Update 9: Seeds of Fortune is ready to bloom! This update adds key systems and brings more polish to the Hyvid Frontier. With Enchanting and the Luck Tree, we've added more crafting to Forts. Contracts, Fame quests, and an improved quest UI enhance the account-level goals and rewards - including more pets. Another batch of class skills adds strategic depth and variety. On top of it all, we have a huge set of bug fixes, new content, tuning changes, and polish. As always, let us know what you think. Many of these changes came from the feedback and discussions we have with our fans.
~Tyler Thompson, Project Lead
Features
Enchanting
As mentioned in our previous blog post, this feature allows for a new layer of customization for characters. Convert any old or unwanted loot you’ve found into magical essence. This essence is used to apply bonuses to your weapons and other equipment at the Enchanter’s Altar within your Fort. Recipes for enchantment can be found as drops while adventuring throughout the Frontier.
Contracts & Fame
Contracts are chock-full of unique and otherwise useful rewards. This new system is now a core part of the experience of Torchlight Frontiers. Complete Fame quests and reach new Contract levels to unlock things like the new chakawary, eagle, and cat pets, interesting fort props, and sacks of gold or other loot. Get a sneak peak of the Goblin Expedition Contract in our latest blog post.
New Class Skills
Up to this point, each of the three currently available classes had some mysterious “?” on their skill paths. Update 9 finally pulls back the curtain on a few of these (though there are still more to be released). We’re eager for our alpha testers to put these new skills to good use then providing their first round of feedback and sharing their totally OP builds, of course.
Duskmage
- Light Spear: Throw a spear of searing light with a chance to heal you for every enemy hit.
- Damnation: Corrupt an area, causing your enemies to deal less damage. Defeat an afflicted enemy to return some of your mana.
Forged
- Sonic Pulse: Unleash a pulse that exposes enemy weaknesses, thereby temporarily increasing damage against them.
- Fracking Strike: Your fists send rippling waves of earth that damages and slows your targets.
Railmaster
- Lantern Flash: Unleash the brilliant light of your lantern to both burn and blind your foes.
- Spike Drive: Sunder the earth with your weapon, sending out cracks that damage and slow your enemies.
Relic Crafting
We want to add more feels-good-man moments to the Relic crafting journey by taking the emphasis off that binary drop/no-drop moment. Especially for those that were falling on the wrong side of our RNG bell curve. As such, we've added more avenues by which to rapidly accumulate cores--namely as Contract rewards--but we've also increased the number of cores to craft each Relic. The same bosses will drop the core with approximately the same frequency, but they now drop 1-3 cores at once. These changes net out to require the same amount of time currently needed to collect and craft a Relic.
Luck Tree
Early on in you adventure, you’ll receive a quest to obtain your very own Luck Tree. Once you’ve planted it in your Fort, you’ll need to care for it. What does a Luck Tree need to grow? Loot, of course! Your old magic, rare, and legendary items can be sacrificed to level up this mighty flora. Each level brings a 1% increase to your Item Luck.
Hyvid Rework
Similar to our rework of the Goblin Frontier, we’ve dramatically revised the quest structure, rewards, and monster pacing for the Hyvid Frontier. Even if you’ve managed to squash and stomp your way through waves of these insectoids, you’ve still got to face two newly updated boss fights: Psora & Spinderella!
Shrines
Update 9 will include a series of changes to Shrines. The goal is to make them more impactful, but counter that with a shorter duration.
- Speed Shrine: Now increases movement speed by 30% (down from 50%), and also increases attack speed by 60%.
- Healing Shrine: Now restores 33% of your maximum health per second (up from 20%).
- Shrine of Energy: Now named 'Skill Shrine', which reduces all cooldowns by 50% while active instead of increasing resource regeneration.
- Might Shrine: Now raises your Critical Hit Chance to 100% for the duration rather than increasing raw damage.
- Fire Defense Shrine: Now named 'Smoldering Shrine', which gives 100,000 Fire Defense.
- Poison Defense Shrine: Now named 'Plague Shrine', which gives you 100,000 Poison Defense.
New Monsters
A new monster, the Cave Lurker, will now appear in Goblin Frontier cave dungeons, starting in the Den of Upheaval. Watch out for these self-destructing firebats - they hit hard, but die quickly if you can react fast enough.
