AVWW Beta 0.904 "Umbra Vortex Missions" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/avww-beta-0904-umbra-vortex-missions.html

This one is another big one.  For one, there's a bunch of new art: lots of new furniture and other small objects, lots of new cavern backgrounds that look really cool, and so on.

These sorts of things really help to breathe some extra life into the exploration itself, so I'm always happy to have time to do some of that; and when it comes to furniture and other environmental objects, Josh is handling that almost single-handedly these days, which is a double bonus.

Even cooler is a new mission type that player Terraziel suggested: Umbra Vortexes.  The basic idea is that you get infinite jumps in a sort of evil-corrupted cave.  At first that's just fine and easy, you're fighting some micro-bosses and they either fly after you or wander around helplessly below.  Wheee!  What a power trip.

But after you win three of these missions, the enemies get the infinite-jump ability as well, and things get a lot more challenging.  If you keep playing a lot more of this kind of mission, it gets progressively harder until you're fighting up to 10 crazy-leaping micro-bosses at once in some rather insanely-designed caverns.  It's really different than anything else in the game, and it's only available as a secret mission until you get to the second continent.

Oh yeah, we also made NPC Rescue Missions a lot easier to find by giving them their own special kinds of one-use mission nodes that you can find in caves and buildings.  Better chance in caves than buildings.  So when you're just starting out on a new continent beyond your first, and you need that key stonebinder or whatever, now you'll have a much easier time of doing so.

All that, along with a variety of bugfixes and balance tweaks.  We also have one other new mission type half-implemented, and should have that complete and in place tomorrow.  This one is one that we thought up, rather than a player suggestion.  In all, at the moment we have six more kinds of missions that have passed the fully-designed-out stage and are awaiting implementation hopefully this week (time permitting).  Perhaps half of those were player suggestions, too.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

[Underfot]

I didn't see it in the release notes, but did you just teach Icicle leapers to crawl?  I caught this happening in a stealth mission, and it's a really neat effect.

[BobTheJanitor]

The new mission is a lot of fun! Bouncing around dodging shots in every direction is great. This is kind of what I'd imagined the underwater regions would be like orignally. Are all the umbral vortex caves full of tons of mushrooms? Because both that I have seen so far have been. You've got the mood lighting already, just need to play some Hendrix or some of the Dead and we'll have a real party going! 

Random other things I've noticed: Is anyone else missing skelebots lately, or is it just me? Maybe I'm just not in the right regions, but I don't think I've seen one outside of the giant skele-bosses for the last few versions.

And are carp really supposed to do 44 damage per hit? Because ouch.

Edit: Another random thing. Bats suddenly seem harder to hit this version. I think I have seen some spells that are going right through them and yet doing no damage. I'm not certain enough of it that I could put in a coherent bug report on it yet, but other people might want to keep an eye out for this.

Edit 2: Hey, before I report this as a bug, (because I've reported so many things tonight I'm afraid Chris is about to delete my mantis login) is gold boomerang intended to be a piercing spell? The current behavior, as far as I can tell, is that it will hit one enemy, then fly harmlessly through anything else in its path, until it turns around, and then it will hit one more enemy only on the way back, again doing no damage to everything past the first thing in its return path.

Also when using it to attack a crawler's back wheel, it was not causing the normal slowdown until the wheel was destroyed, and then it stopped dead.

[Terraziel]

And are carp really supposed to do 44 damage per hit? Because ouch.

Carp? carp are nothing. Whales, Whales do 450 damage a hit to me.

[keith.lamothe]

And are carp really supposed to do 44 damage per hit? Because ouch.

Yea, when I set those up I remembered it was a good idea to make fish hardcore

[x4000]

I didn't see it in the release notes, but did you just teach Icicle leapers to crawl?  I caught this happening in a stealth mission, and it's a really neat effect.

Not... intentionally.  Will investigate.

The new mission is a lot of fun! Bouncing around dodging shots in every direction is great. This is kind of what I'd imagined the underwater regions would be like orignally. Are all the umbral vortex caves full of tons of mushrooms? Because both that I have seen so far have been. You've got the mood lighting already, just need to play some Hendrix or some of the Dead and we'll have a real party going! 

They just get whatever is in the caverns anyhow, and that's mostly a lot of mushrooms early on in.  Those other freaky plants will start becoming more proliferate as yo unlock them.

Random other things I've noticed: Is anyone else missing skelebots lately, or is it just me? Maybe I'm just not in the right regions, but I don't think I've seen one outside of the giant skele-bosses for the last few versions.

