Pagan Online Team May 15, 2019 7:00 PM CEST

We will be introducing Patch 0.2.0 on May 16 2019 at 06:10 UTC.

To the co-opmobile!

Greetings Pagans,

After running support of the game with just a few dedicated code wizards during the holidays, we are back in the studio ready and raring to push for some crucial changes to be implemented in this patch.

The first iteration of co-op play is finally here! Slaying monsters with friends is always fun, after all. We also did some other work on hero controls, the way they move and attack, and fixes to the damage calculation model for all the number crunchers out there. Oh, and card packs are gone. A little bird tells us the new hotspots for farming epic materials are the Threats. 😉

Before we delve into the patch notes, I will share some bits that we are planning for the near future.

Legendary Items

Currently, we’re not too happy with the state of legendary items and will do some fixes on them. This includes rebalancing and crafting fixes.

Starting Hero Choice

We are working on implementing an option to confirm your hero choice at the end of the tutorial, so all three of the starting heroes can be played before making a choice.

Miscellaneous

We are working on a lot of quality of life changes: autopick selection, buy/sell improvements, inventory lag, and an alternative WASD control scheme to name a few.

We are grateful for all the feedback you guys are providing and we will continue to listen closely to what you have to say about our game. This is an awesome journey for all of us.”

Emil aka Easymode, Lead Game Designer

CO-OP

The first iteration of co-op is here! We had it during The Trials, but there were some technical issues with it so it wasn’t ready for Early Access. Now it’s making a return in its first iteration. For now, you can play any side mission or assassination in co-op. The campaign is not playable co-operatively. There might be some bugs and glitches. If you find any, please report them back to us so we can fix them ASAP.

The maximum number of players is currently two. We also have matchmaking in place, which means when you queue up for a mission type, you will be matched with players playing heroes of a similar level.

How can I play a mission or assassination?

Group with another player in the Pantheon via the Party menu. You can invite people from your local Pantheon instance, or you can add people to your friends list and invite from there. You can also go to the Looking For Player (LFP) tab and make yourself available for all players to see and invite you.

What is planned for co-op in the future?

4 player co-op: we’ve been testing it and it works almost at an optimal level

Quality of life: at the moment, co-op can be a bit hectic as it lacks UI that would help players distinguish what is going on during battle. Things like “teleport to encounter” indicators, health bars, player character indicators, etc.

Optimization: getting that smooth experience is a top priority for us, so there will be more work on network and general optimization

Balancing: additional balancing for co-op will be required and it’s something that we will continuously do

Designing fun: synergy between heroes, special systems for co-op only, special rewards and drops and all that good stuff will come once the majority of bugs are fixed and we are satisfied with the overall experience and balance.

HEROES

While the last update was mainly about hero stats, numbers and abilities, in this update we are trying something new. We are updating the control scheme and adding some quality of life changes. We will monitor how these changes affect the overall balance before making any significant changes to numbers again.

Attack and Move

All heroes can now use their primary attack (default LMB) and move at the same time with reduced movement speed.

Movement Ability Control

Added an option to control the direction of targeting some movement abilities. Now you can choose to aim these abilities with WASD or mouse pointer. It’s under Options > Gameplay > Character Ability Direction Control

Abilities affected by this are:

Kingewitch’s Dash





Anya’s Vitality Rush





Masha’s Twirl





Valeria’s Jump Out.

All Melee Heroes

Fixed a bug where melee hits would not hit a target - heroes affected: Kingewitch, Morokh, Istok, Masha.

Istok

Rebalanced the Thunderfist ability:

Damage increased from 500% to 800%





Does not consume “static charge” for additional damage any more by default





Spell Upgrade node “Bonus Damage per Static Charge” decreased from 5% to 1%.

Masha

Masha’s passive ability now works properly.

Kingewitch

Fixed bug where Whirlwind ability gets stuck in continuous loop until recast.

Morokh

Fixed an issue with Harvest ability not doing damage

Now has 1 passive resource regeneration per second.

Lukian

Fixed a bug where some of his abilities would deal Physical Damage instead of Fire / Lightning.

Dameer

Fixed an issue that caused his damage to scale immensely when changing gear

Fixed an issue that caused bear damage to scale immensely when changing gear

Removed charges from Dameer’s primary attack and slowed his attack animation by 10%.

By popular demand, here are the stats of Vavvan, Dameer’s faithful bear companion:

Starting Strength 85, gains +8 per level

Starting Dexterity 50, gains +7 per level

Starting Intelligence 55, gains +7 per level

Starting Fortitude 130, gains +17 per level.

STATS & DAMAGE CALCULATION

As many players already discovered, something was glitched with some of the hero damage calculations so I will take this opportunity to explain in depth how it all works and what has been changed for this patch.

The main thing that has been changed is that we introduced a new damage type “under the hood”. It’s called “Weapon Damage” and it can be found only on weapons as an implicit stat and can't be stacked from crafting or other means.

Why this change?

Our system for ability damage relies on taking damage from stats (like weapon stats) and converting that damage into any type. We decided this because we want gear to have an impact on abilities. So in order to make a lightning damage ability before… we had to set it up to convert all physical damage into lightning damage for that ability because you had only physical damage on your weapon. This system was faulty and made it so that all physical damage (not only from a weapon) was being converted into lightning and allowed people to keep stacking physical damage and boost all other types of abilities.

Now the system is set up so every ability of every character takes the newly introduced Weapon Damage and uses that as base for the damage of that ability. If you use lightning abilities now, you will need to have lightning damage and lightning damage bonus (%) stats in order to improve that ability. Patch notes for this change are simple, but they require some additional explanation:

All Weapons: all weapons in game now have Weapon Damage as an implicit stat instead of Physical Damage

All Heroes: Most of the abilities of all heroes were changed in how they calculate stats and which bonuses apply.

