Ro-Wizard V2.0.6 Changelog

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RO-WIZARD V2.0.6 CHANGELOG

Hello. I hope everyone has enjoyed the Holidays. Now that December is over, I’ve been focused on wrapping up this update that I had mostly completed in November. As a brief overview, this update will bring damage types and character conditions (i.e status effects) closer to the forefront in combat. Additionally, visual feedback within combat has been improved: hitmarkers, kill feedback, damage numbers, spell visual upgrades, hitboxes, and so on. New spells have been added, Avada Kedavra and Crucio have been reworked, and many existing spells and cooldowns have been adjusted or reworked.

Previous Update: Ro-Wizard V2.0.5 Changelog

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NEW

• Damage Types

  • A damage type system where all damage dealt has a type has been buried in the game’s code but had little bearing on gameplay. This entire system has been redesigned and recoded.
  • The current types are as follows: Force, Fire, Water, Cold, Electric, Slashing, Blunt, Necrotic, and Poison.
  • Slashing damage will build a hidden bleed value on enemies equal to the amount of slashing damage dealt. Once the threshold has been reached (some mobs have higher thresholds), enemies will hemorrhage and take slashing damage equal to 20% of their max health. This will become useful moreso for PvE.
  • Electric damage has a special property where 25% of the applied damage will go through shields and deal health damage, as well as its full shield damage. This has already been a feature, but just for the record.
  • Mobs and characters can have vulnerabilities or resistances to certain damage types. Some mobs have these by nature, and characters can gain resistances and vulnerabilities via potions, spell effects, and character conditions. For example, becoming Wet via Spells, Rain, or Water will leave you vulnerable to cold and electric damage.

• Character Conditions

  • Character conditions describe any states that are added to the character. These previously existed in the game, but were hard-coded statuses and many of them were invisible and inconsistent in their rules. All of these have been reworked into a new system for handling character conditions.
  • Some conditions will now stay on your character after dying or rejoining the game.
  • Above your health bar you’ll see a new UI with a horizontal list of all conditions affecting your character. Will show stacks, duration, and every condition has a unique icon. You can hover over these conditions to get a description on what it’s doing.
  • Many conditions have unique visuals attached. E.g while wet you’ll see water dripping off characters, while shocked you’ll see lightning buzzing around them, etc.
  • 24 conditions currently exist: basic info about them can be found below:
    All Conditions

    • Burning - Take constant fire damage each tick. Immune to frozen. Resistant to cold and water damage. Removed by wet & mobility spells like ascendio/artemio.

    • Soul Numbed - After exhausting your hate to kill, your inner focus has been shaken. Max focus cannot go above 3. Persistent.

    • Time Slowed - Movement speed, gravity, and animation speed are all slowed down. Spells cast while this condition is active have a 30% longer cooldown.

    • Anti-Gravity - Gravity has less of an effect, allowing you to move through the air easily.

    • Shimmering - Bright energy wavers on and off - allowing this character to phase through magical shields.

    • Reputation Boosted - All reputation gains boosted by 25%. Persistent.

    • Irresistible - Coated in a perfume that will inflict the In Love condition to anyone in a radius of you, causing them to deal 50% less damage to you.

    • In Love - Affected by an irresistible scent. You deal 50% less damage to the person that inflicted this condition.

    • Shield Boosted - Boosts maximum shield health and regeneration. Persistent.

    • Frozen Blood - Increased resistance to fire and cold damage. Immune to burning and frozen. Persistent.

    • Regeneration - Regenerating 5 health per second.

    • Scarred - Maximum health reduced by 25.

    • Fishlung - Breath capacity underwater significantly increased. Persistent.

    • Blue Flame Protection - The blue flames give you 25% resistance to all damage and makes you immune to most negative conditions.

    • Speed - Increases movement speed by 10.

    • Greater Speed - Increases movement speed by 15.

    • Speed (Stackable) - Increases movement speed by 11. Can be stacked twice.

    • Ragdolled - Incapacitated and unable to move or perform any actions.

    • Wet - Soaked in water. Immune to burning, resistant to fire damage, vulnerable to electric and cold damage. Applied by spells, rain, and water.

    • Chilled - Extremely cold. Resistant to fire damage, but vulnerable to cold and water damage. Slows character down slightly. Maximum of 3 stacks. Applies walkspeed slow, animation slow, and longer spell charge cooldowns that increase per stack.

    • Soul Suck - Affected character’s soul is being slowly drained of life. 45% speed penalty.

    • Frozen - Frozen solid. Immune to cold damage. Taking fire damage will end this condition. Immune to Poisoned, Bleeding, Petrified, and Ragdolled.

    • Petrified - Frozen in stone. Resistant to all damage and immune to most conditions. Taking any damage will end this condition.

    • Bleeding - Takes constant slashing damage each tick.

    • Shocked - Buzzing with electricity. Becomes vulnerable to water damage. Character’s shields take 20% extra damage (does not stack). Maximum of 2 stacks.

    • Poisoned - Suffering from poison. Takes constant poison damage each tick.

    • Suffering - Explained under Crucio.

  • Conditions all share properties that allow me to quickly design interesting conditions and determine how they behave. If you’re interested in the technicalities, you can find them below.
    Condition Properties

    • MaxStacks - Determines the maximum amount of stacks of this condition that can be applied to a character. E.g 3 stacks of Chilled will make you extremely slow compared to just having 1 stack of Chilled.

    • Duration - How long the condition stays on a character before going away. Some conditions have a -1 duration (infinite) and are removed under certain circumstances e.g Ragdolls.

    • Stack Type - Stack type determines when a condition is applied to a character that already has that condition. Must tend to be Overwrite.
      -Ignore: Condition is not applied if it already exists on the character. The existing condition stays as is with its current duration.
      -Stack: Condition is applied as an additional stack to the character along with the existing condition, up to MaxStacks.
      -Overwrite: The existing condition is replaced with the new one, essentially renewing the duration. E.g if you’re burning and step into a fire source, the burning condition is overwritten and set back to its maximum duration.
      -Additive: The existing condition stays, but the duration of the new condition is added onto the duration of the already present condition.

    • PersistentOnRejoin - Determines of a condition will be saved to the affected player and reapplied whenever they rejoin the game.

    • PersistentAfterDeath - Determines if a condition stays on a character after it respawns.

    • RemoveOnDeath - Determines if a condition instantly expires when a character dies.

    • ConditionTags - List of custom tags for a condition e.g a common one is “Incapacitated” for conditions like Ragdolled, Frozen, and Petrified and conditions on a character with this tag will prevent wand usage, teleporting, and so on.

    • ConditionImmunities - List of conditions that cannot be applied to a character while this condition is active. E.g if Wet cannot get the Burning condition.

    • ConditionsToRemove - List of conditions that will be removed from the character when this one is applied. E.g when Wet is applied it will automatically remove Burning.

    • DamageMultipliers - List of damage multipliers that determine what damage types the character will be vulnerable or weak to while this condition is applied. E.g while wet you take 1.25x electric damage and 0.8x fire damage.

    • Misc - Bunch of other properties or WalkSpeed multipliers/penalties, spell cooldowns/charge cooldown multipliers, physics time scale multipliers, animation speed multipliers, etc.

• New Spells

  The focus of this update wasn’t on adding spells, and moreso starting to improve on existing ones, but there were some relatively quick ones I developed for it that focus on adding more variety to early-mid game combat.

  Protego Maxima

  • Raise a large magical dome that blocks all incoming projectiles. Will fall after its duration, or when it’s reduced to 0 health.
  • The shield can be passed through (to kinda prevent specific griefing/softlocking/etc), but with its final upgrade enemies that touch the shield will be flung backwards and take damage (will not do this in safe zones for clear reasons). When the shield damages and flings a character back it will take some damage itself. Has upgrades to increase its size and health as well.
  • This is a tricky spell to design since it has a lot of grief/annoying balance potential so be prepared for changes based on feedback.
  • Purchasable at the Warden, requires focus and must be a Light Wizard.

  Patentia

  • Fire a magical bolt that deals more force damage the further it travels.
  • Damage starts increasing after 70 studs. Has a minimum of 5 damage at 70 studs and a maximum of 130 damage at 500 studs away.
  • Has an upgrade to lower the damage range from 70-500 to 70-400.
  • Purchased at Summer’s Spellbooks.

  Abjecto

  • Auto-target spell that instantly removes the currently loaded spell from your opponent’s wand and forces it into its full cooldown.
  • Purchased at Summer’s Spellbooks.

  Advolvo

  • Send out a vine that will attach to a surface and then pull you rapidly towards it. Essentially a grapple.
  • Hidden on the map.

  Glacius Flabellum

  • Fire a volley of ice shards in a cone with a set pattern. Each hit applies a stack of Chilled and does Cold damage.
  • Can be upgraded to tighten the cone, add more projectiles, and to make the projectiles travel faster.
  • Like a shotgun, deals massive damage at close range since more projectiles are likely to hit.
  • Hidden on the map.

  Fulmen Conexus

  • Fire a bolt of lightning that deals lighting damage and shocks the target it hits. Additional bolts of lightning will shoot off from your target towards the 2 closest enemies in range. The forking bolts of lightning will do slightly reduced damage compared to the main bolt.
  • Can be upgraded to fork to the 3 nearest targets and to increase the radius of the forking.
  • Discovered as part of a secret quest.

  Descendo

  • Auto-target spell that slams enemies high in the air down to the ground, dealing force damage that scales based on how high up they are.
  • If pulled from a high enough height, target will be ragdolled as well.
  • Purchased at Summer’s Spellbooks.

  Crucio

  • Many have pointed out that the current version of Avada Kedavra is basically Crucio. I agree, and as such it has been renamed to Crucio and has received its own changes. If you had Avada Kedavra before – you still have the functionality you paid points for, with all of its new improvements. It’s just been renamed to Crucio. This technically goes in Changes, but I wanted to point it out before explaining the new Avada.
  • As mentioned above, Crucio has received its own rework. It’s being brought more in line as a power-fantasy spell like Avada. However, instead of an instant kill you can keep your opponent alive and in pain on the ground at the risk of your opponent being saved by another player.
  • Crucio will now inflict a condition called Suffering which will do percentage based Necrotic damage based on max health instead of doing a flat amount of damage to all targets.
  • The tick rate of Crucio’s damage higher, but overall the DPS is similar. This is just to make the effect more intense.
  • When humanoid characters (will not work on most mobs) that are suffering are reduced below a certain health threshold (currently 40%) they will fall to the ground and begin to convulse around in pain. Duration of the condition will be extended by 5 seconds when they fall. While in this state, they cannot be reduced below 1 HP, and all incoming damage over 10 will create a bright flash of pain that extends the duration of the condition by another 2 seconds, up to 9 times. When the condition ends, the character will be able to die and will get back up after 1.5 seconds.
  • Duration of the condition has been decreased from 30s to 12s.
  • Will become Soul Numbed for 20m when this spell hits a player/boss. 3 minutes if it’s an NPC.
  • Has received visual changes. Red projectile, dramatic effects, improved sound design, and screen filters for the person that is Suffering.

  Avada Kedavra

  • Added as a new spell, this is the proper version of Avada Kedavra people have requested. I’ve been hesitant to add an instant kill spell since it’s a power fantasy spell that’s good for plot, but not for balanced combat. However, I’ll try anything once and see how it goes.
  • Send out a powerful bolt of magic which ignores shields and deals necrotic damage equal to the target’s maximum health - instantly killing anything without necrotic resistance (e.g Basilisk so it doesn’t completely trivialize bosses).
  • Will become Soul Numbed for 30m when this spell hits a player/boss. 5 minutes if it’s an NPC.
  • To explain Soul Numbing if you haven’t read the above Conditions, this is a condition that limits your focus to a set maximum for a long duration. Avada and Crucio still have low cooldowns, but on a successful hit you won’t be able to have enough focus to cast spells like Avada and Crucio for a while. For now, this is the easiest way to approach the balance to prevent consecutive casts of unforgivable spells, while minimizing the annoyances of either absurd focus costs (which are easily regained anyways) and long cooldowns (which are too punishing on a miss, and don’t prevent casting one after the other). These spells are not designed to be used on any regular basis due to their overpowered nature.
  • While I plan to integrate this spell into a quest down the line, for now it’s available at the Dark Wizard merchant for a steep price.

