MORE! MORE! MOOOORRREEEEEE!!!

EDIT: This went up a few hours later than I expected, but this is the benefit of releasing late at night! Hopefully a minimal amount of you were impacted. Sorry for the delay 

Heck YES, my pupper fam! We're BACK this week with another great Pupdate lined up for the game, and some nice reading for your eyes to enjoy as you download this MASSIVE patch of several megabytes! You thought Warzone was hitting your hard drive? I mean, yeah, they have us beat by a factor of several hundred still.

Anywho, this week, we have the second wave of companion changes, and some additional niceties as well! We’re not quite done with the QoL changes yet, but over the next few weeks you’ll see an additional wave of these changes here and there. Additionally, I do hope that all of my Siegfried fans out there can forgive me for swapping his default ability! I do believe it’s ultimately best for not only him, but the game as well. But instead of talking about what the game is now, let’s talk about what it can be, shall we?

Ephemeral Tale 1.8.4 Changelog

• Fixed a weird stray pixel on Gribbler’s sprite (truly, I apologize you had to suffer w/ it for two weeks)
• Balance adjustments made to the Cavern to be more beginner friendly
• When comparing various pieces of gear, the players HP and MP will now properly reflect the changes that will occur
• The rainfall in the Corrupted Castle is now more severe
• Fixed a passibility issue in the Sunken Summit
• Addressed an issue where the Corrupted Castle and Occluded Oasis Jelly rooms had little to no loot
• Added more noise to the grass in the Forgotten Forest
• Siegfried has been given a significant adjustment pass:
• Siegfried no longer knows Cleave by default (he hit his head, if you need some canon justification)
• Siegfried now knows Taunt by default, this skill ensures enemies target him first and foremost
• At Lv. 15, he will learn Rally, a buff lasting a few turns that returns HP when he deals damage
• At Lv. 25, he will learn Cleave, his classic wide-hitting AOE
• At Lv. 40, he will learn Bulwark, a buff lasting a few turns that significantly ups his maximum HP pool and damage reduction
• Enemies of the Corrupted Castle have received a balance sweep as well:
• Enemies of the Corrupted Castle are now weaker to their weakest elements (Fire, Shock) by an additional 20%, bringing the weakness to a total of 40%
• Candlenap has been given more Magic Defense, and lost some Defense
• El Caboney has been given more Attack and Defense, but had has Magic Attack and Magic Defense lowered as well
• Zombobber’s have lost significant amounts of Magic Defense, but gained significant amounts of Defense
• Upholstergeist is now a lil bit weaker in Attack and Defense
• Cacoffiny is now significantly weaker to damage, but does more damage as well
• Vampyr is now weaker in Defense, and stronger in Magic Defense
• Trunkster is relatively the same

Last week, we spoke about the challenges that content development can have. This is something that continues to constantly fluctuate, but over the past few weeks I do feel that I’ve found a goalpost for us to strive for with Ephemeral Tale, and I hope to get there together! That goalpost is ultimately, where I’m likely to call the game “ready for a full release.” Fret not, however! There are plenty of kinks left to work out still in Ephemeral Tale, including the (frankly abhorrently) poor tutorial experience. Right now, the game has a weird problem right out of the gate: it’s hard as nails. Then, you get out of the cave, you’ve started to grasp how everything pieces together, and then you’re thrown into a dungeon where you (once again) get the ever-living crap slapped out of you. That… isn’t the best feeling bit in the game, eh?

To compound this issue, there is a point where this stops occurring, but then the challenge of the game practically dissipates entirely! What gives? Shouldn’t the balance rework have caught this stuff? That’s a complicated question to answer, but the short of it is that it did catch it, the game was just never meant to handle that situation with very much grace. I’m a firm believer that if a game is good, players are smart enough to figure it out and really dig in and enjoy it, rough edges and all. This actually rings rather true to the Ephemeral Tale community as well, but would eventually need to be addressed. I’ve been talking with a few of you guys on our Discord and some trusted fellow developers about all this, and have plans in place to address this, sooner rather than later. One of the primary hopes of these balancing patch sweeps is to increase the amount of depth that enemies convey, while properly setting things up for future changes as well. With that said, I’ll be straightforward with you guys here: by the end of these balancing sweeps, the hope is for the tutorial experience to feel much better, and be better represented as well. Additionally, instead of difficulty spiking somewhat randomly and slowly declining over the course of the game, it should instead NOT spike, and slowly rise from a much more pleasant base. Game development is a weird, constantly changing thing, and I don’t want to promise you guys the moon but only deliver a pizza. So, TL;DR: tutorial experience changes coming, more QoL stuff, easier at the front-end, harder at the back-end. Got it? Cool.

Sneak preview of some upcoming stuff for you!

That’s all the energy I have for this week, but I hope you enjoy the new patch, and as always, have fun!

-- Ryan
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