A new monster pair, the Moltenslinger and Moltenfang Spiders, will now appear in Goblin Frontier cave dungeons, starting in the Cave of Boom. These spiders can pelt you with fire attacks that leave small flaming spots on the ground. Deal with them if you don't want your fighting area to become an inferno. There's also tales of a rather venomous version being spotted in the Hyvid Frontier as well.
One does not simply go from a rank and file goblin to being a Goblin Shaman, there’s an intermediate step. Enter the Goblin Apprentice! This foe also shoots fireballs (though only one at a time) and bolsters his companions, ridding them of their propensity to flee in fear when one of their number falls.
Updated Quest UI
Life on the Frontier is surprisingly task-oriented. The Empire’s agents fill your quest log from the get go. We’ve significantly enhanced the overall look and behavior of the quest UI, making changes to color coding within the log and adding the ability for players to flag/unflag quests for tracking. Let us know what you think once you’ve spent some time in Update 9.
Tuning
Forged
- Increased the heat generated by the Forged Shotgonne Blast from 10 to 13.
- The Forged Rapid Fire ability now stacks a 10% damage multiplier up to 100% damage that lasts 5s.
Duskmage
- The Dusk Mage Holy Fury skill can now hit more than 3 targets.
Railmaster
- Added a once per second heal to the Railmaster Shield Car active skill.
- Added a target decal for the Railmaster Incendiary Mortar skill.
Relics
- Increased the XP needed to level Relics by 30%.
- Reduced the damage of Blood Drinker's Spinning Blade from 50% to 25% weapon damage.
- Reduced Blood Drinker's recharge time 120s to 60s.
- Increased Blood Drinker's Blood Pools duration from last 6s to 10s.
- Reduced Blood drinkers Spinning Blade proc chance.
- Reduced Bane's Venomous Maw skill damage from 150% to 100%.
- Increased the drop quantity of Relic Cores, but slightly decreased the drop chance.
- Bane now takes 24 Relic Cores and only 20s to craft.
- Flaming Destroyer now takes 24 Relic Cores and only 20s to craft.
Monsters
- Increase the health of Netherim Scrappers and Warriors.
- The Secret Weapon boss's attacks have been tuned up a bit. In addition, the boss now has the Blazing affix. We've reduced its health by roughly 1/3 and eliminated the possibility that minions would infinitely spawn during the fight.
- Stabby, Taker of Men no longer has a stun affix.
- Removed the possibility of the Invigorated affix for any monsters that have naturally high health.
- Reduced the regen rate for the Invigorated affix on monsters by 20%.
- Increased the time before detonation for Goblin grenades from 2s to 4s.
- Increased Spinderella’s hit points by roughly 40%.
- Reduced Hyvid Egg Spawner hit points by 50%.
- Hyvid Eggs now have a 1.5 second delay before hatching.
- Infested Goblins now spawn 1 Hyvid Egg rather than 2 Hyvid Larvae.
- Increased Lugnut's damage and reduced the likelihood he'd focus on your pet.
- Increased hit points for Netherim Sluggers.
- Reduced hit points for Shield Skeletons.
- Increased hit points for Slobby.
- Greatly increased Deadmaster Retchbreath's hit points and slightly increased his damage.
- Reduced Goblin Gunner pack sizes.
- Slightly increased Mossrat damage.
- Slightly decreased Goblin Gunner damage.
- Increased Goblin Blaster damage.
- Increased the damage and health of Goblin Raiders.
- Reduced Yapper's base damage factor.
- Increased the likelihood of chests providing a potion to 50%.
- Increased the damage of the Goblin Firedancer Fireball skill.
- Reduced Kronch's hit points.
- Increased the damage for Hyvid Larvae poison trail damage.
- Increased the damage of Goblin Chanters.
- Increased the amount of Foul Hurler spawns.
- Brittle Skeletons will no longer appear in game.
Loot
- Increased the drop rate of legendary items.
- Reduced the frequency of rare item drops.
- All non-legendary gear can now drop up to 3 levels higher.
- Lifebound items now only drop after level 7.
- Slightly improved the rewards from boss chests.
- Slightly improved Elite and Legendary champion loot drops.