• Projectile Hit Detection/Hitboxes

  • When casting projectiles it is common, especially on slopes or while aiming at a target’s feet, for your spells to go into the ground. Your aim is precise, but your projectiles go into the ground. As it stands, it’s mostly impossible to hit a normal character’s feet consistently unless you jump before casting or have elevation to angle your projectile correctly. This also impacted certain wand skins, especially longer ones, where the tip extended closer to the ground on certain animations, which would cause more projectiles to be swallowed by the ground if not aimed carefully.
  • I’ve spent some time rewriting hit detection for spells. Hit detection for terrain is now completely separate and significantly smaller (usually just a single raycast/non-shapecast for most projectile sizes) so that your projectiles will not hit the ground or random objects around the scene if you are aiming precisely at your target.

• Damage Numbers, Hitmarkers, and Kill Feedback

  • Damage numbers will now only show for the person that’s dealing the damage.
  • Damage numbers are colored based on the type of damage dealt instead of only being red.
  • Damage numbers will show through all objects. Before it was hard to keep track of damage, especially on large mobs, because spell effects and mob geometry would block the numbers.
  • Damage numbers will stay at a constant size on the screen instead of being extremely tiny at long distances.
  • Overall, the movement and sizing of the damage numbers should feel much more satisfying than before. Doing large amounts of damage will cause a more pronounced damage number popup.
  • Hitmarkers are now server-authoritative and will appear for all instances of damage.
  • Hitmarkers are centered around your crosshair instead of being rooted to a position in the world.
  • Hitmarker size is scaled based on the damage within the last second (DPS).
  • Whenever you kill a character, a skull icon will appear over your crosshair. Additionally, a small local killfeed will show you the name of the character you killed near the center of the screen.

• VFX/Spell Visual Upgrades

  • A lot of spells haven’t received any visual updates since V1 of the game. While sound design and VFX aren’t my highest priority yet, I’ve gone through some particularly egregious spells and upgraded their visuals.
  • For several projectile spells, I’ve spent time upgrading the projectile system so that more interesting projectile bolts and flight paths could be created to give projectile spells more distinction and character.
  • Fire effects and explosions have overall been upgraded. Incendio and Confringo will shift in the air and will feel much more powerful. Ignis Murus, Ignis Petra, and all other fire-related spells have received these VFX improvements.
  • Avada’s cast will be green, have a powerful light, and a strong impact effect. Also has a custom animation with a fairly long windup but nothing too crazy.

• New Item Notifications

  • Previously gem, point, xp, item obtainment, spells, and so on were all batched into the same notification banner at the top of the screen. To make everything more clear, many of these have been added into an item obtainment popup queue on the left side of the screen which will provide much better visual feedback on what you’re gaining. This includes icons, a stackable amount display, and color theming as well as a more appealing animation when items are added.
  • New items you discover that are added to your inventory will also give you a dedicated popup with the item’s description, name, and icon on your screen.
  • NOTE: Notifications and popups only occur the FIRST time a unique item is added. However, since this is being added after a lot of people already have data if you add a copy of an item you already have (e.g ingredients) you’ll still get the popup/notification once.
  • Made a few changes to the visual design of the inventory and the hotbar. Some items will have special colors and so on. This is to set up for some plans which may come in the future.
  • When you discover a spell a small notification will inform you that it’s been discovered.
  • Added new point, gem, and XP icons.

• Other

  • With popular demand, The Lightning Tree has been added back into the game. Since its old hill was destroyed, a new one has been created nearby. In addition, it now has its own small secret quest.
  • The Warden at the prison now has a spell shop only accessible to Light Wizards. Only Protego Maxima is found there, but there are more plans for this in the future.
  • Avada Kedavra, Crucio, and Morsmordre will cause a reputation loss for non-dark wizards whenever they hit a target (or in the case of Mors, whenever the Dark Mark appears).
  • You’ll now gain a small amount of XP and points for killing mobs. This is minimal, but the system is there.
  • Collectable items, ingredients, bookstands, chests, etc in the world will now have a small sparkle effect on them to make it more obvious to new players what can be collected.

CHANGES

• Spells Reworks/Adjustments

  Aqua Carcerem

  • Instead of a projectile, casting Aqua Carcerem will send a large wave in the direction it’s casted. On impact with a character, they will take water damage, become wet, and will be suspended in a ball of water. Will now go through shields. Spell has received visual updates overall.

