Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

[bigosaur]

I'm adding a potion (to the random pool) that will give you 100% double damage change for 1 battle. I have two ideas for the name:

1. "Every hit is crit"
2. "Crit every hit"

I somehow feel like the first one is much better, but I haven't played much D&D so I'm not sure.

Which one do you like better?

P.S. Also, I'm preparing a bunch of other new potions and weapons for the next release.

[Jubal]

"Every hit's a crit" would be my suggestion

Good job on all the new content - it's coming out rather faster than I can write the guide to it What does the stickiness on the slime king actually do? I couldn't tell when I fought it what effect it was actually having...

Also I just got caught and slowly killed between two ice shooters - given I had a lot of health, this took AGES, and I had no way of stopping it. Worst death ever

[bigosaur]

"Every hit's a crit" would be my suggestion

Ah, of course. Thanks!

What does the stickiness on the slime king actually do?

The "Sticky feet" has two effects: 1. slows you down and 2. protects you from sliding on snow/ice. There will soon be an item you can pick up with the same effect, so you will be able to examine it closely.

Also I just got caught and slowly killed between two ice shooters - given I had a lot of health, this took AGES, and I had no way of stopping it. Worst death ever

Those two in one of the treasure rooms? Yes, it's a trap. It happened to me while I was making that room, and I liked it and decided to leave it there. I suppose it will happen to most players once and after that they will be extra careful in that one room.

BTW, I'm adding a new random potion effect that will give you 1% skill (magic,melee,archery) bonus for every 100 gold you have. I tried it out last night and it stacks really nice with avarice (to the point it becomes OP if you survive the old catacombs).

My plan is to add about 20-25 new things in the game over the next week or so - mostly new items with special mechanics, but a couple of potion effects and weapons as well. I got most details planned out already, just need to add graphics and program it.

[Jubal]

Those two in one of the treasure rooms? Yes, it's a trap.]Those two in one of the treasure rooms? Yes, it's a trap.

Yes, I figured that out now Was just a pity to lose such a good character in the process!

I think all three of the guides are mostly up to date now, anyway, so they should be useable - there'll be more ideas to add, I'm sure, and especially I need to add an overview of the character classes to the general gameplay advice guide, but for now I think they're functional

[bigosaur]

I think all three of the guides are mostly up to date now, anyway, so they should be useable - there'll be more ideas to add, I'm sure, and especially I need to add an overview of the character classes to the general gameplay advice guide, but for now I think they're functional

Awesome!

Here are some corrections/details:

BTW, The Ogre Mama has a third attack: she can slap you if you stand behind her and attack her. This is rarely seen in single-player games but it often catches novice melee players by surprise in co-op games.

Cyclops damage is 30 for punch and 60 for club. Both knock you down.

P.S. I love how quickly you figured out the importance of poison for the Trickster fight.

[bigosaur]

BTW, I'm re-reading some of the old descriptions now. I have reduced the Healing Staff damage to 6 recently so its section would have to be updated. And Fireball staff is only 3 mana now.

Staff of the Dead has always had 9 damage, I don't know why it says 7.

Shepherd staff is super useful to quickly eliminate tough enemies like Orcs in the castle, Vampiresses in the old Catacombs and Skeleton Mages when they are near you but behind an obstacle so you cannot hurt them directly.

You probably haven't seen it yet, but the staff that the Trickster has can sometimes drop in a chest/pedestal or by Trickster himself. It does 8 damage and can create temporary walls of barrels for protection. Can be very useful, especially when combined with the Ethereal Bow.

[Jubal]

Oops, thanks for those, will try and update soon. Also, do you have a list/spreadsheet of monster health values? I kinda want to add health and attack stats to the UMM, but determining health in particular via having to go round and kill/be killed by everything in the game is going to be a really grimly slow process.

I'm still not sure about the blowfish - it does hold you up less now, though I worry it's a bit OP sometimes, especially when it just traps a whole bunch of enemies next to a fence and kills all of them pretty efficiently.

[bigosaur]

Also, do you have a list/spreadsheet of monster health values?

Not really, I can write some code to extract the units, but for bosses I will have to hunt it down across multiple files. Boss HP depends on game mode (casual/regular) and number of players. I will create a list for you now.

[bigosaur]

I'm considering to change is the way Archery works by default. Here are the current problems from my point of view:

1. the 3-arrow strong attack is rarely useful. It's hard to aim and doesn't do much damage. It does have two uses:

a) when you have really, really high damage (300+). But by the time you get that you are probably on the ice level and enemies have more HP, or
b) you want to poison/petrify/freeze/burn multiple enemies. While this second case is valid, I find that I very rarely use it.

2. the regular arrow attack does so much damage that it immediately knocks down most regular enemies. This can be useful when there are a lot of them. However, when there is only one enemy, you need to try to stomp (which usually isn't enough damage to kill) or wait for him to get up and use the second arrow to kill (which usually does enough damage).

What I would like to do is change the default attack set for the bows. Instead of the current "single" and "triple" arrow attacks, the bows would have "regular" and "knockdown" attacks. Hitting an enemy with the regular attack would make him stand his ground. The strong attack button would trigger the "knockdown" attack that always knocks down an enemy (for "small" enemies, not bosses).