- Phase Dungeons now have +15% Item Luck and +25% Gold Luck bonuses.
- Added two new legendary pet collars and two new legendary pet tags.
Balance and Pacing
- Increased the primary damage affix for legendary weapons to ensure that they will always be stronger than the strongest rare weapons for at least 2 levels.
- Increased the ranges of armor affixes.
- Doubled pet health.
- Increased the amount of damage that players do at higher difficulty levels to improve pacing.
- Increased the expected armor values at each level for calculation purposes to make it more difficult to hit the cap.
- Increased shock bolt damage.
- Reduced the length of Murky Cavern and Goblin Stash.
- Removed all champion spawners from the Deadly Arena.
- Increased the level range of Lost Woods from levels 3 - 4 to levels 3 - 5.
Quests
- Updated XP and gold rewards for numerous Goblin Frontier quests.
- Removed the 5 sandstone rocks requirement from "Tidying Up the Den" quest and increased the gold reward to 50.
- Updated the rewards for the "Fortuitous Arrival" quest to include a Magic Weapon and 20 gold.
- Removed the requirement to collect the key to rescue the last guard in the "Guardnapped" quest.
- Updated the prop art for the “GobBoomBlast” quest.
General
- Renamed the Imperial Outpost to Trevail Point.
- Renamed Wood's Edge to Trevail's Bluff.
- Increased the size of the mouse cursor.
- Added support for mouse wheel scroll speed.
- Made several minimap adjustments to improve visibility.
- You can now bulk-buy potions.
- Added a gold sound when buying from vendors.
- Revised health and regen tooltips to read consistently.
- Moved defense and damage numbers to the top of the stat group in the player profile UI.
- Added a pop up for assigning skills after gaining your first level of experience.
- Made it so that if any party member skips a cinematic it's skipped for all members.
- Added a new background to the title screen.
- Added additional info to the tooltip for the Dusk Mage Spirit Well skill.
- Added additional info to the tooltip for the Dusk Mage dark and light buffs.
- Reworked the distortion VFX on the Railmaster's Shield Generator.
- Increased brightness of all clickables so they are not as easy to miss.
- Added new clickable objects in the Hyvid Frontier.
- Made Hyvid tendril props a bit more twitchy.
- Green cracks in Hyvid Frontier caves no longer deal damage.
- Reduced the amount of time "out of mana" and similar skill notifications remain on screen from 3s to .75s.
- Re-worked the VFX for leaf & wood piles.
- Reduced the length of animations for defeated goblins.
- Added a button prompt to the welcome screen when using a gamepad.
- Players will no longer move forward between each cast of a skill when holding down both the left-stick and the casting button when using a gamepad.
- The map panel now defaults to the area map when opening it with the gamepad or clicking "Map" on the character menu header.
Fixes
- Fixed an issue causing some geography to block the camera in Hyvid caves.
- Fixed an issue that caused Kronnk to lose aggro when at long distance after reaching 80% of its hit points.
- Fixed an issue preventing players from picking up and placing Fort props in certain situations.
- Fixed an issue allowing health on kill affixes to give health when "killing" breakables.
- Fixed an issue that should allow Kronnk and Klatz to appear in their appropriate boss arena, The Alcove and the Shady retreat respectively.
- Fixed an issue preventing skills from being dragged into the action bar in certain situations.
- Fixed an issue causing the alpaca to walk in place during one of the intro cinematics.
- Fixed several issue causing collision problems in Snotskin Grove.
- Fixed an issue causing the wrong resource message to appear when using the Forged Coal Launch skill.
- Fixed an issue preventing the selection of map markers when using a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue causing Yapper to be invulnerable and untargetable for too much of his intro animation.
- Fixed several issues causing seams to appear in the mini map within the Goblin Frontier.
- Fixed an issue causing the warp to be obscured by rocks in the Subterranean Trench.
- Fixed an issue for gamepad that caused a quest to be removed when pressing the [X] button during the quest dialogue.
- Fixed an issue causing a crash when mousing over the quest tracker.
- Fixed an issue causing a seam to appear in the ground texture for Fort passage areas.
- Fixed an issue causing a seam to appear in the ground texture for Gobtown.
- Fixed an issue causing item names that were too long to extend beyond the info panel.
