This update contains some significant changes to Endless Harvest brought about by feedback and observation.
It’s important to us that Endless Harvest is an exciting, tense experience. Some of the balance and structure in the first deployment make it possible to advance through what we consider an excessive amount of kills (1000+!) which results in a drawn out experience lacking some of the tension and excitement that we feel is vital. These changes have been made to try to keep the experience “punchy”, while still retaining that incentive and challenge of bettering your kill counts...without requiring a dozen or more hours for a single deep run. We hope that you find them to be good changes for the long term health of the mode, just as we do!
We are deploying this update to Coming in Hot so we can observe feedback before turning it live to the broader audience. Let us know what you think!
Introducing Endgame Conditions!
- Once you have progressed beyond 200 Kills, the shimmering space-time of the corrupted Farmstead takes on an endgame condition, called a “Reflection.” These are mutators that increase the difficulty of the quest in different ways from that point onward.
- Unbearable Reflection:
- Heroes +20% Stress
- Heroes -40% Stress Heal
- Monsters +2 SPD
- Reflection of Decay
- Heroes +20% Stress
- Heroes -40% Healing
- Monsters +2 SPD
- Sanguine Reflection
- Heroes +20% Stress
- Heroes -10% Crits
- Monsters +5% Crits
- Reflection Obscura
- Heroes +20% Stress
- Heroes -25% Stun Skill
- Monsters +5% Crits
These conditions stack on top of other Light conditions in the Farm and Space and Time.
Battle Limit Skill Refreshments in Endless Harvest:
Battle Limited skills with battle-long durations were balanced for the normal game structure. In Endless Harvest, this resulted in them being overpowered because a given combat lasts much longer than a normal 4-monster combat.
Now in Endless Harvest, Battle Limited skills don’t refresh until the end of a given wave *group* instead of refreshing after each wave. This helps with the balance and creates some tension around when you should pop and lock those Leper combos.
Shard Dust, however, now carries the additional benefit of refreshing battle limited skills on an individual heroes. This is a zany idea that we think can be compelling and give you some additional tactical options. Of course, don’t hit that dust too much, or it will leave the hero worn out.
We hope this change encourages more party comp explorations.
Darkest Dungeon
- SOME SAY THAT CRITSMAS WENT TOO FAR. (Critsmas was when we increased crit %s AND added the OnCrit Buffs for each hero.) They are basically right. We have tweaked a number of crit values (skills, trinkets) down a bit to account for those OnCrit Buffs that were a late addition. Crits are still net+ from pre-Color of Madness release.
- Total Scouting chance can now be seen as a tooltip on the Quest Provision screen.
- Shambler loot increased
- Champion Bone Courtiers should drop their special Chalice more often now
- Moved Laudanum glossary entry to base game (from CC)
- Fix to crash when killing siren with controlled hero with reflect damage.
- Swinetaur brain improvements: hooked PIG SPEAR back up (it went missing!) and improved logic of Trot Retreat
- Added buff/debuff+ icons to quest length duration buffs/debuffs.
- Fix to double riposte overriding corpse crit clear.
- Fix to centered icons swapping sides.
- Carrion eater ACC++ on their main attacks
- Fix to alpha curio bug in battle.
- Leper crit tuning
- reworded Help strings referencing Retreat Flag to say "Retreat Icon (which looks like an "X")"
- Fix for quest generation that was creating too many quests in individual dungeons
- Town buffs and debuffs now use the new Buff+ and Debuff+ icons.
- Add ability to modify combat speed in the rules file.
- Fix to removing mortality debuff camping skills and the has had heart attack flag cleared.
- Riposte now won't trigger attack additional effects.
- Game now saves every time you sell a trinket.
- MODDING: can disable new Virtue loss at high stress and return to legacy system through an entry in Rules.json ("virtue_can_lose_from_stress" : false)
Crimson Court
- Fixed a typo on CC Bleed Res Debuff 5 (ie. Champion monsters will now correctly apply bleed resistance debuffs to some of their attacks.)
Shieldbreaker
- We have been concerned to see feedback that some players believe the Shieldbreaker flashback battles are never-ending and therefore the SB isn’t given as much value as she deserves. We’ve implemented a few things to help communicate that there are only 7 flashbacks and they only need passed once. (Not once per recruited SB.)
- Added a tutorial for flashbacks.
- Flashbacks now have a 50% chance of happening on a given quest.
- The Shieldbreaker will now bark to warn the player of an impending nightmare before resting.
- Once the 7 flashbacks have been completed, all Shieldbreakers get a free restful sleep buff each time they camp!
The Color of Madness
- Reflections (see above)
- Change to Battle Limited skill refreshment while in Endless Harvest (see above)
- Wave spawned monsters now are placed more intelligently. (Front rank monsters will more reliably be placed in front; back rank monsters will more reliably be placed in back.)
- Revised length of post-Spire wavepools for new Endless Harvest rules. (Each wave group is shorter now.)
- Fix sorting of shard recruits.
- Remove raid buffs when dying and going to time and space.
- Remove plot quest required quirk heroes (shard recruits) from being calculated in hero level requirement for town events (vulf).
- Added refreshing of skills in curio rooms
- Abomination has an exception for his transformation
- Shard dust refreshes skills when used
- Remove roster limit quirk heroes ( shard recruits ) from being included in goals.
- Adding colour_grades to monster art files. In particular Galaxy and Spire.
- Geologic Study hall should no longer increase stacking of Trapezohedrons, Tapestries, and Antiquarian treasures
- Fix to torch settings persisting after death in time and space.
- Added Kill Count to Wave UI
- Lowered Thing roaming icon on quest select screen to reduce overlap on 4th position quest icons above it
- FIXED bug where once you've finished endless, game would reroll quests everytime you start it
- Remove map references from help menu in wave raid.
- Remove quest modifier buffs when you die and go to time and space.
- Thing debuffs don't apply if the attack misses
- Thing persists after retreat (you can't retreat to then roll a new encounter)
