using the brick selector and hotbar could be expanded in the future to replace some other things that currently still use server commands.
To use magic, you now simply press B to open the brick menu, which will be populated with all the spells you have unlocked, and pick the spells you want on your hotbar. Just like with building, you can right-click a spell to equip it temporarily without it being added to your hotbar.
You can open the hotbar at any time to enter a 'barehanded' casting mode, from which you can cast any spells you like without the use of a staff. For ease of use, we've removed the requirement to use a staff while in combat; and melee armor no longer prohibits casting spells. On that note, we've also made Recall a regular spells which everyone has unlocked! There is no longer any need to lug a Recall scroll around in your inventory at all times.
Spell picker/hotbar icons were purchased from Snurly's Spell Icon Pack with only minor modifications applied.
Spell Power, Cooldowns, Utility Spells, and You
Since spell casting is being unrestricted for melee, we've also reimagined the 'spell damage' stat into 'spell power', which now influences many utility spells beyond just damage output. Healing spells now have their effectiveness linearly adjusted by spell power with a logarithmic falloff on positive spell power stats. Basically, this means that these spells can only gain a little bit of additional effectiveness from bonus spell power; but will face major reduction in effectiveness from negative spell power stats such as what melee armors have.
We've also introduced a per-spell cooldown system which has allowed us to rethink how certain spells interact with your spell loadout. As a rule of thumb, we've left basic spells with no cooldown so you can always use them; but we've added cooldowns to some higher tier spells that we want you to alternate using with other spells in your loadout. In exchange for these cooldowns, we've increased the power of some of these higher tier spells too.
‣ Cauterize: Now heals 20% of recently taken damage, modified by your spell power. Spell power modifications beyond 25% effectiveness are throttled logarithmically.
‣ ManaStiches: Now heals 30% of recently taken damage, modified by your spell power. Spell power modifications beyond 30% effectiveness are throttled logarithmically. Added 20 second cooldown.
‣ AuroraHealing: Now heals 35% of recently taken damage, modified by your spell power. Spell power modifications beyond 40% effectiveness are throttled logarithmically. Added 60 second cooldown.
‣ Dash: Slightly lowered base effectiveness, effectiveness is now modified by your spell power. Added 5 second cooldown. Element changed from Arcane to Fire.
‣ Alchemy (All variants): Now interactively allows you to pick an item from your inventory to alchemy, instead of using the last item you had equipped. Spell power has no effect on alchemy spells.
‣ Recall: Now learned by default.
‣ ShadowBomb: Increased base damage to 800 (+250 radius), added 20 second cooldown, removed non-linear spell power scaling.
‣ Eclipse: Increased base damage to 200, added 10 second cooldown, removed non-linear spell power scaling.
‣ Bloodstrike: Added 20 second cooldown.
‣ ShadowBolt: Removed non-linear spell power scaling.
‣ FrostShards: (Hologlaxer) Added new casting VFX and projectiles are now spawned in an arch formation above your player.
‣ BloodSpray: (Hologlaxer) Added new casting VFX and projectiles are now spawned in an arch formation above your player.
Quote from: (Hologlaxer) Developer Media - Projectile summoning arch formation
‣ (Pecon + Darksaber + Hologlaxer) New intermediate Earth spell: Slam
—▷ This spell bounces you upward slightly, right before sending you crashing to the ground to create a large explosion on impact. Cast it from a height and crouch simultaneously for extra effectiveness! 10 second cooldown.
—▷ Unlock scrolls can be found occasionally in the dungeon.
Quote from: (Darksaber) Developer Media - Slam spell demonstration
‣ New Light spell: Aegis
—▷ Grants 10 seconds of invincibility.
—▷ Single-use scrolls can be found occasionally in the dungeon. This spell does not have an unlock scroll.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added a couple new learnable legendary spells for you to discover.
Staffs Restatted
Since casting with a staff is no longer primarily a mechanical convenience, we've also introduced some stat changes to them across the board to help re-incentivize using them in the new system.
‣ The Apprentice staff now provides -10% mana cost on all spells.
‣ The Mage staff now provides +10% spell power on all spells.
‣ All the basic elemental staves now provide a -20% mana cost and a +20% spell power modifier for spells of the matching element.
‣ All the legendary elemental staves now provide a -30% mana cost and a +30% spell power modifier for spells of the matching element.
Hybrid Armors Rework
From observation of adventurers using hybrid armors, there were clear signs that one class would still be seen as the dominant one; relegating the other to more niche purposes. Therefore, the hybrid armors have been reworked to introduce passive effects that only trigger when playing as one class which will provide an advantage for the other class; greatly incentivizing to synergize and play as both classes more often.
Holy Knight
‣ (Hologlaxer) Reduced mana regen stat changed from -60% to -100%
‣ (Hologlaxer) Increased spell power stat from +20% to +30%
‣ (Hologlaxer) New mechanic: True Melee Manasteal — 8% of melee damage dealt is added as mana to your mana pool.
Quote from: (Hologlaxer) Developer Media - Holy Knight True Melee Manasteal
Rōnin
‣ (Hologlaxer) Slightly decreased arrow modifier bonuses
‣ (Hologlaxer) Now has standard -75% stat for mana regen and spell power.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Like all other melee armors, no longer prohibited from casting spells.
‣ (Hologlaxer) New mechanic: Banzai Charge — After landing hits with a ranged weapon, gain Banzai Charge which increases both your movement speed and Melee attack damage for some time.
New: Warlock
Quote from: (Hologlaxer) Developer Media - Warlock Armor
‣ (Hologlaxer) Warlock armor: Created with divine crafting by combining Magister Robes armor with Poacher armor, a basic mana crystal, and a golden idol.
‣ (Hologlaxer) -25% armor, +40% spell power, +150% mana regen, +50% arrow recovery, +75 arrow capacity, moderate arrow modifer bonuses, cannot use channeling crystals.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Mechanic: Passive Channel — Any time you are not casting spells, passively gain bonus mana regen stat up to a maximum of +900%. Casting a spell resets your mana regen stat to the base value.
Quote from: Developer Commentary
Rushing erratically is a ruined dance of harmony... Impatience... Unsustainable! But a patient harmonic dance will surely last forever in beauty.
Quote from: (Hologlaxer) Developer Media - Warlock passive channel
General Changes
New & Changed Equipment
‣ (Hologlaxer + Darksaber) Added a new legendary melee weapon to be crafted.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added a new legendary ranger weapon that can be found rarely in the dungeon.
‣ (Magus + Darksaber) Added a new ranger arrow mod 'Lightning Lacrima'. It can be found occasionally in the dungeon.
‣ Feast & Famine's ultimate effect has been replaced with a stackable temporary +0.1x scale & damage buff that lasts for five minutes.
—▷ Consequently, the Growing Pains curse has been removed from the game.
‣ Body & Mind's ultimate effect has been replaced with one that applies a stackable temporary +100 Max HP & Mana buff that lasts for ten minutes.
—▷ As there is no longer any way to acquire permanent max HP/mana modifications, support for them in the saving system has been dropped. Any players who had permanent max HP/mana modifications will revert to their level's default stats as of this update.
‣ Archangel's Staff's special ability now grants a powerful temporary HP shield instead of invincibility.
Quote from: Developer Commentary
I'm sorry but this shit was just busted. I've added the Aegis spell scroll so that invincibility is still a player-accessible mechanic, just not a totally free one you get to use on a cooldown.
‣ Bulwark's Draught now grants only 300 HP for its shield, but the duration has been extended to five minutes.
—▷ Additionally, the potion also grants a non-stackable +0.2x player scale & damage buff that also lasts five minutes.
‣ Tonic Vitæ now also grants a non-stackable +100 Max HP & Mana buff that lasts five minutes.
‣ Focus Distillate now overcharges your special attack energy to 150%.
Other Content
‣ (APX) Composed new original ambiance soundtracks for floors 2, 3, 5, and 6, replacing the unoriginal soundtracks.
‣ The Mind Torn Guard miniboss has learned to DODGE.
‣ (Hologlaxer + Pecon) Added item icons to nearly all remaining items that lacked them.
‣ Wrapping paper re-added to dungeon shop drop tables (Christmas event only).
Quality of Life
‣ (Hologlaxer) You can now wear hats while crowned.
‣ (Hologlaxer + Pecon) You can now properly utilize multiple crowns at once. The world may not be ready for this power.
Quote from: Developer Media - Multiple Crowns
‣ Added a /alignment command which allows you to check the piety of all your alignments as well as your current prayer power/connection.
‣ You can now enable multiple donor emitters at once. The world is definitely not ready for this power.
Quote from: Developer Media - Donor Emitter Spam
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added /sort command for interactive inventory sorting.
Quote from: (Hologlaxer) Developer Media - /sort command
‣ Significantly reduced the amount of camera shake the Troll Boss's boulder explosion does.
‣ New players now spawn into the game with a rusty dagger, a novice bow, an apprentice staff, a full quiver of arrows, and with the Recall & FlashFire spells automatically unlocked.
—▷ Starting gold reduced from 150 to 100.
Client Data Callback Functions
‣ (Hologlaxer) Added an assortment of client callbacks that communicate game state info that is useful for AoD client mods. Information you can get includes your player stats, quantities + types of damage you deal as you deal them, and boss encounter info.
Client data callback functions are opt-in, to enable them you must listen for the random number sent via the 'AoD_HandshakeReceive' client command, and reply with a 'AoD_HandshakeVerify' server command that passes back the random number. Doing this will disable sending the default bottomprint HUD! Prepend an extra 'true' argument to the verify command to skip disabling the HUD.
Code
clientCmdAoD_ReceiveStats(string %stats) - Sends a space-delimited string with your various current stats.¹ clientCmdAoD_Health(float %amount) - Indicates how much health your player has gained/lost. clientCmdAoD_Shield(float %amount) - Indicates that your player currently has blocked the given amount of damage via shields. clientCmdAoD_Mana(float %mana) - Indicates how much mana your player has gained/lost. clientCmdAoD_Gold(int %gold) - Indicates how much gold your player has gained/lost. clientCmdAoD_Damage(float %damage, int %type, Point3f %position) - Indicates that you have dealt damage and where. %type can be 0 for generic damage, 1 for fire damage, and 2 for poison damage. clientCmdAoD_RangerCooldowns(string %cooldowns) - Sends a tab-delimited string with your arrow mod item cooldowns. clientCmdAoD_AddBoss(int %bossID, string %bossName, float %health, bool %isChallenged) - Sends information about the boss your player encounters, use this for any custom boss health bars needs. (This only works for main floor bosses, mini-bosses are not included.) clientCmdAoD_RemoveBoss(int %bossID) - Sends which boss your player have disengaged from, use this to remove any custom boss health bars. clientCmdAoD_UpdateBoss(int %bossID, float %health) - Sends an updated value of the boss' current health, this will only trigger if the boss is currently engaged. ¹ %stats = %level SPC %xp SPC %expGain SPC %requiredExp SPC %EXPMultiplier SPC %health SPC %extraHP SPC %shieldAmount SPC %maxHealth SPC %isInvincible SPC %mana SPC %extraMana SPC %maxMana SPC %gold SPC %goldGain SPC %goldMultiplier SPC %alignment SPC %alignmentAmt SPC %armor SPC %arrowMod SPC %spellPower SPC %manaRegen SPC %poison SPC %corruption SPC %bloodBuild SPC %bloodCurse SPC %healing
Bugfixes
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed poison applied by arrowmods not counting towards your damage contributions.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed some other inaccuracies in how player damage is tracked.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed some issues the Oathbreaker's AI could run into when affected by an interrupt effect.
‣ (Hologlaxer) Fixed melee weapons hitboxes not scaling appropriately with your player scale.
‣ Fixed miniboss music frequently ending very early.
‣ Fixed some cases where certain enemies could keep you stuck in combat despite not actually being engaged.
‣ Fixed some incorrect tips, fixed the town NPCs sometimes spouting some wildly inaccurate nonsense.
Music Recommendations to AoD's UST and OST
Recommendations to AoD's Unofficial Soundtrack and Original Soundtrack. Subject says it all. lmao, necroing an unused forum
Forestry Area
Hidden Boss(?)
Recommendations to AoD's Unofficial Soundtrack and Original Soundtrack. Subject says it all. lmao, necroing an unused forum
Forestry Area
Hidden Boss(?)
AoD v1.2.4 Major Patch
Hi. Been a while, I know. A few years ago, we thought that for sure this time we must be close to wrapping up and releasing the sequel game to AoD.
But no, as it turns out it's rather difficult to keep a ragtag team of developers all motivated and focused on a single vision. Seeing as there is no particular payoff to making the game beyond just seeing people enjoy it, incremental change is much easier. So a few months ago I poured over what Darksaber had made over the past few years and did some more v1.2 development of my own. After confirming that people would prefer an update sooner rather than later via the community poll, we have put together this update for you all. Read on to see what has been cooking.
Player Class Changes
Mage
Thanks to some fundamental fixes, the Mage class has had its identity repaired and is now ready to be the glass cannon class it always deserved to be. We've buffed spells and magic gear across the board to help recoup the damage potential it lost due to prior balance-related setbacks.
‣ The /autocast command has been superseded by the new /bind command for the sake of naming convention. You can still use /autocast and /ac, they will do the same thing.
‣ You now bind spells to individual staff items rather than elements. This means you can have multiple of the same type of staff with distinct bound spells.
‣ Only spells that are bound to a staff can benefit from the staff's mana cost reduction.
‣ Staffs have been mechanically redesigned to integrate more strongly with their bound spells.
—▷ You can no longer switch items or unequip while casting a spell via a staff.
—▷ You can now simply hold down the primary trigger to cast your bound spell as fast as possible. There is no need (or benefit) for spam clicking.
—▷ Your bound spell is now displayed when you equip the staff.
‣ Major buffs to many combat spells' base damage values and major reductions to cooldown times across the board.
—▷ Aurorahealing: Cooldown time reduced from 7 seconds to 3.5 seconds.
—▷ Bloodbombs: Cooldown time reduced from 2.85 seconds to 2.3 seconds. (Darksaber) Also fixed a bug that caused them to deal no damage
—▷ Bloodspray: Cooldown time reduced from 2 seconds to 0.65 seconds. Base damage increased from 20 to 27 damage per projectile. Reduced projectile count from 20 to 10.
—▷ Bloodstrike
——▷ Cooldown time reduced from 2.85 seconds to 2.3 seconds.
——▷ Targeting logic revised to work more consistently in rooms where there are fewer targets.
——▷ Struck enemies are now afflicted with a lightning debuff that causes them to take 2% more damage from all sources for two seconds.
—▷ Cauterize: Cooldown time reduced from 3 seconds to 1.25 seconds.
—▷ Dash: Cooldown time reduced from 2.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
—▷ Earthstrike: Cooldown time reduced from 1.2 seconds to 0.9 seconds. Base radius damage increased from 70 to 85.
—▷ Flashfire: Cooldown time reduced from 0.8 seconds to 0.6 seconds.
—▷ Frostshards: Cooldown time reduced from 2 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Base damage decreased from 25 to 23.
—▷ Manastitches: Cooldown time reduced from 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
—▷ Shadowbolt: Cooldown time reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.35 seconds.
—▷ Shadowbomb: Cooldown time reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Base damage increased from 100 to 150. Base radius damage decreased from 100 to 75. Projectile speed decreased from 20tu to 18tu.
‣ Changes to mage armor balance
—▷ Apprentice Robes: Increased mana regeneration stat from +20% to +80%. Increased spell damage stat from +15% to +30%.
—▷ Mage Robes: Increased mana regeneration stat from +50% to +120%. Increased spell damage stat from +30% to +60%.
—▷ Magister Robes: Increased mana regeneration stat from +100% to +200%. Increased spell damage stat from +75% to +100%. Reduced armor stat from -30% to -40%.
—▷ Holy Knight Armor: Increased spell damage stat from -50% to +20%.
‣ (Darksaber) There are a few new legendary single-use spell scrolls.
