0.9.5 Patch Notes

Version 0.9.5:

Notes:
  • We've wiped all the passive skills again. Please take care reallocating your passives so that you can use your equipment and gems.
  • We've moved all old characters and items to Legacy leagues and have created new Default and Hardcore leagues with clean ladders. These leagues cannot interact with each other. We're interested in getting balance and economy feedback from the new leagues, but feel free to continue to play your old characters if you want to.
  • As discussed below, we've changed how flasks work so that they recover life/mana slower than before. Be careful to test your characters before plunging into combat in Hardcore.


Features/Content:
  • Added the ability to refund individual skill points on the passive tree by spending "Passive Skill Respec Points". These can be gained from quest rewards or by using a rare currency item.
  • Enabled the "Golden Hand" quest in the Church Dungeon. This currently gives two skill respec points per difficulty as its reward, but this will change in the future.
  • Added two new world areas, currently called the "Ancient Pyramid" and the "Old Fields Cave".
  • More than doubled the number of Unique Items in the game.
  • Added some new monster types which can be found towards the end of Act Two.
  • Added new currency items, improved vendors and the ability to sell items to vendors. See the section below for more information.
  • Added a new unique monster to the Rocky Climb - "Ironpoint the Forsaken".
  • Revamped how stats on items and skills are displayed so that many of the confusing cases are explained more consistently now.
  • Improved the character selection cargohold scene and added the Quartermaster to its background.
  • Added new level topologies to the Submerged Passage, Tidal Island and other areas.
  • Improved the environment of the Twilight Strand.
  • Removed the Submerged Passage Level 2 waypoint. Added a Rocky Climb waypoint. Moved some other waypoints around to random locations within their maps
  • Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.
  • Added dividers between the NPC talk items such as shops and quest information.
  • Added a new Raised Zombie run animation.
  • The new Strength skill, "Lightning Strike", has been moved to a (hopefully soon) future patch because of issues that occured during testing.
  • Disabled the Punishment skill gem from being found until we have it working properly.


Currency/Vendor Changes:
  • Added new currency item - "Orb of Regret": Grants one passive skill refund point when used.
  • Added new currency item - "Blessed Orb": Rerolls the value of the implicit (built-in) mod on an item.
  • Fixed up the vendors that sell you items so that they offer a more reasonable selection of items at more appropriate prices. They now have some permanent currency items in their offered goods.
  • Added the ability to sell items to vendors. The vendors have many complex recipes for combinations of items that they accept, so we encourage experimentation.
  • Added "Scroll of Wisdom Fragment", "Transmutation Shard", "Alteration Shard" and "Alchemy Shard" currency items which can only be obtained from vendors. These cannot be used in their shard form, but when they reach their maximum stack size, they automatically transform into the appropriate type of normal currency item.
  • Implemented mod-pricing for selling identified blue/rare items at the vendors. Different types of mods on your items can yield different numbers of shards (many are worth nothing). Some mods offer increased prices if they are at their maximum value.
  • Added new art for most currency items. In some cases, you'll only get the new art if you find new currency items.
  • Renamed some currency items. "Chaos Sphere" became "Chaos Orb". "Orb of Transformation" became "Orb of Alteration". "Gem Quality Upgrade" became "Gemcutter's Prism". "Flask Quality Upgrade" become "Glassblower's Bauble". "Armour Shard" became "Armourer's Scrap". "Whetstone" became "Blacksmith's Whetstone".


Item Drop Changes:
  • Reduced the drop rate of Orbs of Scouring, Scrolls of Wisdom and Portal Scrolls (scrolls can easily be obtained from vendors now.)
  • Increased the drop rate of Orb of Chance.
  • We're now biasing towards higher item base types extremely strongly for most item types. This means that it's much easier to stay up to date with the current highest item type for each slot. For example, if a bow drops in the Maelstrom of Chaos, there's a ~40% chance that it's the level 58 bow.
  • Magic/Rare/Unique monsters can drop currency items and skill gems again, at an adjusted fair rate. Their chance of dropping these items is higher than that of normal monsters.
  • Changed how Unique Items are generated so that low level Uniques can still drop in high level areas.