- Fixed an issue causing problems with the Flaming Destroyer's activation animations.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Forged from summoning portals in some cases.
- Fixed an issue causing projectiles to be blocked by harvest nodes.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused a blank background to appear in the notification window after picking up a quest item.
- Fixed an issue causing the character create flow to stick after pressing the B button during difficulty selection when using a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue causing multiple gamepad legends to appear on the difficulty selection screen.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Hyvid Larvae spawn animation to have reduced framerate.
- Fixed an issue causing the Pet HUD to appear over the Goblin Forest intro cinematic.
- Fixed an issue causing a distortion in pet health bars.
- Fixed an issue causing missiles to fire incorrectly when using the Dusk Mage Absolver skill.
- Fixed an issue causing some treasure chests to float.
- Fixed an issue causing a seam to appear on the minimap when in Murky Cavern.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Railmaster flamethrower car from using its basic attack while the activated skill was on cooldown.
- Fixed an issue causing Hyvid Armor Crystals' defensive aura to sometimes persist after the crystal was destroyed.
- Fixed an issue causing pets to be unresponsive after being knocked back.
- Fixed an issue causing players to move even when holding [Shift] to force-stop and using Rapid Strike.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Railmaster Blasting Charge skill from playing its full animation.
- Fixed an issue preventing pets from following players up wooden planks in goblin caves.
- Fixed an issue preventing players from clicking on skill upgrades in some cases.
- Fixed an issue sometimes causing a disconnect after repeatedly critting a resurrecting goblin.
- Fixed an issue preventing object interaction if characters were too close to them.
- Fixed an issue with the target HUD disappearing while using certain skills with a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue indicating which display which tab was selected when accessing the Skills menu while using a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue causing jittering tooltips when in the Skills menu.
- Fixed an issue with monster models fading after being defeated.
- Fixed an issue preventing Relics from properly capping at level 40.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Mimic Chest from playing its proper animations.
- Fixed an issue where Infested Goblins in the Hyvid Frontier were giving far too much XP for a small mob of their difficulty.
- Fixed an issue preventing the "Lucky!" message from appearing when it should.
- Fixed an issue that caused goblins to return to their idle animations after being defeated.
- Fixed an issue causing you to return to the dungeon entrance when returning via a portal.
- Fixed an issue preventing gadgets from being targetable when using a gamepad.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Railmaster from being able to summon their train after equipping an item with a summoning affix.
- Fixed an issue causing map markers to stick around after travel.
- Fixed an issue causing tooltips to pulse during mouseover.
- Fixed an issue causing the wrong potion to drop when triggered by a Lucky effect.
- Fixed an issue preventing Item, Gold, and Potion Luck from factoring into your chance to get bonus rolls for champions, bosses, and chests in some cases.
- Fixed an issue preventing Forged from receiving a reward from the Wideload quest.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes resulted in lost quest progress.
- Fixed an issue causing the Forged Rapid Fire ability to interrupt after one shot.
- Fixed a gap that appeared at the bottom of the stairs in Lugnut's Tower set piece.
- Fixed an issue preventing cinematics from playing correctly.
- Fixed an issue causing certain monsters to rubberband when spawning.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Yapper (and other monsters) from dropping an item when they were supposed to.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from using consumable bag item .
- Fixed an issue causing certain items to drop with no affixes with the wrong frontier information.
- Fixed an issue with wardrobe props allowing players to equip a 2h item with an off hand item.
- Fixed an issue preventing Bone Blocker from summoning skeletons on block.
- Fixed an issue causing the lantern on the Railmaster's track to block player movement.
- Fixed an issue causing the wrong helmet to be used for the Forged legendary goblin helmet.
- Fixed a bug that caused difficulty selection to be improperly saved after character creation.
- Fixed an issue preventing crafting queues from saving properly after quitting the game.
- Fixed an issue causing a crash when receiving a new quest.
- Fixed an issue allowing monsters to attack trapped/caged/cocooned imperial guards. They're now invulnerable to monster attacks. Their situation was already pretty terrible.
- Fixed an issue causing maces to hit inconsistently.
- Fixed an issue that allowed the Goblin Frontier cinematic to play more than once.
- Fixed an issue allowing bosses and their minions to target players outside their arena.
