What a Journey!
Incredible how time passes! With this update Rogue Empire is almost ready to be out of early access! Looking back at the road map 95% seems to be finished.
On the other side there are a lot of optional features I regret won't be seeing the light of day on release... still they will eventually :D
By the way, don't forget to cast your vote for Rogue Empire in the Indie of the Year 2008 contest here at IndieDB! Being in the Top 100 is amazing, but lets push it further! Even if Rogue Empire is not your thing, I would encourage you to check out all the great games in here!
Anyway, this update bring Legendary Items and Item sets! I am so exited for these as they are very unique one of each other!
Lets see the details on what was updated!
Legendaries!
Added more than 30 legendary items/gear! You will find several little Easter Eggs on them!
At the moment you are guaranteed to get at least 1 legendary item from the first boss you kill. After this the loot chance depends on the amount of legendary items already acquired and the source of loot. From higher to lower chance this is:
- Bosses.
- Golden chests.
- Champions.
- Zoo rooms.
- Regular chests.
- Goo protected rooms.
- Regular Monsters
As a guideline legendary gear followed these 3 concepts:
- It should look cool & make you drool... awe at it!
- It should stay relevant!
- It should be as fun as possible!
As an example I will show the very first legendary: The Fiery Soul Cutter!
Look cool!It is said 1 image... gif is worth more than a 1000 words...
Staying Relevant!
One of my objectives with legendary gear is that it should be available with a little luck (and some fate) from the start of the game. So in order for a legendary item to stay relevant later on as you progress they scale in power with the wielder level!
As an example let’s look (in the new leaner item details UI 
) how this works for The Fiery Soul Cutter:
Be as fun as possible!
While powerful, some items can have interesting side effects. Take for example Mal 'Rok's Fury (you might have spotted some Easter egg there). You can throw down a meteor on your enemies, but from with in it a demon spawns that is hostile to everything, including you!
Here are some other great examples!
Then we have armor sets!
In contrast to their weapon counterpart, legendary armor pieces will not grant an intimidate cool ability, but will be part of a item set.
Each set is built to have its own advantages, you will get more bonuses the more pieces of the set you gather. The more powerful bonus will demand you to have the whole set.
Another important aspect of the hunt for legendary gear are Ancient Runes & Altars!
Now when you adventure you will be able to get Legendaries the regular way but totally random. At the same time you will be able to get Ancient Runes at a higher drop rate:
Then, when you collect 3 Ancient Runes you need to find an Ancient Altar of Power! These altars can spawn randomly in any dungeon and come in three flavors:
AncientAltarOfTheArcane(Color will change to blue):
AncientAltarOfTheWarrior:
AncientAltarOfTheNimble(Color will change to yellow):
As you might have guessed each type of altar will correspond to a set of Legendaries.
Once in the altar you can offer 3 runes in exchange for a legendary of the Altar's type:
Once you have the 3 runes and do the offer, you will be able to obtain 1 legendary out of 3 choices:
As a bonus at any altar you can sacrifice 1 legendary for 1 rune. This enables you to at least get something back if you had a legendary you didn't like drop the usual way.
Improved item Compare, pickup and detail display
Its time now for a great QoL feature!
Detailed pickup windowNow in addition to the regular pickup you can shift+p (can be changed) to pop up the detailed pickup window.
Here you can see all the items on a tile and also check out their details! You can make comparisons and pick up the ones you want or all of them!
Items highlightNow with just holding shift all the items within view will show up as a small tool tip. Letting you glance whats where and if it is worth picking!
Comparing items now has been improved with colors and standardized position of key features!
Other New Features!
- Updated trap and goo special rooms so that they will if possible generate a treasure chest instead of an item.
- Added 2 new special rooms that can be generated during dungeon creation.
- Enemies that not wear armor such as beasts or giant insects now have armor with 95% coverage (think of it as fur) and different armor point depending on the enemy.
- Added 1 new possible modifier for non legendary items.
- (Temporal) When getting a legendary there is a higher probability it fits the class you are playing.
- Weapons now have damage types: Slashing vs Piercing vs Bludgeoning. Enemies have different vulnerabilities or resistance to each type. For example skeletons are very resistant to Piercing damage but vulnerable to Bludgeoning damage. This will add new layer of strategy to weapon choice.
- Ammo of the same type is auto-equipped on ammo slot.
- Added 2 new environments:
- Fungal
- Cave
- Fungal
- Added Christmas flavor (can be disabled in settings).
- Added a new location to the main campaign.
- Elves have a new starting racial "Elven Heritage" : +10% perception and +10% intelligence.
- Otwoks have a new starting racial "Wooden Body" : +50% deduced damaged from piercing attacks.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed issue where on the first time you load a game the weight status would not show properly.
- Fixed several smaller issues while I was doing the content update.
- Cloud saves should now work cross OS.
- Fixed action bar slot bug where it sometimes would get locked.
- Fixed bug where rapid cuts would not apply hit bonuses. Consecutively nerfed it a little.
- Fixed bug where none physical dots (such as poison) would break prepared and very prepared bonuses.
- Fixed bug where offset shield would add to armor coverage && mitigation.
- Fixed bug related to none-compressed saves.
- Fixed bug related to none-compressed saves.
- Obstructions up from tiles in the field of view get now revealed. This avoids enemies not showing their health bar.
- Prepared blows now should always wear off after the next move of the entity doing it.
- Enemies killed by fire created by player should now properly give XP. This also include propagated fire.
- Summoned vines now properly surround the target and no longer count towards the summoner active summons limit.
- Improved off screen summoning times to not halt the game.
- Fixed bug that prevented the additional champions too spawn in the challenge dungeon.
- Fixed bug that made trolls have 30% less hp instead of 30% more hp as a racial.
- Fixed bug where very late game speed item modifiers would be insanely high.
- Fixed issue on inventory when using an item would select a random item category.
Balance
- Reduced a little the spawning rate of high spawning dungeons and fixed its tool-tip.
- Reduced the weight of magic rations to 0.1s
- First aid heal and cool down slightly nerfed.
- 2h weapons damage was made more consistent (less deviation) in general. A few weapons got their damage improved, specially the different types of sickle as it had an error in its formula.
- Ranged weapons damage was made more consistent (less deviation) in general. Late game ranged weapons have had their damage improved.
- First Aid heal reduced slightly. Cool down also increased. Now uses 5000 energy instead of 1000 (making it recommended to not do while in combat).
- Earth Elementals are now immune to poison.
- Some legendary weapons where nerfed. This does not affect current games.
- Buffed armor and armor coverage of all enemies.
- Shape shifted druids can no longer be disarmed.
- Item bonuses to speed, hp regen and mana regen now stack additively with each other.
- Shields have had their armor values greatly increased to buff them as an defensive option.
- Shoulder and leg gear has had their body coverage values increased for lower tiers.
- Legendary items with abilities now have their cooldowns tied to having the item equipped. This means cooldowns tick down when you have the legendary equipped and tick up when you don't have it equipped (capped).
- Halved health of non summoned vines and barricades. Added fire vulnerability.
- Deviation on the Initial health rolls for every class has been reduced. Not so initial attribute rolls (depends on race).
- Goo armor slightly reduced. Goo now returns a little damage back.
- Ancient book of learning now ticks with spell learning even if not successful.
- Warriors demoralizing shout uses no energy now.
- Hunter weapon affinity talents where improved around 30%.
Other
- Improved spell items space usage of its description in the UI.
- Updated the underlying unity (game engine) version.
Conclusion
All in all this was a huge update for the main game! Both in QoL & Interface as new features! I hope this brings even more adventures to explore Rogue Empire!
Cheers and happy dungeon crawling!
GW
