Game updates/2023-06-29

Update Notes: June 29, 2023

This update primarily focuses on game balance issues and quality-of-life (QoL) issues. And it's time for summer... and the Steam summer sale!

Summer Sales

Project: Gorgon will be on sale for most of July, from June 29 to July 27, at a big discount - 75% off! We know that the $10 price point is more feasible for some potential new players, so if you have any friends left who haven't tried PG, this may be the time!

If you don't have any friends to invite, you can still get involved -- we just want your scintillating presence! There are lots of ways you can participate in-game during the sales, including special events for newbies and existing players alike, free redemptions each week, rotating buffs, and another VIP Challenge.

Balance Changes

This update has a lot of balance changes. We'll cover the systemic changes first. Then we'll break out individual skills that received multiple changes. If your favorite skill isn't listed here -- or if these changes aren't to your liking -- don't worry, there will be more changes to all skills in the future. In general we're trying to power up weaker skills while toning down the most problematic treasure effects. Please give us your feedback after you've played with these changes a while.

Transmutation Cost Changes

We've been too stingy with Transmutation. Creating and experimenting with new builds is a big part of the game's fun, and it needs to be more accessible.

- Decomposing an item into Phlogiston now yields an average of +100% more Phlogiston. (But note that there's more randomness in the yield than before.)

- Durability costs for using Transmutation are now as follows:

- Legendary: was 25%, is now 8%

- Epic: was 20%, is now 6%

- Exceptional: was 10%, is now 5%

- Rare and Uncommon: unchanged. (Was 5%, is now 5%)

- Note that it no longer matters whether the transmuted slot is "generic" or not for purposes of durability cost. (But it still affects phlogiston cost.)

Power-Cost Changes

The Power system isn't pulling its weight in terms of gameplay, so Power costs have been increased across the board. The magnitude of this change depends on the internal "cost tier" of the ability. For some abilities the change is modest (and a few even got cheaper), but for many abilities it's quite noticeable, especially at high level.

We're a little worried that this change will have unintended consequences in middle level ranges -- if you find this to be too big a squeeze, let us know.

And for low-level players, it's more important than ever to remember to eat both a meal and a snack! That's the best way to recover Power between battles. Another tip: while plentiful, raw fruit is a low-potency meal, so eat something better when you can.

Favor Rewards

- Favor Quests now reward more Favor (averaging +50 Favor per quest).

- Hang Outs that reward Favor now reward significantly more Favor (about +90%).

Inventory Slots

New players now have 8 more Inventory Slots than before. These slots were previously earned by leveling up Endurance. (Endurance previously gave out 30 Inventory Slots at level 100; it now gives out 22.) For existing players: If you've already gotten all the extra Inventory Slots from Endurance, you won't see a change. If you haven't, you will gain access to the Inventory Slots you hadn't earned yet.

Deer

First a note about formatting. When a treasure effect has changed, the format we use is:

- (SlotsThisCanShowUpOn) "Old level 100 version of this effect" => changed level 100 version

Now the actual deer changes:

- (Head, Necklace): "Summoned Deer Rage Attack Damage +183" => "... In addition, if it deals Indirect Nature damage (such as via Insect Egg implantation), damage is +20 per tick"

- (Hands, Necklace): "Deer Kick implants insect eggs in the target. (Max 4 stacks.) Future Deer Kicks by any pet deer or player deer will cause target to take 390 Nature damage over 5 seconds" => This effect has been re-coded so that the attacking deer's indirect nature buffs are added to the damage dealt. It can also now be found on Ring (as well as Hands and Necklace)

- New treasure effect (Feet): "Bounding Escape dispels any active Slow or Root effects on you and grants you immunity to similar effects for 15 seconds"

- New treasure effect (Head): "Forest Challenge deals Psychic damage, and damage is +200"

- New treasure effect (Hands): "King of the Forest deals Psychic damage, and damage is +120"

- Summoned deer pets now periodically use an Antler-Slash move in between Deer Kick moves. This was done to somewhat reduce the number of Egg Infestation stacks per deer (when those mods are used)

- Pummeling Hooves: This ability is now considered a Kick (for purposes of buffs and combos).

- Fixed a bug that caused the "Forest Caller's" treasure effect to not show up for all item levels.

Druid

- Removed treasure effect (Legs, Hands): "Fill With Bile heals 92 health and 92 armor" => This treasure mod has been replaced with the new effect below. The new effect can only be on Hands, not Legs, so if you previously had it on Legs, that piece of gear leg-gear is now Legacy (because the new effect will be on your pants and shouldn't be!). Use transmutation to remove the effect and it'll stop being Legacy.

- Replacement treasure effect (Hands): "Fill With Bile causes any Core attacks that deal direct Poison damage to deal +180 damage for 3 minutes. (This effect does not stack with itself.)" Note: this mod applies to Toxin Ball, Toxin Bomb, and Inject Venom.

- New treasure effect (Legs): "Fill With Bile causes any Nice attacks that deal direct Poison or Acid damage to deal +180 damage for 3 minutes. (This effect does not stack with itself.)" Note: this mod applies to Acid Bomb, Spit Acid, Delerium, and Venomstrike.

- (Chest, Legs) "Heart Thorn coats the target in stinging insects that deal 378 Nature damage over 12 seconds" => 480 damage over 8 seconds

- (Hands, Legs) "Heart Thorn deals Poison damage (instead of Nature) and also deals 330 Poison damage over 12 seconds" => 440 damage over 8 seconds

- New treasure effect (Necklace): "Heart Thorn causes target to suffer +19% damage from all Indirect Damage sources for 15 seconds"

- (Head, OffHand) "Heart Thorn restores 90 armor to you" => "Heart Thorn coats the target in acid that deals 580 armor damage over 8 seconds"

- (Hands, OffHand) "Pulse of Life restores 100 Health over 15 seconds" => 260 Health over 15 seconds

- (Head) "Pulse of Life gives +18 Fire, Cold, and Electricity Mitigation (direct and indirect) for 15 seconds" => 22

- (Hands, Feet) "Brambleskin deals +120 Nature damage to melee attackers" => This is now available on Main-Hand gear, as well as Hands and Feet

- New treasure effect (Chest, Head) => "Brambleskin deals +34% damage to melee attackers"

- New treasure effect (Legs): "Rotskin debuffs target's Indirect Nature Vulnerability -28% for 12 seconds"

- (Chest, MainHand) "Cloud Sight covers the target in insects that deal 312 Nature damage over 12 seconds" => "304 Nature damage over 8 seconds"

- Ability Toxinball: deals the damage over 8 seconds instead of 12

- (Hands, Legs) "Toxinball deals +234 Poison damage to health over 12 seconds" => 224 damage over 8 seconds

Rabbit

- (Chest, Ring) "Bun-Fu Kick Delayed Trauma Damage +221" => +358. The delayed trauma damage happens after 5 seconds instead of 8.

- Long Ear ability: Removed the movement-speed debuff. Normalized buff duration to 15 seconds at all tiers.

- Hare Dash no longer cancels Long Ear.

- Love Tap ability: Revising to make this more interesting as a combat-opening "puller debuff". (Note that it already prevented help-shouting.) Ability no longer generates any Rage. Ability has bonus Accuracy. Hastened reset time of all tiers. In addition to increasing the target's rage-fill requirements, Love Tap now also Slows the target 45% for 10 seconds.

- (Head, Main Hand) "Love Tap deals 415 Trauma damage after an 8-second delay" => 505 Trauma damage after a 4-second delay.

- New treasure effect (OffHand): "Love Tap causes target to suffer +14% damage from future physical attacks (Slashing, Crushing, and Piercing) for 10 seconds"

- Love Tap and Bun-Fu strike are considered bodypart attacks (for purposes of certain buffs).

- New treasure effect (Feet, Necklace): "While Rabbit skill is active, all Kick abilities deal +25% damage, with a 15% chance to deal double damage"

- Fixed leftover attributes that referenced "Bun-Fu Blitz" (now renamed to Bun-Fu Kick).

Spider

- Spider: Incubate ability: it now takes 10 seconds to incubate an egg, not 15

- (Hands, Main Hand) "For 12 seconds after using Infinite Legs, additional Infinite Legs attacks deal +28 damage" => "After using Infinite Legs, additional Infinite Legs attacks deal +58 damage" (The duration is now the same as the built-in buff for that tier of ability, i.e. 10 seconds at level 1 and 18 seconds and level 8.)

- (MainHand, Ring): "Premeditated Doom restores 128 health after a 10-second delay" => "Premeditated Doom restores 231 health (or armor, if health is full) after a 10-second delay"

- Removed Treasure effect (Head, Necklace): Premeditated Doom restores 200 armor after a 10-second delay => this treasure mod has been replaced with the one below. The new one can only be on necklaces, so if you had the old effect on Head gear, you now have the NEW effect on head gear... which is illegal, so your head gear has become Legacy. If you use transmutation to remove the effect it will stop being Legacy.

- (Necklace): "Premeditated Doom boosts your Crushing damage +80 for 20 seconds"

- (Head): "Premeditated Doom boosts your Direct Poison damage +97 for 20 seconds"

- (Legs, Hands): "Gripjaw deals +42% damage and hastens the current reset timer of Grappling Web by 5 seconds" => 41.2% and 6 seconds

- (Main Hand): "Spit Acid raises your Poison Damage +23% for 30 seconds (this effect does not stack with itself)" => "Spit Acid raises your Poison Damage +22% for 12 seconds"

- (Head, MainHand): "Terrifying Bite causes the target to take +16% damage from Poison attacks" => +24%

- (Hands): "While you are near your Web Trap, you recover 6 Power per second" => 10

- (Hands, OffHand): "While you are near your Web Trap, you recover 13 Health per second" => 18

- New treasure: (Head, MainHand): "Incubated Spiders' Rage attacks deal +1056 Poison damage over 12 seconds"

- (Legs, Necklace) "Gripjaw restores 78 Armor to you" => "Gripjaw deals +78 Armor damage and restores 78 Armor to you"

Sword

- Ability Hacking Blade: Trauma damage from this ability is generated over 6 seconds instead of 12.

- Ability Many Cuts: This ability now deals Trauma damage to health (instead of dealing Slashing armor damage over time); amounts increased.

- (Head, Legs) "Precision Pierce deals +40 direct health damage and further reduces target's Rage by 300" => +63 damage; -350 rage

- (Feet, Main Hand) "Hacking Blade deals +240 Trauma damage over 12 seconds" => over 6 seconds

- (Necklace, Off Hand) "Hacking Blade and Debilitating Blow deal 162 Trauma damage over 12 seconds" => over 6 seconds

- (Head, Necklace) "Flashing Strike deals +269 damage to undead" => +580

- (Chest) "Flashing Strike deals +35% damage and gives you 50% resistance to Darkness damage for 4 seconds" => for 7 seconds

- (Main-Hand, Necklace): "Many Cuts and Debilitating Blow deal +166 damage to Arthropods (such as spiders, mantises, and beetles)" => "Many Cuts and Debilitating Blow deal +134% damage to Arthropods (such as spiders, mantises, and beetles)"=> Also, this effect can now only be found on Necklaces. (Main-hand weapons with this effect are now Legacy, until it's removed from them via Transmutation.)

- (Legs, Main Hand) "Many Cuts deals 236 armor damage" => "Many Cuts deals +228 Trauma damage over 6 seconds"

- (Feet) "Many Cuts deals +25% damage and stuns targets that have less than a third of their Armor remaining. However, Power cost is +33%" => "Many Cuts deals +12% damage and stuns targets that have less than a third of their Max Rage."

- (Head, Feet) "If target has less than a third of their Armor remaining, Many Cuts knocks them back and deals +40 damage" => "Many Cuts deals +86 damage and if target has less than a third of their Max Rage, also knocks them back."

- New treasure effect (MainHand): "Debilitating Blow deals +75 damage and causes target's Rage attacks to deal -20% damage for 10 seconds"

- (Chest, Off-Hand) "Finishing Blow restores 128 armor to you" => "Finishing Blow deals 530 Psychic damage after a 4 second delay"

- New treasure effect (Hands, Feet) : "All Sword abilities deal +13% damage to targets with less than 33% of their Max Rage."

- (Legs) "Decapitate deals +100 damage and terrifies the target for 4 seconds" => +255 damage and terrifies for 7 seconds

- (Chest, Off-Hand) "Decapitate restores 197 armor to you" => "Decapitate increases your Max Health +137 for 60 seconds (and heals 137)"

Other Skill & Ability Changes

- Fire Magic: (Hands, Feet): "Indirect Fire Damage +48% when skill Fire Magic active" => +38%

- Necromancy: (Hands, Necklace): "Indirect Fire Damage +48% when skill Necromancy active" => +30%

- Shield: (Chest, Ring): "While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 34 Armor every second" => "... every 3 seconds"

- Shield: Elemental Ward ability: protective buffs last for 20 seconds instead of 30

- Warden: (Hands, Feet): "Indirect Fire Damage +77% when skill Warden active" => +42%

- Unarmed: Abilities Cobra Strike, Mamba Strike, and Slashing Strike have a new innate benefit: "Dispels the strongest Damage-over-Time effect you are currently suffering from"

- Hammer: removed artificial Power-cost increases for this skill, resulting in a 5-10% cost decrease. However, this decrease is completely overshadowed by the major Power-cost rescaling explained above. (But Hammer users can now rest easy knowing their skill no longer has artificially-high Power costs.)

Note on Legacy Gear

Some gear for a few skills may now be marked as Legacy. This can happen when effects on the item are no longer allowed to show up on that type of gear. Legacy items become unusable after 30 days. But! You can fix these items (making them non-Legacy again) by using Transmutation to remove the now-invalid treasure effect. If you're unsure exactly why the item is Legacy, visit the Legacy Item Helper golem in Serbule. It can examine your item and give you more info.

To facilitate this, these skills will enjoy much cheaper Transmutation costs for the next month or so: Deer, Spider, and Druid. And Sword. (We're including Sword because of the significant gameplay changes it's seen this update.)

Monster Changes

- The creatures variously known as "Garden Tenders", "Sand Dogs", and "Snow Leapers" (depending on their variety) are now immune to slow and root effects.

- Orcs: Sword-wielding orcs previously had a Parry move which drained a tiny amount of Power. This Parry move now reduces Core Attack damage by 75% for 10 seconds.

- Orcs: Melee-range orcs can now throw a knife up to 20 meters. They use this when slowed or rooted.

- Slimes are now immune to slow, root, fear, and mesmerize effects. (But notably not knockbacks.)

- Monster tornadoes are now immune to slow and root effects.

Angling

- Dramatically increased the amount of XP earned by catching high level fish. (All levels of fish are affected, but will be most noticeable after level 50.)

- Quest "Angling: Toxic Blooms": The toxic blooms only appeared during nighttime hours, but should appear at all hours.

- Adjusted the level & distribution of fishing zones in Povus.

- Added some more types of angling fish to Povus zones.

- Grapefish on the line are now purple.

- Fixed an Angling visual effect with transparency issues.

- Quest "Angling: Vicious Eels": Fixed the description; it had been "Angle Invasive Ice Fish".

- The fishing pool on the northeast side of the main Sun Vale island previously gave a quest that rewarded you with the "Angling (Advanced)" ability. This ability's level has been lowered to level 30, and is now given out by a lower-level pool: the one on the north end of the main island. (The northeast-side quest still exists, but now gives bait and XP as a reward.) - Note: the "Catch And Release (Advanced)" ability is still level 45; it will changed to 30 (and moved to a level 30 pool) in a future update

- Catching junk like crates and bottles now gives better XP at higher levels.

UI

- You can now search for items with Ctrl+F! Note: This is a new keybind, located in Settings > Keys > Interface > "Search for Item".

- Adjusted vitals-change animation speed so larger changes will animate quicker.

- Fixed bug causing "Save Changes" popup to show erroneously due to some custom chat channel preferences.

- Settings tooltips now only show when you hover over the name of the setting.

- Closing the Settings window without saving changes will now properly update the window the next time it opens.

- Fixed bug preventing the settings "Save" button from enabling when modifying some graphics overrides.

- New setting to disable enemy AOE ranges from appearing: "GUI > Windows & HUD > Abilities & Items > Show Enemy AOE Areas". Defaults to true.

- Better handling of AOE Range opacity, and default the setting to 0.5 instead of 1 (resulting in dimmer AOEs).

- Renamed "Reset Camera Position" keybind to "Re-Align Camera to Character".

- Fixed bug that sometimes caused party-member nameplates to get stuck on the screen.

- Target of target's avatar portrait is now controlled via the "Avatar Portraits" setting.

- Right-clicking on your target to use it will no longer use the thing behind it.

- Fixed bug causing the cursor to not change properly when your hovered target disappears.

- Drastically decreased the time dropping & picking up items stops you for (especially for humanoids).

Defaults Changes

In this update, we also changed a slew of default settings for the UI in order to make things a little more useful and familiar for new players. Note that these defaults only affect new players!

Keybinds:

- Open Inventory: I, B

- Open Skills & Abilities: K, Ctrl+D

- Open Social Window: O, Shift+Ctrl+S

- Open Crafting: C, Ctrl+R

- Open Quest Log: L

- Open Chat: Ctrl+C

Other:

- Chat no longer closes when pressing Esc.

- Ability Tooltips appear near the cursor, not in the top corner of the screen.

- Change tooltip font size from 11 -> 12.

- Skills, Abilities and the Quest Log start out as larger windows.

- The "Tip" window (that shows tutorial messages) is centered on the left of the screen.

- Channeling bar is centered above the character's head.

Other Changes

- Added an "Observation Golem" to Anagoge to help direct lost players.

- Added a "Training Golem" to Anagoge Records Facility to point out some hidden-but-useful game settings for new players.

- Demo players can no longer be sent pigeon mail. (This was a bug.)

- Golf: Fixed a number of bugs, refined the golf UI, and tweaked some functionality for a (hopefully) improved experience.

- Fixed bugs with fairy chimes not properly updating.

- Fixed the sometimes-broken nib barters on Shala.

- Adjusted minigolem hitboxes to be more exact.

- Improved handling of looping animations for most animals.

- Toned down some Battle Chemistry visual effects.

- Prevented particles from sticking around in certain conditions.

- An assortment of graphics touch-ups in the character select & create screens.

- Updated a number of icons.

- Damage from falling, dehydration, and drowning will no longer put you into combat.

- Fixed a bug causing playable animals to not rotate properly when strafing when ground alignment was turned off.

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