Greetings Talented Gamers!

I just wanted to let you know that, as of today, we've openned up the Decked Out playtest - so everyone can try out a very early version of the game before the Demo drops! You can sign up on the Decked Out Steam Page:

https://psteamproxy.yuanyoumao.com/app/3628810/Decked_Out/

Meanwhile, we're hard at work on Talented's next major update. We've had a lot of speculation and community ideas surrounding our plans to keep some of our oldest Common Talents relevant in the late game. I think it's time to let you know what's going on!

When considering our options for how to handle Common Talents that are constrained by Combat Stat caps we wanted to land on a solution that would fulfil a few criteria:

We want the solution to feel "right" on all Classes that have the Talents - We don't want to fall back to something that would benefit one Class more than others, or even worse end up feeling like a useless stat on that Class.

We don't want to kick the can down the road - Some solutions we considered included giving other stats (which would themselves eventually max out) or even making the Talents cost 0 Talent Points (which would lead to endlessly navigating talent trees to find the 1-2 useful Talents)

We want to keep it simple - We're happy with where Talented has landed for players new to the roguelike genre, and (particularly with our first few Classes) we don't want to introduce more systems on top of what we already have. That's what our end game Classes are for!

Note: Simple =/= Easy! We'll be talking about how we're injecting a bit more challenge into the base game in the next devlog.

So with all of that put together we've decided to introduce new simple Combat Stats and have our Common Talents that are vurnerable to this problem reroll into them when the cap is reached.

In 1.4 we'll be introducing a batch of 3 of these Combat Stats to address the \[Crit Up], \[Attack Speed Up] and \[Cooldown Reduction Up] Talents.

Crit Damage is now becoming a core Combat Stat! We're expecting to see some huge Critical Strike numbers with this change.

Even better, Grindstone now doubles all Critical Strike Damage, so if someone finds it late into a run we might be getting a new record for largest damage number!

When you reach maximum Attack Speed, all \[Attack Speed Up] Common Talents will instead increase your Multifire!

Multifire will give you a chance fire a quick barrage of attacks in between each Basic Attack, each 100% Multifire equates to a guarenteed extra attack (just like Bandit's Luck).

This mechanic might sound familiar to some of you as it was already part of Archer's Base Talent set with Spark Quiver - And as you'd expect we've updated the Tooltip to reflect that.

Finally we've reworked Vortech Timecracker to enhance Multifire Talents even further. Definitely be on the look out for this one if you want to push Multifire to its limit!

Note: We've also increased the cap on Attack Speed to 0.25s so your Multifire Talents should start appearing even earlier.

Now for my personal favourite. Those with strong design instincts have probably already recognised the pattern - we'll be converting Cooldown Reduction Talents into a brand new Stat - Multicast.

Multicast is likely to be the most rule-bending of this set of three Combat Stats, allowing you to get more use our of your Abilities than ever before. As with Multifire, every 100% Multicast Chance equates to a guarenteed additional Ability Use.

Echomancy has been converted into a huge Multicast drop, and a reworked Time Dilation can give a huge amount of both Cooldown Reduction and Multicast. You'll be clearing the screen in no time!

So there we have it - there should be more Talents on the tree that you're happy to see in Endless Mode! Next time I'll be walking through some of the Quality of Life and a few other changes coming in 1.4. I'm saving the new Mythic Talents for the 100th Devlog!

Stay Talented

Greetings Talented Gamers!

This week I want to talk a bit about the new Epic Talents coming to every class in 1.4. If you enjoy reading these devlogs we're doing the exact same for our new game Decked Out, the first one ever released just last week and you can find it here:

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/games/3628810/announcements/detail/511857117305504408

Adding new Talents that can appear in every run for a Class is a delicate business, our approach this time is to add support for each classes existing win conditions that we hope will be relevant at all stages of the run.

For Archer, Homing Missile builds can feel great when they get going, but currently they're completely reliant on a couple of Talent Packages. This Epic Talent should give you a push in the right direction when you hit it early and increase the late game power of Missiles.

Wizard mains will already be used to getting plenty of \[Dorble Up] Talents. Quadrorb will allow you to not only make early game Orbs more consistent but fill in those Night 40 gaps with bigger Orbs than ever.

Bandit's can now start their Ghost Pistol builds even earlier, this should synergize nicely with everything Critical Strike related as well as the Ghost Pistol packages.

Better yet, after all of the positive feedback surrounding Ability Upgrade Scrolls, we're introducing a group of Talents that give even easier access to the Ability Upgrade system.

Warrior is jumping right into the action. Since he typically doesn't get as many levels as other classes - this unique Talent will allow him to reach those pivotal Epic and Legendary Ability Scrolls early.

Summoner has an interesting example. With Covenant you can fill out any remaining Ability Slots with Abilities instantly upgraded with powerful Epic boons. It doesn't stop there though, this also functions with any Ability Replacements you get - so you can keep rolling until you find exactly the Scroll you want.

Finally, we have a few Talents coming that should add entierly new synergies. These are experiments, so they might now generate entierly new win conditions - but we are open to revisiting them in the future if they end up being the beginning of fun new builds.

This should be both a great way to activate Alchemist's Sigil Talents and potentially make space for some niche Alchemist Basic Attack builds in the future.

Who doesn't like another Orbital? Along with all of the Snail synergies already in the game, we're hoping Summoner really likes this one!

Long time Talented gamers will remember Hemomancy as a strong but awkward Epic Talent. We're hoping it finds a better place in the combat system as a Legendary you're able to build around or pick up when you already have plenty of Lifesteal.

Well that's quite a lot of Talents! Of course there are plenty coming that we didn't reveal here, and we've not even touched the new form of Mythic Talents we teased last Devlog. Next time we'll be going over our plans for Combat Stat Reworks and diving into some of the Quality of Life changes coming in 1.4. Until then...

Stay Talented