Today marks the first month in Early Access for The Hopebringer. And this update recaps the changes that made it into the early access build this week.
Highlights of the week included new NPC companions who will accompany you in most scenarios, along with four new summoned pets. It also saw the game get localized in 10 new languages.
Companions
- Introduced three new companion NPCs. These are allies who will accompany you on your on adventures. There is one of each class: A warrior, mage, and cleric. It will assign you with companions of a different class than your character on missions that support them. If one of your companions dies, they are dead for the duration of the scenario.
- Improved our spawner system to allow for greater variety in ranges based on companion or player counts, and scenario.
- Introduced four new summoned pets. More details on them can be found in the Skills and Abilities section.
- Companion networking optimizations.
Dungeons/Scenarios
- Improved our spawner system to allow for greater variety in ranges based on companion or player counts, and scenario.
- Increased the number of enemies required in the Trimming Their Numbers quest.
- Made tweaks to spawn counts in numerous scenarios, to compensate for the new companions.
Items and Loot
- Shaman and Witch-Doctor NPC variations now have a small chance to drop Lycanthrope Fangs.
- Increased the drop rates of Orc Blood.
- You can now buy Orc Blood in small quantities from shopkeepers or magic vendors.
- Turned down the loot ratio of Health and Power potions, as well as portal scrolls.
NPCs
- Spiders now have hit reactions.
Skills and Abilities
- Introduced a new Conjurer spell: Summon Orc. This spell requires Orcs Blood. It will summon an Orc pet. Orc pets have slightly less hit points than the skeleton pets from Witches, but deal greater damage. They can be differntiated from standard orcs by their blueish skin and unique appearance. Increased skill ranks increase the damage and health of these pets, as well as increasing the maximum number that can be summoned at a time.
- Added a new Conjurer spell: Summon Spider. It uses Spider Venom to summon a Spider pet, and is a child ability of Summon Orc, which unlocks at level 7. These pets have a spider leaping special ability, as well as a chance to poison their victims. They have less hit points, but deal more damage than Orc pets. They receive a small bonus to their hit points for each rank you have in Summon Orc. These spiders have a yellow skin texture to make them easy to differentiate from other spiders.
- Implemented a new Conjurer spell: Summon Werewolf. This summon spell requires a Lycanthrope Fang as a component. It is on the same line that begins with Summon Orc, and requires you to be level 15 or higher to gain access. Werewolf pets are fast, powerful, and have a high number of hit points. They are currently by far the strongest pets in the game. The downside to them of course, is that they require an uncommon component. Summoned werewolves have white fur, to make them stand apart from the NPC varieties. They have a retaliation ability which will often make them return incoming attacks with a free response action. Werewolf pets receive a bonus to their health for every skill rank in Summon Orc, and a bonus to their max damage for every 2 skill ranks in Summon Spider.
- Integrated a new Witch spell: Summon Healer. This spell requires bone chips, and will summon a Spectral Healer. It is a child of the Summon Skeleton and Hold Undead line. And requires you to be level 15+ to train it. These have a greenish tint and are less transparent, to differentiate them from the NPC variations. Unlike other pet types you can only have one healer active at a time. Summoning a second one will destroy the first. Healers will receive a health bonus for each skill rank of Summon Skeleton which has been trained, and a bonus to their casting speed for each skill rank in Hold Undead.
- Made adjustments to the power costs of many spells and abilities. This included: Healing Wave, Leaping Strike, Shield Smash, Leg Slice, Buckle Down, Overpower, Sanctifying Shock, Cleanse, Hold Undead, Ward, Strength, and Meteor Strike.
- The Strength skill (Protector/Cleric) now starts with 2 additional strength baseline.
- The healing component of Siphon Life (Witch/Mage) now starts with 5% additional lifetap.
- Despite the tooltip reading the intended 20 power cost for Summon Skeleton, it was only actually removing 5 power. That has been fixed.
- Taunt now properly displays the Attack Rating bonus buff you receive from it. That bonus was always being given but it wasn't being displayed in tooltips.
Sound
- Added new unique companion sound effects.
- Werewolves have new sound effects.
- Added new voice overs for rescued prisoners.
- Added additional sound effects to Ghosts.
User Interface
- Made some adjustments to UI layouts and underlying code, to try to compensate for some text being larger in non-english languages. This included some rather large underneath the hood changes. Please report any bugs you find on the forums.
- Changed the Hold Undead icon.
- Font adjustments to better accommodate localization.
Miscellaneous
- The game has been localized in French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. If you run into any isues with the localization, please let us know on the forums. This should be considered a first pass.
- General performance improvements.
- Quite a few texture optimizations.
- Fixed a bug that had some Fire Staffs causing Lightning damage.