General Balance:
  • We've changed how flasks heal your life and mana so that they are slower than before but heal substantially more in total. They also take more monster kills to refill. This change should make your life and mana totals more relevant than just the speed your flasks recover at. There are more (drastic) flask changes scheduled for 0.9.6 but we're interested in feedback on these ones first.
  • Made higher difficulties harder.
  • Removed the 10% damage bonus that monsters get per additional party member.
  • Changed how Stun Threshold Reduction works so that it makes more sense now. A 50% decrease in Stun Threshold now means that you only need to deal 50% of the previous damage to cause a stun.
  • Applied the "currency drop penalty" to Skill Gems and Scrolls also. This penalty applies if you're playing in an area far lower level than you are.
  • Reduced the bonuses granted by Frenzy and Endurance charges.
  • Changed enemy critical strike damage multiplier reduction so it only reduces the part of the multiplier above 100.
  • Nerfed the Divinarius unique dagger. Old versions of this item are unmodified.
  • Most flasks in the vendors don't generate with quality now.
  • Reduced the number of Scrolls of Wisdom you start with to 3.
  • Rebalanced most of the mods on flasks around the new behavioural changes.
  • "Low Life" on Cautious flasks is now defined as 35% rather than 50%, to be consistent with other uses of the term.


Active Skill Balance:
  • Modified Firestorm's behaviour so that the explosions have a larger radius and are more likely to fall near the centre of the affected area. Doubled the number of fireballs that fall and rebalanced damage around these changes.
  • Reduced Frenzy damage per charge.
  • Increased damage progression of Freezing Pulse.
  • Raise Spectre now raises better Spectres at higher levels.
  • Made Explosive Arrow more powerful. The damage has been increased and the fuse time is now one second.
  • Split Arrow mana costing increased based on number of arrows.
  • Increased the chance that Warlord's Mark will grant an Endurance Charge.
  • Projectile weakness now increases damage taken from projectiles.
  • Increased the damage bonus granted by the Added Cold, Added Lightning and Added Chaos Damage Support Gems.


Passive Skill Balance:
  • Cold, Fire and Lightning damage passives have been increased from +4% to +6%.
  • Chaos Inoculation now grants +80% energy shield rather than +20%
  • Increased the sizes of mana regeneration passives.
  • Reduced area of effect passives.
  • Added additional life passives and increased the size of existing ones so that players are able to gain more life than before if they choose to specialise in it.
  • Removed connections to increase distance between the Witch and the unannounced class.
  • Reduced the size of some cast speed passives.
  • Minor other passive tweaks.


Bug Fixes:
  • Opening the passive skill screen no longer closes the overlay map.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed curses to be cast through walls.
  • Cast time/attack time on skill popups now updates when stats change.
  • Fixed a bug where chests opened with damage would not have the currency drop penalty.
  • Fixed a bug where the energy shield of a raised Spectre was not scaled properly.
  • Fixed Poison Arrow and Viper Strike so that damage from their degeneration is scaled properly for PvP.
  • Fixed a bug with bow attacks where they would miss at long ranges.
  • Fixed a bug where multiple conversions of one monster with Dominating Blow would not be applied correctly.
  • Fixed a bug where the stun duration increase stat for staves and two handed weapons were interpreted in a swapped way.
  • Fixed a bug where "Increased Evasion" did not apply to converted evasion for Iron Reflexes.
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Last edited by Chris on Dec 22, 2011, 6:30:44 PM
Updated patch notes with:

- Reduced the number of Scrolls of Wisdom you start with to 3.
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I've updated the patch notes with:
  • Rebalanced most of the mods on flasks around the new behavioural changes.
  • "Low Life" on Cautious flasks is now defined as 35% rather than 50%, to be consistent with other uses of the term.


"
kushstash wrote:
wow casters just keep gettin fucked, the only viable witch build was the crit and cast passives...


We still feel they're very powerful and are looking for ways to make it fairer.
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When discussing patch notes changes, remember that:

a) What happens to existing characters doesn't matter to us as long as it makes the game better for when it's released.
b) We haven't reached class parity yet, so some classes are going to keep getting weakened until it's fair.
c) The end-game is meant to be really hard and to kill players efficiently.

