Author Topic: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion  (Read 218143 times)

bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #390 on: December 21, 2017, 11:20:55 AM »
You could do something like add an achievement for teleporting to multiple hidden locations in a game, and then switch the teleport signs off when you're not holding the staff after the player gets that (& thus "proves" they know how to use the staff), but that might be quite complex to do I guess.

Not really that complex now. I have added a new framework for dealing with such achievements recently. However, I still find it useful to see the teleport destination, even if you don't have the staff with you, so you know that you can reach it in one of the future runs. IIRC there are a couple of rooms where it's not clear whether the teleport staff would help or not. Because of this, I'm not sure that hiding it is the thing all players would want.

Now that I think about it more, it looks like the best way would be to have an option in the settings after all.

bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #391 on: December 21, 2017, 12:19:32 PM »
Here's a list of new stuff added recently with short descriptions, to save you some time when you get around to update the guides:

Potions:

- Apprentizer: every time you spend mana (using an item or a staff) your magic skill increases by 1%. Drinking multiple potions stacks, so if you drink 5 of those, every time you use mana, your magic skill increases by 5%. Pretty OP for mages, but also usable for Knights and Archers as you can build up your magic and use the various helper items/weapons more effectively (ex. Earthquake staff breaks more rocks, Turret staff shoots more powerful orbs, Snake staff buffs your sword/bow with stronger poison, etc.)

- Money is Power: every 100 coins you have give you +1% to all skills (melee, magic, archery). The effect stacks, so if you drink 5 potions and have 300 coins, you would get +15% boost to all skills. This potion is OP when combined with Avarice or other items that earn you a lot of gold (ex. Magic Chest)

- Every Hit's a Crit: gives you 100% critical chance for the next battle. Similar to Mega Boost, it's useful to save for bosses and other tough fights.

- Bomberman: same effect as Double Bomb item, see below.

Scroll:

- Confusion: all enemies start thinking that everyone is their enemy. It also enables "friendly fire" on enemy units so they can hit each other even with orbs or thrown weapons. The AI might still decide to attack the player, especially if you hit an enemy. Useful when there are many enemies on the screen. It only works for enemies that are present, so don't use it too early in the boss fights - wait for some minions to spawn first.

Weapons:

- Cutlass: 7/17 damage, 65 reach. Sword moveset. +1% melee skill for every kill - does not count for spawned minions. Very usable weapon if you get it early or mid-game.

- Sword of the Damned: 40/50 damage, 91 reach. Sword moveset. The most deadly melee weapon in the game damage wise. The sword is cursed and you lose HP every time you hit an enemy (-5HP for quick attack and -10HP for strong attack, damage reduction from shields does not help here). If you have a giraffe and/or strawberry staff at hand it creates a nice challenge of having to restore you health all the time. Health/mana potions become very usable. Also usable if you get the Bare Bones Amulet and try to play without getting hit at all.

- Batting Sword: 8/18 damage, 81 reach, sword moveset. A decent sword for the early game (and later if upgraded). Has ability to repel enemy projectiles back at them. It takes a lot of practice to actually do that for Guard spears and Goblin Berserker axes as the window for hitting is short. You can use it to repel the crown of the Slime King boss for high damage. It's easy to repel multiple weapons at once if you use the rage attack (dash). There's a new quest in the forest where you can try to repel some axes across the screen and get runestones from barrels on the other side (or you can just teleport across if you have the teleport staff)

- Great Blood Axe: 20/30, 96 reach. Similar to the War Axe it has the quick melee swing attack that deals a lot of damage. This weapon feeds on blood - it gets +1 damage after every battle, but you lose 50 HP every time you bring it into a new room. This weapon is for players who want high risk/reward ratio. If you get it early on, it will get very strong and quickly clear rooms of enemies, but you can also die from any shot. It combines very well with the Unicorn Horn - since you're going to play with low HP all the time, you might as well enjoy the double-damage benefit. If you also find the Dwarven Spinner, this weapon can one-shot most enemies in the game

- Clockwork staff: 6 damage. If you have gold, it will shoot it (1 coin per orb) adding +15 damage to those orbs. This fixed damage upgrade makes it usable for knights as well if they need a ranged option for some boss/shop fights and don't want to carry bow and arrows. The staff is extremely usable in the dungeon as you can turn off all the traps making the level much easier and also allowing you to rob the shops without much trouble.

- Notched bow: 50 bow damage, 30% chance to fire three arrows instead of one (each shot spends only 1 arrow regardless).

Items:

- Chain Reactor: makes the enemies drop bombs when they die (one to the left and one to the right) if you keep the enemies lined up, this can create a nice chain reaction and kill them all. Duplicating it has no effect.

- Double Bomb: when you drop a bomb, you will drop another one for free in the opposite direction. Duplicating (and/or drinking Bomberman potions) makes you drop 3,4,5... etc. bombs all arranged in a circular area around the player.

- Silver Coin: you can only get the coin by buying 4 items in a shop. The coin is a single-use item which you can carry with you (just like bombs, for example) and it teleports you into a randomly selected shop in the level. If you are already in a shop it will teleport you into another one. Some of the uses for this item is the Amanda's quest (so you can quickly get into the shop in the Castle) and whenever you need to escape from tough situations into a safe place.

- Wooden Shield: halves the damage taken for 10 hits. Same effect like the starting Knight's shield or the Toughness potion

- Warrior's Emblem: adds 40% to your melee skill

- Green Slimeball: your feet become sticky, making you much slower (-2 speed) but you no longer slide on ice. This is the same effect as walking into a puddle created by the Slime Boss, except it's permanent. If you have a mount or low speed, it is advisable to skip this. It can be duplicated, but it's only worth it in co-op games, so that all players can have one.

- Battle Horn: increases the "flight" speed of projectiles: orbs, arrows, thrown weapons. It does not affect the shooting speed, only how fast the projectiles fly. This is very useful to reduce slowdown the effect of the Full Metal Jacket. It can be duplicated for increased effect.

- Pillow: makes you invulnerable during special attacks. Basically this prevents the enemy hits from interrupting your special attack animation. This includes rage attacks like "dash" or "piercing arrow" and magic "buff" animations. So you know when you press the special attack button that it cannot be interrupted by getting hit. You can also use this fact to walk through some traps without getting hit.

- Steel boots: slow you down (-1 speed) and make you immune to floor traps. Currently only useful in the dungeon, where you can use it to rob the shops as well.

- Goldsmith's magnet: make all the coins in the room fly toward you. Very nice when combined with the Portable Foundry and the Bear pet allowing you to turn unreachable items into gold and pick it up.

- Dwarven Spinner: gives you triple melee damage for axes and hammers. All thrown weapons are tripled. This combines great with Mjolnir, and also with the Ringleader Hammer - you can throw 3 hammers, each doing 40 damage.

- Carpenter's Emblem: creates a copy of any thrown weapon - flying in the opposite direction. This makes the Ringleader Hammer very usable alternative to Mjolnir as you don't have to turn to throw it. Still Mjolnir bounces so they kind of even out. If you get the Dwarven Spinner as well, it can quickly turn into an OP combination with one of those throwing hammers.

- Miner's Shield: 10 hits damage reduction (similar to wooden shield) AND you drop a bomb whenever you get hit. This can change your play style significantly as you might position yourself to get hit in such a way to break some rocks with those bombs that drop. It gets really interesting if you have had a couple of bomberman potions and the Ice Bomb, it can easily freeze and kill all the enemies around you (just be careful not to run into some of the bombs yourself).

- Bare Bones Amulet: reduces your health to 20, your HP to 1 and mana cost for all items and weapons to 1. Pretty risky, but if you can find some blood runestones it can be great. Also, if you've got a Bottomless Bag, you can create a bomb in every room and basically skip everything except the boss battles.

- Mom's Book of Chores: slows down all enemies in every room you enter. Similar to the Lazy Enemies scroll, but it's permanent effect and works in every room. Unlike other books, this book cannot be obtained via altars. The only places to get it is the pedestal after the boss fight in the old catacombs and the starting pedestal in the forest (only if you haven't beaten the Executioner yet).

