Indie Archaelund: RPG that combines 1st-person exploration with 3rd-person TB combat - now available on Early Access

[Whisper]

One of best early access games i've saw. Totally love this one.

 

[Serus]

So it is good? Not because it has mountains of poorly written lore and dialogues, not because of animal sex and other progressive stuff but because of actual gameplay? Shame it's not finished yet, even if already fun to play. Will wait.

 

[fantadomat]

so is it gud?

Humans can't be barbarians, game is unplayable

 

[Infinitron]

0:00 - Archaelund
2:50 - Castaways
5:13 - The Peninsula
8:21 - Port Galeb
11:33 - Lurking Depths
14:12 - Chorus of the Damned
15:43 - Devil's Horn
17:46 - Combat 1: Sudden Encounter
19:40 - Combat 2: Bandits and Thieves
20:55 - Combat 3: Clash of Iron
22:40 - Combat 4: Showdown

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I've enjoyed the game so far, put in about 7 hours and then complained on the forums about loading times and haven't played since. Will play again sometime soon.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[agris]

I've spent a lot of time with Archaelund recently, it's a fantastic game even in this early state. I shared some detailed feedback with DavidBVal over on the steam forums, and decided to copy it here so that those on the fence can learn more about it

I think one of the biggest surprises to me was the quality of environmental exploration in the overworld map. It reminds me somewhat of Gothic, even though there is no jumping or mantling. The considered way in which hidden paths and secret little areas are secluded away rewards the attentive player. I also think many fans of blobbers would enjoy this, as the dungeon delving is quite good and plays like a gridless blobber (except for combat, which is TB in a pseudo-iso perspective)

I think it's the easiest to recommend to BaK and RoA fans.

Spoiler

First off, I really enjoy this game. The only other game that I've played with this mix of first person exploration and isometric-ish combat is Betrayal at Krondor, although I've had my eye on the RoA series for a long time.

Things that I enjoyed

1. Environmental exploration. I really appreciate how you have treasure and items nestled into nooks and crannies of the world, often somewhat hidden behind a group of baddies. Or how you reward players for paying attention to the landscape around them with items or quests. Despite the lack of jumping and grappling, the world exploration feels somewhat like the underappreciated aRPGs Gothic 1/2/CoM.
2. World size and density. In the overworld map, combats are appropriately spaced out, don't feel too crowded, and the world feels larger for it. Even though we are only in one tile of a much larger map, this land feels grander in size in part due to how you've spaced things out. I hope this continues.
3. Leveling rate. I like that leveling up feels impactful, and that it doesn't happen too often. There is an aspect of delayed gratification here, but leveling is indeed gratifying because it doesn't happen often and when it does, your characters frequently feel as if they have jumped in power. Leveling is meaningful, as it should be.
4. Itemization. Aside from leveling, the largest changes in power are due to new items. I really enjoy the way itemization works in Archaelund, it reminds me somewhat of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, where character power and combat tactics are significantly impacted by the items you find. I'm happy to see there's sparse use of small percentile bonuses (2%, 5%, etc) outside of hit chance, and that upgrades are significant.
5. Combat. I like how combat is tuned right now, and that there isn't overuse of active abilities and that it isn't visually cluttered with SFX for mundane actions like basic attacks.
6. Character mechanics. Archaelund has fairly detailed mechanics for a cRPG, and I think you do an excellent job in showing and describing the importance of mechanics during character generation. This is through your tooltips and written descriptions, as well as seeing how changes manifest on the character sheet.
7. Writing & dialogue. While there is some feel of ESL, I appreciate that the dialogues are almost all direct and to the point, with appropriate characterization. Nothing felt overwrought or artificial in the dialogue or interactions, the way it often does with larger cRPG studios.

Things that I didn't like

1. Invisible mechanics. I understand that you want to reduce visual complexity and have elected to omit slash/pierce/blunt damage resistance from the character sheet and enemies' inspection sheets, but I think this is a mistake. It is impacting some enemies significantly (like skeletons), and I think it's important to show it to the player. Plus, enemies' information panel is already quite detailed, I don't think the inclusion of 3 additional resistances will make the difference between an overwhelmed player or not.
2. Lack of world interactions w/ skills outside of tutorial area. The tutorial area did an OK job showcasing how non-combat and non-exploration skills can impact the world. The athletics check to lower the mast onto the rock to retrieve the package, the crafting check when you encounter driftwood and nails. Unfortunately outside of the tutorial area, I can't think of any other interactions like that. They are wonderful little ways to make the world feel alive, your skill choices important, and I hope we'll see more of them outside of the tutorial.
3. Resistances on % scale. For the current range of elemental damage we can receive, 1 - 10 points or about, having resistances on a 1-100% scale feels like overkill. 5% resistance does nothing, even 40% fire resist does nothing to 2 points of fire damage.

Regarding resistances, I feel like you're shoehorning in two different mechanisms into the 0-100% system: resisting elemental damage, and resisting spells that may not have an elemental damage component, and it doesn't work well. There should be elemental damage thresholds, i.e. you're protected from 1 pt of cold damage, or 3 points of fire damage, and that is distinct from your ability to resist cold or fire-based spells. I.e. take the damage mitigation system you developed for armor, apply it to elemental damage as well, and list elemental damage thresholds on armor as well. These elemental damage thresholds are now separate from spell resistances, where the 0-100% (200%?) system *does* make sense.

Suggestions

1. During character creation, indicate somewhere that movement costs 2 or 3 AP
2. During character creation, indicate that 1 meter translates to 1 tile (I think this is right)
3. During character creation, if changing a trait or race or profession changes some part of the character info panel (AP, HP, WP, weapon skills, initiative, spell power, etc), visually highlight the values that changed due to the selection. Either cast a glow around them briefly, make them larger and bolder for 1 sec, something to catch the player's attention and draw clear lines between what they've changed and how it impacts the character they're building. This is onboarding for new players and important, you want the least amount of friction possible here. You've got great mechanics, good descriptions, I think this is the last mile towards removing barriers towards players understanding the impact of their choices on the character they're building.
4. Let us save the custom characters we create, so we have a roster more than 4 characters we can select from when we start a new game
5. Tutorial. Need to tell players advantage of initiating combat vs having enemies initiate it
6. Need a hotkey for delay turn
7. Need weapon sets (with AP penalty for changing) and a hotkey to change sets
8. In the character screen, we should be able to select party members using 1-6 on keyboard/numpad
9. In the character screen, we should be able to drag items directly from a character wearing them to another character (at least outside of combat). As it is currently, we need to move to inventory, then drag to character.
10. Character screen. Resistances should show what items are contributing to a resistance, much like other stats do. For example: Mind = 14 = WIL/2 + Lesser Ring of Focus (+12)
11. Selling items, we need a hotkey to hold down that will instantly sell it when we click on it (SHIFT).
12. Stacks of items. We should have a hotkey that when you click on a stack of items, it instantly splits 1 off (suggest CTRL).
13. Selling stacks of items. We should have a hotkey that when you click on a stack of items, it instantly sells 1 (CTRL) or all (Shift).
14. Combat. Need option to stop camera snapping to and following enemies.
15. Combat. Need combat animation speed options to speed things up.
16. Combat. Need visual indicator of when moving will draw an AOO. I've played through the game twice and still don't know when I can move past an enemy without drawing an AOO (when they're pinned b/c of another attacker?)
17. Combat. Need to distinguish movement costing MP from AP. Right now if you have 10+3 AP + MP, at the start of your turn if you move such that it costs 5 points it will say 5 AP. It should say 3M+2A or something like that.
18. Combat. Need spell range indicators like we have for bows.
19. Talents. Locksmith talent should let the NPC with the talent have the option to pick lock without picks, taking the skill penalty. Right now if you want to conserve picks and not use them on an easy lock, and you have this talent, you have to drop all your picks.
20. Armor Handling. Bulk is not clearer imo, and is actually somewhat confusing.
21. Armor Handling. AH of 4 is a dead zone for armors apparently, and the fact that we can't buy any AH 3 armors means the rusty mail is the best armor possible for someone with AH 3. This is a weird situation for those characters.
22. Combat action bar. We need to be able to customize each party member's combat action bar, and invoke actions using hotkeys 1 - 0
23. Combat action bar. Icons on bar should show AP and/or WP cost, with the color differentiating between AP & WP
24. Containers that have already been looted entirely by the player should either not be highlighted, or have the color of the highlight change.
25. We need a "Take All" hotkey
26. Saving/quicksaving the game should print a message to the log, so we can clearly see when we've last saved (yes I'm going senile)
27. You should disable quicksaving when the player is taking damage (like when drowning, or when poisoned). This is to avoid the player accidentally saving in a scenario they will die from.
28. Quickload should work in combat
29. Let us configure the number of autosaves
30. Saved games should be under a party profile, to make it easier to manage saves when playing multiple parties.
31. Let us add notes to maps, and give us various colored pins or icons for different types of notes (quest/creature/item/POI/note), and let us filter notes based on color/icon.