The special (rage) attack would be upgraded to always be the triple-arrow attack (but spend only 1 arrow) + piercing as it already has. So, you could still use it to poison/freeze/etc. multiple enemies, but not as often as before.

How do you feel about this ideas? Do you currently use the triple-attack?

[bigosaur]

I will create a list for you now

Here it is for the regular game (in alphabetical order):

Bandit: 120
Bat: 60
Boar: 100
Brigand: 80
Bushido: 320
Castle Guard: 90
Goblin Berserker: 90
Goblin Blaggard: 90
Goblin Grunt: 100
Goblin Shaman: 120
Goblin Warrior: 60
Guard Captain: 80
Ice Archer: 170
Ice Raider: 250
Ice Mage: 200
King: 150
Orc: 200
Princess: 100
Sky Wizard: 100
Skeleton Warrior: 100
Skeleton Archer: 100
Thief: 100
Troll: 220
Undead Mage: 90
Vampiress: 300
Young Yeti: 320

Bosses (in regular game):

Ogre Mama: 400 + 300*players
Earth Golem: 400 + 250*players
Cyclops: 300 + 200*players
Dragon: 400 + 500*players
Hornet Queen: 400 + 450*players
Slime King: 500+500*players
Executioner: 600 + 600*players
Crystal Wizard: 400 + 400*players
VioleNt Knight: 250 + 250*players
The Simerian Butcher: 700 + 700*players
Felgin the ringleader: 700 + 500*players
Trickster: 800 + 500*players
Necromancer: 600 + 500*players
Undead King Salamis: 700 + 300*players
Vampire Lord: 600 + 400*players
Crazy Santa: 1200 + 1000*players
Candy Snowman: 1200 + 1200*players
Yeti Elder: 1500 + 1500*players
War Sheep: 500

[Jubal]

Fantastic, thankyou for the list! Undead Boar and Hornet seem to be missing still.

I don't usually use the triple-shot - the fact that it uses up multiple arrows for not much damage is the main reason, I think. I guess it'd be worth testing a change. Only thing I'm wondering is if it might make robbing shops too easy if there's an always-knockdown attack: that with snailbite arrows, if I could repeatedly knock down the bushido, might make it super easy (I can currently rob a shop at base speed with bow + snailbites, but it takes very quick and careful maneuvering and I don't need to get it much wrong to die).

[bigosaur]

Fantastic, thankyou for the list! Undead Boar and Hornet seem to be missing still.

All NPCs and non-hostile units are missing. Not sure if you need those. Undead Boar has the same as regular Boar: 100, Hornet has 50.

Only thing I'm wondering is if it might make robbing shops too easy if there's an always-knockdown attack

Only on regular, "small", enemies. Bushido, Orc, Vampiress, Young Yeti are "medium" sized units and would be immune to that effect.

[Jubal]

OK, makes sense

Thankyou! And no, I don't think it's worth putting all the NPCs in the monster manual, I may do if I get bored sometime I guess but there's plenty to do as it is.

[bigosaur]

A new version is up:
- 17 new items with unique mechanics
- 5 new weapons with unique mechanics
- 4 new potion effects
- a new scroll: Confusion
- a new quest area in the forest where you can play baseball
- 6 new achievements
- all bows now come with a low-damage knife as a strong attack. You can use the knife to quickly break barrels and boxes and stay alive if you run out of arrows
- get a special reward from the shopkeeper if you buy all the items
- fireball + dark orb synergy now works
- fixed returning bow animation for the Archer
- fixed swoosh animation for melee swing attacks
- all Mom's Books can now be duplicated for increased effect (double poison/fire damage, double freeze duration, etc.)
- added a note showing which sword attacks are quick in the weapon description
- removed the Catacombs Shortcut from the daily challenge
- reduced the mana cost for the Bottomless Bag of Bombs
- show current run time on the pause screen
- fixed the Slime King boss netcode bug
- fixed bug when a player would get sticky feet if he walked into another player that had the effect
- added an option to show the timer during the game.

PvP fixes:
- sudden death timer is no longer running when the game is paused
- using twilight staff spell only increases power for the caster
- turret staff clones now shoot at other players and cannot harm the caster
- fixed the dead animation glitch for the winning player after he gets smashed with the huge hammer

[Jubal]

Nice! Might be a while before I get all the guides updated, I've found most of the new stuff & what it does now but I've only got a week left before I take a trip back to the UK for Christmas so things are a bit hectic at the moment.

A few thoughts before I forget though:

• Why does the portable foundry have no mana cost? It's way more powerful than the magic chest, which does.
• It's not currently very clear from the description that the clockwork staff uses up gold. Not yet sure how best to tweak it, but it was a short while before I noticed.
• It wasn't clear on the bare bones amulet that it would reduce both your max health and total health to minimum. Again, I think a wording change is needed but unsure what yet.
• Does "special attacks" on the cushion just mean rage attacks?
• I feel like the bomb effect on the miner's shield should maybe be a removable status effect or something? I dunno, it feels a big playstyle change for what appears to be a not terribly uncommon item.
• Are we going to get a scroll of summon monsters at some point? It's a bit of a classic of roguelikes etc and it'd work quite well in this game, I think.
• There's now a whole bunch of dwarven or plausibly-dwarven items (spinner, ring, miners' shield, foundry) - but no dwarves. I was thinking that using dwarves as the ice mountain shopkeepers might fit thematically quite well?.