- Elven shield: protects you from 20 ranged hits (orbs, arrows, thrown weapons). It doesn't look like much, but being able to walk and attack without being interrupted has saved me so many times, especially in some boss fights where the boss or his minions use the ranges attacks. Worth to duplicate because the effect stacks.

- Bear in the Barrel. Extends the weird connection between bears and barrels in the game (the bear pet breaks all the barrels and boxes). Every time a barrel is destroyed (either by you, pets or enemies) the player gets full rage. Very useful in long fights in rooms with many barrels. Combines very well with the Evergreen Oak Branch staff (which lets you create barrels).

- Portable Foundry: a non-consumable item allowing you to smelt any item or weapon into gold. It doesn't cost any mana, so you can just bring it along and smelt all the things you don't need

Some important changes:

- bows now come with a "backup" dagger you can use as a melee weapon. There is no triple-shot by default anymore (but Notched bow has triple shot chance)

- Celestial Hammer now automatically aims at the enemies

- Shepherd staff mana cost is reduced to 1

- Healer shop vendor sometimes sells the staff so you don't have to kill her to get it

- reduced the Bottomless Bag of Bombs mana cost to 3
« Last Edit: December 21, 2017, 01:59:03 PM by bigosaur »

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #392 on: December 23, 2017, 12:44:45 AM »
Thankyou :)
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #393 on: December 27, 2017, 10:15:36 PM »
A new version is up. You can ride the baby dragons now. While you're on a flying dragon, you can fly over chasms and floor traps. You are also immune to slime puddles during the Slime King boss fight.

The dragons breathe fire at the enemies on their own. You can use a magic staff or a bow and shoot to the left or right to make them shoot in the same direction.

Currently the dragon mounts have 10% chance of randomly showing up on the battlements level. The probability is low because they are really powerful. I will probably tweak this later, maybe add a room in the ice or desert level where you can get them as well. Currently I'm thinking about a challenge room where you have to defeat 2, 3 or maybe 4 dragons, and if you manage to do it, you can get the baby dragons to ride.


Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #394 on: December 28, 2017, 12:25:23 PM »
Nice! :) And yes, dragons sound like they should be a challenge to get.
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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #395 on: January 15, 2018, 10:56:14 PM »
I just finally updated all the guides :)

Also, check out the stats from a neat Money Is Power + Barebones + Chest combo in a recent DC (this is from a couple of days ago:



I've had some good runs lately - though today's was marred by the fact that I had a super powerful character (knight class) who completely cleared out the catacombs, was in good shape, had both King Salamis AND the Vampire Lord as bodyguards... and then just got demolished by the snowman :( There was no mammoth amulet in the game, or any protection from ice slippage, and I just got caught and gunned down by the ice wizards in the boss fight (who also completely neutralised the two undead with freezing).

Also, what HP do the baby dragons have? I really like them :) Although graphically I think might look better if they had some change to make them look more "baby" rather than just like tiny versions of the adult. Maybe if they were less blotchy? I dunno. It's just a minor thought on a potential tweak - they do look OK as is.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #396 on: January 16, 2018, 03:39:31 PM »
Also, check out the stats from a neat Money Is Power + Barebones + Chest combo in a recent DC (this is from a couple of days ago:

Wow. I see you also turned all the items into gold for extra power. I'm planning to add an achievement for some amount of gold the player has. I was thinking two achievements, one for 10k and another one for 50k. As least now I know 10k is surely doable ;)

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I've had some good runs lately - though today's was marred by the fact that I had a super powerful character (knight class) who completely cleared out the catacombs, was in good shape, had both King Salamis AND the Vampire Lord as bodyguards... and then just got demolished by the snowman :(

 >:D

BTW, did you notice that Snowman can block ranged shots (orbs, arrows, etc.) when he raises his cane? I believe that's missing from the description.

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There was no mammoth amulet in the game, or any protection from ice slippage, and I just got caught and gunned down by the ice wizards in the boss fight (who also completely neutralised the two undead with freezing).

