CH-CH-CH-CHANGES!

Has it already been another month? Has time really slipped by that much? No worries-- change is constant, and everflowing through Ephemeral Tale. This week is no different! I figured we could maybe, iono, go over the changelog and then maybe talk about our dear friend Siegfried a bit? If you, y'know, wanna.

Ephemeral Tale 1.4.9 Changelog

• Fixed several instances of mapping errors in the Traveller’s Respite and connected areas
• Fixed a bug where falling into holes would show the players current Power
• Fixed an issue where I didn’t properly push some image assets because I’m a big dumb dumb poopoo butt
• More passability issues resolved (Thanks, Kak!)
• Arcane Bolt has been buffed slightly
• Opened up some of the pathways within The Great Palace to break up the annoying-ness of the maze elements
• Addressed an issue where the staircase to the final encounter could cause the player to be unable to run in other areas
• Fixed a bug in The Great Palace where the player could be teleported to an inaccessible spot due to a cutscene
• Fixed a bug where the visual filters option could cause a crash upon entering an encounter
• Addressed an issue where Swiftstep didn’t have an icon

This week is very clearly about The Great Palace, mostly. I'm hopeful that the Palace has become a much improved dungeon in light of all these changes (including prior ones), but I'll need to do a play-test to confirm the improved quality. You guys have given me some great feedback lately about skills, companions, and a whole slew of stuff recently! I'm working on parsing through that and figuring out how to address that feedback. Some of that ties into the upcoming companion reworks. We spoke recently about the changes coming to Merlin, the damage dealer companion. Today, we're gonna talk a bit about Siegfried, your friendly, neighborhood tank companion!

From the above clip, you might notice Siegfried will be getting a few new abilities with his rework! Let's go over his new toolkit:

1. Cleave
   His OG ability: Cleave tears through all viable enemies in a large swipe.
2. Rally
   A new ability: Rally is a buff that makes it so that Siegfried's attacks will return a portion of the damage he deals as HP! This is a sweet little self-heal ability that plays very nicely with Cleave and large groups of foes!
3. Taunt
   A new ability: Another new buff, Taunt is an ability that taunts all viable enemies into targeting specifically Siegfried for it's duration. While this will mean Siegfried taking more damage, this can be an advantage if your player character is rather squishy! Additionally, you can combo this with Rally + Cleave for some nasty plays where enemies are focusing on Siegfried but can never quite get the job done!

I'm still working on what his final ability will be, but suffice to say, Siegfried will play significantly differently once these changes roll out. I'm looking to potentially move Cleave from being his default ability, to Taunt being his default ability when these changes go live. As you can tell, this is an early peek into some of what I've been working on behind-the-scenes for you guys; it's nowhere near ready, but it's fun to share and get feedback from you about what you like about it!

This is a shorter Pupdate this week, but that's because I've been so busy improving the game-- I can't wait to talk to you guys next week! It'll be fun.

Have fun and stay safe,

-- Ryan