Time for the third update this month! Lots of quality of life improvements and a few important bugfixes!

Cutscene

The starting cutscene is now finally visible in all it's colorful glory. Anjin has completed all the artwork and it's in game. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into the world of Nowhere Prophet.

Anti-Aggro

One approach to deck-building has been too dominant for a while now: The aggro deck. Build a quick, light deck to try and defeat basic (non-elite) enemies in the first few turns. Because these enemies have relatively little health, rushing them is a good way to avoid losing followers or taking damage. While this is a fun way to play it shouldn't be the only one. But just nerfing that strategy is not something I want to do.

To that end I've started fiddling with a few mechanics. Now to make the loss of a follower a bit less painful, they now generate a small amount of resources when you bury them. And the end of combat XP formula has been adjusted: If you rush through a fight you'll not get as much XP as if you stay and beat up a few of the enemy units. This is to have aggro still be useful but it's not as sustainable in the long term. You will want to switch it up now and then.

So these changes are a few first steps. Depending on how things go with these tweaks, I might change them some more or add new ones. Next things I want to try is to actually change the enemy leaders a bit, make a few of the basic ones tougher, so that aggro is still viable, but maybe only against certain factions.

Tooltip time & Text animation

The events now feature an animation that creates the text. Since this can be annoying there's also a slider to adjust the speed of that animation to better suit your preferences. The same is now possible for tooltips - you can set them all to instant, or you can increase the time it takes for them to show up. Whatever you prefer.

Also any feedback on the default times for both these systems would be appreciated. I've tweaked the event reveal speed a good amount but this one's hard to get right since everyone has their own tastes.

Anyway, that's the biggest ones. Check out the changelog below for the bulk of minor changes. Some of you may find their reports reflected in some of the notes there. So please, keep that feedback coming!

And as always: Stay hydrated,

- Martin

Changelog

Major changes

• Bugfix: Action log now visible even in fullscreen
• Balancing: End of Combat XP is now influenced by the amount of enemy followers killed - rushing through basic fights drops a bit less XP than before.
• Balancing: Burying dead followers now returns a small amount of resources (based on the type of follower)
• Interface: Added event text reveal animation
• Content: Starting cutscene final graphics

Minor changes

• Optimization: Changing the way visual effects are handled
• Optimization: Saving during combat is now quicker 
• Balancing: Leader damage from events can now no longer put the leader below 5hp. 
• Balancing: Cost of rare and legendary comfort items in shops reduced 
• Balancing: Endboss buff can not self-trigger 
• Balancing: Overwhelming no longer triggers on your own side 
• Interface: Added option for tooltip delay and text animation speed 
• Interface: Final crypt event text cleaned up 
• Interface: Clarified Overwhelming keyword tooltip 
• Interface: Cards in Cargo View now properly show rarity 
• Interface: Added FX for overwhelming keyword trigger 
• Interface: Moved leaders closer to central grid 
• Interface: Added bottom bar with operator face in Edit Deck screen so forget-pain feedback is given clearly 
• Interface: Added new visual page count to various paginated lists 
• Interface: Added hint about targeting empty slots to BLATS followers 
• Bugfix: Steam Achievement notifications should now happen immediately 
• Bugfix: Rule book can now reopen the last page when re-entering screen 
• Bugfix: Buying or selling something in the shop no longer resets the page unless the page was emptied 
• Bugfix: Removed itch.io version check for Steam builds