Yes, watching when mages prepare to attack and dodging away before they even start to shoot is high priority in those fights. If you're a knight, staying under the igloo and attacking them as soon as they get out is a good tactics, especially if you have allies to deal with the boss.

Anyway, I feel like Snowman is tough, Yeti is appropriate and Santa is too easy currently. I need to do more playtesting.

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Also, what HP do the baby dragons have?

200.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #397 on: January 24, 2018, 06:17:43 PM »
Yeah, those sound do-able. You'd need a stack of avarice potions plus, say, the foundry, for 50K, so it'd be a case of just loading games until you got the right combo I guess.

And yeah, I noticed that recently when the dratted thing killed me yet again.  :( I need to add it to the guide still.

A few recent observations:
  • With the steel boots and slime blob as super important & fairly common items that reduce speed, I'm finding that the rabbit is increasingly a "take this above all others" pet for all character classes. I guess it feels a bit too important now, and I'm finding I'm not bothering with a lot of other pets like the rhino or bird that are more actual fun to play with because it's too important to counterbalance the likely slime effect.
  • I switched back to playing archer for a bit lately, and I'm finding them quite weak compared to the melee & magic characters currently. I think the new set of items has decreased the relative frequency of things like the crossbow, fletcher's emblem, full metal jacket and other archery-specific items, whilst adding things that will boost your melee (cutlass) or magic (apprentizer). The battle horn I guess sort of helps archers but it's not *that* good; as such, it's harder than it used to be to get to the all-important point where you can one-shot the 90-100HP enemies. Felgin and the Trickster are both particular death to archer-mains too, as well. I do think the change to add a hand knife is good, but in general the regular archer I think is just lacking in power at the moment, and I've more than once found that my best option as an archer was to switch to melee or even magic because it's so much easier to build those stats and find top-level weapons for them.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #398 on: January 25, 2018, 05:19:19 PM »
Yeah, those sound do-able. You'd need a stack of avarice potions plus, say, the foundry, for 50K, so it'd be a case of just loading games until you got the right combo I guess.

I did a couple of test runs, managed to get over 30k without problems. This is without gambling on the "heads or tails" machine or going into the old catacombs. So, 50k really seems ok, and something higher like 100k seems impossible so I'll make the achievement 50k.

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And yeah, I noticed that recently when the dratted thing killed me yet again.  :( I need to add it to the guide still.

Level 7 is coming soon BTW.

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I'm finding that the rabbit is increasingly a "take this above all others" pet for all character classes.

Well, there's the wheel, rabbit amulet, Super Weight Loss potion and having a mount boar/undead pig/dragon. Undead pig mount should appear in almost every run and you can revive it with both Death and Life staves.

Even if you get a run without any of these, bringing a Stormbringer from a castle is a viable alternative. It has high mana cost, so you might want to save it for tougher rooms. I find that sliding is a problem for melee heroes only (and somewhat for archers), who don't use mana that much anyway, so stacking on some mana potions and using Stormbringer should solve that problem. For magic heroes I simply skip on slime unless I already have high speed, I'm running away and shooting back at enemies all the time without stopping anyway.

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I switched back to playing archer for a bit lately, and I'm finding them quite weak compared to the melee & magic characters currently. I think the new set of items has decreased the relative frequency of things like the crossbow, fletcher's emblem, full metal jacket and other archery-specific items, whilst adding things that will boost your melee (cutlass) or magic (apprentizer)

You're right. The game does change the drop probabilities depending on the class you play, but the sheer amount of non-archery items make it really hard to play pure archery build. I think one of the problems is that archery range (runes and potion) effect is also meant for non-archer classes because archers start with good range anyway.

I will have to add more archery based upgrades (and maybe some potions?) to balance it out.

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Felgin and the Trickster are both particular death to archer-mains too

They can be tricky for mages as well. Since most bosses were harder for melee characters, I added some to balance that out and make it easier for melee but hard for ranged combat.

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change to add a hand knife is good, but in general the regular archer I think is just lacking in power at the moment

Against the bosses - I agree. However, with just a little bit of power up (darkness, money is power, etc.) and a rage upgrade (bull, infinite bow, potions) you can one-shot rooms full of regular enemies other classes cannot.

So, archers are generally better against minions, but have problems against bosses. I'm not sure if I want to change that, it makes choosing a class actually have some strategic consequence. For example, I find that saving the ice arrows for the 4th level boss (instead of using those against bushidos/earlier bosses) is crucial for a successful run when you're an archer.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #399 on: January 25, 2018, 08:26:38 PM »
I think a small increase in the number of archery items would do the trick - they're not badly underpowered, they just need to more reliably be able to access better equipment. I think the difference between 80 and 100 damage is super important for the archer - once you get to one-shotting, they're very competitive, before that point they're quite weak, especially in more crowded rooms. Possibly 1 or 2 higher damage bows available for later levels, and a slight increase in chances to boost archery?

I guess also I'm mostly playing daily challenges, for which I presume the drop probabilities are fixed for everyone?
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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #400 on: January 26, 2018, 10:34:20 AM »
I guess also I'm mostly playing daily challenges, for which I presume the drop probabilities are fixed for everyone?

It still depends on the class.

However, there are 3x more melee weapons/items than archery ones, so they have 3x more chance to drop. So, without class-based modification the ratio is 3:1. Class based modification works by multiplying the drop chance with the stat percentage, with a special rule that uses (stat percentage - 20%) if the stat is less than 100%, and uses at least 10% multiplier if the above -20% reduction would make it less than 10% (ex. Skeleton Archer magic skill).

So, if you have an archer with 70% melee it would multiply melee items/weapon chance by 50%, it means that ratio now goes down to 2:1. But this still means that melee stuff would drop twice more often.

Magic items/weapons aren't a problem, because archers have low magic stat, so it multiplies all the magic item chances by 0.1.

For the next version I think I'll just increase drop rates for the archery items/weapons by about 40% and then we'll play and see how it works.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #401 on: January 27, 2018, 08:43:23 PM »
OK, sure :)

And speaking of archers, I finished another bonus skin:
https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5515
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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #402 on: January 28, 2018, 11:00:51 AM »
And speaking of archers, I finished another bonus skin:
https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5515

Cool. I'm having trouble finding the download link? Did you include it?

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #403 on: January 28, 2018, 11:09:14 AM »


Version 3.0.9 is up with the final, 7th level of the story, the end-game boss and the final cut-scene:

- a new desert level with a new status effect (thirst)
- completed the game story w/ the final boss fight
- some enemies have petrify attacks. Drink the dragonfire potion quickly to remove or use the Life Staff
- 3 new enemy types
- 1 new boss
- 2 new weapons
- 2 new items (both were present in the game, but didn't drop before)
- fixed the drop algorithm for the Magnet item
- bugfixes for ranged AI
- fixed "on sale" name translations for the potion shop
- blood runestones now give you 20 HP on top of +20 health increase
- balanced archery weapons and items drop rate
- allowed special / quest rooms to spawn in casual mode
- fixed a netcode bug where the Book of Ice would freeze enemies who are immune to freezing
- added more detailed decorations to the forest area

The game can now be played from start to end, but this is not the final game and there's still a lot more content to add before we exit early access. The most important ones are the Barbarian hero and 12 quests that you will have to beat to unlock him. And after that, 2-3 more bosses for some variety in the desert level, a bunch of new items and Hard mode. Also, about 30 more achievements are planned now that the game is completely playable from start to finish.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #404 on: January 28, 2018, 01:36:21 PM »
Completed the desert on my first try :) I feel like the lack of ranged enemies makes it almost surprisingly do-able? I played a wizard with turret staff, and a few upgrades and some sunset scrolls, so I was able to keep fairly far from the enemies (as such I don't actually know what most of their attacks are yet :P ). For the boss fight, I went in and made turrets everywhere (like 10+ of them) and then just ducked and dodged until they did the job for me.

How will you deal with alternate desert bosses in terms of the storyline? I feel like it kind of breaks the plot if it doesn't end with the dragon master being defeated...
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