Rogue Legacy 2 – v0.2.0 – The Far Shores Update
It’s finally here! After months of work, we are incredibly excited to release our very first content update to Rogue Legacy 2. And trust us, it’s a doozy... We heard you loud and clear about the lack of substance when the game first released in Early Access, so we scrapped our best laid plans and decided to go all-out. For this content patch we will be nearly doubling the amount of content by releasing not one, but two entire biomes. Along with new regions to explore, this means new enemies to defeat, new heirlooms to discover, and new bosses to conquer. This doesn’t even include all the standard things we intended to add, like classes, skills, traits, and so on. And what about the slew of new gameplay systems or improved accessibility support, like widescreen handling? Fear not, we will cover everything in the Far Shores Update, but there is much to talk about so be sure to get comfortable.
**IMPORTANT**
Due to the immense number of additions and changes in the Far Shores Update, when launching your save file for the first time your skill tree, equipment purchased, and runes purchased will all be reset. To compensate, the majority of the total gold spent on those purchases will be refunded to allow you to respec your heroes. This helps maintain game balance as prices, skill levels, and game difficulty have all changed. All collected runes and equipment will remain found. While we try very hard to minimize the amount of progress lost whenever drastic changes are made, this will likely be standard policy with each large content update.
As well, gamepad configurations have been reset once more to allow support for the new camera controls.
GAME UPDATES
The Campaign Expands – When creating Rogue Legacy 2, we wanted to fully realize the vision of a more Metroidvania-esque experience. This means finding new powers, unlocking new paths, and constantly expanding the player’s abilities as they traverse the kingdom. We are really emphasizing this by releasing two new biomes with this content patch, Axis Mundi and the Kerguelen Plains. The decayed remnants of a bustling township are all that remain of Axis Mundi. It is a unique region that will truly challenge your side-scrolling prowess. Meanwhile, the Kerguelen Plains are frigid and unyielding, yet you must uncover every corner of its expanse in order to solve its mysteries. To really flesh out the biomes, we are adding a ton of new rooms to the generation pool alongside many new enemies and bosses. There is also a few new heirlooms to uncover, to permanently increase your repertoire of abilities.
Talents 2.0 and Core Class Update – We always wanted mana to be solely used for spell-slinging, and with this update we now have the infrastructure to support it. Now every class has their own unique talent which “recharges” based on their class playstyle. Barbarian’s Shout regenerates when taking damage, Rangers recharge their Ivy Platforms when they hit foes, and Knights can block for free, forever. We also took this time to update the classes to make them synergize more with their talents, which includes major reworks on the Mage, to minor tweaks done to the Ranger.
Mastery XP – In Rogue Legacy 2, we’re asking for the players to learn a lot more. Our goal is for every class to be unique enough to stand on their own. This steepens the learning curve to an already difficult game. To encourage people to keep trying new things, we’ve added the mastery system from our previous game - Full Metal Furies – into Rogue Legacy 2. Now each class can earn Mastery XP, which will unlock permanent stat bonuses, benefiting all classes. Doing a solo class run is still viable, but branching out will bring its own rewards.
Unity System – Remember that unity stat on your gear? Now it does something! Wear enough pieces of the same set, and unlock special bonuses for your character. UPGRADE your gear, and increase your Unity Synergy, unlocking even more special bonuses for your character. UPGRADE your gear even MORE, and eventually wearing just 1 or 2 pieces of equipment will provide enough Unity, allowing you to mix and match bonuses as you enter the end-game.
Antiques – We’ve added a ton of relics into the game, and some can drastically change how you play a run. Rather than wait for the slim chance you’ll find a relic, we’ve decided to replace the Treasure Hunter trait with a new Antique system. This significantly increases the chances of a character STARTING with a relic, changing how the game plays right from the get-go. Some classes may even start with 2!
New Hero Classes – With the Far Shores Update we are introducing three new classes: the Valkyrie, the Duelist, and the Chef. The Valkyrie wields one of the longest range melee weapons in the game, the Fauchard. Along with its length, it can attack in multiple directions making it extremely versatile. And when in a tight spot, Valkyries can destroy projectiles in a small area around them. The Duelist is fast and agile, and can perform air-to-ground combos while dodging out of danger. It is one of the quickest and highest damage-dealing classes in the game, but it is offset by a low health bar. And finally, the Chef is the first “healing” class introduced to Rogue Legacy. Reflect incoming projectiles with your massive frying pan, and turn your enemies into toast. Cook a meal at any time to heal a portion of your health, but be careful because you are vulnerable while doing so.