Melee
Melee has felt in a pretty good spot feature-wise, but mostly suffers from a lack of meaningful choices to make in their impressive arsenal of legendary weapons. In addition to redesigning the existing BIS weapons, we also focused a bit on beefing up the older legendary melee weapons to make their existence more meaningful.
‣ All legendary melee swords have been revamped to some degree:
—▷ (Darksaber) Wraithcutter has been redesigned and rebalanced.
—▷ (Darksaber & Conan) Gram has had its V2 rendition backported and has new VFX.
—▷ All the double-bladed swords have reworked a bit:
——▷ They have been buffed to strike twice each swing in line with their (still somewhat awkward) animation.
——▷ Previously, there was a flat 20% chance for each strike to trigger a special sword ability. This chance has been reduced to 10%, but is now boosted to 30% instead if you have melee class armor equipped.
——▷ Previously, the odds of rolling the ultimate special ability of these swords varied between 10% to 2% depending on the sword. This has been normalized to 4% for all of them. (So 48% chance of the first primary effect, 48% chance of the second primary effect, and a 4% chance for ultimate effect)
——▷ Fire & Ice: Burning effect duration is no longer randomized, is always 90 damage over 3 seconds. Burning effect now plays a sound cue. Replaced unique 10 second per-enemy cooldown on freeze effect with a shared 15 second per-enemy cooldown (currently only shared with Light & Shadow). Added VFX to ultimate special ability.
——▷ Light & Shadow: Replaced the prior primary effect that dealt 100 damage to your target with a new primary effect that grants you a 30 damage shield that lasts 10 seconds. Second primary effect is unchanged (Heals you 30 HP). Ultimate effect now applies a 3-second fear to your target (Shares a 15 second per-enemy cooldown with Fire & Ice's freeze effect).
——▷ War & Peace: Burning effect duration is no longer randomized, is always 90 damage over 3 seconds. Burning effect now plays a sound cue. Replaced the prior ultimate effect with a new effect that grants you a 200 damage shield that lasts 30 seconds.
—▷ The Dragon Dagger (p++) special attack power usage has been reduced from 50% to 30%.
‣ (Darksaber) A few new legendary melee weapons have been added.
Ranged
Not much going on in ranger land these days. As ranger remained the strongest class at the time of development, most attention went elsewhere.
‣ (Darksaber) Added new ranged/melee hybrid armor which can be created via crafting.
Dungeon Monster/Boss Changes
FrostFire Mage
‣ (APX) All-new ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
‣ Reworked fire cone attack:
—▷ It now has a narrower angle, but much longer range and a longer duration.
—▷ The boss also now picks a direction to spin with this attack at random, instead of lamely attempting to face towards a specific target.
—▷ The boss also turns a bit faster with this attack than before.
‣ Replaced VFX for the flame teleport ability.
‣ Added a subtle sound cue to the boss's teleport abilities.
‣ Reduced damage radius of flame teleport explosion.
‣ Reduced the volume of some SFX in the encounter.
‣ Spirits summoned during the second to last phase now retaliate when attacked by players. They still get subdued by the boss.
‣ Increased spirit HP from 8.3% of total boss HP to 10% of total boss HP.
‣ (Magus) Updated dialog.
Oathbreaker
‣ (Darksaber) Oathbreaker boss changes:
—▷ Updated a few VFX.
—▷ Updated AI to be a little smarter in some cases.
—▷ Added sound cues to a couple of attacks.
—▷ Changed a few attack patterns.
—▷ Bugfixes
—▷ Added a new (actual) challenge mode version.
Other Bosses
‣ Implemented mitigations for a couple cheese strategies on the Cursed Knight and Excavator bosses.
New Standard Enemies
‣ (Darksaber) Rōnin!
—▷ New floor 6 melee enemy.
—▷ Armed with a Katana and a Wakizashi, this enemy starts out attempting to charge at their target
—▷ During the charge, projectiles are deflected with the Wakizashi
—▷ Then attacks with the Katana
‣ Skeleton mages!
—▷ New enemy that appears mostly on floor 5 & floor 6, but can occur with diminishing frequency up to floor 2.
—▷ Has randomized equipment that scales with the floor they spawn in.
—▷ Each mage uses their own preferred spell!
—▷ Don't let them get away, they've got a heal spell too!
—▷ Generally not very flammable. (Although their robes can still catch fire)
‣ (Darksaber?) ¿¿sharks??
‣ Bunny :)
‣ (Darksaber & Magus) Lizard people!
—▷ They breathe fire!
Other Enemy Changes
‣ (Darksaber) Flying enemies' contact damage logic has been fixed so they are much less likely to get stuck on your head.
‣ (Darksaber) Wasps have been scaled up a bit more to be easier to hit.
‣ (Darksaber) Wasps have had their attack damage reduced from 25 to 20.
‣ (Darksaber) Wraiths have been reworked to be more threatening.
‣ (Darksaber) Added a new miniboss (or two)...
General System Changes
Prayer
‣ Lawful prayer cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.
‣ Neutral prayer cooldown reduced from 120 seconds to 40 seconds.
‣ Chaotic prayer cooldown reduced from 300 seconds to 120 seconds.
‣ Divine crafting prayers now only use 25% of your connection instead of 100%.
General Content
‣ (Darksaber & Magus) Added 4 new potions with unique and powerful effects. These can be rarely found as loot, or can be crafted with appropriate ingredients.
‣ (Darksaber & Magus) Added some new secrets to be found deep in the dungeon.
‣ (Darksaber) Added some new donor hats by Avem.
‣ Added new music tracks for floor 6.
‣ Added a couple new achievements.
‣ Portals now charge a tax for repetitive usage.
QoL
‣ (Darksaber) Floor 5’s floor collision has been smoothed out. Hopefully, this reduces the incidence of greenscreen crashes.
‣ (Darksaber) Bank system changes:
—▷ Most non-curse soulbound items are now bankable (you still aren't allowed to trade or drop them).
—▷ You can now withdraw items by name. Supports partial name matching (ex. /withdraw arch withdraws a stored Archangel’s Staff).
‣ (Darksaber) Added /swapItemUp and /swapItemDown commands. Now, you can organize your inventory in-place without having to push items to the very top or bottom.
‣ Doubled the rate at which you can gain large chunks of EXP.
As a reminder, this update will go live on June 21st at [b]18:00 PDT[b] (6pm). We hope to see lots of people enjoying the new content this coming weekend!
Hi. Been a while, I know. A few years ago, we thought that for sure this time we must be close to wrapping up and releasing the sequel game to AoD.
But no, as it turns out it's rather difficult to keep a ragtag team of developers all motivated and focused on a single vision. Seeing as there is no particular payoff to making the game beyond just seeing people enjoy it, incremental change is much easier. So a few months ago I poured over what Darksaber had made over the past few years and did some more v1.2 development of my own. After confirming that people would prefer an update sooner rather than later via the community poll, we have put together this update for you all. Read on to see what has been cooking.
Player Class Changes
Mage
Thanks to some fundamental fixes, the Mage class has had its identity repaired and is now ready to be the glass cannon class it always deserved to be. We've buffed spells and magic gear across the board to help recoup the damage potential it lost due to prior balance-related setbacks.
‣ The /autocast command has been superseded by the new /bind command for the sake of naming convention. You can still use /autocast and /ac, they will do the same thing.
‣ You now bind spells to individual staff items rather than elements. This means you can have multiple of the same type of staff with distinct bound spells.
‣ Only spells that are bound to a staff can benefit from the staff's mana cost reduction.
‣ Staffs have been mechanically redesigned to integrate more strongly with their bound spells.
—▷ You can no longer switch items or unequip while casting a spell via a staff.
Quote from: Developer Commentary
This addresses a major unintended use of magic where players could swap to other items while casting in order to achieve more simultaneous actions than intended. Previously we have had to nerf magic in general quite significantly to rein in this behavior, but in doing so we made the intended experience of magic very underwhelming. Read on from here for the various buffs it'll now get...
—▷ You can now simply hold down the primary trigger to cast your bound spell as fast as possible. There is no need (or benefit) for spam clicking.
—▷ Your bound spell is now displayed when you equip the staff.
‣ Major buffs to many combat spells' base damage values and major reductions to cooldown times across the board.
—▷ Aurorahealing: Cooldown time reduced from 7 seconds to 3.5 seconds.
—▷ Bloodbombs: Cooldown time reduced from 2.85 seconds to 2.3 seconds. (Darksaber) Also fixed a bug that caused them to deal no damage
—▷ Bloodspray: Cooldown time reduced from 2 seconds to 0.65 seconds. Base damage increased from 20 to 27 damage per projectile. Reduced projectile count from 20 to 10.
—▷ Bloodstrike
——▷ Cooldown time reduced from 2.85 seconds to 2.3 seconds.
——▷ Targeting logic revised to work more consistently in rooms where there are fewer targets.
——▷ Struck enemies are now afflicted with a lightning debuff that causes them to take 2% more damage from all sources for two seconds.
—▷ Cauterize: Cooldown time reduced from 3 seconds to 1.25 seconds.
—▷ Dash: Cooldown time reduced from 2.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
—▷ Earthstrike: Cooldown time reduced from 1.2 seconds to 0.9 seconds. Base radius damage increased from 70 to 85.
—▷ Flashfire: Cooldown time reduced from 0.8 seconds to 0.6 seconds.
—▷ Frostshards: Cooldown time reduced from 2 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Base damage decreased from 25 to 23.
—▷ Manastitches: Cooldown time reduced from 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
—▷ Shadowbolt: Cooldown time reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.35 seconds.
—▷ Shadowbomb: Cooldown time reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Base damage increased from 100 to 150. Base radius damage decreased from 100 to 75. Projectile speed decreased from 20tu to 18tu.
‣ Changes to mage armor balance
—▷ Apprentice Robes: Increased mana regeneration stat from +20% to +80%. Increased spell damage stat from +15% to +30%.
—▷ Mage Robes: Increased mana regeneration stat from +50% to +120%. Increased spell damage stat from +30% to +60%.
—▷ Magister Robes: Increased mana regeneration stat from +100% to +200%. Increased spell damage stat from +75% to +100%. Reduced armor stat from -30% to -40%.
Quote from: Developer Commentary
With great power comes great likelihood of being blown to smithereens...
—▷ Holy Knight Armor: Increased spell damage stat from -50% to +20%.
‣ (Darksaber) There are a few new legendary single-use spell scrolls.
Melee
Melee has felt in a pretty good spot feature-wise, but mostly suffers from a lack of meaningful choices to make in their impressive arsenal of legendary weapons. In addition to redesigning the existing BIS weapons, we also focused a bit on beefing up the older legendary melee weapons to make their existence more meaningful.
‣ All legendary melee swords have been revamped to some degree:
—▷ (Darksaber) Wraithcutter has been redesigned and rebalanced.
—▷ (Darksaber & Conan) Gram has had its V2 rendition backported and has new VFX.
—▷ All the double-bladed swords have reworked a bit:
——▷ They have been buffed to strike twice each swing in line with their (still somewhat awkward) animation.
——▷ Previously, there was a flat 20% chance for each strike to trigger a special sword ability. This chance has been reduced to 10%, but is now boosted to 30% instead if you have melee class armor equipped.
——▷ Previously, the odds of rolling the ultimate special ability of these swords varied between 10% to 2% depending on the sword. This has been normalized to 4% for all of them. (So 48% chance of the first primary effect, 48% chance of the second primary effect, and a 4% chance for ultimate effect)
——▷ Fire & Ice: Burning effect duration is no longer randomized, is always 90 damage over 3 seconds. Burning effect now plays a sound cue. Replaced unique 10 second per-enemy cooldown on freeze effect with a shared 15 second per-enemy cooldown (currently only shared with Light & Shadow). Added VFX to ultimate special ability.
——▷ Light & Shadow: Replaced the prior primary effect that dealt 100 damage to your target with a new primary effect that grants you a 30 damage shield that lasts 10 seconds. Second primary effect is unchanged (Heals you 30 HP). Ultimate effect now applies a 3-second fear to your target (Shares a 15 second per-enemy cooldown with Fire & Ice's freeze effect).
——▷ War & Peace: Burning effect duration is no longer randomized, is always 90 damage over 3 seconds. Burning effect now plays a sound cue. Replaced the prior ultimate effect with a new effect that grants you a 200 damage shield that lasts 30 seconds.
—▷ The Dragon Dagger (p++) special attack power usage has been reduced from 50% to 30%.
‣ (Darksaber) A few new legendary melee weapons have been added.
Ranged
Not much going on in ranger land these days. As ranger remained the strongest class at the time of development, most attention went elsewhere.
‣ (Darksaber) Added new ranged/melee hybrid armor which can be created via crafting.
Dungeon Monster/Boss Changes
FrostFire Mage
‣ (APX) All-new ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
‣ Reworked fire cone attack:
—▷ It now has a narrower angle, but much longer range and a longer duration.
—▷ The boss also now picks a direction to spin with this attack at random, instead of lamely attempting to face towards a specific target.
—▷ The boss also turns a bit faster with this attack than before.
‣ Replaced VFX for the flame teleport ability.
‣ Added a subtle sound cue to the boss's teleport abilities.
‣ Reduced damage radius of flame teleport explosion.
‣ Reduced the volume of some SFX in the encounter.
‣ Spirits summoned during the second to last phase now retaliate when attacked by players. They still get subdued by the boss.
‣ Increased spirit HP from 8.3% of total boss HP to 10% of total boss HP.
‣ (Magus) Updated dialog.
Oathbreaker
‣ (Darksaber) Oathbreaker boss changes:
—▷ Updated a few VFX.
—▷ Updated AI to be a little smarter in some cases.
—▷ Added sound cues to a couple of attacks.
—▷ Changed a few attack patterns.
—▷ Bugfixes
—▷ Added a new (actual) challenge mode version.
Other Bosses
‣ Implemented mitigations for a couple cheese strategies on the Cursed Knight and Excavator bosses.
New Standard Enemies
‣ (Darksaber) Rōnin!
—▷ New floor 6 melee enemy.
—▷ Armed with a Katana and a Wakizashi, this enemy starts out attempting to charge at their target
—▷ During the charge, projectiles are deflected with the Wakizashi
—▷ Then attacks with the Katana
‣ Skeleton mages!
—▷ New enemy that appears mostly on floor 5 & floor 6, but can occur with diminishing frequency up to floor 2.
—▷ Has randomized equipment that scales with the floor they spawn in.
—▷ Each mage uses their own preferred spell!
—▷ Don't let them get away, they've got a heal spell too!
—▷ Generally not very flammable. (Although their robes can still catch fire)
‣ (Darksaber?) ¿¿sharks??
‣ Bunny :)
‣ (Darksaber & Magus) Lizard people!
—▷ They breathe fire!
Other Enemy Changes
‣ (Darksaber) Flying enemies' contact damage logic has been fixed so they are much less likely to get stuck on your head.
‣ (Darksaber) Wasps have been scaled up a bit more to be easier to hit.
‣ (Darksaber) Wasps have had their attack damage reduced from 25 to 20.
‣ (Darksaber) Wraiths have been reworked to be more threatening.
‣ (Darksaber) Added a new miniboss (or two)...
General System Changes
Prayer
‣ Lawful prayer cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.
‣ Neutral prayer cooldown reduced from 120 seconds to 40 seconds.
‣ Chaotic prayer cooldown reduced from 300 seconds to 120 seconds.
‣ Divine crafting prayers now only use 25% of your connection instead of 100%.
General Content
‣ (Darksaber & Magus) Added 4 new potions with unique and powerful effects. These can be rarely found as loot, or can be crafted with appropriate ingredients.
‣ (Darksaber & Magus) Added some new secrets to be found deep in the dungeon.
‣ (Darksaber) Added some new donor hats by Avem.
‣ Added new music tracks for floor 6.
‣ Added a couple new achievements.
‣ Portals now charge a tax for repetitive usage.
QoL
‣ (Darksaber) Floor 5’s floor collision has been smoothed out. Hopefully, this reduces the incidence of greenscreen crashes.
‣ (Darksaber) Bank system changes:
—▷ Most non-curse soulbound items are now bankable (you still aren't allowed to trade or drop them).
—▷ You can now withdraw items by name. Supports partial name matching (ex. /withdraw arch withdraws a stored Archangel’s Staff).
‣ (Darksaber) Added /swapItemUp and /swapItemDown commands. Now, you can organize your inventory in-place without having to push items to the very top or bottom.
‣ Doubled the rate at which you can gain large chunks of EXP.
As a reminder, this update will go live on June 21st at [b]18:00 PDT[b] (6pm). We hope to see lots of people enjoying the new content this coming weekend!
AoD v1.2.3 Minor Patch 1
Changelog:
Dynamic Boss HP Scaling
- (Monoblaster & I)The way world boss HP scales has been fundamentally changed. The boss's HP is no longer pre-set the moment it spawns, the HP changes only based on who is actually engaged with the boss.
+ This fixes a longstanding issue with unengaged or afk players negatively affecting the experience of fighting bosses. It also addresses some very questionable cheese behavior where players log off before spawning a boss to minimize its HP.
- When a player joins the fight, the boss HP is increased based on their level; even if the fight has already begun.
- The boss HP cannot scale downwards, and only resets to a clean state if the boss heals back to 100% HP.
- To avoid confusion and awkwardness, you can no longer see the absolute HP value of bosses. Instead, you will see their HP percentage.
+ You can still see your actual damage done in your DPS report at the end of a fight.
+ Another part of the reason for this change is because seeing the boss HP increase when another player joins your fight could lead to false beliefs that having more players in the boss fight makes the fight harder, which would cause social play problems.
- In addition to this, the level to world boss HP scaling has been changed so that levels above 60 scale the HP logarithmically.
+ This effectively means world boss HP is reduced across the board for high level parties.
Boss changes
- The FFM's blizzard ability has been reworked. It now starts off not dealing any damage, but after a few seconds deals increasing frostbite damage as you stay in it longer.
+ Frostbite damage ignores shields and armor. (Frost crystal attacks still deal normal physical damage)
+ You can spend some time outside the blizzard to warm up and reset the damage windup on yourself.
+ If you spend the entire phase in the blizzard, you will freeze solid near the end of the phase.
- Reduced the HP scaling of the excavator somewhat, increased damage across abilities.
- Excavator's challenge mode now applies +30% damage to all his attacks.
- Gave every world boss except FFM 75% resistance to blood curse buildup. FFM has 25% resistance.
- Added new FX to make it obvious when the Cursed Knight absorbs a projectile from its absorption ability.
- The Excavator and Oathbreaker's attacks and important VFX now have some networking priority to make them less likely to not show up when the server is busy.
- (Darksaber) Fixed a few bugs with the Oathbreaker.
Item changes
- Added a new item that can be crafted using a challenge stone.
- Increased the duration of the neutral crown shield from 5 seconds to 15 seconds, and made the shield's effect more consistent with the lawful one.
- World Tree Branch now cleanses 90% of poison with its special (up from 80%).
- Increased the draw time of the Wraithcutter from 0.4 seconds to 1.4 seconds.
- Increased damage for the Fire Crystal arrow mod from 100 damage over 3 seconds to 200 damage over 6 seconds.
- Made Seal Breaker a bit more rare.
Misc & Bugfixes
- Status effects now show icons when you have the 'small plant errors' client setting enabled.
- Mana drain from being overcharged now increases exponentially as you overcharge further, making it impossible to overcharge by too much.
- Removed the Mana Shock curse.
- (Monoblaster) Fixed some more bugs regarding rejoining in the dungeon.
- Fixed some instances where it was possible to regain control of your player when you're not supposed to.
- Fixed blood spells applying blood curse to immortal enemies.
- (Magus) Changed the sound effect for magic shields absorbing damage.
- Fixed some descriptions.
- Fixed a bug where potion bags didn't interact correctly with forced dropping mechanics.
- Fixed a bug where banned players couldn't see their approximate ban time remaining correctly.
Changelog:
Dynamic Boss HP Scaling
- (Monoblaster & I)The way world boss HP scales has been fundamentally changed. The boss's HP is no longer pre-set the moment it spawns, the HP changes only based on who is actually engaged with the boss.
+ This fixes a longstanding issue with unengaged or afk players negatively affecting the experience of fighting bosses. It also addresses some very questionable cheese behavior where players log off before spawning a boss to minimize its HP.
- When a player joins the fight, the boss HP is increased based on their level; even if the fight has already begun.
- The boss HP cannot scale downwards, and only resets to a clean state if the boss heals back to 100% HP.
- To avoid confusion and awkwardness, you can no longer see the absolute HP value of bosses. Instead, you will see their HP percentage.
+ You can still see your actual damage done in your DPS report at the end of a fight.
+ Another part of the reason for this change is because seeing the boss HP increase when another player joins your fight could lead to false beliefs that having more players in the boss fight makes the fight harder, which would cause social play problems.
- In addition to this, the level to world boss HP scaling has been changed so that levels above 60 scale the HP logarithmically.
+ This effectively means world boss HP is reduced across the board for high level parties.
Boss changes
- The FFM's blizzard ability has been reworked. It now starts off not dealing any damage, but after a few seconds deals increasing frostbite damage as you stay in it longer.
+ Frostbite damage ignores shields and armor. (Frost crystal attacks still deal normal physical damage)
+ You can spend some time outside the blizzard to warm up and reset the damage windup on yourself.
+ If you spend the entire phase in the blizzard, you will freeze solid near the end of the phase.
- Reduced the HP scaling of the excavator somewhat, increased damage across abilities.
- Excavator's challenge mode now applies +30% damage to all his attacks.
- Gave every world boss except FFM 75% resistance to blood curse buildup. FFM has 25% resistance.
- Added new FX to make it obvious when the Cursed Knight absorbs a projectile from its absorption ability.
- The Excavator and Oathbreaker's attacks and important VFX now have some networking priority to make them less likely to not show up when the server is busy.
- (Darksaber) Fixed a few bugs with the Oathbreaker.
Item changes
- Added a new item that can be crafted using a challenge stone.
- Increased the duration of the neutral crown shield from 5 seconds to 15 seconds, and made the shield's effect more consistent with the lawful one.
- World Tree Branch now cleanses 90% of poison with its special (up from 80%).
- Increased the draw time of the Wraithcutter from 0.4 seconds to 1.4 seconds.
- Increased damage for the Fire Crystal arrow mod from 100 damage over 3 seconds to 200 damage over 6 seconds.
- Made Seal Breaker a bit more rare.
Misc & Bugfixes
- Status effects now show icons when you have the 'small plant errors' client setting enabled.
- Mana drain from being overcharged now increases exponentially as you overcharge further, making it impossible to overcharge by too much.
- Removed the Mana Shock curse.
- (Monoblaster) Fixed some more bugs regarding rejoining in the dungeon.
- Fixed some instances where it was possible to regain control of your player when you're not supposed to.
- Fixed blood spells applying blood curse to immortal enemies.
- (Magus) Changed the sound effect for magic shields absorbing damage.
- Fixed some descriptions.
- Fixed a bug where potion bags didn't interact correctly with forced dropping mechanics.
- Fixed a bug where banned players couldn't see their approximate ban time remaining correctly.
AoD v1.2.3 Major Patch
Happy patch 123! Today we introduce to you primarily a rework to one of the most prominent lategame mechanics, crowns. There are also bugfixes and quality of life fixes galore, alongside some new content!
Crown Rework
The lawful crown now provides a 100 point health shield which refreshes every five seconds.
- The lawful crown was by far the least popular crown, and was often regarded as useless.
- While it did have a niche in circumventing a number of very dangerous attacks, it didn't really live up to the usefulness expected from such a lategame item.
- This new effect gives the user superior survivability in virtually all situations, just try not to take too much damage at once!
The neutral crown now doubles and reflects any damage taken by the wearer. Additionally, when you heal, you gain a shield for five seconds equal to half the heal.
- The neutral crown was well loved, but its effect was boring as hell and didn't quite hit the theme on the head.
- Now it combines two abilities, one offensive, one defensive.
- This helps assert its neutral identity, and gives it more interesting interaction than simply making your healing better.
