Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered v4.0.0 has been released!
v4.0.0 is arguably Shattered’s biggest update yet! There’s a massive new quest, a bunch of new in-game art, 6 new enchantments, and plenty smaller changes and adjustments.
Liking the new update so far, graphics look nice. My complaint is about the new quest in the dwarven realm. I was having a good run up until then, lots of high ranked items, healing potions and several blessed ankhs. I died in the new dwarven vault and was annoyed because obviously the ankhs didn’t fire (since you give all your equipment up). I guess I should have expected this outcome and fled the vault sooner, but it felt annoying to have “wasted” what would otherwise have probably been a successful run. The dwarven vault Difficulty seems a little hard given that you start with effectively no equipment and only find what seem to be lower powered gear than what you would otherwise have at this stage in a run, yet the enemies are scaled correctly to the dwarven realm. I guess I would have preferred the ankh to still fire and kick you out of the vault (fine to lose all equipment you found in there) so you don’t lose the entire run.
This is exactly why I added a warning popup later into the beta, to try and remind players that the vault is deadly and that they do have an easy way to escape if they want to.
The vault is sort of a little microcosm of progression, and that also includes learning about how it works. Pretty much all combat is avoidable so you really want to try and work your way up before fighting enemies.
I’m planning to keep an eye on how success numbers go as people play and learn about the vault, at the moment they are quite low, but the vault is also brand new. It’s a later game challenge, so I don’t think I’m ever going to just have an automatic safety net though, as this stage of the game players should be expected to recognize when they need to flee.
Hell 00-Evan thanks a lot for the good work since all those years. first time commenting (sorry); I hope I won’t be a bother. from my few experiences in the Vault (only 5 … yet), my feeling is the following, but I might be wrong: Vault is deadlier to heros that can’t use any Hero power when losing all equipments : either hero or tengu-power . duelist : as soon as she has 1 weapon, she gets her hero power// assassin : no cape no power, hard time// freerunner : if you run… power works (you are even outfitted with a cloth armor to have ++ evasion :) ) // gladiator : as soon as 1 weapon, can use power // archer(s) : no power : hard time // // then I can predict how it’ll happen for me// Mage(s) : no wand, no power : hard time// Berserk : only cloth armor: you die before having any use of power // cleric : dunno, but spells seems linked to Tomes… no power, might die.
You’re absolutely right that some heroes have an easier time starting out than others. I’ve tried to reign in the most extreme cases (e.g. Warrior with hold fast could full-tank prison enemies, Warden with old barkskin could fully tank prison and caves), and also did all of my testing without using ANY hero abilities at all.
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Is it finally time for me to try this game?
Yes
Thank you!
For Android F-Droid users, as of this writing, it looks like it’s not yet out on F-Droid, but one can pull and update the releases directly from the GitHub release page using Obtanium.
EDIT: Aw yeah, the new item graphics look nice.
I’m actually working a bit with the F-Droid folks to have reproducable builds available soon! This won’t mean the updates are faster sadly, but it will mean that F-Droid and Github builds will become interoperable.
It’s a great upgrade! The new quest is awesome.
Oh, there’s new art for the crystals in the troll quest. Looks great! Same with the vault boss. 😂
And the new recycle icon is perfect!
Howdy! The new update looks cool and a lot of the new graphics look pretty nice, and I’m excited for the vault quest. It looks really cool!
I am a little bit concerned about the new graphics for the scrolls, specifically. The way the runes warp on the pages look more realistic, but can make them harder to parse at a glance, which can definitely be troublesome. I’m not sure there’s a lot to do about that except maybe just have the old graphics still be useable with a toggle?
On the note of accessibility, I’ve also recommended the game to a couple of red-green colorblind friends, and they’ve definitely fumbled potions because they got colors mixed up. Would it be possible to implement some kind of setting to allow custom colors for potions, or maybe just an option to add a symbol to potions similarly to scrolls?
I know this is probably a fairly minor concern, all things given, but it’s been on my mind since I got back into the game recently.
As someone with red-green colorblindness, I think the newer potion art is actually slightly easier to differentiate than the old art, although I still have some trouble with golden and jade potions. I’ve just trained myself to always actually look at the description for a potion, which tells me what color it is. The seeds have been a lateral move, since I still can’t really tell apart sungrass and swiftthistle, and now mageroyal looks like stormvine instead of sorrowmoss. The earliest tease art of the scrolls and runestones was absolutely terrible for me, but the final version is better. I think it’s largely just going to be a matter of getting used to it, and I really like a lot of the new art.
I’m afraid I don’t usually put in toggles to revert changes made by updates, or revert them in general, and this time isn’t an exception. I understand the hesitance about new art, but this isn’t the first time Shattered has had major art changes, it’s not the first time people have been resistant to them, and if the past is anything to go on then people will end up getting used to these changes and will see them as an improvement.
As for colorblind stuff, I have made some specific tweaks for them and will continue to do so as major things are brought to my attention. I’d rather just try and make the base game reasonably playable for everyone than support separate colors for different users. This is partly why potions have little icons to denote their function once you’ve IDed them.
The way the runes warp on the pages look more realistic, but can make them harder to parse at a glance, which can definitely be troublesome.
That’s funny, because I personally make no attempt to memorize the glyphs in a run. I just inspect every scroll in the shop, and it tells you the name before you buy it. If I see one scroll I like, I can memorize the glyph for one second to count how many are being sold.
Glyphs on unidentified scrolls don’t really matter, and ID’ed ones in inventory have icons. If I see a scroll on the ground, I pick it up. The only time I inspect scrolls on the ground is if I want to use a Wand of Fireblast. If it’s Upgrade, I blast away. And if I think a scroll might be Transmute (from one of those choose-three rooms) I use the note system to label it.
So when exactly are the glyphs troublesome? They could be blank icons, and it would barely affect my gameplay. 😄
…maybe just an option to add a symbol to potions similarly to scrolls?
ID’d potions already have symbols, although Toxic Gas and Paralysis can be confused since they only vary by color.
Elixers don’t have symbols, though.