Unique Character Encounters – Some new and familiar faces will be joining your town alongside the Blacksmith and Enchantress. Lady Quinn, the dummy residing next to your manor, is now an unlockable NPC that can be conversed with. From her years of being a target dummy, she now possesses a wealth of knowledge that can help you master your characters. And then there’s Maria, the Pizza Delivery person. What she does remains a mystery. Is it related to delivering? Maybe. Does it involve pizzas? Maybe not.
Magic System Rebalance – We’ve rehauled ALL the spells, to encourage players to really incorporate them with their basic attacks. Long story short, all spells have been rebalanced, mana regeneration has been boosted, spell costs are down, and mana capacity is down. We’ve also redesigned the Magma Mass, Shockwave, and Magic 8 Ball, and introduced two new spells – White Star and Fungal Spread.
Trait Rebalance – Although the gold bonus to traits has gone far to help take them beyond their gimmicky origins from Rogue Legacy 1, that’s not enough to call it a day. We still want to make them feel good, so we’ve taken a hard look at the ones we think don’t bring enough to the table, even with a gold bonus. We’ve done a complete pass on traits and have removed some, redesigned others, and added brand new ones. In general, everything’s been buffed.
Relic Rarity – The addition of relics has been very well-received, and after getting to see how people interact with them, we really wanted to push the envelope. Unlike other roguelikes, Rogue Legacy is about short runs, so getting a large number of relics that do small changes doesn’t really fit. For RL2, every relic needs to be impactful, and the natural synergy needs to occur quickly. With that in mind, we’ve ‘tiered’ relics to make how they harmonize readily apparent, and we’ve implemented a Rarity System that divides all relics into UNCOMMON, RARE, EPIC and OATH categories.
Encumbrance – Gear is great. In fact, it’s so great that it was pretty much broken in original Rogue Legacy. With the addition of Unity and equipment-leveling in RL2, now it’s even brokener! Enter the Encumbrance system. Too heavy? You regenerate less mana. Nice and light? Bonus mana! This helps solve a number of balance problems and adds more depth to character personalization. If you’d like to hear our reasons, we talk about it in more detail here.
More Stuff Overall – There are so many opportunities to add more to the world of Rogue Legacy 2, and we’re taking advantage of each and every one. We’ve already outlined a number of the new spells, runes, equipment, and so on. But here’s the official run-down: 2 new spells, (and 4 redesigned ones), 5 new traits, 5 new runes, 15 new manor skills, 10 new relics (and 1 redesigned), and two new equipment sets. And with each new content patch, this number is going to keep growing!
Native Support for Aspect Ratios – We decided to natively support the handling of screen aspect ratios outside of 16:9. This doesn’t just mean widescreen support, but also all aspect ratios in-between, from 21:9 to 5:4. We’re giving users the full suite of options, so you can either maintain the standard 16:9 aspect ratio and have pillar boxes or letter boxes surrounding the gaming area, or you can unlock the ratio entirely to get as natural a display of the game as possible. For users playing on widescreen, this means an immense amount of additional viewing space. Please note that multi-aspect ratio support is a beta feature, meaning we’ve gone through to ensure the game is properly playable, but there will be scenarios where things won’t look quite right. You might see some empty space above or below or to the sides, particularly with UI elements. That’s the nature of a game not originally designed for those aspects. Also, expect bugs.
OPTIMIZATION
We have made a lot of significant changes in an attempt to increase performance, particularly when playing at the lower quality levels. With that said, our focus for the Far Shores Update was on content, so there is still a lot of work to do in regards to optimization. For our second content release we will be going back to a more human-reasonable schedule, and with that we hope to put more resources into improving game performance. Regardless, we hope the current steps we’ve taken will make it a smoother experience overall.
BUG FIXES, BALANCE TWEAKS & MINOR ADDITIONS
Community: Added “Look” mechanic that allows you to shift the camera to view the dangers around you. Use the Right stick for gamepad, or hold Left-Control for the keyboard.
Added Spore Burst status effect.
Added Mana Burn status effect.
Removed the following traits: Optical Migraine, Near-Sighted, Othorexia, Mesomorph, and Light Sensitivity.
Redesigned/balanced the following traits: Pacifist, Panic Attack, Diva, Combative, Bookish, Glaucoma, Tunnel Vision.
Added the following traits: Nature, Hero Complex, Algesia, Vampire, Tetrochromat.
Added the following relics: Ivy Seed, Gnawed Bone, Freon’s Reward, Rage Tincture, War Drum, Amaterasu’s Sun, Body Buffet, Catalyst, The Heavy Stone Bargain, Lily of the Valley.