  Homenum Revelio

  • Updated UI overall. Will show Character Conditions as those have been added, and will show vulnerabilities/resistances as before but with updated icons for each damage type. Has a visual health bar/shield bar instead of just numbers.
  • No longer shows the last damage type.
  • Specific shield health will not be shown to reduce clutter.
  • Made the highlight less intense.
  • Overall time for Homenum Revelio has been dramatically increased, but cooldown raised.
  • Will show your distance away from the character, and if a highlighted character is far away their ESP will be minimalized to prevent clutter.
  • Will not highlight the player that cast the spell.

  Confringo

  • Has new visual effects.
  • Overall speed reduced.
  • Fire field upgrade will only be attached to the closest ground surface. Will no longer randomly float in the air on impact. Fire field is also significantly smaller now.

  Sectumsempra

  • Target will no longer be ragdolled during the spell.
  • The projectile will ignore shields, but the damage from this spell is still applied to shields if they’re active.
  • The bleeding condition will be applied after the spell has ended
  • Because this spell goes through shields, its Scar upgrade duration has been decreased from 60s → 15s and it’s gone from 3 → 2 damage per tick. This condition pretty much guarantees -25 damage, and with the bleed condition the spell is already very powerful.

  Gladio

  • Whenever a character is hit with Gladio two times in short succession (similar to Incendio’s burn stacks) they will gain the bleeding condition.

  Expelliarmus

  • Shield damage reduced: 50 → 30 (balanced for shock combos).
  • When Expelliarmus hits a shield, it will automatically disable it and your opponent will be unable to raise it for 1 second.

  Encaseum Levo

  • Direct projectile hits with Levo will automatically launch the hit character into the air instead of spawning a rune awkwardly on their body.
  • Recoded, will work on mobs instead of only players.
  • By default, will stay on the ground for 8 → 15 seconds, however each rune can only be bounced on a single time before the rune goes away. Longevity upgrade has been replaced with one that adds an additional bounce, unless you have the greater bounce upgrade active.
  • The above changes to Levo are a result of observation + also plenty of complaints from players about the fact that with Levo you can stay airborne while also combining ascendio/artemio for nearly a majority of the combat encounter. Movement is still important, but Levo runes were a passive way to avoid a large majority of spells with minimal effort. Will try these changes out and see how they go.

  Arresto Momentum

  • Overall dome size increased, but max upgrade will make it last a bit less time.
  • The previous Time Slow condition has been completely re-coded and upgraded mainly for Arresto, details about this condition can be found in the section above.
  • Recoded entire spell/did a lot of under the hood work so this will work on ALL characters now, not just player characters.
  • Time Pull upgrade has been disabled.

  Glacius

  • Does cold damage on direct hit and applies chilled.
  • The ice surface will also apply chilled to any player on top of it.
  • Will no longer freeze on direct hit by default. However, if the player is chilled or wet then they will be frozen. This is part of an effort to make stuns less accessible/require more setup but may change this.

  Gaia Murum

  • Added additional flexibility/creativity for this spell by reverting it back to a projectile as it was in beta. Has some new custom VFX for this projectile instead of being a bolt as it was before.
  • Is now a destructible object. Extremely vulnerable to fire damage.
  • Has an upgrade that increases its wall size, health, and duration significantly while increasing its cooldown.

  Diffindo

  • Behaves as a projectile now, visual update as well.

  Lumos

  • When upgraded, lasts forever until Nox is cast.
  • Unupgraded the duration has increased from 30 → 60.

  Bublio

  • Engulf upgrade has been disabled.
  • Each bubble is an actual projectile now.

• Spell Cooldowns

  Read this dropdown if interested in further reasoning.

  One design issue with the game currently is that as more spells are added, the more burst potential there is for spam casting spells with little decision making. For example, if you have 12 attack spells learned, you can send them out one after the other, and by the time you’re finished with the last cast the others will be off cooldown. It also makes it more difficult to add some new spells designed around mobility, healing, and defense because of this issue. For instance, if the game had 10 mobility spells, then you could constantly fly through the air since their cooldowns are all independent. Raising all of the mobility spell cooldowns would only be a temporary solution since as you add more, all of their cooldowns would have to keep being raised until it becomes a bit absurd. The natural solutions involving mana bars, linked cooldowns, and limited spell slots are tempting, but I do personally like the sandbox freedom in the game. Features may have to be made in the future when this becomes even more of an issue, but for now I’m implementing cooldown changes. The idea behind this is that you’ll be forced to rely on more spells overall instead of spamming the same ones off CD. I will likely be adjusting these a lot and this problem is bound to be revisited in the future.