Finally, a plea: give different classes different leveling curves! It was a great mechanic in AD&D, and I think it fits well with the crunchy rules you have in Archaelund. INT impacting XP is a smart move, but I think you should double down on differences in character leveling through the implementation of class-specific curves.

AwesomeButton ERYFKRAD Parsimonious cook Abu Antar luj1 Darth Roxor

 

[Abu Antar]

It has been happily sitting in my Steam library since EA started!

 

[Cnaiur]

Bought, because of you esteemed gentlemen.

 

[luj1]

I've spent a lot of time with Archaelund recently, it's a fantastic game even in this early state. I shared some detailed feedback with DavidBVal over on the steam forums, and decided to copy it here so that those on the fence can learn more about it

I think one of the biggest surprises to me was the quality of environmental exploration in the overworld map. It reminds me somewhat of Gothic, even though there is no jumping or mantling. The considered way in which hidden paths and secret little areas are secluded away rewards the attentive player. I also think many fans of blobbers would enjoy this, as the dungeon delving is quite good and plays like a gridless blobber (except for combat, which is TB in a pseudo-iso perspective)

I think it's the easiest to recommend to BaK and RoA fans.

Spoiler

First off, I really enjoy this game. The only other game that I've played with this mix of first person exploration and isometric-ish combat is Betrayal at Krondor, although I've had my eye on the RoA series for a long time.

Things that I enjoyed

1. Environmental exploration. I really appreciate how you have treasure and items nestled into nooks and crannies of the world, often somewhat hidden behind a group of baddies. Or how you reward players for paying attention to the landscape around them with items or quests. Despite the lack of jumping and grappling, the world exploration feels somewhat like the underappreciated aRPGs Gothic 1/2/CoM.
2. World size and density. In the overworld map, combats are appropriately spaced out, don't feel too crowded, and the world feels larger for it. Even though we are only in one tile of a much larger map, this land feels grander in size in part due to how you've spaced things out. I hope this continues.
3. Leveling rate. I like that leveling up feels impactful, and that it doesn't happen too often. There is an aspect of delayed gratification here, but leveling is indeed gratifying because it doesn't happen often and when it does, your characters frequently feel as if they have jumped in power. Leveling is meaningful, as it should be.
4. Itemization. Aside from leveling, the largest changes in power are due to new items. I really enjoy the way itemization works in Archaelund, it reminds me somewhat of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, where character power and combat tactics are significantly impacted by the items you find. I'm happy to see there's sparse use of small percentile bonuses (2%, 5%, etc) outside of hit chance, and that upgrades are significant.
5. Combat. I like how combat is tuned right now, and that there isn't overuse of active abilities and that it isn't visually cluttered with SFX for mundane actions like basic attacks.
6. Character mechanics. Archaelund has fairly detailed mechanics for a cRPG, and I think you do an excellent job in showing and describing the importance of mechanics during character generation. This is through your tooltips and written descriptions, as well as seeing how changes manifest on the character sheet.
7. Writing & dialogue. While there is some feel of ESL, I appreciate that the dialogues are almost all direct and to the point, with appropriate characterization. Nothing felt overwrought or artificial in the dialogue or interactions, the way it often does with larger cRPG studios.

