Changes

: When is the Update?

: Sword

: Most of the weird target-specific treasure effects have been removed, like goblin-killing and cat-killing and so on, but I tried to salvage a few of them by making them apply to a much broader range of monsters. We'll see how that works out.

: Mentalism

: On the support side, some of the treasure-effects for the Psi-wave abilities were combined into a smaller number of multi-use effects. This makes it more plausible for a mentalist to switch which psi-wave they're using in different circumstances. The most important treasure effect for a psi-wave-using mentalist is the one that boosts the potency of all three recovery waves. Because it's very important, it has a higher chance of showing up than most treasure-effects do.

: Staff

: Also noteworthy: the staff ability Deflective Spin is now an area-effect attack as well as a powerful defensive buff. The defensive aspect is still the main priority, but it helps flesh out Staff's crowd-management options.

: Werewolf

: The new ability Blood of the Pack heals you and buffs your group's Trauma damage. It can be geared to work as a personal healing tool, or it can be geared to emphasize the group-support aspect.

: Psychology

: Psychology is still missing a core ability -- I haven't decided what it should be yet, but there's a space in the treasure-effects tables for one or two more major abilities.

: Fire Magic

: One particular goal was making it easier for Fire Mages to easily switch to using cold attacks in the field (perhaps with a couple of equipment swaps, but not requiring an entire wardrobe change). There's now more treasure that boosts both fire and ice at the same time. This also opens the door to better fire/ice combo builds, and even using Fire Magic + Ice Magic together, but I haven't spent a ton of thought on that yet. You can experiment and see how well it works for yourself.

: Unarmed

: (By the way, I still need to make it easier for non-animal players to unlock the old animal-abilities like Headbutt and Bodyslam, and conversely for animals to learn the human-centric techniques like Knee Kick. I haven't done that yet, but it's on my to-do list.)

: Necromancy

: Working on Necromancy caused me some angst because I want to replace the way in which skeletons are summoned. I have a fun new idea I want to try out... but I just don't have time in this update.

: So When *IS* the Update?

: As I write this, I'm partially through with Archery. I may have time to do one or two more significant skill overhauls, but then I need to switch to polishing, sanity-checking, and adding all the missing bits. I'm shooting for the 28th as the big launch day, but even though that's 8 days away, it will require a lot of hours of hard work to hit that deadline... and a bit of luck. So wish me luck!

: Q&A

(edited to fix math!)

: Organic Combos: I noticed some concerns about the example of "organic combos" in last week’s dev blog. The skill revision details above might give a better overall picture of how I see organic combos working, but let me hit it more directly here.

: Anyway, that’s the idea. Once I get this update out the door, I’ll need your feedback to see if you think I got anywhere close to my goal.

: Halloween: Lots of people have been asking about this year’s Halloween festivities. It’s going to be tight, but if I get this update out the door on time, you’ll have some Halloween stuff for Halloween. If not, Halloween will come a little late this year. But it will happen.

: Ability Categories: I've mentioned ability categories like "Core Attack" before. Here are the current set of cross-skill ability tags. Some are old, some are new: