Huge skill and trait rework!
Every skill now has two trait paths: 198 paths across all 99 skills.
- A skill's two paths are a fork. Once you take one, its later ranks come up often and the other path only rarely, so about one life in four ends up with both paths of its main skill.
- The guaranteed skill card in a trait offer leans slightly toward your newest skills.
Reworked skills
- Toughness (Warrior): losing 20% of your life within 3 turns ends every affliction on you, then it waits 10 turns.
- Heavy Weapon Mastery (Warrior): every fourth weapon hit stuns for 1 turn and deals 30% more.
- Berserk (Warrior): for 4 turns you take 60% less damage and deal 40% more with weapon attacks. It takes no time to use.
- Unbreakable (Warrior): when a hit leaves you below 30% life, damage heals you instead for 3 turns.
- Brood (Ranger): monsters killed soon after a spider's bite hatch spiderlings.
- Lethality (Rogue): each weapon hit steals from the monsters it hits. They deal less damage and you gain Dexterity.
- Blessing (Priest): a cleanse plus a short, big boost to all resistances, and crowd control on you lasts half as long.
- Meditation (Priest): each spell has a chance to give back three times its mana cost.
- Martyr's Grace (Priest): for 5 turns, damage and healing are held back, then healing lands first. Nothing kills you while it holds.
- Summon Demon (Warlock): the demon is thrown onto a spot, hurting and stunning the monsters around where it lands, and burns the monsters next to it.
- Elemental Flow (Shaman): after a spell or a totem, your next plain attack sets off a lightning burst that chills.
New skills
- Challenge (Warrior): pulls nearby monsters into melee, so they can't shoot, cast or heal, and gives you more armor meanwhile.
- Driving Wind (Ranger): pushes monsters away along a line and silences them.
- Phase Shroud (Rogue): the next 3 hits on you deal no damage, and your next 3 attacks deal more.
- Rewind (Rogue): puts you back where you stood 4 turns ago, with the life and mana you had then.
- Sacred Guard (Paladin): you and nearby allies take no physical damage and heal a little each turn.
- Burning Mantle (Mage): a shield against fire, cold, lightning and poison that burns monsters near you.
- Exile (Priest): banishes a monster, or yourself, for 2 turns, then deals damage around it on the way back.
- Warding Totem (Shaman): gives resistances to you and your allies near it.
- The Mage's Town Portal skill is gone. Town portal scrolls are still there.
New monster threats, from act 2
- Serrated elites: their hits make you bleed 50% of the hit over 4 turns.
- Enfeebling elites: their hits weaken you, so you deal 25% less damage for 3 turns.
- Harrowing elites: they howl every 8 turns, with "Howl" shown over their head a turn ahead. Within 3 tiles, you're afraid and spend your next turn stepping away.
- The ten elemental shooters now cast spells. Spells always hit and can't be dodged or blocked, but deal half damage.
- Bleeding, weakened and afraid each have a status icon and a tip.
- Winning no longer wipes you on the spot
- The Demon Lord's way out, and the demo's end portal, show a short victory card, then take you back to town with everything you carry.
- From there you can sell, stash and buy upgrades. You start the new life when you choose, from the HUD button or the guards at the stairs.
Balance
- Leech gives mana only at rank 3, and Siphon's shield takes the extra healing first.
- Prism is rare and offered at a fifth of the old odds.
- Trophies are halved, and Serrated, Enfeebling and Harrowing can now be taken as trophies.
- The Pharaoh's Grave Wraps are wider and faster. They hit your tile and the four straight next to it, landing after 1 turn, so only a quick diagonal step gets away.
- Ranks that couldn't trigger were redesigned: Heat Sink 3, Breaking Point 3, Rolling Meteor (now rolls toward a monster) and Cut Down (any Death Mark kill counts).
- Act 1's Demon is removed. It was the Demon Lord's sprite in other colours.
UI
- The skills page draws real trees: lines from each skill to the ones that need it, five columns, and the tree tabs down the left.
- The smith's Enhance and Upgrade each have a (?) tip with the item's numbers now and after.
- Trait card texts fit their cards. Eleven cards ran over before, Echoing Hammer among them, and a test now keeps them within their lines.
- Bloodthirst's card says how much damage its charges give right now.
- Trait cards no longer name other traits (Leech, Night Terrors).
- Skill cards show the next rank's mana cost.
Fixes
- Poison bites now count as hits for Avenger, Reckoning, Toxic Hide, Rewind, Iron Will and Backlash.
- A path's extra hit could kill a monster twice, giving double XP and double the effects that trigger on a kill.
- Toughness now ends a stun that lands right after the hit.
- Challenge now lasts its full 2 turns.
- Quarry's allies now go for the marked monster.
- Atonement now counts only healing that actually lands.
- Boiling Over now works with Overhead Smash, and Reckoning with Shield Toss.
- Boss marks keep their spacing after a stun.
- "Equip best" now weighs mana per kill less for weapon builds.
- Selling everything no longer sells items you kept through a death.
- Totems now say why they can't be planted.
- Many smaller card, status and log line fixes.