Things that I didn't like

1. Invisible mechanics. I understand that you want to reduce visual complexity and have elected to omit slash/pierce/blunt damage resistance from the character sheet and enemies' inspection sheets, but I think this is a mistake. It is impacting some enemies significantly (like skeletons), and I think it's important to show it to the player. Plus, enemies' information panel is already quite detailed, I don't think the inclusion of 3 additional resistances will make the difference between an overwhelmed player or not.
2. Lack of world interactions w/ skills outside of tutorial area. The tutorial area did an OK job showcasing how non-combat and non-exploration skills can impact the world. The athletics check to lower the mast onto the rock to retrieve the package, the crafting check when you encounter driftwood and nails. Unfortunately outside of the tutorial area, I can't think of any other interactions like that. They are wonderful little ways to make the world feel alive, your skill choices important, and I hope we'll see more of them outside of the tutorial.
3. Resistances on % scale. For the current range of elemental damage we can receive, 1 - 10 points or about, having resistances on a 1-100% scale feels like overkill. 5% resistance does nothing, even 40% fire resist does nothing to 2 points of fire damage.

Regarding resistances, I feel like you're shoehorning in two different mechanisms into the 0-100% system: resisting elemental damage, and resisting spells that may not have an elemental damage component, and it doesn't work well. There should be elemental damage thresholds, i.e. you're protected from 1 pt of cold damage, or 3 points of fire damage, and that is distinct from your ability to resist cold or fire-based spells. I.e. take the damage mitigation system you developed for armor, apply it to elemental damage as well, and list elemental damage thresholds on armor as well. These elemental damage thresholds are now separate from spell resistances, where the 0-100% (200%?) system *does* make sense.

Suggestions

1. During character creation, indicate somewhere that movement costs 2 or 3 AP
2. During character creation, indicate that 1 meter translates to 1 tile (I think this is right)
3. During character creation, if changing a trait or race or profession changes some part of the character info panel (AP, HP, WP, weapon skills, initiative, spell power, etc), visually highlight the values that changed due to the selection. Either cast a glow around them briefly, make them larger and bolder for 1 sec, something to catch the player's attention and draw clear lines between what they've changed and how it impacts the character they're building. This is onboarding for new players and important, you want the least amount of friction possible here. You've got great mechanics, good descriptions, I think this is the last mile towards removing barriers towards players understanding the impact of their choices on the character they're building.
4. Let us save the custom characters we create, so we have a roster more than 4 characters we can select from when we start a new game
5. Tutorial. Need to tell players advantage of initiating combat vs having enemies initiate it
6. Need a hotkey for delay turn
7. Need weapon sets (with AP penalty for changing) and a hotkey to change sets
8. In the character screen, we should be able to select party members using 1-6 on keyboard/numpad
9. In the character screen, we should be able to drag items directly from a character wearing them to another character (at least outside of combat). As it is currently, we need to move to inventory, then drag to character.
10. Character screen. Resistances should show what items are contributing to a resistance, much like other stats do. For example: Mind = 14 = WIL/2 + Lesser Ring of Focus (+12)
11. Selling items, we need a hotkey to hold down that will instantly sell it when we click on it (SHIFT).
12. Stacks of items. We should have a hotkey that when you click on a stack of items, it instantly splits 1 off (suggest CTRL).
13. Selling stacks of items. We should have a hotkey that when you click on a stack of items, it instantly sells 1 (CTRL) or all (Shift).
14. Combat. Need option to stop camera snapping to and following enemies.
15. Combat. Need combat animation speed options to speed things up.
16. Combat. Need visual indicator of when moving will draw an AOO. I've played through the game twice and still don't know when I can move past an enemy without drawing an AOO (when they're pinned b/c of another attacker?)
17. Combat. Need to distinguish movement costing MP from AP. Right now if you have 10+3 AP + MP, at the start of your turn if you move such that it costs 5 points it will say 5 AP. It should say 3M+2A or something like that.
18. Combat. Need spell range indicators like we have for bows.
19. Talents. Locksmith talent should let the NPC with the talent have the option to pick lock without picks, taking the skill penalty. Right now if you want to conserve picks and not use them on an easy lock, and you have this talent, you have to drop all your picks.
20. Armor Handling. Bulk is not clearer imo, and is actually somewhat confusing.
21. Armor Handling. AH of 4 is a dead zone for armors apparently, and the fact that we can't buy any AH 3 armors means the rusty mail is the best armor possible for someone with AH 3. This is a weird situation for those characters.
22. Combat action bar. We need to be able to customize each party member's combat action bar, and invoke actions using hotkeys 1 - 0
23. Combat action bar. Icons on bar should show AP and/or WP cost, with the color differentiating between AP & WP
24. Containers that have already been looted entirely by the player should either not be highlighted, or have the color of the highlight change.
25. We need a "Take All" hotkey
26. Saving/quicksaving the game should print a message to the log, so we can clearly see when we've last saved (yes I'm going senile)
27. You should disable quicksaving when the player is taking damage (like when drowning, or when poisoned). This is to avoid the player accidentally saving in a scenario they will die from.
28. Quickload should work in combat
29. Let us configure the number of autosaves
30. Saved games should be under a party profile, to make it easier to manage saves when playing multiple parties.
31. Let us add notes to maps, and give us various colored pins or icons for different types of notes (quest/creature/item/POI/note), and let us filter notes based on color/icon.

Finally, a plea: give different classes different leveling curves! It was a great mechanic in AD&D, and I think it fits well with the crunchy rules you have in Archaelund. INT impacting XP is a smart move, but I think you should double down on differences in character leveling through the implementation of class-specific curves.

AwesomeButton ERYFKRAD Parsimonious cook Abu Antar luj1 Darth Roxor

Thank you for the information, I value your opinion

This seems far better than any of last year's "hits"

 

[santino27]

Bought. Codex better not have let me down here or... well... I guess I'll be out $20 with little to show for it.

 

[ProphetSword]

I haven't played it in a couple of weeks, but I remember really being drawn into it. It reminded me so much of an updated Gold-Box game mixed with a M&M VI-style blobber that I almost couldn't believe how well it married those two game styles. I'm anxiously awaiting the game to be in a more completed state so that I can enjoy it even more.

 

[agris]

I haven't played it in a couple of weeks, but I remember really being drawn into it. It reminded me so much of an updated Gold-Box game mixed with a M&M VI-style blobber that I almost couldn't believe how well it married those two game styles. I'm anxiously awaiting the game to be in a more completed state so that I can enjoy it even more.

How far into it did you get? I’ve played through all the EA content 2x now and the idea of making a new party still gets me excited.

There’s a new companion on the beta branch right now fyi, a spell caster

 

[Tyranicon]

I've gotten to the point where I think I've completed most of the EA content besides exploring caves and stuff.

Just waiting on more content at this point.

 

[agris]

I've gotten to the point where I think I've completed most of the EA content besides exploring caves and stuff.

Just waiting on more content at this point.

how’d your party do against the rebel bandit leader?

 

[Tyranicon]

I've gotten to the point where I think I've completed most of the EA content besides exploring caves and stuff.

Just waiting on more content at this point.

how’d your party do against the rebel bandit leader?

Is that the one where the bandits were having a civil war amongst themselves? I don't remember, I don't think I got involved. All I remember was I got stopped by some bandits demanding a toll, who explained that they were having a kerfuffle and to keep an eye out for the rebels.

Who just happened to be around the hill from them. lol.

I also can't figure out if my game is bugged or I'm just blind, because I spent like two hours looking for the last of the three students that went missing.

 

[agris]

I've gotten to the point where I think I've completed most of the EA content besides exploring caves and stuff.

Just waiting on more content at this point.

how’d your party do against the rebel bandit leader?

Is that the one where the bandits were having a civil war amongst themselves? I don't remember, I don't think I got involved. All I remember was I got stopped by some bandits demanding a toll, who explained that they were having a kerfuffle and to keep an eye out for the rebels.

Who just happened to be around the hill from them. lol.

I also can't figure out if my game is bugged or I'm just blind, because I spent like two hours looking for the last of the three students that went missing.

Talk to the camp leader and get the quest to kill the rival bandit leader. It’s a fun, great big fight that you can influence with your civil skills if you have any.

The third student is a pile of bones in the mirtek cave you’re avoiding.

Did you clear dead valley, the crypt, or make it to the ruins at the top of the devil’s horn?

 

[Tyranicon]

Did you clear dead valley, the crypt, or make it to the ruins at the top of the devil’s horn?

The crypt is the only one I remember clearly. Sounds like I've got more content to explore, but I think I'll still just wait until more content is out.

I do remember combat kicking my ass and having to cheese my way out of things a few times.

 

[agris]

Did you clear dead valley, the crypt, or make it to the ruins at the top of the devil’s horn?

The crypt is the only one I remember clearly. Sounds like I've got more content to explore, but I think I'll still just wait until more content is out.

I do remember combat kicking my ass and having to cheese my way out of things a few times.

i figured, that was part of why I asked. While the game has a long way to go, there's actually a meaty chunk of ~15 hrs of gameplay if you play pretty quickly.

i'm slow af and my first playthrough took like 40 hrs (including a few restarts), second took closer to 13.

 

[Abu Antar]

Archaelund
Announcement
Update 0.7.6.395

Content

-Quest The Academy is now completable. The initial dialogue has been altered, so the quest has been reset. To initiate it, walk the road just out of Port Galeb and meet Issam.
-Quest Justice from Above is now completable. The initial dialogue has been altered, so the quest has been reset. To initiate it, talk to the innkeeper in Port Galeb.


Features & Improvements

-Items can now be equipped directly from the Party Inventory, not just from the backpack.
-Backpack items can now be assigned to combat hotkeys.
-Party inventory slots doubled (from 32 to 64).
-Added an option to accelerate enemy animation speed during combat (in Settings>Gameplay).
-Character Window now displays information about the character's race when hovered.


Gameplay & Balance

-Party encumbrance: when Party Inventory exceeds the combined carry capacity of the party, exploration movement will be slowed down or even halted. Party encumbrance only has effect on exploration movement, and grants no character penalties.
-The weight from some items has been revised.


Bugfixes

-You can no longer talk to dead companions.
-The combat panel(and hotbuttons) was sometimes not correctly refreshed when AP were spent or gained. Fixed.
-Dragging to equip items during combat now costs the required AP.
-Fixed several terrain and geometry issues in the Peninsula.
-Fixed an issue related to the paralysis effects of Blizzard Shards spell.
-The first character acting in battle was ignoring status effects during the first round. Fixed.
-Fixed a glitch that could display an erroneous character level and not allow the player to level up.
-In some cases, taking quest items from a container would not advance the journal as intended. Solved.
-Systems in turkish language were still showing some visual glitches, like when displaying items with a skill bonus. Fixed.
-Minor UI fixes.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Better than BG3 already. Patiently waiting for v1.0 to be enchanted.

 

[Serus]

How is the game translating the terrain from 1st person to combat view? This is one of the mory tricky thing to do - unless you ignore terrain features in 1st person and generate random maps for combat bases only on terrain type.