So with that said, let’s delve into a more detailed explanation on how damage is calculated.

Ability Damage Definition

Everything that Heroes use is an ability, primary attack included. Each ability that does damage is defined by two main parameters: SOURCE and TYPE. The final damage will be calculated depending on these two parameters.

SOURCE: can be Attack or Spell

If it’s Attack , it means this ability will benefit from the “ Attack Damage Bonus (%) ” stat that can be found on gear. It is also derived directly from the Strength attribute.

, it means this ability will benefit from the “ ” stat that can be found on gear. It is also derived directly from the attribute. If it’s Spell, it means this ability will benefit from the “Spell Damage Bonus (%)” stat that can be found on gear. It is also derived directly from the Intelligence attribute.

TYPE: can be Weapon, Physical, Sunfire, Cold, Lightning, Poison.

This basically means that each ability that deals damage can deal ANY type or MULTIPLE types of damage, depending on how we, the developers, set up that ability. This system also allows us to convert any type of damage into any other type of damage. Let’s do some examples:

Istok’s Thunderslam is set up as an Attack that deals Lightning damage. Step by step how the total damage will be calculated.

The appropriate bonuses are chosen (Attack Damage Bonus or Spell Damage Bonus) according to the ability type (Attack/Spell). Thunderslam is an Attack ability so Attack damage Bonus is chosen.

is chosen.

A value is randomly chosen from the Min - Max values for each damage type that a hero has from gear, and the Attack damage Bonus is applied to those random values.

that a hero has from gear, and the to those random values.

Next, we have Damage Type conversions and multiplier factors which are defined in the ability. For the Thunderslam ability we convert Weapon damage to Lightning damage and ignore all other damage types apart from Lightning Damage. Converting a damage type to another damage type will transfer the value to that other damage type (so if we had 5 weapon damage and 5 lightning damage, after conversion we will have 0 weapon damage and 10 lightning damage).

and which are defined in the ability. For the Thunderslam ability we convert and all other damage types apart from Lightning Damage. Converting a damage type to another damage type will transfer the value to that other damage type (so if we had 5 weapon damage and 5 lightning damage, after conversion we will have 0 weapon damage and 10 lightning damage).

After converting Weapon damage to Lightning damage we apply additional bonuses to the value. The bonuses are the Ability Damage Factor (defined for each damage type for each ability) and the specific damage type bonus. Thunderslam has the Damage Factor set to 150% for lightning damage and the Bonus Lightning Damage stat the player might have is multiplied with that.

Istok’s Primary Attack is set up as an Attack that deals all types of damage.

is set up as an that deals of damage. Attack Bonus is chosen.



Attack bonus is applied to all damage types.



Primary Attacks on most heroes do not ignore any type of damage and have ability damage factors set to 1 for all types of damage. For Istok’s primary attack we convert Weapon damage to Physical damage and we do not ignore other types of damage.

other types of damage.

So after converting Weapon damage to Physical, we apply the Ability Damage Factor bonuses for all types of damage and each type of damage is multiplied with its own damage bonus stat.



This results in Istok’s LMB damage output having values other than Physical Damage while mostly scaling with physical because weapon damage is converted to that.

Lukian’s Primary Attack is set up as a Spell that converts all damage types into lightning.

is set up as a that into lightning. Spell Bonus is chosen.



Spell Bonus is applied to all damage types.



Primary attack on Lukian is set up so it gathers all the damage types and converts them to Lightning type.



After the conversion, the Ability Damage Factor is applied as a multiplier, as is the Lightning Damage Bonus stat.



This results in Lukian’s LMB damage output having a single lightning value as opposed to Istok’s all damage type attack.

So to conclude, we can see how the damage of a single ability is calculated by writing it down in a step by step algorithm.

According to the ability type (Attack/Spell), the appropriate bonuses are chosen (Attack Damage Bonus or Spell Damage Bonus). A value is randomly chosen from the Min - Max values for each damage type that a hero has from gear, and the Attack/Spell Damage Bonus is applied to those random values. Depending on the ability itself there is Damage Type Conversion (mostly it’s Weapon Damage into some other type, for example Physical). After the conversion, bonuses from the Ability Damage Factor and specific damage type are applied as multipliers.

While this system might make many of damage stats on some heroes obsolete temporarily, it is a good basis for future updates and when we bring the new skill tree as an addition that will complement the stats.

BOSSES AND NPCS

Boss fights are something we want to improve on and will likely continue to tweak and change until we get them to a high enough level of fun that you guys expect from a proper boss fight. For now, we start with tweaks for Furun and Kablar.

Furun the Soulsmith

Will not use Soul Siphon ability at the start of the fight



Hammer Throw changed so hammers don’t travel back. Furun can react faster after casting this ability



Movement Speed increased



Higher chance of chasing hero to melee range



Soul Cages in phase three turn faster.

Kablar

Now summons minions in phases one, three, and four



Fire meteors have increased range



Fixed camera position in phase four.

Fixed some collision problems with Glavodar.

USER INTERFACE

UI is something that we are constantly working on and trying to improve. It will most likely change even more over time as we find better and better solutions to communicate game design to you guys.

New graphics solution for hover descriptions

Blueprints in craft machine now have hover info

Battle HUD: added info about status effects

Battle HUD: added Level Up info window

Battle HUD: added new health bars for enemies

Vendor: added item hover description in buyback panel

Party UI: New graphics solution

Loading Screen: no longer requires “click to continue” action to proceed.

GENERAL

Missions: Survivals and Expeditions cannot be completed any more by leaving them before the last encounter

Missions: Threats: increased drop chance of epic materials. Threats are designed to give larger quantities of a specific material

Vendor: It is impossible to sell your last weapon for the chosen hero.