Valley 2 Beta .801 "Oh, Sorry About The Shrapnel In The Face, Jim" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/02/valley-2-beta-801-oh-sorry-about.html

This one is filled with... well, all sorts of stuff.  We're getting into the territory where the changelogs are hard to sum up.  It's a huge collection of small things, rather than a midsize collection of big things.

Oh, by the way -- I don't think we've announced this yet, so I will take this chance to now.  Valley 2 is going to be going to 1.0  on Monday the 18th.  So we're really getting down there now!

Key stuff in this release:

* Lots of sound effects work.  The tier 1 mage classes are now finalized, and many of the other mage classes have large portions of final bits to them. Some more of the monsters now have that, too, but largely I've not started on the monsters yet.

* A good dozen or so monsters have been rebalanced in various ways, based on our first monster balance thread.  Another one (focused on this version and beyond) has now been created.  I sense the start of a trend, like our "Worst Unit Of All Time" poll in the AI War subforums.

* There's new strategic stuff, like the ability to skip the tutorial bits at the start, and the ability to undo moves of your NPCs if they didn't fight or do a few select other things.  Also some balance shifts on the strategy side, and it now shows you the perk token counts on each region.

* Oh, yeah -- the way buildings are handled in a lot of the more annoying regions is a lot better now.  Now they shouldn't be "the more annoying regions" anymore.  All in all the time to exploit a given region, and flip back and forth between the strategy and adventure parts of the game, should be better balanced now.  There are still bits that take longer -- by design -- but they are also a lot more rare comparably speaking.

* Oh, also fixed a number of bugs with various spells in multiplayer and solo.  One of which was causing you to friendly-fire YOURSELF when you used debris field spells.  But it's all fair -- the firewalker monster was friendly-firing himself, too, the poor guy. ;)  All that stuff is now fixed, along with the usage of explosions and rockets and so forth in tight corners and against walls.

Big bunch of polish, in short.  This is definitely a very satisfying part of the development cycle of any game or expansion, I have to say.  More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  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 the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!

[Mick]

Now when on the world map looking at the details on a region (either in the lower-left window or the interaction menu) that can have perk tokens (caverns, city hall, chateau, and pyramid), it will tell you "Collected X of Y Perk Tokens"; where Y is the most that can seed in that region and X is the number you've already picked up there.

I don't see this on the first farmland tile.

[madcow]

The Aurock warrior's shield is on its back? I never really paid close enough attention to it I guess, heh. For some reason I thought they carried it in front of them. Oh well!

[Professor Paul1290]

The tile/building descriptions seem to have disappeared since this patch.

[Nanashi]

IMO, fully charged shots need to be about half as powerful as this. That's the damage of a rank 1 apothekinecist bomb without any mods, and given how unwieldy bombs are, it actually works.

Apothekinecist is largely okay right now except it's abysmal at freefall sections since its shots are absolutely useless in that kind of situation. The primary shot moves slower than you fall, so it can't hit anything below you, the bombs don't have collision on the way down, and meleeing downwards is dumb, meaning the only thing of value is the horribly unreliable and overcosted ammo spell (which has the issue of frequently hitting the walls/ceiling on the way up and never coming down).

Enemywise, Robot spiders have a problem with not always activating if they spawn on a slope.

[Misery]

I swear, those bloody crawlers, they're out to get me, they are!  I've lost count of how many "crazy crawler" reports I've done now...

I've got TWO for you this time!  Yay!


http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10631

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=10633



Aside from those, this is a very good patch so far.   I havent gotten to the eyeballs yet, but the spiders are actually POSSIBLE now.   Also really liking the building change, which also just makes alot more sense.


Also this bit with the monsters coming out of the keep at the beginning of the game is a very interesting change.  I'm curious though, what was the logic behind it?   It's pretty good regardless though.

IMO, fully charged shots need to be about half as powerful as this. That's the damage of a rank 1 apothekinecist bomb without any mods, and given how unwieldy bombs are, it actually works.

Apothekinecist is largely okay right now except it's abysmal at freefall sections since its shots are absolutely useless in that kind of situation. The primary shot moves slower than you fall, so it can't hit anything below you, the bombs don't have collision on the way down, and meleeing downwards is dumb, meaning the only thing of value is the horribly unreliable and overcosted ammo spell (which has the issue of frequently hitting the walls/ceiling on the way up and never coming down).

Enemywise, Robot spiders have a problem with not always activating if they spawn on a slope.

I find that quite alot of spellsets arent very good at dealing with those "falling" sections.   I tend to either want snake spells for those, or the bombs, actually.  Stand on edge of something, drop lots of bombs over the edge, and chances are if there were crawlers or other things standing on wherever I'd fall to next, they're probably fried.   Though I use the bombs in general quite a lot as it is, those are my favorite spell type right now.

But yeah, those falling sections, pretty darn tricky in general.

[Mick]

The tile/building descriptions seem to have disappeared since this patch.

I don't understand this change at all.

[Pepisolo]

The Aurock warrior's shield is on its back? I never really paid close enough attention to it I guess, heh. For some reason I thought they carried it in front of them. Oh well!

Yep! Seems fine to me now, though. Shield blocks, exposed area takes damage. Nice!

[tigersfan]

IMO, fully charged shots need to be about half as powerful as this. That's the damage of a rank 1 apothekinecist bomb without any mods, and given how unwieldy bombs are, it actually works.

Apothekinecist is largely okay right now except it's abysmal at freefall sections since its shots are absolutely useless in that kind of situation. The primary shot moves slower than you fall, so it can't hit anything below you, the bombs don't have collision on the way down, and meleeing downwards is dumb, meaning the only thing of value is the horribly unreliable and overcosted ammo spell (which has the issue of frequently hitting the walls/ceiling on the way up and never coming down).

Enemywise, Robot spiders have a problem with not always activating if they spawn on a slope.

See, I get reports all the time that charged shots are terrible. I tend to think you're right that what you're seeing is too high, but many others don't agree.

[Pepisolo]

I don't understand this change at all.

Isn't this like a major bug that needs fixing ASAP!?

[x4000]

New patch incoming very shortly with a fix for several things mentioned here, most notably the descriptions bug.

Also this bit with the monsters coming out of the keep at the beginning of the game is a very interesting change.  I'm curious though, what was the logic behind it?   It's pretty good regardless though.

Lots of things; it just didn't feel right to me the old way in practice.  Now you have time to establish yourself a bit before you are locked in a cage with Demonaica.  This is helpful for new players, sure, but it's also important just to the proper flow of the game as a strategy game even once you know what you're doing.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12434.0.html

[InfinityX]

With the quick start option, I noticed that the starting purified area is still the same, where if you played for the three turns, you would be able to purify more areas.