Full release planned when? I hope it isn't made by Cleve's cousin. I don't want to wait until I hit 60 to play it.

 

[Abu Antar]

How is the game translating the terrain from 1st person to combat view? This is one of the mory tricky thing to do - unless you ignore terrain features in 1st person and generate random maps for combat bases only on terrain type.

Full release planned when? I hope it isn't made by Cleve's cousin. I don't want to wait until I hit 60 to play it.

My guesstimate for a stable release is 2028.

 

[Tyranicon]

How is the game translating the terrain from 1st person to combat view? This is one of the mory tricky thing to do - unless you ignore terrain features in 1st person and generate random maps for combat bases only on terrain type.

The answer's pretty simple, it's just a perspective change: first-person->isometric.

Any terrain elements (rocks, water, hills) that you find in FP is still reflected in combat. The only issue is sometimes you think a certain grid can be walkable in FP, but then you are surprised to find it's not.

Great fun when you have your party bunched up near it and it screws up your "deployment."

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1082970/view/4152954628627440142

Update 0.7.8: fine tuning the game systems.
Skill and resistance systems were revised, and crafting is now implemented.
Hi everyone! with some relevant mechanics changes in this update, I felt like writing a small post explaining them rather than just the usual log.

Gameplay & Balance

-
Alchemy
and
Crafting
skills implemented. You can now combine new items from ingredients while resting at camp. More "recipes" will be added in future versions. For some of the new ingredients required in recipes, check Myrelle the trader in Port Galeb.
-
New skill mechanics.
(See below)
-
New Resistances
system. (See below)
-Enemy attacks with
special effects
can now be resisted. For instance, spider poison has a chance to be resisted by Vitality, while ghost paralysis can be resisted by Spirit. check the enemy attack info for details (if your Mythology skill is high enough).
-
Default difficulty
when starting a new game is now "New School".
-
Meditation skill
revamped. Now it gives a chance to recover some of the spent willpower after battle.
-Spell
"Regrowth"
(Animism rank II) is now implemented.
-Spell
"Outrage"
(Mentalism rank I) is now implemented.
-Spell
"Minor Miracle"
(Piety rank II) is now implemented.
-"Psalm of Renewal" now heals 2d6+SP instead of 1d6+SP.
-Experience rewards gained from quests or skill checks are no longer dependant on the party size (combat XP is still divided among party members).
-Accuracy per-level progression adjusted. Basic careers will now grant +1 to +3 weapon accuracy per level and, rarely, +4 (previously the range was 1-5). This will bring little change in the first few levels.
-Base accuracy formula adjusted slightly. The result shouldn't differ much from previous formulas, but it prevents some very high values at level 1.


Bugfixes

-First aid items now provide different healing bonuses as stated in their description.
-Fixed performance drop in Nessera Caves.
-Spending APs for Attack Focus will now work correctly with Charge and other special attacks.
-Solved several spawn issues in the Peninsula.
-Spell durations in combat now also take into account the initiative value at the time of being cast. For instance, a spell lasting only one round cast by your caster at initiative 5 will last until next round's initiative 5 turn. Previously the spell ended at the beginning of the round, making short duration spells lasting less than expected.


We continue relentlessly advancing through the planned roadmap, but at the same time we decided it was essential to make some changes to skills and resistances, after observing issues in the first couple months of the game being out.

New Resistances and Protection
Regarding elemental damage, the resistance percentage system was not working well for a non-inflationist game. Giving a +5% or +10% resistance was irrelevant, because its effect on, let's say, 5 points of fire damage are negligible. On the other hand, spells and items granting "noticeable" bonuses such as +25% or +30% were quickly stacking together close to 100%, which was not good. From this version onwards, such damage is dealt with with Protection, which works similarly to armor but is limited per turn. For instance, Fire Protection 4 means your character ignores 4 points of fire damage per turn.