These may sound harsh, but the purpose of the beta is to quickly converge on a finished product that is challenging in the right places.

We do note that sometimes the same people say "game is too easy" then later say "hey, you nerfed my character!" ;)
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Updated patch notes with:
- Cold, Fire and Lightning damage passives have been increased from +4% to +6%.
Lead Developer. Follow us on: Twitter | YouTube | Facebook | Contact Support if you need help!
"
konfeta wrote:
Oh, cool. It doesn't fix the issue of spellcasting passives being highly concentrated and in a rigid path, but it does open up specialization as something worthwhile to pursue.

Two questions:
1. Are high level quest reward gems going to be changed any time soon?

2. Is it intended that Flicker Strike can have its cast range bypassed with holding shift?


1. Sure. They aren't interesting currently.

2. No, not intended. It's on a bug list!
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"
konfeta wrote:
Coolsause.

Still no details on how exactly higher difficulties are more difficult? :(

Or have you implemented a surprise -100 all resists in merciless mode?


That's totally coming, but not this patch.

This one is more difficult in terms of monster damage and survivability. The other knob is boss-density but we feel that value is okay.
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"
crazyslice wrote:
"Applied the "currency drop penalty" to Skill Gems and Scrolls also. This penalty applies if you're playing in an area far lower level than you are."

What does this mean?
My chars are always 5 or more lvls than the lvl of the area. Even a fresh char will be higher lvl than the lvl he is atm after some grinding. You can hit lvl 27 in a blink of an eye and youll be 6 lvls higher than the Alira zone which is lvl 21 normal. And i wont get wisdom and portal scrolls for that? I dont understand.


If you're 5 levels above the area then you get a 7.5% reduction in the drop rate of these items ((level difference - 2) * 2.5%). You kill fast enough when higher level that this is not a problem. It's still beneficial to farm for currency in lower areas, but at least not completely abusable like it was in 0.9.2.

"
prodiii wrote:
"
Chris wrote:

[li]Added two new world areas, currently called the "Ancient Pyramid" and the "Old Fields Cave".[/li]

just regular maps, right ? nothing about increasing experience curve or higher endgame lvl areas ?


Right

"
prodiii wrote:
"
Chris wrote:

[li]More than doubled the number of Unique Items in the game.[/li]

do we have some fix amount of quantity/rarity to find any ? i played a lot and didnt get one yet :D


They're very rare.

"
prodiii wrote:

"
Chris wrote:

[li]We're now biasing towards higher item base types extremely strongly for most item types. This means that it's much easier to stay up to date with the current highest item type for each slot. For example, if a bow drops in the Maelstrom of Chaos, there's a ~40% chance that it's the level 58 bow.[/li]

40% sounds quite high now. lets hope it wont be too high ;) but yeah im looking forward to it. also i didnt see much about bosses - can we expect the same as in 0.9.4 poor drops ?


Actually yes, bosses do drop a bit more now. I forgot to put that in the patch notes.

"
konfeta wrote:
Another question if you got time/info Chris!

Will we, at some point, get an actual way to preview/see the list of reward gems?

The absolutely worst part of this skill system is the tremendous difficulty in planning out a build when you end up with situations where you have gem A and B offered at one quest, you pick gem A with hope of getting gem B later, only to get gem A a couple more times from the subsequent quest rewards and not get another shot at gem B for an entire difficulty change or two.

Very obnoxious.


Yes, that needs to be exposed on the website or in game.

"
Torin wrote:
Sooo, when are we going to get skills that give power charges?


Soon! Skills require a lot of people to be involved, and the Christmas break is disturbing that process. As people get back in January it'll get easier to add that type of content again.
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"
BrecMadak wrote:
"
Chris wrote:

  • Removed the 10% damage bonus that monsters get per additional party member.


Nice changes there, appreciated, but i do not see any point why 10% damage bonus of monsters are removed ?
You raise the game difficulty more, but then again remove the monster damage that's gotten by additional party member.

This is contradiction

People were prefering doing solo most of the time regarding to find items for his/her own good, now there is none reason left for grouping anymore. More people will prefer solo...


This was fixed because it broke the armour system and was unfair on Strength characters.
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We're fixing it.
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