Redesigned/balanced the following relics: Ambrosia.
Added the following runes: Dash rune, ????? rune, Quenching rune, Soulsteal rune, Trick rune.
Redesigned/balanced the following runes: Lifesteal rune, Retaliation rune.
Archer platform now applies Spore Burst while standing on it.
Community: Fixed bug where players were getting higher level equipment than they should have (Special thanks to Fennor on the Discord forums for isolating the problem).
Fixed bug where initial costs for equipment were not being calculated correctly.
Community: Removed Maximized Window display option as it is a Mac-only setting.
Community: Fixed issue where sentries would attack you the moment you aimed an aim-able ability, instead of when the projectile was actually fired.
Fixed bug where non-damaging abilities would trigger sentries or fail fairy rooms that did not allow you to attack.
Community: Fixed bug where cancelling an ability while it was in its Exit animation state would exit out of the newly cast ability (resulting in the player doing nothing).
Updated abilities that should have DealsNoDamage flag.
Community: Fixed bug where dashing while simultaneously opening chests, talking to people, running relics, etc. could freeze your character and softlock the game.
Community: Fixed bug where dying due to the Gold Curse while you could revive (either by chance or through another relic) would softlock the game.
Community: Fixed bug where dying due to Gold Curse could glitch player input for subsequent runs.
Gold Curse relic can now be negated by relics/traits that negate damage.
Community: Bosses now respawn when entering a boss room, to fix issue where killing the boss and quitting before you returned would result in there being no boss in the room when re-entering.
Community: Fixed bug where moving in the downward direction of a slope while you were falling would result in you going through the slope.
Fixed bug where an arrow would sometimes appear during the death sequence if you were an archer.
Fixed bug where the cooldown for flame barrier was not triggering at the correct time.
Community: Fixed bug where certain full screen trait effects were not being displayed correctly in the Kerguelen Plains.
Community: Fixed bug where hitting water right after teleporting to a new room in an heirloom would glitch out and prevent you from entering next room.
Fixed bug where the Puritan trait would sometimes place the effect on the wrong position on the enemy.
Greatly reduced the file size of user reports. Hopefully this lowers the number of user reports that fail to get sent.
Sped up the time it takes to open Submit-o-Tron 2000.
Fixed bug where, under certain circumstances, you could not access the Upgrade button on the Blacksmith or Enchantress.
Fixed bug where spawned projectiles (either after collision or after death) would not break invisible walls.
Community: Numerous Room fixes.
Community: Numerous text fixes.
Community: Buffed attack speed of Ranger, reduced pushback, and reduced gravity flight.
Camera now pulls back in larger rooms
Advanced and Expert Variant enemies rebalanced to lower their late game scaling
Expert enemies now drop Bloodstone or Ore.
Fixed multiple direction lock edge cases where the player would cast spells in the wrong direction.
Community: Updated hitboxes for Black Roots to allow players to hit them from below.
Community: Black roots grow instantly, grow slower, and have a larger window of grace (before becoming deadly), Black roots also now flash red when “active”.
Mana regenerates on the Docks.
Fixed bug where chest icons were not displaying correctly in biomes other than the Castle.
Fixed bug where map was not displaying correctly in biomes other than the Castle.
Fixed bug where Enchantress shop was displaying Equipment Ore owned instead of Bloodstone.
Boss chests now magnetize the items that come out from them.
Player now properly turns left or right during their animation depending on the flip of the heirloom statue.
Objective Complete display now handles multiple objectives complete at once better.
Offshore bank can now be spoken to, and displays stats.
Fixed bug where projectiles designed to only hit certain other projectiles were also triggering collisions with bounce-able platforms.
Fixed a number of display issues to the stats in the Player Card.
Fixed bug where the turn parameter on enemies was not being triggered correctly, resulting in no enemies executing their turn animations.
Community: Fixed bug where Insight menu was not properly displaying input icons.
Community: Fixed bug where Decos would be childed to a parent with a hitboxcontroller not initialized yet, resulting in the deco becoming a part of the parent's hitboxcontroller data. This was the cause of coins appearing in the ceiling.
Boss chests now spit out their rewards further.
Fixed bug where certain projectiles (namely ones that spawned out of the destruction of a previous one) would not destroy cracked walls.
Enemies no longer collide with players during their initial logic lockout delay.
Community: Fixed bug where Barbarian could swing axe and fall through platforms at the same time, resulting in a pseudo-spin animation.
A bunch of bug fixes that were probably not recorded properly...