Adding Buffs to Dungeon Exiles 0.2.3!

Hello everyone, today I have a pretty big update for you! In Dungeon Exiles 0.2.3, I have added many new level-up skills and with that is the advent of buffs! So, let's just get right into it!

What's new?

Buff System

So firstly, I think it's important to explain what a 'buff' is. So, a buff is a temporary effect that grants bonus stats for a duration or if a condition is met. If you've played Dungeon Exiles before you may be familiar with two skills that were buffs before this buff system was even implemented. These are Avatar of Fire and Berserker:

Essentially I have expanded on this system to be far more versatile so I could add far more interesting effects. For example:

Cruel Momentum is a new Rogue-exclusive skill that grants a stacking Attack Speed buff if you've dealt a Critical Strike. However, you may be thinking that remembering and keeping track of all these buffs may be difficult but don't worry, there is a solution!

Buff UI

In Dungeon Exiles, you'll be able to see all active buffs on your character and you'll be able to hover over them to gain more information. Here is Cruel Momentum for example:

Here you can see its remaining duration and the amount of stacks it has. Remember that Cruel Momentum can stack up to 4 times! There are so many new skills that I've added in this update and some old returning friends!

New and Reworked Skills

Here is Lord of Steel for the Warrior, this skill is notable because it grants you the bonus only while Shielded which is a completely new type of activation condition, so Shield builds rejoice!

Speaking of skills, I have brought back an old friend. Remember before I said that Attunement was too overpowered with the Rogue back when Attunement only granted 2 Mana on Crit? You're probably thinking that I'm some sort of madman reintroducing it and making it more than twice as strong, but wait, let me explain. Attunement is back, however, it is now Mage only so I don't need to worry about Rogues critting 20 times a second to gain all their mana back.

Prerequisite Skills

So you may be thinking that with all these new skills (and there are so many more new ones that I haven't shown here) it may be hard to specialise in the stats you want. To combat this, I've added the requirement of prerequisite skills. So, what do I mean by this? Well, more powerful and specialised skills are locked behind other ones. Take, for example, Born In Flames (which is yet another new skill):

In the past Born In Flames may have seemed like a bad skill for the Warrior as Fire Damage is quite limited for that class. However, with the prerequisite system, Born In Flames will only appear if Avatar of Fire is allocated. Suddenly with a skill like Avatar of Fire (which grants Fire Damage to Attacks based on your Strength), Born in Flames becomes a far more appealing option. And in Dungeon Exiles 0.2.3 you'll find that there are so many new skills that are locked behind others, so if you want to see them all you'll have to get creative and try out some new builds!

What's next?

I have so much more to do in Dungeon Exiles, but right now I'm working on what I like to call the "Road to the Third Floor" or the "Road to Floor 3". Pretty much, this is a list of everything that needs to be finished and implemented before I can start working on the third floor for Dungeon Exiles. So, what things are required for this? Well, there are three main things:

Firstly, I need to fully animate ALL characters. Right now, only the player characters are animated and that needs to be changed because it would be too much work for me to fully animate 3 floors worth of enemies in one big batch. So, I'm starting now to slowly animate at least one enemy for each update and as part of this, I need to go back and refine some of the sprites before animating them. For this update you'll get to enjoy the newly revamped Wraith:

Secondly, the buff and debuff system needs to be finished and this system needs to be extensible to work on enemies as well. Currently, I have the buff system working for the player (as is the main post of this update) but I still have a lot of work to do including implementing debuffs.

Lastly, I need to revamp random events. There needs to be far more random events and they need to be reworked to add more variability and interest into runs. Despite them being called "Random Events" they are quite static.

Closing Words

There is one last thing... A hint, a teaser of what's to come...

I hope you found this interesting and please download Dungeon Exiles and give it a try! Let me know if you have any feedback or if you find any bugs! Thank you for reading and hopefully I'll catch you in the next devlog!

Peace!