HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Hello, once more! Let me start this Pupdate by telling you from the bottom of my heart, I wish you the happiest of holidays as we enter the season! I hope that despite the global health crisis that surrounds us at the moment, you find yourself surrounded by an air of positivity, love and hope as we enter these final days of the year. This week, I've got one heck of a wall-of-text for you guys, so feel free to strap in. This is a long one.

With that out of the way, let's hop into today's patch: Major Update #6. Summaries will be provided after the patch notes, but if you want the full, juicy deets? Dig in.

Ephemeral Tale 1.35.14 Changelog

• When using a controller, the mouse cursor will now automatically hide/show based on inputs
• As an example, if the game gets a controller input sent to it, the mouse cursor will automatically hide. Once the game receives a keyboard or mouse input, the cursor will automatically show again.
• You can now dismiss undesired party members at the camp fires available throughout the game
• During the introduction of the game, you can now select from one of sixteen different sprites to represent yourself
• There are now 33 Steam Achievements for Ephemeral Tale
• Added the Trouble Twins weapon to the game
• The Trouble Twins can be acquired from Lizords in the Royal Rosegardens
• Added an alternative acquisition method for the Cauldron of Permutation for Sabrina’s quest, as well as made the acquisition methods more evident through a text adjustment
• Added an additional prompt text after talking to the Keeper to encourage players to use their skill gems at the campfire
• Added proper administrative bypasses for the two mini-bosses inside of the Royal Rosegardens
• M1N1-B0T now has a base HP of 275 (was 250), and a base DEF of 45 (was 40)
• Afflicted Beast now has a base HP of 4500 (was 4000), and a base DEF of 40 (was 35)
• Anetill now has a base HP of 4250 (was 3000)
• Darune now has a base HP of 3500 (was 3000)
• Dustini now has a base ATK of 26 (was 18)
• Fateshifter, Bound and Willbearer, the Imprisoned are now immune to Splinters and Ignite
• Fateshifter, Bound now has a base HP of 3750 (was 3200), a base DEF of 50 (was 35), and a base MDEF of 50 (was 35)
• Fateshifter, Bound will now activate Dark Crusade at set intervals, rather than randomly when at a certain HP threshold
• Fateshifter, Bound’s Cursed Wound affliction has been increased to 5% damage per turn (was 3%)
• Fateshifter, Bound’s Hope mechanic has been re-tuned
• Stage 1 (Fading Hope) will now reduce your Max HP by 10% (was 7%), give 5% MP “poison,” and reduce your damage output by 10%
• Stage 2 (Dwindling Hope) will now reduce your Max HP by 20% (was 14%), give 10% MP “poison,” and reduce your damage output by 20%
• Stage 3 (Lost Hope) will now reduce your Max HP by 30% (was 21%), give 15% MP “poison,” and reduce your damage output by 30%
• Stage 4 (Veil of Darkness) will now reduce your Max HP by 50% (Was 29%), give 15% MP “poison,” and reduce your damage output by 50%
• Willbearer, the Imprisoned now has a base HP of 4500 (was 3200), a base DEF of 50 (was 40), and a base MDEF of 50 (was 40)
• Whenever the Afflicted Beast attunes to Fire damage, it will now Ignite the party
• Added additional dialogue for the companions when you recruit them
• Updated battle backgrounds for the Sunken Summit
• Other miscellaneous script adjustments/changes
• Lowered the intensity of the screen flash when entering a fight, trading in Power for skill gems at the Keeper, or using a Scroll of Power
• Added a gate opening sound effect to the two gates within the Bayou Bog
• Fixed an issue where Jesse’s quest wouldn’t properly be triggered by entering the Sunken Summit
• Fixed an issue where the Great Palace could cause the entire screen to zoom permanently
• Fixed an issue where players couldn’t interact with Tillie once obtaining her Blessing
• Fixed an issue where a secret chest could spawn without meeting the prerequisites in the Great Palace
• Fixed an issue with a cutscene in the Great Palace
• Fixed an issue where “godrays” could disappear after combat in certain scenarios
• Fixed an issue where the Spark skill wouldn’t have action camera motions
• Fixed an issue where Trunksters wouldn’t apply Splinters when in the Graveyard Grove
• Fixed an issue with some corrupted graphics for tiles in the Corrupted Castle
• Fixed an issue where mini-boss music could replace normal combat music in the Forgotten Forest
• Fixed numerous cases of improper ellipsis use
• Fixed an issue where Jackson could become vaguely cursed and not show his name/combat icon
• Fixed an issue where break messages for gear would appear several times
• Updated various animations throughout the Corrupted Castle to be pixel compliant

To talk about this patch in a summarized form, we're going to break this down into a couple of categories: New stuff, Balance changes, and quality of life changes.

New Stuff

Ephemeral Tale now has character customization, where players can choose from one of sixteen sprites to represent them throughout their journey. For new players, this will occur when starting a new game. Where as for existing players, this is something that will be triggered once reaching New Game+. Ultimately, this feature is meant to bring more inclusivity into Ephemeral Tale so that regardless of race or gender, players can feel more of a connection with the character they've built along the way.

Additionally, the game now has 33 Steam achievements. During the 360 era, I was a real achievement hunter and would play games for hours trying to get things done in particular ways. I generally prefer achievements that are things that can happen naturally, but can also help teach the player an intended way of playing or give a different perspective to the game at hand. I've tried to craft the achievements for Ephemeral Tale in such a way that you guys will actively enjoy hunting them down. These can range in terms of difficulty, but I've had fun collecting them myself during testing (not that it's the best metric, but hey!). For players on other platforms, I'm looking into seeing if there are ways to bring that hunt to you as well.

And finally, we have a new weapon in the game: the Trouble Twins. It's a cool piece of gear that drops from Lizords in the Royal Rosegardens, and I hope you guys have as much fun with it as I've had playing with it over the past few days!

Balance Changes

Balance changes make up a fairly significant portion of this major update-- far more than I ever anticipated them to! The vast majority of balance changes are based on my most recent playthrough of the game, while some are based on your feedback. In general, the bosses in the back half of the game felt a bit underwhelming and have been buffed to feel more appropriate, given the relative difficulty of the enemies of those zones.

Additionally, a few mechanics weren't working out well in actual gameplay, so have been expanded to give them a bit more "oomph," like the final boss.

Quality of Life

To start, we've got a ton of bug fixes that help improve the quality of player life while playing! These things range from small things (like dialogue not being available for Tillie in the Mute Mountains after a certain point), to much larger issues (like Jesse's quest being unobtainable for some players entirely).

Following that, we have some changes to dialogue throughout the game. Without going crazy into detail, new dialogue has been added throughout the game, as well as existing dialogue being refined. To build on this point, we can take Sabrina's quest as an example-- when doing my recent playthrough, I couldn't for the life of me remember where her cauldron was! I actually had to open the editor and poke around to figure out what the intended way of getting it was! That's [ib]clearly not acceptable, so her dialogue got expanded on to clearly indicate how you're supposed to go about obtaining the cauldron.

On top of that, I actually added more ways of completing various quests like the one above; if a quest felt too obtuse, I generally took the time to add a secondary method of completion throughout this patch. This should also make any potential speedruns a bit more predictable, as players will be able to rely on having guaranteed ways of tackling quests rather than relying strictly on the blessing of RNGesus.

While playing, I also found a couple of spots where I felt that I could do better by you guys with regards to how I was presenting multiple-choice options, so in those instances I expanded on them through either dialogue or other mechanics to improve them a bit. One example of this would be the robots deep inside of the Royal Rosegardens; previously, your choice didn't matter-- you'd fail the authentification check and be forced into a mini-boss fight. Now, each of the two mini-bosses has one working option for bypassing the authentification. This will hopefully lead to fun little "oh, nice!" moments for players in the future.

One of the things that drives me crazy about playing games is when I change input types, but still have indicators from a previous input type. So now, whenever you move from mouse/keyboard to gamepad or vice versa, the mouse cursor will appear/disappear as appropriate.

Finally, the most major quality of life change added in this update is the ability to dismiss party members at the campfire. This has been a long-requested feature that I'm glad to finally be able to bring to you guys, and I hope it's helpful!

ONE DOOR CLOSES...

Whew, that's a lengthy one! This is one of the more all-encompassing patches I've ever released for the game, and I hope it lives up to your expectations! As 2020 winds down, I'll be spending it with family, resting up, and planning the next update for Ephemeral Tale. This patch will be the last one of the year, but next year I'll certainly be back fixing some bugs that you guys have found, and we'll be discussing the transition from Early Access to a full release!

From mine to yours, have the happiest of holidays, and thank you so much for making this year so special! Your gameplay videos, comments, emails, and so, so much more have meant the world to me this year. You guys are great, and I love you! Until next year, stay safe and have fun!

-- Ryan
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf