The Slormancer 
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Slormite Chronicles #36Apr 6, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello Everyone! Since the Encyclopedia Update that introduced the Codex, Achievements and Performance Updates, we've been working on the 0.9 Update, called the "Balance Update". This update will introduce a LOT of fixes, changes, and balance to The Slormancer to get it ready for the last content Updates and for the 1.0 release. We're getting close! This Balance Update is pretty much a community update since it involves making changes to all the points raised by the community over the last three years that we felt were relevant. That's a lot of things to rework and sort out but balance has been neglected for most of our Early Access so it is now time to address it. One giant trap at this stage of development would be to try to rework too many points and/or too deeply. This is something we did before early access and it took us nearly a year. Therefore, we need to sort out what needs to be reworked and what, despite being imperfect, is part of the charm of the game. After all, we have a game that feels solid in many aspects but can seem a bit rough around the edges in others. Below, I'll list all the changes that you can expect from the Balance Update. They are divided in two major categories: Balancing the Experience and Balancing Combat. Balancing the Experience The Slormancer can be a tedious game. This is something that we've had to ackowledge to move forward. Most mechanics and features come with a downside that can heavily harm the fun that was initially intended. Here are a couple of examples, but if you've played the game, I'm sure that you've experienced the feeling: Whenever a players loots a Slorm Reaper (say, its first, around Level 10), he should be nothing but super excited to discover and equip its new weapon however, it is unplayable because of the level difference with its current Slorm Reaper. Whenever a player finally unlocks its first Primordial Slorm Reaper, after sweating on that 40k+ victims, he should be thrilled, yet it is unusable for at least another couple of hours or so of grind to get it back to a relevant level. Whenever a player unlock its first NPCs, he should be super excited to find out about all the fancy features that the game is made of, but no, he first has to pay a substantial amount of Goldus to unlock these features. I could go on about other mechanics that work in a similar way where we ended up turning an experience that should be full of fun into something tedious and ultimately, disappointing. We've always wanted for The Slormancer to be a game where you can easily create and experience new builds on the fly, yet somehow it sometimes feels like the game is actively preventing you to. I'm not going to go into details about how we're about to change what has been detailed above just because everything is still subject to change but these issues will no longer exist. We're moving back and forth with our solutions because although some of the issues may seem easy to resolve, or have been resolved in a certa...Hotfix 0.8.0jMar 28, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello! Don’t mind me, I’m just fixing a few minor bugs. This issue with the various Passives and Upgrades stacking up everytime you come back to the Village or Load your Save has been resolved. The following Achievements should now work properly: Ancient Slorm Siphoner Legendary Object Collection Legion, Reaper of Unity should now target properly and display the correct sprites. Cheers!The Encyclopedia Update is now available!Mar 19, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The Encyclopedia Update (v.0.8.0) is now available! Codex A Codex has been added to the game and should answer the most frequently asked questions regarding most mechanics. Stats Tooltips have been added, displaying current value and valuable informations to all the stats that may appear on Skills or Upgrades. If you feel like an entry is missing an important information, please let us know. After working on the game for so long, we lost track of what is easy to understand and what is not. Achievements A little over 200 Achievements have been added to The Slormancer. Steam Achievements will be added later (for the 1.0 release). There are quite a few values that were not tracked before adding Achievements so there are a few Achievements that will be starting at 0. Profile Menu The Profile Menu has been reworked to look more modern and better reflect the actual content of the game. Click to Move Click to Move has been reworked and should feel more natural to use. The Click to Move key can now be rebind. Aiming should be more precise and now come with visual feedback. Performance We've done numerous changes that should drastically improve the performances of the game. That being said, new issues might arise from all these changes (basically, we might have broken something). If so, please let us know. And since we've made changes to how the game compiles and executes, there is a small possibility that it just no longer works on your setup. If so, let us know as soon as possible so we'll be able to work things out. We've done a great deal of changes yet there are some things remaining that may cause the game to slow down, if you happen to find one, please let me know (such as when equipping this X Legendary Item or that Y Upgrade). Even though everything should work much faster, the game can still be quite demanding for the more modest configs. On your side, you can disable Damage Numbers and / or Lifebars, both of these can take a toll on performance when many enemies are being displayed. Enabling the "Low FX" option from the Settings menu also helps a lot. Bugs Slorm Reaper Fixed a crash with Primordial Reaper of Time and Space. Changed the lore of Reaper of the Spider Nest to match its Reapersmith. Relevant Projectiles should now properly rebound when hitting the edges of the screen when Reaper of the Spider Nest is equipped. Changed the lore of Reaper of Support to match its Reapersmith. In The Great Forge, Imps should no longer be locked outside the Area when using Slasha. Various Using "Sort Inventory" should no longer mess with Loadouts. Blazing Fireball now add the correct amount of stacks. Opening Random Boxes with Jemma with a Controller should no longer lock you out of the menu under specific circumstances. In The Great Forge, the "War Chest Quantity is equal to War Chest Quality" reward should now work properly. You should no longer be able to use an exploit allowing you to unlock all Slorm Reapers through the campaign. Imp...Slormite Chronicles #35Mar 6, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello Everyone! If you've missed the last Slormite Chronicles then here's a quick recap: We are currently working on Update 0.8 that will introduce Achievements, a Codex and various quality of life features regarding stats and mechanics to The Slormancer, Update 0.8: Achievements and Codex You can read more about Achievements and Codex in our previous Slormite Chronicles. Quickly put, we're introducing over 200 Achievements and a Codex, detailing most mechanics, stats and game modes of The Slormancer. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/e26ea74af1e3c590b76366f98a5967094ab06073.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/ddea70430bb07b72bf57d262e785255854142a42.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/4c4c5cd183e0e0f414c01483f7a17cccb176a066.png Working on Performance Besides the Codex and Achievements, we wanted to work on one last thing for this Update before calling it ready: Since the beginning of our Early Access, The Slormancer has struggled with performance toward the endgame when using heavy builds against lots of enemies. And this has only gone worse since the release of The Great Forge and then even worse when we allowed to fight multiple waves at once, coming from multiple directions. So you guessed it, we've been working on Performance. We're trying to get rid of any sort of slowdown or freeze and to maintain FPS at a good enough rate regardless of the situation you're in. Hopefully, this is our final work on performance, and once we're done, The Slormancer will be ready for 1.0 performance-wise. I've recorded a Before / After using a VERY intensive build in which I have about 100% Critical Strike Chance and 50% Ancestral Strike Chance, resulting in lots of Ancestral Effects triggering on top of constant Burn ticks everywhere. I'm also using Echoes of Vilinis, which can be quite demanding (to say the least) when lots of Crits are occuring. It's quite a messy build yet it's much cleaner when it stops being a slideshow. We've done incredible improvements by reworking pretty much every script that are heavily used in combat, whether by your own Character and Skills or by Enemies. We've also changed the way the game is compiled, again gaining quite a bit of speed. I'm happy to say that improvements are satisfying enough to the point that we now feel confident with the performances of the game. That being said, some very specific builds may still be slowing the game down, but these will now be easy to target and work on. Release when?! That's where we're at. At this point, it is safe to say that the 0.8 Update should be available before the end of March, unless we run into some big issues during our final tests. We've been working on mostly technical stuff for the past month so this is not the most exciting Chronicle, and we don't have much to share. But we believe it's for the best! Cheers!Slormite Chronicles #34Feb 6, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello Everyone! Today, I'd like to talk about our plan for 2024. We've layed down the last steps that should allow us to hopefully leave Early Access this year! Without further ado, let's break it down. The 2024 Roadmap {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/6287e04aa3772f8a6ec158fbcb32d2a4ff907694.jpg Here is our latest (and last) Early Access Roadmap. Some steps have been removed while others have been changed: We've removed "Enemies & Environment" along with the "5th Endgame Mode" that were in our previous Roadmap. The truth is that it does not feel necessary to consider the game as complete. Of course, we could keep adding stuff to The Slormancer but we feel that we have enough enemy diversity and enough environments for now. As for the 5th Endgame Mode, we believe that our 4th Endgame Mode called "The Warlords" will be more than enough to complete the gameplay loop we want for the game. We believe that these additions would benefit the game so we may very well add them after the release in 1.0 but our current priority is to polish our game and get it out of Early Access. As you may have noticed on the Roadmap, there should be 3 Major Updates leading to the release. Update: 0.8: Will introduce the Codex and the Achievements. Update: 0.9: Will introduce a lot of changes regarding Balance and Player's Experience based on all the feedback we've gathered this past few years. Update: 1.0: Will introduce the end to the Story, the fight against The Slormancer, The Warlords Endgame Mode, the Influence that will be tied to it along with a big batch of Legendary Items. At first, we wanted The Warlords to come earlier but we decided that we needed to drop something big along with the 1.0 Release so The Warlords Update will actually sign the end of Early Access. We will playtest it in Closed Beta just to make sure that everything works properly before the release. There are a few key elements that will be worked on along with Update 0.8 and Update 0.9 such as: Performance. Massive Debugging. Translation. We have a bunch of deadlines set up along the year and we'll quickly know whether we can make it for 2024 or not. Now that we're so close, better not mess up. Update 0.8: The Encyclopedia Update The Codex {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/ddea70430bb07b72bf57d262e785255854142a42.png We've been working pretty hard on this Update already: We're done with the Codex (see above) but we've also added a pretty neat little feature: Since some new players were lost when reading their Skills and Upgrades for the first time as to what stat does what, we've added an extra tooltip that explains all stats that are mentioned in said Skill or Upgrade. AND for seasoned players, it also displays the current value of the stat so that you don't have to move back and forth your inventory. This should be really useful for everyone that doesn't quite understand how some of our stats work. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/f4d5a02c47099814368e81a92e9688da927a120a.png Achievements As for Achievements,...The Slorm Reapers Update is now available!Jan 22, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The Slorm Reapers Update (v.0.7.5) is now available! New Slorm Reapers 68 Slorm Reapers have been added into The Slormancer! That's pretty much it. Of the 68 Slorm Reapers, there are 40 Unique Slorm Reapers and 28 Evolutions. This means that the Slorm Reapers Collection is now complete. However, 2 of the new Slorm Reapers are currently locked behing unavailable content right now: Vengeance will be acquired once you defeat Ohm Agad. Altior will be acquired once you complete Adam Nostrus' Trials. Some Advices to hunt Slorm Reapers: Slorm Reapers are looted on Breaches (not enemies) so clearing Breaches is the way to go. Rooms in The Slorm Temple count as Breaches. Breaches from Story Missions can loot Slorm Reapers. There are no Breaches in The Great Forge so you won't find Slorm Reapers there. There is a hidden pity timer that guarantees a Slorm Reaper every 150 Breaches. Various Additions We've added a couple of things that felt mandatory when working on this Update: Whenever a Skill resets its Cooldown Time due to a triggered effect, an animation will be played on its icon to clearly deliver the information. Legendary Items and Slorm Reapers tooltips can now be scrolled up / down. Bugs & Performance Performance: Crafting lots of Slormites / Slormelines will compute instantaneously and will no longer cause the game to crash / freeze. Opening FAT War Chests should no longer cause the game to crash / freeze. Goldus can now drop in stacks of 100 000. Slormite, Slormelines and Slormandrites will be packed based on their Tier / Rarity. In the absence of a Loot Filter, Items will be gradually filtered out to prevent 100s+ of Items displayed on screen (granting Goldus instead). This will literally only activate if more than 100 Items of a specific rarity are about to spawn, and will never filter out Epic or Legendary Items. Item Names will be shown once the War Chest has done distributing all its content to prevent unnecessary performance constraints. Looting all the content of a FAT War Chest should be much faster overall. Bugs Fixed: Having the Primal Ancestral Stone in a Tier 1 Ancestral Legacy Slot should no longer cause a crash. Duplicating a currency should no longer be possible in the Material Tabs. That's about it for now! Cheers! Slormite Chronicles #33Jan 6, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHappy New Year everyone! Same as last year, this Chronicle will be a recap of the year 2023 for The Slormancer and we will take a look back at what's been done. But first and foremost, let's talk about the Slorm Reaper Update that was supposed to be done (damn you, devs!). It turns out that verifying and debugging a hefty amount of 68 Slorm Reapers took us longer than anticipated. We also took some time off during the holidays, and were busy eating raclette for a few days. There's still a degree of uncertainty regarding the release date. We have a few things to polish here and there, a few sound FX to add and still some Slorm Reapers that do not work the way we want. We're almost there but not quite. We're almost always regretting giving a release date too soon so I'm not giving any right now. Coming Soon is the best I can say. Now onto the Recap. A Year of Chronicles: 2023 Edition Fun fact: You may not know this but we publish the Slormite Chronicles devlog every 6th of the month, which is the day The Slormancer was released (on April 6, 2021). Everytime we publish a Slormite Chronicles, the game gets one month older, and it is currently 2 years and 9 months old. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3648510249383787904 We started the year with Slormite Chronicles #21. A Chronicle similar to this one, with a roadmap for 2023, and it turns out that we did everything that we had planned. Yay! Moving to Slorm Reapers by the end of year was not planned but it is one of the most challenging part of the roadmap for us so we're happy to be (almost) done with it. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3677786821873442436 We then went on with Update #1: The Luxuriant Update Part II on January 30. This Update introduced : 8 New Missions (Act 4) A New Ancestral Legacy Tier, adding 32 Ancestral Skills. An Increased Level cap to 70. Quality of Life for The Slorm Temple. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3645136358946943138 In Slormite Chronicles #22, we talked about the (mixed) feedback we got for Act 4 and our plan to fix things, and then talked about the upcoming rework on Controller Support. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3655271993680980796 Slormite Chronicles #23 was again about Controller Support and the numerous technical changes that were coming to the game in The Technical Update. We also talked about the new Environment and Enemies that we were working on. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1104280/announcements/detail/3645137816263933584 Update #2, called The Technical Update, introduced a complete rework of the Controller. We had a growing playerbase on Steam Deck, and an unexpected amount of players using a controller so it was most needed. We also added numerous technical changes: A new Aim-Assist for Controller users. A Toggle Option along with various Visual Feedbacks for the Aim-Assist. Many Interface and Menu Navigation changes for the Co...Slormite Chronicles #32Dec 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! It's Chronicle time! Slorm Reapers, again! I feel like I'm only talking about Slorm Reapers lately in these Slormite Chronicles, but that's pretty much what this is what our daily lives are like. Slorm Reapers everyday, and night. For those of you that have missed our latest Slormites Chronicles, we are currently working on finishing the whole Slorm Reapers Collection. As of now, there are currently 52 Slorm Reapers available in The Slormancer for a total of 120 wanted. This means 68 new Slorm Reapers to deliver. The good news is that everything is coming along. We are slightly late on schedule but not by a big margin. This could have taken much more time than previously anticipated, so we're happy with how things are going. As for our current progress, at the time of writing this Chronicle, we are at: - Pre-production and Brainstorm : 100% Complete - Production (Actual Code) : 80% Complete - Assets (Icons and Visual FX): 70% Complete - Tests: Debug & Balance: 0% Complete This means that we should be done relatively soon but I'm still reluctant to give a release window right now, mostly because Christmas holidays are coming up. And we want to make sure that we are fully available to fix bugs for at least a week once the update releases. We also don't want to release an update that may introduce gamebreaking bugs while the holiday sales is going on, since this would be a pretty bad experience for new players. Basically, this means that we will probably aim for a release of this update slightly after Christmas, and possibly even slightly after the holidays, depending on how comfortable we are with our update. That being said, we're close to finish quite a big milestone for The Slormancer, and for us. And we're pretty happy with how things are going. We're not sure about the impact of adding so many Slorm Reapers for our Early Access players, since most of you already have totally broken very viable builds with the weapons that already are in the game. But we're pretty confident that having so many different and unique weapons to choose from, level up, and discover will eventually pay off and hopefully be an important salespoint for the game. Slorm Reapers, again! Since we now have quite a bit of Slorm Reapers ready, I can finally show a bunch of screenshots of actual gameplay. It's not as efficient as videos but it's much faster to make, and it means that I will be able to return to coding Slorm Reapers soon enough. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/8c55e645015600166638519b138b38b9f9857f8f.png The first screenshot is based on the notorious Vegetable Reaper. Tyler, the rabbit is there with you, eating vegetables. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/c1e0aacda374f2b12611493830469417d0756d1e.png This is the Slorm Reaper of the Desecrated Unholy Sepulcher: When killing enemies, they will drop a small sepulcher. You will then be able to either cast Tomb Explosion or Tomb Profanation on them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/65e31d7a4536c2a20c6592c00d1f9581b...Slormite Chronicles #31Nov 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! It's Chronicle time! As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, we are currently working on building the last Slorm Reapers for The Slormancer. This is a long and quite difficult process but we're making good progress. We've now moved to production and I believe this part should take about a month. There are a lot of original (and hopefully fun) new concepts that require quite a bit of assets and resources, but we believe it's for the best. We don't have much gameplay to show yet, or at least nothing visually interesting, so we will instead continue to reveal upcoming Slorm Reapers. (As always, everything is subject to change). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/3d97f3bf14fd69dc1da3cc757a7c3cbadf9216b9.jpg The Slormancer being The Slormancer, we have a couple of circumvoluted and absurd concepts that we want to share with you, such as a Vegetable as a Slorm Reaper. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/d4a544f823bc6114c3d7a836bcc280799bc1e202.jpgGo Tyler, Go! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/336424f1f76b01339ce13f4a93a8a84a13703224.jpgThe Primordial Version has an effect called "Miscalculation" that reduces Critical Strike Chance or Ancestral Strike Chance to 0% before Probability occurs. It gets fun. We also came up with a bunch of asymmetrical Slorm Reapers. Here's Legion, Reaper of Unity! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/6686d5d67f45d8ebaea5b5b29ff6d328aeb0b231.jpg This Slorm Reaper gets stronger based on the number of Slorm Reapers you own called Legion. It has a total of 5 Evolutions, plus its base form, so adding up the Primordial Versions, it adds up to a total of 36 Slorm Reapers. On top of that, each evolution starts at level 1 and can be leveled up to 100. Complete Collection And here's a small preview of what a Slorm Reapers Collection looks like when complete! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/85fb41f64961ecb62f024b3be83087fddba1e981.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/2af22ca40239d00a417c7f77434bcfe985fe8840.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/dde48766317e2bd20f030a97db14a94a26564c45.jpg If you want to read more about how we came up with Slorm Reapers and how the concept evolved, you can read our previous Slormite Chronicles. That's about it for today! Cheers everyone!Slormite Chronicles #30Oct 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! It's Chronicle time! We're currently working on the upcoming Slorm Reapers, and since we're still on preproduction, we don't have that much to share with you guys, so I figured I might tell you a bit more about Slorm Reapers and how we came up with the concept. The Origins At first, Slorm Reapers were supposed to be much more basic than what they are now. The core was the same: Collectible Weapons that would always at least slightly alter the way you would play. But the result was very different back then. We came up with about 40 Slorm Reapers, with various effects. Most of them worked in a similar way: You get a nice bonus that could enable a build, but you get a malus that you have to play around. And we also liked that it was a collectible, instead of a basic piece of Equipment. We wanted a "Weapon-o-Dex" that you could complete and that would also allow players to quickly change their builds on the go. Here's an example of a very early prototype: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/30f06a359e7cfba83a133983a20d54a313d8a913.jpg Slorm Reapers had rarities back then, and as you can see, one very simple bonus, and one very simple malus. Slorm Reaper Hunting As you can see on the screenshot above, we had a mechanic in place called "Focused Thoughts Elixir" that would allow players to try to loot a very specific Slorm Reaper he wanted. Basically, you would loot Scrolls that would give you informations on a random Slorm Reaper, including where you could find it, then you could decide to use Focused Thoughts Elixir on that Reaper, greatly increasing the chances to find it. We called this "The Hunt". Slorm Reapers were much harder to drop without these Elixirs and the process felt tedious and not so fun. So instead of having to loot a Scroll, then spend a few Elixirs, then farm in the correct Environment, we removed these steps, increased the droprate and went full random. From 40 to 120 At this point, we've only had one playtester beside us two (which is the composer), and when he played the first prototypes, he told us that he loved collecting Slorm Reapers, and that he thought we should go for more, and that 40 was not a big enough number. So we went with 120. This would lead to a LOT more work than anticipated, especially given the numerous reworks we've had to make. Reworking Slorm Reapers We then went on and built 120 Slorm Reapers. Then moved on to other mechanics of the game, eventually reworking Class Skills, The Ancestral Legacy, addind Character Traits etc... And even though Slorm Reapers were "good to go", The Slormancer got much bigger and much more complex than we anticipated, and all of a sudden Slorm Reapers were very underwhelming for what they were supposed to accomplish. So we decided to rework them all. This would lead to a very important change: We felt that granting a bonus and a malus was a very nice idea but that most players would be so annoyed by the malus that they would not give the Slorm Reaper a try. So we first d...The Ancestral Update is now available!Sep 19, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The Ancestral Update (v.0.7) is now available! Adam Nostrus' Trials Part I and II of the Adam Nostrus' Trials have been added to The Slormancer. As mentioned in our previous Slormite Chronicles, they are an introduction to the endgame content of The Slormancer. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/1219db64032526162707fd22757f6905f3fc1bb2.jpg The Slormancer is now tracking the following data: The number of Bosses defeated during Expeditions. The highest Reinforcement among your Items. The highest Great Forge at Wrath 3+ This means that somes objectives of the Trials will be validated retroactively, while others (listed above) will not. Ancestral Stones and Ancestral Skills Have been added to the game: The 7th Ancestral Stone. The Primal Ancestral Stone. The last 5 remaining Ancestral Skill. With this update, the Ancestral Legacy is now feature complete. Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion Adam Nostrus, King of Fashion, our first Endgame boss has been added to the game. He has fixed stats and will not scale to your Character Level or Wrath Level. He will be fairly easy to defeat for seasoned players but should be quite challenging for players running Wrath 5 to 7 Expeditions. This is a first for us, and its first iteration, so feel free to let us know how you are doing against Adam Nostrus and if a mechanic is difficult to overcome. Various Changes and Additions The Necromancer and The Dreadful Colossus, enemies you've defeated as Story Bosses, can now appear as regular enemies during Expeditions. Bosses will trigger more often during Battlefield Expeditions. Loadouts are now saving Character Traits. Story Missions from Act 1 to Act 3 can now be chained without returning to the Village when possible. Fate-Crusher, Reaper of the Seven & The Great Forge: Fate-Crusher no longer grants an unknown and unusable Reapersmith Spirit. Fate-Crusher now has a bonus Reapersmith Spirit reward with every Reapersmith Spirit. As such, a defeat in The Great Forge equipped with Fate-Crusher will result in you keeping every Reapersmith Spirit in your War Chest. Bug Fixes The Might Knight: Grappling Hook should now behave and animate properly. Grappling Hook should no longer teleport you around. The Great Forge: Light Beam and Ice Bomb should no longer stop as soon as the "Next Wave" Button is enabled. (Bugs were definitely not a priority lately) That's about it for now! Cheers! Slormite Chronicles #28Aug 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Today is Chronicles day! So let's jump into it! We've mentioned this in our previous Chronicle but we have a short term plan in mind for the rest of 2023. Ideally, we would like to release 3 Updates: The Ancestral Update It's the one we are currently working and I'll detail all about its content right down below. The Slorm Reapers Update Is the one where we want to release all the Slorm Reapers that are left to be introduced. That's a whopping 68 new Slorm Reapers! The Warlords Update Is the update that will introduce the big Endgame content that we have in mind for The Slormancer. Best case scenario is that we manage to release all of that content before the end of the year. But depending on how things may turn out when developping Slorm Reapers or The Warlords endgame mode, it may take longer than that. Once we're done with these 3 Updates, the vast majority of the content will be in The Slormancer so we would like to move on to balancing the game. The Ancestral Update Now let's talk about the upcoming Ancestral Update. The idea here is to tie the end of the Story to the beginning of the Endgame via a few objectives to complete that will give the players a good idea of what's left to be done when reaching this point. On top of that, we will introduce the last 2 Ancestral Stones for the Ancestral Legacy tree, along with our very first non-scaled Endgame Boss. Adam Nostrus' Trials {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/6ca9290fcba1dda95f286d2165229bcea00eba74.jpg Once you reach the end of the Story and defeat the Boss in Act 5, Adam Nostrus will give you a few tasks to complete to make sure that you are indeed ready to fight The Slormancer itself. His Trials are divided in 3 Parts. You will have to complete each part to unlock the next one, and everytime you complete a part, you will unlock a reward. The first part grants the seventh Ancestral Stone, while the second part grants The Primal Ancestral Stone which is a unique Ancestral Stone that can be enshrined into any slot of your Ancestral Legacy. As for the third part, as you can see, it is currently waiting for "The Warlords" content to be available but it will reward you with a unique Slorm Reaper (only available through the Trials). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/535e47899abac4dcbea7917a3dae1048e94e5ea2.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/1219db64032526162707fd22757f6905f3fc1bb2.jpg Adam Nostrus' Trials are designed to encourage new players reaching Endgame for the first time to explore all their options. For seasoned players looking for harder goals, we will instead use Achievements to create interesting challenges. Regarding the tracking of all these Objectives, the game is already tracking most of them, and this is also true for Achievements. However, some of them are currently not being tracked, such as Defeating Expeditions Bosses, so you will start from scratch once the Update comes out. Ancestral Legacy {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/ab606078ad666f94abf2bd5113e750cb156f6309.jpg One of the...The Royal Update, Part II is now available!Jul 10, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Act 5 Act 5 has been added to The Slormancer. It is the final story act and is composed of 6 Missions leading to an (hopefully) Epic boss fight. New Ancestral Legacy Tier A new Ancestral Stone will be available once Act 5 is completed, granting access to more than 20+ new Ancestral Skills. Increased Level Cap Level Cap has been increased to 80. Loadouts Loadouts have been added into The Slormancer and should be immediately accessible through the big dresser next to the Storage area. The Storage area has also been changed to be easier to navigate and look nicer. Changes The Royal Wing Update Part II also comes with a hefty list of changes. Changes to The Great Forge You no longer have to wait for every enemy of a Wave to die before triggering the next one. Instead, you now only have to wait for the Wave to spawn before triggering the next one. Limitations: Up to 5 Waves can be active at once. You won't be able to trigger a new Wave if 300 or more enemies are currently alive. At the start of The Great Forge, you will now be offered with a new choice that will impact the spawn rate of the rest of the Expedition. You will now be able to open up to 6 Spawn Locations (instead of 2), thus increasing the spawn rate by up to 200%. Increasing the spawn rate has an Elder Slorm cost tied to it. Changes to Armor & Elemental Resistance Armor & Elemental Resistance have been completely reworked and should now be much more effective, and be equally useful against heavy or light hits. Since Armor is now pretty straightforward, the % value displayed below your Armor value under your Stats recap represents exactly what your Armor does at a given Wrath Level against ANY attack. This rework also affects enemies. So be prepared to face enemies with actual Armor & Elemental Resistances. For this reason, we've changed Wrath Modifiers to match this new efficiency. At Wrath 10, Armor & Elemental Resistance Multipliers are now 1000% instead of 2000%. We've also reduced the base Armor, Elemental Resistance and / or Life values of some enemies to better reflect the contrast we want for each of them. We will adjust these values based on the feedback we get. Changes to Silence Spellcasters: Enemies are now split into various categories. One of them being “Spellcasters”. Silence now only affects Spellcasters enemies. List of Spellcasters can be found inside Silence’s tooltip but it's supposed to be obvious (Enemies casting spells). The Mischievous Mage: Shutdown now reads: Your Ancestral Strikes (instead of Critical Strikes) Silence enemies hit for the next 1 second. Ancestral Legacy: Gliterring Silence now silences for 0.5 (+0.1 per level) seconds, instead of 2 (+0.3 per level) seconds. Exaltation of Silence has been renamed to Exaltation of Bliss and does the following: Enemies within a 3 yard radius are Blinded, Rooted and Silenced. Changes to Legendaries Legendary Reinforcement: Legendary Effects can no longer benefit from Reinforcement Levels above 15. It l...Slormite Chronicles #27Jul 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The Royal Wing Update, Part II First and foremost, The Royal Wing Update, Part II will be available on Monday, July 10. This update comes with new content and quite a bit of reworks. New Content includes: Act 5: New Missions. An Epic Boss Fight. The 6th Ancestral Stone and new Ancestral Skills. Increased Level Cap to 80. Loadouts. Reworks include: Armor and Elemental Resistance. Changes to Silence. Changes to Legendary Scaling. Rune Balance. Changes to New Player Experience. New Legendary with early game sustain. New Legendary with early game leveling help. The Great Forge: Multi-Waves. Increased number of Paths (up to 6). You can read more about most of the upcoming changes in Slormite Chronicles #25 and Slormite Chronicles #26. The Roadmap With this Update, we are done with most of the heavy / mandatory stuff and the future will allow us more flexibility. We still have quite a bunch of very important features coming up, but they are a very different aspect of the game than what we've been working on this past year (Enemies / Environment / Story / Missions) so we're pretty excited by this. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/d1741ab949cb8cfc690d92700f5bad5b46453842.jpg Our plan for the rest for the year 2023 is as follow: Release The Ancestral Update and tie the Story to the Endgame. Release 68 New Slorm Reapers to reach our target number of 120. Release The Warlords Update: Our 4th Endgame mode. Let me say this right now, Slorm Reapers can be REALLY hard to design so it is quite hard to determine how much time it will take. Above is what we have in mind, but if taking the time to create fun and interesting Slorm Reapers delays the release of the Warlord Update for a month, then so be it. Then 2024 will be about adding final features such as adding a Codex, Achievements etc... We also want to rework classes and skills with the help of the community while balancing the whole content. And hopefully move on to 1.0. The Ancestral Update The Ancestral Update is next on the line. The goal of this Update is to link the end of the Story that you will get to discover on Monday's update (The Royal Wing Update, Part II) to the Endgame. And altough everything I'm about to say is subject to change, this is roughly what is planned for this update: Adam Nostrus will give the players that just completed the story a good introduction to what can be done in the endgame. We currently call this "Adam Nostrus' Trials", and it will consist of a series of various milestones for the player to complete. Adam Nostrus' Trials are divided in three parts. Completing a part will grant you much needed rewards to complete your build. Completing Part I will grant you the 7th Ancestral Stone. Completing Part II will grant you the Primal Ancestral Stone. Completing Part III will grant you the last Slorm Reaper in the game. The Primal Ancestral Stone?! It is a very special Ancestral Stone we've talked about a few times that you will be able to enshrine in any Ancestral Slo...Slormite Chronicles #26Jun 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! We are making good and steady progress on Act 5, and although we are not working on particularly new mechanics, we are putting extra care on that last boss and dialogues. It won't be the final boss, and we still have quite a bit of story elements to drop here and there but these put an end to the "Story" portion of the game, so we're trying to close that chapter with extra love. This Update is turning out to be larger than our previous ones because we are introducing new missions and Ancestral Skills, Loadouts, on top of substantial reworks of some mechanics and game modes. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/c1143a8a3fb74aaef21126ab63e5718d5a0e400a.jpg If you've read the previous Slormite Chronicle, you've read about upcoming changes regarding The Great Forge, New Player Experience, Armor & Elemental Resistances and a few other things here and there. In today's Chronicle, I'd like to talk about other changes that are coming up: The first one is actually another change to The Great Forge (reworking our rework basically) and the other one is about Legendary Items and scaling. The Great Forge v.2 After reading all of the comments we've had regarding our intention to add a "Fast Forward" mechanic to Challenges, it was clear that it was not going to do what we wanted it to do. It's a fun mechanic that we might eventually add at some point, but we now tend to think that it won't actually fix the issues raised in our last Chronicle (being that The Great Forge is both too long and/or too boring). We came up with two solutions that have both been implemented. They both feel much more natural because they make The Great Forge work smoother without adding additional features. Here's our take: If you manage to 1 or 2 shot packs inside The Great Forge, then the vast majority of your time is spent waiting. You wait for the wave to spawn, then you wait for packs to get inside the combat area. You eventually also wait for enemies to walk toward you or you move back and forth between active Forge Paths. And it's not fun either way. What we did is that we tried to remove the wait time to 0. This would make The Great Forge both faster to clear but also more exciting which is the initial goal. Obviously, we want The Great Forge to remain a fair Challenge for new players so we couldn't just increase the speed of everything. So here's what we did: Opening More Paths At the very beginning of The Great Forge, you will now have the choice to open up more than 2 Forge Paths (these options are unlocked at higher Wrath Levels, a new player will only open up 2 Forge Paths up to a certain point). Above Wrath 4, you will get to open up to 6 Forge Paths. It basically make enemies spawn 3x times faster, and they come up from every direction so your best option is to stand in the center instead of running around Forge Paths, which was neither fun nor intented. And I've felt that it creates much more epic fights. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/224097ad39f1b15e8c2e1d1850a3307...Slormite Chronicles #25May 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Our next update is on tracks, its name: The Royal Wing Update, Part II. No surprises there, it will include Act 5 (so new missions), new boss fights, new Ancestral Skills and an increased level cap. One important thing to mention is that it should be the last update containing a new Act / Missions. Once this one is out of the way, we will be introducing our last 2 endgame modes followed by various objectives and quests that should link the endgame altogether and lead to a glorious fight against the infamous Slormancer. That being said, we've mostly been working on "side" stuff lately and things we've been delaying for a while because once we're done with the main content of an update we tend to publish it as soon as possible without taking the time to rework past content or work on "secondary" features. So this time, we're doing it the other way around. New Feature: Loadouts This is something that we've always wanted to have in the game since we want to encourage players to change their builds and explore fun and interesting options on the go. The way it works is that you can take a snapshot of your current build, switch to another build that you've been looking to try (eventually save it aswell), and load back your previous build once you're done. If you're familiar with the Diablo 3 system, I believe that it is exactly the same. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/6904a39391ca60f49febb7f907a4e24d09515951.jpg So there now is a large Wardrobe next to the storage area with 5 Loadout Slots per character. It is important to note that it is not a storage space. Items are not being stored, so you can use them in multiple builds (of the same character). The tooltips of Equipment pieces will now display whether or not these items are being used in a Loadout Set. In the screenshot above, my Ring is used in Set I and in Set II. We've also been reworking the "Storage Area" so you access everything faster. The top left chest replaces the Storage NPC, so you no longer have to talk to her. The top right chest, is the legendary chest and the wardrobe opens up the Loadouts menu. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/6fc5ca0832c825cc081bf6179dd4ce71ae20a62b.jpg Reworks We have a few reworks coming with this update. I will not detail most of them right here mostly because we came up with solutions that are yet to be tested (so they are subject to change). You can expect changes regarding: Legendary Equipment Scaling, Soul Eating Mantle, Runes: such as Thornbite Rune, and Activation Rune of Hagan, Silence in general. However, we have a few changes coming that I'd like to talk about: Armor & Elemental Resistance (I'll only talk about Armor here out of simplicity but the same changes will be applied to Elemental Resistance since they are identical). Let's be real, Armor does not work or at least, it doesn't make much of a difference. We've been looking at some numbers to figure out why Armor was not doing its job, and we actually found out that we didn't know what job...The Royal Update, Part I is now available!Apr 11, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The Royal Update, Part I is now available! Patch 0.6.01d New Enemies {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/19bb9bd95b1783580c9d7e44ed88b86e1553f44b.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/954f713775a0bf3b7d2b7a9383ecf0a5fe3e9183.jpg 5 New Enemies have been added to the game. New Environment {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/4a60c5407a5e4b0404279fa345dbce260bd10d80.jpg The Royal Wing has been added to the game and can be accessed through Battlefield Expeditions. This is NOT a new Act. It will come in a later update. New Legendary Chest {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/f100f2718578bb47ee272dc25fc1acc495827ad9.jpg A New Storage Stash has been added to the game and allows you to store up to 1 of each Legendary item that can be found in The Slormancer. Changes: Battlefield Expeditions: You can now choose between: Battlefield Journey: Random and everchanging Environment. Boss Events. Careful Examination: Chosen Fixed Environment. No Boss Events. Super Elites Super Elites have been removed from regular Battlefield Floors. Super Elites have been reworked and are now Bosses during Battlefield Journey Expeditions. Various: "The Great Maze" mission has been changed and now have regular fights along the way. The Jetlag Cataclysm has been renamed to "Invulnerability" to match its current effect. The "Head of the Syndicate" mission no longer has the Jetlag Cataclysm. Bugs: The Mighty Knight: Whirlwind should now work properly with Reaper of Vindictive Slam. Voracious Swing should now work properly with the "To Each his own" Cataclysm and with the Obelisk of Revocation. The Fierce Huntress: The Force Transmission + Elemental Sorcerer loop should now be fixed. Fountain of Malady now reads: "While Delighted, you can now Leech Life with Poison Damage and have an additional +3.5% Life Leech on Poison Damage." instead of "While Delighted, you have +3.5% Life Leech on Poison Damage." Fountain of Malady should now work properly with the "To Each his own" Cataclysm and with the Obelisk of Revocation. The Mischievous Mage: Chrono-Burst should now properly deal its damage to the enemy that triggered it. Chrono-Burst should now trigger properly with the new Leech mechanic. Empowered Rift Nova should now work properly with Supreme Rift. Legendaries: Ancestral Champions' Present should no longer display Ancestral Gifts that are currently not available in Early Access. Battlefield Mantle (The Mischievous Mage) should no longer trigger when inside Bryan's Seal of Protection. Spectral Sight should now grant you the proper Pierce Chance. Various: Starting an Optional Mission to unlock a new Hero then immediately leaving the game should no longer your Material Tab and Shared Stash to disappear. You should now properly lose the Stun status when leaving a Boss Room while being Stunned for cinematic purposes. Elite Life Bars should no longer show negative values. Slorm Temple Shrine animation should now be played at the correct speed. NPC moving during cinematics should now walk at the correct ...Slormite Chronicles #24Apr 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The Royal Wing Update is almost ready, and it will be available next week! Today also marks the 2-year anniversary of The Slormancer's Early Access! Two years of Updates, Patches, and Chronicles! The Royal Wing Update, Part I {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/19bb9bd95b1783580c9d7e44ed88b86e1553f44b.png We've been talking about upcoming content in our latest Chronicle, so I'll only briefly recap what has been said and move on: The Royal Wing Update, Part I comes with a new environment called "The Royal Wing" (duh) and 5 new enemies, tied to that environment. Oh, and it will be availble on April 11th! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/4a60c5407a5e4b0404279fa345dbce260bd10d80.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/954f713775a0bf3b7d2b7a9383ecf0a5fe3e9183.jpg Now, we've been working on a couple of new exciting stuff that will be available with this update: Battlefield Expedition Changes {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/957810f15ee878e256b57fc504d9208ae864bd6f.jpg As you can see in the screenshot above, we've added a couple of choices to Battlefield Expeditions. We wanted to fix different issues we've been having with Battlefield Expeditions: Playing in the same environment over and over gets boring, especially when you've been dealt with an environment you don't really like. Battlefield Expeditions lack special events / changes of pace. If you wish to play in a specific environment, you have to fish for the correct environment by entering/leaving Battlefield Expeditions until you get the one you want. For the same reason, once we introduce the Influence feature tied to Environments, players will want to farm in specific environments, so this has to be doable. Now, you will get to "Choose your Adventure": You can either choose the Battlefield Journey which is the default option. "Random and Everchanging Environment. Boss Events." If you choose "Battlefield Journey", you will get to face a boss every few floors (with appropriate loot :o). We've been working on a nice staging, similar to the one we've made for Story Bosses: The entire floor is dedicated to the Boss fight, just you and him. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/f349dfd65e27e85f8cd7c8dcff5f93e095b5b27a.jpg Once you've dealt with the boss, the Expedition will then continue on a different environment so it never gets boring. Or you can choose the Careful Examination option. This alternative allows you to choose the Environment you want to venture in. However, you will face no bosses and the environment will, obviously, never change. This comes with a change: Super Elites that you could sometimes find in Battlefield Expeditions can no longer be found in a regular Expedition floor. We felt that they didn't have the set-up they deserved and were not noticeable enough to cause the change of pace we wanted them to cause. So we've actually been working from what we had with these Super Elites and turned them into the Battlefield Journey Bosses mentioned above. The changes we've made should hopefully create more e...The Tech Update (v.0.5.02)Mar 7, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! As discussed in our latest Slormite Chronicles, I've been working on various aspects of how the Controller behaves, both in menus and in game. Both were causing some frustration and a rework was much needed. This update introduces major changes to our controller support but I also took the chance to work on other technical and / or quality of life features so everyone has something to look for in this update. So here goes! Controller Rework Controller Aim Assist: Reworked the Auto-Aim system to be much more efficient. The Auto-Aim should now accurately follow the direction of the ground cursor. The Auto-Aim should no longer aim for enemies behind walls. As a result, switching between targets should be much MUCH easier. When moving with the Left Stick, the system should aim for pretty much any relevant target nearby in front of you. When using the Right Stick, you will be able to more accurately pick a direction FROM the enemy currently being targetted. If you don't like that behavior, I've also added two other options for you to choose from: "Aim Assist" Setting: Added an Aim Assist Setting with 3 options: Auto Aim: (Default option) Use the Right Stick to navigate between targets. Semi-Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. Your aim will adjust to a relevant target in the direction you're aiming. Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. No Help. Toggle "Aim Assist": Added a Bindable Option called "Toggle Aim Assist" that I encourage you to set to R3 (R3 used to be Toggle Enemy Life Bars by default): Toggle Aim Assist will switch from your chosen Aim Assist setting to "Free" and back to your previous choice when you press R3 again. Visual Feedback A Locked Target will now glow with a more distinct stroke and the back of its lifebar will change. When a Target is locked, the ground cursor will change color. User Interface: The Left stick can now be used to move a newly added cursor around menus and select any button or hover over any kind of tooltip. This should make the navigation much MUCH smoother. I've also fixed a couple of weird behaviors: Ancestral Tree Menu: Moving the Tree now takes stick sensitivity into account. Ancestral Tree Menu: You can now properly refund Ancestral Legacy choices with a controller. Inventory: Enabled Stick/Pad Navigation to Slorm Reapers, Thumbs and pretty much any button. Inventory: You can now add/remove Traits 10 by 10 by holding RB. Inventory: You should now be able to navigate through the Slorm Reapers menu without issues. Inventory: You should now be able to properly close Reaper Runes / Ultimatums notifications with the A button. The Great Forge: You can now hover over Challenges Effects and Rewards. Expeditions: Now that everything is clickable, the default button to start Expeditions is now Y instead of A (used to click on things). Bonus: Button Faces can now be customized between Xbox / PlayStation or Nintendo Switch. Various Additions Font Sizes: Added new Font Sizes called "Biggerer" and "Biggest" whi...Slormite Chronicles #23Mar 6, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Controller Update, When? In our previous Slormite Chronicles, we've said that the Controller Update was expected to be done in February. I later posted a comment regarding the delay that most of you probably missed: I had personal things that came up so we had to delay the release a bit. But we can now announce that The Controller Update will go live on March 7. Things also got out of control as I felt the need to add more and more features to this update! :D So the "Controller Update" became a larger beast, now known as "The Technical Update". What's in it? I don't want this to turn into a patch notes (that we will publish on March 7 as well) but I'm glad you ask! Controller Rework Controller Aim Assist: I've reworked the Auto-Aim system to be much more accurate and efficient. I've also added an Aim Assist Setting with different control schemes: Auto Aim: (Default option) Use the Right Stick to navigate between targets. Semi-Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. Your aim will adjust to a relevant target in the direction you're aiming. Free: Use the Right Stick to Aim. No Help. On top of that, we've added a new bindable option called "Toggle Aim Assist" that is used to quickly switch between your default Aim Assist option and the "Free" control scheme. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/b0522973b52d375444475546a8b368bcb1b79918.jpg We've been working on visual feedback aswell. User Interface: Navigating through menus with a controller used to be really painful. But fear not! Things got much MUCH smoother as you can now use the Left stick to move freely inside menus. And as mentioned in our previous Chronicle, you will be able to change button faces and choose between Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo Switch. Wait! There's More! We've also been working on various Quality of Life features and technical stuff that should improve the overall experience. I've added new Font Sizes called "Biggerer" and "Biggest", bigger than the "Bigger" font size. You can now bind Side Mouse Buttons (up to 2). I've added Search Bars (similar to the one in the Ancestral Legacy menu) to Skills, Attributes and Slorm Reapers. The Slormancer now supports UltraWide and the 2560 x 1080 and 3440 x 1440 resolutions are now available. The Slormancer now supports 120+ FPS and a "Target FPS" setting has been added by 4 options: 30, 60 (default), 120 and Uncapped. Last but not least, I've added a Zoom setting allowing you to Zoom Out by up to 25%. It should feel better for people unconfortable with our current level of zoom without breaking the experience. Everything listed above will be available with the "Technical Update" on March 7. The Royal Update Part.I While working on the technical aspect of the game, we've also made progress on The Royal Update that will add a New Environment and 5 New Enemies to The Slormancer. New Enemies Here's a preview of our upcoming enemies! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35818693/19bb9bd95b1783580c9d7e44ed88b86e1553f44b.png From left to right: The Loot Thief...
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