  • Repello: 12s → 30s
  • Protego Diabolica: 60s → 120s
  • Serpensortia: 60s → 120s
  • Levicorpus: 8s → 20s
  • Accio: 6s → 15s
  • Arresto Momentum: 45s → 90s
  • Aqua Carcerem: 10s → 20s
  • Geminio: 20s → 35s
  • Encaseum Bombardo: 15s → 25s
  • Encaseum Porto: 30s → 2m
  • Encaseum Levo: 20s → 30s
  • Ignis Petra: 10s → 25s
  • Tempestas: 12s → 20s
  • Encaseum Helios: 25s → 60s
  • Fulguritis: 10s → 15s
  • Protego Electrica: 30s → 45s
  • Incendio: 5s → 10s | Charge: 0 → 0.3
  • Diffindo: 5s → 8s | Charge: 0 → 0.3
  • Piertotum Locomotor: 1m → 3m (had 0 downtime because of the statue’s life, mostly unnoticeable)
  • Episkey: 20s → 30s
  • Glacius: 8s → 13s (Does damage on impact now, and when raining this spell hits very hard + freezes).
  • Homenum Revelio: 20s → 30s
  • Morsmordre: 1m → 3m
  • Confringo: 11s → 22s

• Other

  • Dark Wizards now spawn in more areas of the game, especially in the Dark Forest.
  • Year scaling on ‘A Dark Ritual’ has been lowered given the simplicity and ease of the quest compared to others.
  • Area Indicator no longer shows a description, is a bit larger on the screen, and has a cleaner animation.
  • All damage previously had a 1.25x multiplier against shields. This default has been lowered to 1.20x in light of the Shocked condition.
  • Reputation penalty for disabling a shield tether raised to 120 for Light Wizards, and is still 75 for everyone else. It’s still an option, just a slightly higher consequence.
  • Colloportus may now be cast in safe zones.
  • Made adjustments on the low graphics setting so that cobblestone doesn’t become significantly darker.

BUG FIXES

• General

  • Fixed a large amount of spell upgrades not functioning properly. E.g Diffindo double slice never working.
  • Regions that aren’t supposed to be active when not in the workspace will no longer register. Notably: Cursed Spirit Realm and Illusory Realm would kick you out of flight while flying in certain areas.
  • Loading a new spell into your wand while casting Fulguritis, Bublio, Glacia Maxima, Fiendfyre, or Expecto Patronum (spells where you typically guide it with your mouse) will cancel the spell’s active effects. (Fixes various bugs that allowed you to stack e.g Fulguritis + Bublio to do unfair amounts of DPS at once).
  • Fixed Dark Wizard hideout beam not working sometimes
  • Legilimens can no longer be used on players that are Incapacitated (Ragdolled, Frozen, Petrified, etc). This inadvertently affects the balance/meta of the spell, but the purpose is to quickly fix a few bugs related to Legilimens when a player is sent there in a specific state.
  • Environmental damage (kill blocks, lava, legilimens death block, willow, drowning, etc will ignore Concateno links since it allows for the setup of unfair instant kills.
  • Fixed an issue in Mob code that would sometimes cause their updates to continue to run after their model has been destroyed, causing lag overtime.
  • Mobs will ignore attacking random objects e.g Shield Tethers
  • Fixed a few inconsistent PVP flags that would sometimes allow you to use Flight/etc while in combat.

HOTFIXES

• January 9

  • Resolved a few performance issues
  • Fumos is no longer spammable
  • Fumos Cooldown: 1m → 2m
  • Glacius damage lowered slightly
  • Crucio soul numb: 20m → 15m (experimental)
  • Avada soul numb: 30m → 15m (experimental)

• January 10

  • Fixed wand inhibitor not functioning, and items not being disabled for players that visit the prison
  • Patientia cooldown: 8s → 15s
  • Fixed more performance issues
  • Fixed conditions that are stackable not renewing their duration whenever a new stack is added past the limit (was affecting Hastio).