The chaotic crown has been rewritten.
- It functions similarly to before.
- When you land a killing blow on anything, an electric projectile will spawn and attempt to hit another nearby enemy (if any were nearby)
- If the electric projectile kills the next enemy, it'll happen again from that enemy.
- There is also still a small chance for any of your attacks to summon lightning to strike your foe.
- The chaotic crown's identity was solid already, but the implementation was wonky and caused a number of weird interactions.
- This rewrite should help make the crown's ability feel less cheesy.
Quality of Life
The status effect previously named just 'Curse' is now named 'Corruption'.
- Reminder: When your corruption reaches 100, it will reset to 0 and you will be afflicted with a random curse.
Thanks to advances in Blockland Technology™, we have been able to co-opt some base game UI elements for our use. Enable texture downloads to see them!
- There is now a set of 'effect' indicators built into the brick error UIs. These replace previously intrusive chat messages. Indicators will now show up for when the following effects are applied to your player:
+ Poison
+ Burning
+ Slowing
+ Corruption
- Additionally, the ghosting UI has been blanked out to help reduce the visual clutter of it showing up constantly when the server is busy. This obviously doesn't actually address the ghosting, but at least it's not drawing your attention away all the time anymore.
The effect of the town fountain has been upgraded.
- Your health is now restored based on a percentage of your max health every tick. Quick healing for all!
- The fountain now also restores mana similarly.
- The fountain now also cleanses poison.
- The fountain now also cleanses corruption.
The bank now displays 10 items per page.
The tutorial now has its content condensed into fewer (but longer) pages.
Bosses
The Cursed Knight will no longer potentially face away from everyone when using its absorption or pull abilities.
- This was kind of a silly possible interaction. These abilities won't be pointed uselessly away anymore.
The excavator now bounces away from walls when using his spin attacks.
- Beyblades!!
Fixed being able to extend the FrostFire Mage's frost phase by interrupting him.
The FrostFire Mage's fire teleport explosions now deal less damage.
All bosses have had their HP scaling reduced a little bit.
- This was done since most bosses were feeling like they took too long to fight, and were too 'tanky' and needlessly drawn out fights.
All challenge mode bosses now have a 'bonus' loot table that contains only good drops, and every kill pulls one loot item from this table.
- This helps make challenge mode loot feel better overall, guaranteeing you always get at least one thing worthwhile for the challenge mode kill.
Added a new boss designed by Darksaber with support by Magus.
Bugfixes
Fixed seeing numbers in the chat when rejoining in the dungeon.
(Conan) Fixed shields being able to complete block certain melee attacks.
(Conan) Fixed fire and poison damage not being properly counted towards contribution damage.
Fixed some edge cases where pressing 'No' on a message box could have an unexpected result.
Fixed altars never spawning on floor 2.
Fixed human enemies never responding to attacks from behind.
This update will be going live soon!
Happy patch 123! Today we introduce to you primarily a rework to one of the most prominent lategame mechanics, crowns. There are also bugfixes and quality of life fixes galore, alongside some new content!
Crown Rework
The lawful crown now provides a 100 point health shield which refreshes every five seconds.
- The lawful crown was by far the least popular crown, and was often regarded as useless.
- While it did have a niche in circumventing a number of very dangerous attacks, it didn't really live up to the usefulness expected from such a lategame item.
- This new effect gives the user superior survivability in virtually all situations, just try not to take too much damage at once!
The neutral crown now doubles and reflects any damage taken by the wearer. Additionally, when you heal, you gain a shield for five seconds equal to half the heal.
- The neutral crown was well loved, but its effect was boring as hell and didn't quite hit the theme on the head.
- Now it combines two abilities, one offensive, one defensive.
- This helps assert its neutral identity, and gives it more interesting interaction than simply making your healing better.
The chaotic crown has been rewritten.
- It functions similarly to before.
- When you land a killing blow on anything, an electric projectile will spawn and attempt to hit another nearby enemy (if any were nearby)
- If the electric projectile kills the next enemy, it'll happen again from that enemy.
- There is also still a small chance for any of your attacks to summon lightning to strike your foe.
- The chaotic crown's identity was solid already, but the implementation was wonky and caused a number of weird interactions.
- This rewrite should help make the crown's ability feel less cheesy.
Quality of Life
The status effect previously named just 'Curse' is now named 'Corruption'.
- Reminder: When your corruption reaches 100, it will reset to 0 and you will be afflicted with a random curse.
Thanks to advances in Blockland Technology™, we have been able to co-opt some base game UI elements for our use. Enable texture downloads to see them!
- There is now a set of 'effect' indicators built into the brick error UIs. These replace previously intrusive chat messages. Indicators will now show up for when the following effects are applied to your player:
+ Poison
+ Burning
+ Slowing
+ Corruption
- Additionally, the ghosting UI has been blanked out to help reduce the visual clutter of it showing up constantly when the server is busy. This obviously doesn't actually address the ghosting, but at least it's not drawing your attention away all the time anymore.
The effect of the town fountain has been upgraded.
- Your health is now restored based on a percentage of your max health every tick. Quick healing for all!
- The fountain now also restores mana similarly.
- The fountain now also cleanses poison.
- The fountain now also cleanses corruption.
The bank now displays 10 items per page.
The tutorial now has its content condensed into fewer (but longer) pages.
Bosses
The Cursed Knight will no longer potentially face away from everyone when using its absorption or pull abilities.
- This was kind of a silly possible interaction. These abilities won't be pointed uselessly away anymore.
The excavator now bounces away from walls when using his spin attacks.
- Beyblades!!
Fixed being able to extend the FrostFire Mage's frost phase by interrupting him.
The FrostFire Mage's fire teleport explosions now deal less damage.
All bosses have had their HP scaling reduced a little bit.
- This was done since most bosses were feeling like they took too long to fight, and were too 'tanky' and needlessly drawn out fights.
All challenge mode bosses now have a 'bonus' loot table that contains only good drops, and every kill pulls one loot item from this table.
- This helps make challenge mode loot feel better overall, guaranteeing you always get at least one thing worthwhile for the challenge mode kill.
Added a new boss designed by Darksaber with support by Magus.
Bugfixes
Fixed seeing numbers in the chat when rejoining in the dungeon.
(Conan) Fixed shields being able to complete block certain melee attacks.
(Conan) Fixed fire and poison damage not being properly counted towards contribution damage.
Fixed some edge cases where pressing 'No' on a message box could have an unexpected result.
Fixed altars never spawning on floor 2.
Fixed human enemies never responding to attacks from behind.
This update will be going live soon!
AoD v1.2.2 Major Patch
At last, it's time for a boss to make its debut to floor 5. Although that is the highlight of this update, we've got some other things to go over as well.
Misc. Changes
- (Conan) Added new armor hat models to better accompany the newer armor models.
- Fixed another possible inventory saving bug, as well as a few other minor saving bugs.
- (Conan) Fixed some bugs with the /pushItemUp and /pushItemDown inventory commands.
- Decreased mana cost of firework launcher from 25 to 10.
- Removed tier 3 armors from legendary pedestals since there are now plenty of other ways to acquire them.
- Very important bug fix: Your player now wiggles after chatting like it should. This has been broken for far too long.
- (Conan) Added screen effects for burning and slowing, so you can tell when they are applied to you.
- Fixed some text issues.
Bosses
- Added an achievement and profile badge for beating every boss on challenge mode.
- Fixed minibosses being able to be respawned from their room so long as one hasn't been killed yet. This should now only occur if the boss is deleted without being killed.
- (Conan) Tweaked challenge stone appearance.
Floor 5 Boss
Prepare to suffer, because it is finally here. This positioning-demanding boss fight will leave you sitting on the edge of your seat. Just remember this: Blood is a good source of iron (and is an acceptable means of extinguishing fires).
This boss was largely made possible thanks to model contributions from Gunny, irrel, Magus, and Conan.
Audio changes
- Boosted the audio gain on a number of SFX that were too quiet as of the previous patch.
- Added a some new melee weapon SFX, courtesy of Arekan.
- Tweaked the SFX of the firework launcher.
- (Monoblaster) Updated instruments mod to the latest version.
Magic changes
- (Darksaber) Added new divine crafting recipe. What could it be?..
- Increased Frostshards projectile count from 9 to 10. (315 to 350 max base damage)
- Increased Shadowbolt mana cost from 12 to 22.
- (Conan) Greatly increased the windup rate for mana crystals (not orbs). This should make them viable for use during combat like originally intended.
- (Magus) Fixed a missing texture on the Dragon's Fury staff, now looks the way it was intended.
Melee changes
- Fixed melee shield resetting melee skill cooldowns.
- (Conan) Added a matching peppermint shield which is equipped with the candy cane shortsword instead of the normal buckler.
- Reduced the innate value of Gram and Wraithcutter, to make them reasonably possible to lose on death.
At last, it's time for a boss to make its debut to floor 5. Although that is the highlight of this update, we've got some other things to go over as well.
Misc. Changes
- (Conan) Added new armor hat models to better accompany the newer armor models.
- Fixed another possible inventory saving bug, as well as a few other minor saving bugs.
- (Conan) Fixed some bugs with the /pushItemUp and /pushItemDown inventory commands.
- Decreased mana cost of firework launcher from 25 to 10.
- Removed tier 3 armors from legendary pedestals since there are now plenty of other ways to acquire them.
- Very important bug fix: Your player now wiggles after chatting like it should. This has been broken for far too long.
- (Conan) Added screen effects for burning and slowing, so you can tell when they are applied to you.
- Fixed some text issues.
Bosses
- Added an achievement and profile badge for beating every boss on challenge mode.
- Fixed minibosses being able to be respawned from their room so long as one hasn't been killed yet. This should now only occur if the boss is deleted without being killed.
- (Conan) Tweaked challenge stone appearance.
Floor 5 Boss
Prepare to suffer, because it is finally here. This positioning-demanding boss fight will leave you sitting on the edge of your seat. Just remember this: Blood is a good source of iron (and is an acceptable means of extinguishing fires).
This boss was largely made possible thanks to model contributions from Gunny, irrel, Magus, and Conan.
Audio changes
- Boosted the audio gain on a number of SFX that were too quiet as of the previous patch.
- Added a some new melee weapon SFX, courtesy of Arekan.
- Tweaked the SFX of the firework launcher.
- (Monoblaster) Updated instruments mod to the latest version.
Magic changes
- (Darksaber) Added new divine crafting recipe. What could it be?..
- Increased Frostshards projectile count from 9 to 10. (315 to 350 max base damage)
- Increased Shadowbolt mana cost from 12 to 22.
- (Conan) Greatly increased the windup rate for mana crystals (not orbs). This should make them viable for use during combat like originally intended.
- (Magus) Fixed a missing texture on the Dragon's Fury staff, now looks the way it was intended.
Melee changes
- Fixed melee shield resetting melee skill cooldowns.
- (Conan) Added a matching peppermint shield which is equipped with the candy cane shortsword instead of the normal buckler.
- Reduced the innate value of Gram and Wraithcutter, to make them reasonably possible to lose on death.
AoD v1.2.1 Major Patch
let's go!!!
let's go!!!
AoD v1.2.1 Major Patch
All of you currently enjoying v1.2 will surely love this. Finally, a big update that doesn't require your save data to be reset!
Core Game Changes
The Death Rework
- Death has been overhauled to be much less punishing, while still fulfilling its intended mechanics.
- You no longer lose a percentage of your gold and EXP. Now, each death is measured in gold value based on your total EXP. This value scales from 100 gold at minimum EXP to 150,000 gold at 1 million EXP. This value is capped at 150,000 gold; so players with extreme amounts of EXP can't lose monumentally large amounts of progress in a single death.
- When you die, gold you are carrying on you is spent to pay for your death cost; if you can pay the full death cost with your on-hand gold then you will not lose anything else.
- If you don't have enough gold, you will drop up to half of your inventory items at random, but you'll always retain at least three items regardless. Each item dropped this way will help pay more of the remaining death cost. These items become shop items on the ground where you died, so they must be repaid in order to be picked up again.
- Soulbound items such as Gram, chests, and curses are also applicable to this system and so are no longer automatically lost on death. Soulbound items which are randomly dropped cannot be recovered and will burn away moments after death.
- Finally, after dropping items any remaining death cost will be paid with EXP at a rate of 2.25 gold per EXP.
- You will get a popup box with a breakdown of your death cost a few seconds after each death.
Christmas Event
- Thanks to collaboration between Conan and Sentry, there is a simple christmas event to do which you can find the start of right in town!
- The town is temporarily decorated.
- Find quest items in the dungeon to claim an event-exclusive reward item!
Divine Crafting
- Added new 'crafting' prayer which can be used to obtain a couple ultra rare items.
- Using this prayer will check your inventory for compatible components and combine them if they match a recipe.
- Can you figure out any recipes? (Hint: All of them require a golden idol as a catalyst)
- The town music has been updated with a cover of Little Madra by Carbon Zypher.
- The floor portals have had their visual appearance updated by Carbon Zypher.
- The healing system has been modified to be more robust. This fixes a few longstanding issues with healing, especially for dungeon enemies themselves. Unfortunately the inconsistencies with healing spells seem to have not been entirely resolved with this. (We still have no idea why they're inconsistent. I blame Math Bad)
- All potions have been buffed and now grant much more of their respective resource than they used to. They also show exactly how much they grant when held. EXP potion prices have been increased accordingly for this.
- New coin sack items are now available in chests and drop tables. Use them to unbag a bunch of coins! Chests now drop coins less frequently to balance the existence of these.
Class Updates
Melee
- Spears are now obtainable melee weapons. These are the oddball of melee weapons, you have extreme range but cannot hit anything at point-blank.
- Spears have a backdash special ability when using melee class armor, use this to stay in appropriate combat range.
- Spears cannot be bought in town, but can be found anywhere else where melee weapons could normally be obtained (dungeon shops, drop tables).
- Axes are now much faster and have DPS more comparable to the other melee weapons.
- The forward dash axe special ability is usable when melee class armor is equipped.
- Longswords can now cleave multiple enemies, and now have a 'sweet spot' near the edge of their range which deals increased damage. Use good positioning and intuition to greatly increase your damage output.
- The throwing dagger special ability now throws three daggers straight in a row rather than in a fanning formation.
- The shortsword's shield now also reduces some incoming melee damage while active.
- Some DPS balance adjustments across the board.
- Gram can now only crit once every ten seconds, reducing its boss-fight DPS without affecting its power for general dungeon crawling.
- The Dragon Dagger (p++) and Feast & Famine have had their poison abilities reduced.
Ranged
- Bow/crossbow special attacks now scale up in damage based on bow tier. This should help make their power level less stagnant.
- Swiftbow base damage increased.
- Crossbow base damage increased substantially.
- Legendary bow base damage increased slightly.
- Poison modifier slightly nerfed.
- Fire Crystal modifier buffed.
- Arrow Bombs modifier replaced with Thermite Shrapnel modifier. Bomb arrows were not really good at fulfilling their intended purpose, so we got you an incendiary shotgun instead.
Magic
- New channeling orb model by Conan.
- Healing spell heal ratios have been nerfed. (Cauterize 40% -> 30%, manaStitches 60% -> 45%, auroraHealing 75% -> 60%)
- Cauterize and manaStitches now have more range for ally healing.
- Slightly buffed frostShards DPS.
- Awesome new VFX for sunBurst designed by Magus.
- Sunburst buffed substantially.
- A couple new spells designed by Carbon Zypher have been added.
Dungeon Enemies
Bosses
- Added the new Floor 4 boss designed by Carbon Zypher and Magus!
- Added the new Dark Wraith miniboss designed by Carbon Zypher!
- Decreased floor boss rewards across the board a bit, so boss runs consist of a similar amount of total reward as before.
- A floor 5 boss is mostly complete but is being pushed back to another update so that we can get this update out to you today!
- The overall difficulty level of the Cursed Knight has been reduced a bit to make it more accessible to players who would normally be able to clear floor 3.
- The Cursed Knight's absorption attack now duplicates each projectile it absorbs, making it a bit more relevant to the fight.
- The Cursed Knight has had some dialog changed.
- Fixed an unintended mechanic where the Cursed Knight said a line of dialog any time it absorbed a projectile with the absorption ability. This has been fixed such that the dialog is only used when a substantial amount of projectiles are absorbed.
- The Spider Boss's healing mechanic now makes sense due to a fix in the healing code.
- The Spider Boss should now more consistently stay visually flipped over while walking or eating on the ceiling.
- Fixed some weird behaviors with the Troll Boss.
General
- Enemies now regenerate 1% of their max hp every two seconds while completely out of combat. This also applies to bosses.
- Enemies now track who/what is dealing damage to them, and will sometimes prioritize their targets accordingly.
- Enemies now support fighting each other in the right circumstances.
- Enemies no longer lose the ability to fight players while in town, they're dangerous!
- Town guards now automatically attack enemies that enter town. They're no longer useless!
- Fixed human enemies (bandits, etc.) not understanding how walls work and trying constantly to walk through them instead of looking for new targets.
That's all! Servers should soon be online again with this patch. Thanks for all your patience!
(PS: Unless otherwise specified most changes made in the 'class updates' section were done by Conan. It would have looked rather visually cluttered if I specified that he did each of those changes. Thanks for doing so much work on AoD this month Conan :) )
All of you currently enjoying v1.2 will surely love this. Finally, a big update that doesn't require your save data to be reset!
Core Game Changes
The Death Rework
- Death has been overhauled to be much less punishing, while still fulfilling its intended mechanics.
- You no longer lose a percentage of your gold and EXP. Now, each death is measured in gold value based on your total EXP. This value scales from 100 gold at minimum EXP to 150,000 gold at 1 million EXP. This value is capped at 150,000 gold; so players with extreme amounts of EXP can't lose monumentally large amounts of progress in a single death.
- When you die, gold you are carrying on you is spent to pay for your death cost; if you can pay the full death cost with your on-hand gold then you will not lose anything else.
- If you don't have enough gold, you will drop up to half of your inventory items at random, but you'll always retain at least three items regardless. Each item dropped this way will help pay more of the remaining death cost. These items become shop items on the ground where you died, so they must be repaid in order to be picked up again.
- Soulbound items such as Gram, chests, and curses are also applicable to this system and so are no longer automatically lost on death. Soulbound items which are randomly dropped cannot be recovered and will burn away moments after death.
- Finally, after dropping items any remaining death cost will be paid with EXP at a rate of 2.25 gold per EXP.
- You will get a popup box with a breakdown of your death cost a few seconds after each death.
Christmas Event
- Thanks to collaboration between Conan and Sentry, there is a simple christmas event to do which you can find the start of right in town!
- The town is temporarily decorated.
- Find quest items in the dungeon to claim an event-exclusive reward item!
Divine Crafting
- Added new 'crafting' prayer which can be used to obtain a couple ultra rare items.
- Using this prayer will check your inventory for compatible components and combine them if they match a recipe.
- Can you figure out any recipes? (Hint: All of them require a golden idol as a catalyst)
- The town music has been updated with a cover of Little Madra by Carbon Zypher.
- The floor portals have had their visual appearance updated by Carbon Zypher.
- The healing system has been modified to be more robust. This fixes a few longstanding issues with healing, especially for dungeon enemies themselves. Unfortunately the inconsistencies with healing spells seem to have not been entirely resolved with this. (We still have no idea why they're inconsistent. I blame Math Bad)
- All potions have been buffed and now grant much more of their respective resource than they used to. They also show exactly how much they grant when held. EXP potion prices have been increased accordingly for this.
- New coin sack items are now available in chests and drop tables. Use them to unbag a bunch of coins! Chests now drop coins less frequently to balance the existence of these.
Class Updates
Melee
- Spears are now obtainable melee weapons. These are the oddball of melee weapons, you have extreme range but cannot hit anything at point-blank.
- Spears have a backdash special ability when using melee class armor, use this to stay in appropriate combat range.
- Spears cannot be bought in town, but can be found anywhere else where melee weapons could normally be obtained (dungeon shops, drop tables).
- Axes are now much faster and have DPS more comparable to the other melee weapons.
- The forward dash axe special ability is usable when melee class armor is equipped.
- Longswords can now cleave multiple enemies, and now have a 'sweet spot' near the edge of their range which deals increased damage. Use good positioning and intuition to greatly increase your damage output.
- The throwing dagger special ability now throws three daggers straight in a row rather than in a fanning formation.
- The shortsword's shield now also reduces some incoming melee damage while active.
- Some DPS balance adjustments across the board.
- Gram can now only crit once every ten seconds, reducing its boss-fight DPS without affecting its power for general dungeon crawling.
- The Dragon Dagger (p++) and Feast & Famine have had their poison abilities reduced.
Ranged
- Bow/crossbow special attacks now scale up in damage based on bow tier. This should help make their power level less stagnant.
- Swiftbow base damage increased.
- Crossbow base damage increased substantially.
- Legendary bow base damage increased slightly.
- Poison modifier slightly nerfed.
- Fire Crystal modifier buffed.
- Arrow Bombs modifier replaced with Thermite Shrapnel modifier. Bomb arrows were not really good at fulfilling their intended purpose, so we got you an incendiary shotgun instead.
Magic
- New channeling orb model by Conan.
- Healing spell heal ratios have been nerfed. (Cauterize 40% -> 30%, manaStitches 60% -> 45%, auroraHealing 75% -> 60%)
- Cauterize and manaStitches now have more range for ally healing.
- Slightly buffed frostShards DPS.
- Awesome new VFX for sunBurst designed by Magus.
- Sunburst buffed substantially.
- A couple new spells designed by Carbon Zypher have been added.
Dungeon Enemies
Bosses
- Added the new Floor 4 boss designed by Carbon Zypher and Magus!
- Added the new Dark Wraith miniboss designed by Carbon Zypher!
- Decreased floor boss rewards across the board a bit, so boss runs consist of a similar amount of total reward as before.
- A floor 5 boss is mostly complete but is being pushed back to another update so that we can get this update out to you today!
- The overall difficulty level of the Cursed Knight has been reduced a bit to make it more accessible to players who would normally be able to clear floor 3.
- The Cursed Knight's absorption attack now duplicates each projectile it absorbs, making it a bit more relevant to the fight.
- The Cursed Knight has had some dialog changed.
- Fixed an unintended mechanic where the Cursed Knight said a line of dialog any time it absorbed a projectile with the absorption ability. This has been fixed such that the dialog is only used when a substantial amount of projectiles are absorbed.
- The Spider Boss's healing mechanic now makes sense due to a fix in the healing code.
- The Spider Boss should now more consistently stay visually flipped over while walking or eating on the ceiling.
- Fixed some weird behaviors with the Troll Boss.
General
- Enemies now regenerate 1% of their max hp every two seconds while completely out of combat. This also applies to bosses.
- Enemies now track who/what is dealing damage to them, and will sometimes prioritize their targets accordingly.
- Enemies now support fighting each other in the right circumstances.
- Enemies no longer lose the ability to fight players while in town, they're dangerous!
- Town guards now automatically attack enemies that enter town. They're no longer useless!
- Fixed human enemies (bandits, etc.) not understanding how walls work and trying constantly to walk through them instead of looking for new targets.
That's all! Servers should soon be online again with this patch. Thanks for all your patience!
(PS: Unless otherwise specified most changes made in the 'class updates' section were done by Conan. It would have looked rather visually cluttered if I specified that he did each of those changes. Thanks for doing so much work on AoD this month Conan :) )
INFO: Forum registration is permanently broken
It will not be fixed. Blockland authentication changed and it is no longer trivial to verify blockland login information, so this forum really just exists for posting bulletins now. If you had a pre-existing account registered, you can continue to use it like before.
For everyone else, please simply join the Discord for discussing the game: https://discord.gg/rWcufUZ
It will not be fixed. Blockland authentication changed and it is no longer trivial to verify blockland login information, so this forum really just exists for posting bulletins now. If you had a pre-existing account registered, you can continue to use it like before.
For everyone else, please simply join the Discord for discussing the game: https://discord.gg/rWcufUZ