Final 0.9.3 Patch Notes

"

Dreggon wrote:

How long is this invulnerability per charge? I'm thinking I could use Enduring Cry repeatedly to maintain lots of charges and then use this skill to tank lots of monsters.

Long enough that this is probably viable as a strategy at first (we'll rebalance if it's too abusive!) The exact lengths of time are still changing a bit this week.

"

Dreggon wrote:

To what did you rename the mace called 'Sceptre'?

"Holy Mace". Real hard thought went into that one :P

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Added new currency item - Orb of Fusing: Rerolls socket links on an item.

What if there's only one socket? If there are two sockets that aren't linked, are they guaranteed to be linked?

If the layout is not changed it will not consume the item. I expect it will link the sockets in your second example.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Added new unique bosses to The Terraces and the Mud Flats. They have interesting skills to use on players.

Is 'interesting skills' a euphemism for 'you are going to rage so hard and we are going to laugh at you'?

I got taken by surprise when playtesting it, and I knew what was coming.

"

Dreggon wrote:

Will an item be able to support itself initially, or do you need to provide support for the item to be equipped before the item can be equipped to support itself?

I.e. I have 34 strength, this mace needs 38 strength and grants 6 strength. Can I equip the mace directly so it supports itself, or do I need to equip this belt that gives +4 strength before I can equip the mace? If I then lose this belt, and unequip the mace for some reason, and have no other +strength items that I can use to support the mace, I won't be able to equip the mace at all, leaving me weaponless.

Items can only support themselves if you chain into them with another item. Because we only ever unequip items when the player clicks them, this is less of a problem than in other games.

"

Dreggon wrote:

I thought monsters were 'inactive' when far enough away from a player. Wouldn't this increase server strain a bit? If you were testing this on the Alpha realm I'm not sure you would have had enough people testing it (around 100) for the instance generation to create enough of these to be a problem, but come release day, this might cause issues. (Just guessing)

Monsters still go inactive. It's only the active ones that do this new behaviour.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

New monster hover user interface added.

Requesting clarification.

That's what you see when you hover over a monster (at the top of the screen). It's in some of the new screenshots.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Added support for a new system of creating, storing and displaying unique items.

Does this mean we'll be able to create our own unique items (I'm thinking no) or does it specifically refer to boss drops?

It makes it easier for us on our end.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Changed the art for item sockets to make them easier to distinguish for colourblind players.

Does this come with a little tooltip when you hover over a socket that tells you what colour it is? Useless to me, but potentially helpful to others.

Not currently, sorry.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Fixes to the shimmer postprocessing effect.

Can an art person tell us what this means? (If it's Russell please make him actually say what it does instead of trolling me, he can do that later)

I'm not an art guy, but I can give a slightly less cryptic explanation. We use the "shimmer" (distortion) effect for various spells and for things like fire. It causes the ripples in the air. We fixed a problem where it was all wrong before - now it looks a lot better.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Added a wind effect to the Ledge and Rocky Climb.

Is this purely graphical, or does it have sound effects and/or blow my skillshots (ice spear, arrows) off course?

Purely graphical.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Changed the gem-support system so that only Support Gems in the same physical group as a Skill Gem connect to it.

Doesn't it already do this? Even if it doesn't, I'm not sure what the change is.

Previously, if you had Fireball-MultipleProjectiles in one item and Fireball-AddedColdDamage in another item, the Fireball skill would get both. Now you get two different fireball skills.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Increased spell damage percentage is now likely on caster weapons. A larger amount of late-game killing speed for casters now comes from their weapon mods. This makes their itemisation similar to that of weapon users.

Is most of this going to be present on wands, or will I be able to get an intelligence-based staff for my Witch?

Staves/Sceptres/Daggers get it too, slightly less often.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Players now gain enough accuracy per level that they are never going to be completely terrible at hitting. This allows us to reduce the accuracy bonuses from elsewhere so that they are individually rewarding but neither mandatory nor overpowered.

Will it be possible to reach 100% accuracy or higher?

95% cap.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Base weapon types now have more appropriate implicit mods to create strong differences between them. For example, Axes do additional damage and Swords are more accurate.

What do Maces get?

Something to do with stunning, I'm setting that up today.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Intelligence weapons have higher critical strike chances.

Does this also increase critical strike chance for spells?

Spells have their own critical rates. I think they're mostly 5% currently.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Energy shield now makes it a lot harder to get stunned, but doesn't prevent it all the time like it did before.

Is the chance to be stunned relevant to the amount of energy shield remaining, or possibly also the amount remaining relevant percentage-wise to your character's current maximum?

This was considered, but didn't make it in. Still under review.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Higher difficulties now have a substantially increased chance of magic and rare monsters spawning.

Wouldn't this mean that the difficulty of these magic and rare monsters is further increased by the difficulty, on top of their being more common? It could make progression difficult.

It's balanced around this and is totally awesome.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

The Marauder and Templar now start with one-handed weapons.

Do they also start with two-handed weapons? I like playing two-handed melee classes.

You can pick up a two handed weapon if one drops (which it will pretty fast generally), but now you feel like you upgraded!

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Monsters are now not resistant to elemental damage if the value would fall at less than 15%.

Less than 15% of what?

Less than 15% resistant to an element.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Shock Nova now deals its damage from outside (maximum damage) to inside (minimum/no damage). The outside damage is dealt first. It is a linear damage progression (not exponential) now.

Does this mean the ring of damage starts at the outside now, instead of expanding from your character?

Yes.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

"Warlord's Mark" now only grants life leech to physical attack damage.

Does its mana leech still get applied if you use magic damage?

I have no idea. Noting it down to investigate.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Removed some incompatible flask mods from hybrid flasks.

Hybrid flasks? Do you mean the purple Vials?

Yes.

"

Dreggon wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Fixed various ways that skills could be used to target monsters that were too far away.

If they can be targeted, aren't they technically in range?

It was to prevent people with view hacks or weird aspect ratios from targeting things that aren't normally on screen.

"

Goatlust wrote:

I'm a little disappointed that there is no mention of improved UI for summoned creatures or improved following AI.

Neither of these are done yet but are still important issues to us. We'd rather add this type of thing after the patch is out rather than delay it further by hitting all the bullet points of stuff the game still needs :)

Edit: The post-0.9.3 era of patches does not have multi-month waits between updates!