You can have 'negative protection', called vulnerability. That means each damage source received is doubled, up to the value of the vulnerability. For instance, Fire Vulnerability 3 means receiving 5 points of fire damage gets increased to 8.

Percentage resistances remain in the game as a chance to completely ignore and reduce spells or other similar effects. Now a character has three resistances: Vitality, Spirit and Mind. Unlike before, these resistances now allow you to prevent some enemy attack effects, which were pretty much automatic until now.

New skill mechanics
Skills had some issues. Low level characters were already reaching 120% percentages and more, and I was being forced into adding difficulties of -100% soon. By now you already know I don't like inflation much, but in addition the system was too prone to savescumming, rather than truly making each assigned skill rank count towards what your party can or can't achieve. A rank or two more could just mean needing an extra reload or not. I love rolling dice, but the system was not behaving as intended.

In the new system, your assigned ranks get compared to difficulty. There's also a bonus calculated from your traits, talents, items, etc.

Skill Rank vs Difficulty
Success Chance
Skill Rank is 2 points higher than Difficulty
100% + Bonus (Automatic Success in most cases)
Skill Rank is 1 point higher than Difficulty
80% + Bonus
Equal
60% + Bonus
Difficulty is 1 point higher than Skill Rank
20% + Bonus
Difficulty is 2 point higher than Skill Rank
Bonus - 20% (Automatic Failure in most cases)

With the new system, matching the difficulty pretty much grants a decent success chance. An extra rank will make the success almos automatic with a decent bonus. However, one rank below difficulty makes the check hard, and two ranks below difficulty will in most cases be an auto-failure. Exceptional bonuses might still alter this balance thanks to future unique items or talents.

This system still leaves room for luck if rank is within one point of difficulty, but makes your skill rank the deciding factor about that checks you can reliably pass.

Ranks will still be limited to 10, but there will be Expert Ranks (11+), available in the mid and late game through Advanced Careers, quests, etc.

Alchemy & Crafting
Finally you can put some of those herbs to use, and make a few potions! Also Crafting skill will grant the ability to combine a few useful items. Still, the system is barebones and more recipes will be added on each update. It's possible that some future Crafting recipes will require special talents or ranks on other skills to be doable, but for now, all available game recipes are accessible with just Alchemy 4 and Crafting 3.

In case you missed previous updates...
Over 80 bugs were fixed since EA release. Please don't hesitate to report any issues in the forums, I look personally into each and every reported problem.

Lots of features planned for 0.8 were already released in the last couple of months: a few extra quests, a new companion, extra storage and stash was added, and many UI limitations were fixed (selling stacks, equip/use items from party inventory, and others).

But many other unplanned things were added to the game: support for ultrawide screens, input bindings, and more. I also made a big revision on how armor was working, making it more effective and less random.

Dice Drama
Some players were complaining about the combat misses and blaming a defective random-number-generator. Anyone that has played with real dice knows randomness is brutal, streaky and unpredictable, and that you never have "normal luck" in a gaming session. To avoid disappointing players, highly succesful modern games fudge the dice. I can't call a game difficulty "Old School" and do that, in good conscience. But I understand not everyone playing the lower difficulties wants to face Lady Fortune's capricious whims, and for them, a "karma" option was added in Settings/Gameplay. It only works on New School and Explorer difficulties. An option to permanentely lower the game difficulty was also added (in party options window). Karma shouldn't have a big impact on your dice average results, but tries to avoid "streaks" of consecutive bad attack rolls.

What now?
A few features are still missing before reaching the 0.8 milestone next month: two mini-dungeons in the Peninsula, camping encounters, and creating an UI to view spells and talents. As planned, this will be out by April. From then onwards, the focus will be on expanding the game. Archaelund needs new areas, more quests, and raising the level cap to make interesting character builds. With all the game systems working to my satisfaction, that will be my priority for the rest of the year.

Version 0.9 is scheduled for December (rough estimate, remember!) and will make the game much bigger than it is now. More details on what to expect will be posted after 0.8 is out.