These are pretty much just ice age and junkyard.  Most likely you moved to a new continent where the migrations are reset to 0 tiles, so you're used to seeing more of a mix than is default for each type of region.  As your tiers go up, you'll see a new mix emerge based on the regions in that continent.

Edit: Another random thing. Bats suddenly seem harder to hit this version. I think I have seen some spells that are going right through them and yet doing no damage. I'm not certain enough of it that I could put in a coherent bug report on it yet, but other people might want to keep an eye out for this.

I've not seen this at all, and I'm not sure what spell you are using.  It may be you're just missing. 

Edit 2: Hey, before I report this as a bug, (because I've reported so many things tonight I'm afraid Chris is about to delete my mantis login) is gold boomerang intended to be a piercing spell? The current behavior, as far as I can tell, is that it will hit one enemy, then fly harmlessly through anything else in its path, until it turns around, and then it will hit one more enemy only on the way back, again doing no damage to everything past the first thing in its return path.

It should be essentially piercing, but the mechanics it uses are a little different.  The effect should be what you are expecting, though.

Also when using it to attack a crawler's back wheel, it was not causing the normal slowdown until the wheel was destroyed, and then it stopped dead.

So it did stop dead after destruction (it's supposed to), but it didn't slow the parent until then?  Keith, can you look at that?

[BobTheJanitor]

It should be essentially piercing, but the mechanics it uses are a little different.  The effect should be what you are expecting, though.

So it should hit every target in its path on the way out and same on the way back? Because that is what I was expecting... I can try to mantis that later this evening if needed.

And yes on the wheel. No slowdown at all until it turned into a broken wheel, then full stop. And that was specifically when using the boomerang.

[x4000]

Then both are bugs, yeah.

[KDR_11k]

And are carp really supposed to do 44 damage per hit? Because ouch.

Ice bats do 75 damage to me and that's with a 15% damage reduction.

[Hyfrydle]

Finally had chance to play the new update and I tried the exact same thing as on the previous version a boss tower on hero and it was much better although still a challenge. The spawn rate seemed to be a touch too high but with a slight tweak the difficulty at this level would be fine.

I went in with 432 health and completed the mission on 96 this was also brought down due to a few nasty falls when I forgot I'd changed the no fall damage enchant.

I will play more and add any further observations. I still need to see if battlegrounds are any better on the new version. I will not be increasing the difficulty any higher just yet.

Has the walking speed on the world map been increased it's seems to be really fast on this latest update.

[freykin]

Hyfrydle, I noticed the same thing on the world map speed. I also noticed I was glowing yellow, the same as if I was storm dashing. Is it somehow triggering on the world map?

[BobTheJanitor]

And are carp really supposed to do 44 damage per hit? Because ouch.

Ice bats do 75 damage to me and that's with a 15% damage reduction.

Ice bats do 16 damage to me. That's odd. Of course I am on tier 2 now and combat difficulty +1. The 44 damage carp was tier 1. But if that's what they do, then that's what they do. I'll just... well I would say avoid them, but that's still pretty hard in water. Maybe if I find one of those good swimmer enchants one of these days...

As an aside, I really hate running into clockwork probes in boss rooms. I mention this because it just happened. They have so much HP that you can burn most of your mana bar just killing the probe. And then the enemy spawner just spits out another one. I need all my mana to kill the boss!

[Underfot]

I'm having the same issues with world map movement speed.  It's been happening for a few versions though.  As for the glowing yellow, if I am jumping when entering the world map, my character appears on the map with the jumping animation, but always transitions to running.

[x4000]

The glowing yellow on the world map is so that you can see your character easily, it has nothing to do with anything physical.

For the too-fast movement on the world map, that had been a bug for many months but recently I thought I'd fixed that.  I've been unable to see it since, anyhow.  Hmm.

[KDR_11k]

And are carp really supposed to do 44 damage per hit? Because ouch.

Ice bats do 75 damage to me and that's with a 15% damage reduction.

Ice bats do 16 damage to me. That's odd. Of course I am on tier 2 now and combat difficulty +1. The 44 damage carp was tier 1. But if that's what they do, then that's what they do. I'll just... well I would say avoid them, but that's still pretty hard in water. Maybe if I find one of those good swimmer enchants one of these days...

As an aside, I really hate running into clockwork probes in boss rooms. I mention this because it just happened. They have so much HP that you can burn most of your mana bar just killing the probe. And then the enemy spawner just spits out another one. I need all my mana to kill the boss!

The ice bat damage seems lower when I check now, that 75 damage value came from when I checked immediately after dying, seems you get some odd values from the readout when you're dead.