Dev Blog #46: Combat Difficulty and Enemy Updates

It's Stephiroth here! We're back with another development update. Today we'll be talking about game difficulty presets and new enemies coming to the Embrace biome.

More Accessible Difficulty Tuning

We have had individual sliders in the game for a while, though feedback has been a bit mixed. Many players don't even realize that these difficulty settings exist because they're tucked into a hidden menu.

Other players who have discovered this feature have given us a lot of positive feedback about these. They appreciate that the experience is so customizable and accessible, but tuning the individual sliders can be a bit overwhelming.

Additionally, it is hard to understand what the intended baseline for the difficulty is, and so some players are left uncertain how much they want to modify the difficulty.

To help with this, we're introducing game difficulty presets . This will feature three dedicated modes currently: Relaxed , Standard and Hardcore . These will have designer presets that we have tuned to be enjoyable for the intended difficulty.

For example, on Relaxed mode we'll enable settings that ease frictions like dropping items on death.

Want to play on Hardcore , but not lose your items? After selecting Hardcore , swap to Custom mode; there you'll be able to tune any individual aspect to your preference.

These settings can be modified at any time by re-accessing the save file screen and selecting the settings cog. Changing difficulty settings will never impact your progression or any achievement status. We want to make sure players can play how they want and enjoy the full experience of Nera regardless of how they play.

We hope this will help players better tune their experience to their preference from the get-go when starting a new file, and make it easier for veteran players to tweak and tune the settings as they like!

A new foe has appeared

Maybe a few new foes! We are introducing new combatants to the Embrace biome, including some that are introducing a new concept: Enemy Variations.

What are enemy variations?

Enemy variations take some of the enemies you've come to know and add modifiers to make them more difficult, or have an entirely different play pattern.

With this coming patch, we are introducing two enemy variations into the Embrace with a modifier called Unstable .

Unstable enemies are visually different, featuring red, unstable energy. They are aggressive, and explode on death.

The Unstable Wisp , which is the ranged enemy in the Embrace, will now charge at players and explode either on impact or on death and deal a high amount of damage if it strikes the player.

The Unstable Brawler , which is the melee enemy in the Embrace, will leave crackles of unstable energy on the ground with its slam that occlude vision and damage players who are standing in it. On death, it will detonate and explode.

These enemies will spawn within normal enemy camps, especially in farther reaches of the biome. If you position wisely, you can use their unstable energy to your advantage and damage other enemies with it.

We are excited about the potential variations have to change up the gameplay patterns when encountering an enemy camp. For the Players' Most Wanted patch, they will only be in the Embrace so that we can gather feedback on them, but we will expand this concept to the rest of the biomes for 1.0.

New Elite Enemy

In addition to the enemy variations, we're also introducing one entirely new enemy: the Shattered Elite . The Embrace has never had an Elite-tier enemy, and as such felt like it had much less variety compared to the other biomes.

This new elite enemy has a lot of health, deals a significant amount of damage, and has two special attacks. For its main attack, it stomps on the ground, splintering the earth around it and causing damage to players nearby. And as a secondary attack, it will throw boulders that land on the ground and linger for a long time, blocking pathing and dealing damage if players touch them.

We think this will help introduce a level of variety and challenge that felt missing from the Embrace.

But wait... there's more!?

Yes, there are even more features coming for the Players' Most Wanted patch. Stay tuned for future dev blogs where we'll continue to share development updates.

Think you can fight these bad boys on Hardcore mode? Let us know in the comments below