We are changing a few things with today's update to better fit our vision for The Last Spell: allow and encourage players to try different things while using their Heroes.
The Last Spell is a Hero-centric game and defenses (ballistae, traps, catapults) are tools that can help you ease your Nights, they are not supposed to be the main line of defense against monsters.
We are detailing our thoughts below, to give you a little more context about the balancing of the game.
BALANCING
PATCHES
The previous patch (1.0.2.14) was not intended to make the game more difficult, but rather to address a lack of diversity in winning strategies.
The Last Spell released in 1.0 last month and we are extremely happy with the state of the game. Going forward, balancing patches will be fewer but focused more on improving weaker or lacking options rather than adjusting what we think is too powerful. This is something which was already greatly improved during the Early Access and also with the 1.0 update.
We are aware that The Last Spell is a single-player game that doesn't need to be perfectly balanced to be fun, so we hope that this update reflects our actual intentions more clearly. Regarding this patch, we have decided to smooth the impact of some of our previous changes.
DEFENSES
Heroes were always what defined the Last Spell at its core when it came to base defense and tactical gameplay, and so we believe that focusing on ballistae was a too reliable, efficient and optimal method.
The main purpose of defense buildings has always been to support Heroes, not to be the focus of the game. Relying too much on ballistae also created a fundamental issue: not letting players learn how to play the game properly.
However, the cumulation of changes we brought to the game last week had more impact than expected, so we are providing some adjustments.
Ballista
- Cost: 65 materials -> 55 materiaks (40 before patch 1.0.2.14, so a +37,5% cost increase instead of +62,5%)
- Mounted Ballista cost upgrade: unchanged compared to patch 1.0.2.14 (35 materials)
Mounted Ballista
- Cost: 100 materials -> 90 materials (80 before patch 1.0.2.14, so a +12,5% cost increase instead of +25%)
Compared to before patch 1.0.2.14, we want the base ballista to be more expensive by default.
Upgrading a Ballista to a Mounted Ballista is in contrast cheaper than building a new ballista, making it less punishing to build stone walls (line of sight blockers), which are more affordable since patch 1.0.2.14.
Walls
- Walls will generate 25% less panic than before, so 0.75 points instead of 1 upon complete destruction (it was unchanged in patch 1.0.2.14, so this is a straight buff)
In patch 1.0.2.14, we significantly reduced the cost of walls to compensate for the increased cost of ballistae, especially during the early-game.
However, panic gained by wall damage remains a point of friction to their effective usage, so we decided to mitigate this issue: walls will generate less panic overall.
OMENS
Our goal was not to make the game less fun for players who still want to take advantage of defenses as a viable secondary strategy. So, we are revisiting some of our decisions in this area to lessen their impact, especially since the Defensive Training perk bug fix is already quite a heavy hit to the most powerful strategies.
Omen of the Siege
- DMG Bonus: +20% -> +25% (same as before patch 1.0.2.14)
Omen of the Engineer
- DMG multiplier on secondary tiles (Ballista, Mounted Ballista & Catapult): x0.7 -> x0.75 (x0.8 before patch 1.0.2.14)
Omen of the Trapper
- DMG multiplier on secondary tiles (Damage trap): x0.7 -> x0.75 (x0.8 before patch 1.0.2.14)
Omen of the Vulture
- Resource yields are now indicated in the description
PERKS
Fortress Master (Perk)
- Range: 6 -> 8 (10 before patch 1.0.2.14)
BUG FIXES
- Fixed skills shortcuts disappearing when using a skill
- Fixed the meta condition "Have a Hero reach X in Y attribute" that was not correctly refreshed in some cases
- Fixed the effect display "Dispel" being displayed as error glyphs when using non latin language
- Fixed the trophy "Night Survivor" that could be obtain in case of defeat during the boss phase of Lakeburg
- Fixed the "Night owl" perk that was not loaded correctly after continuing a run
- Fixed the apocalypse tooltip on the victory screen not displaying the correct percentage of tainted essance gain
- Fixed the Wounded effect display that was sometimes not refreshed properly because of the Vampire perk
- Fixed the Immunity effect not giving an immunity to contagion
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