Stoneshard Update - Fatigue and Magic System

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Written by ValH on July 11th, 2022

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The upcoming Forgotten Lore early access update for Ink Stains Games' turn-based RPG Stoneshard is expected to go live on August 5, 2022. When that happens, it's going to introduce a new boss, a story quest, a bunch of new content, two new skill trees, and a couple of new mechanics.

Here's an overview of the new stuff and a few paragraphs about the new Fatigue and Backfire mechanics:

Hello everyone!

We’d like to begin today’s devlog by making an important announcement. The upcoming major update, titled as “Forgotten Lore”, will be released this year on August 5th.

It will include the following:

• The long-awaited surprise that we promised some time ago - a new boss! Similarly to the Ancient Troll hunt, this quest can be acquired in a location of questionable repute after you reach a high enough level.
• A new quest, “Gwynnel’s Answers”, which will conclude the opening sequence of the main story and send you off to explore the open world.
  A quick reminder - for the time being, this quest will be the end of the main questline. We plan to focus on the overarching plot only after we finish implementing the necessary systems and mechanics.
• New magic school, Electromancy, which will allow you to master dangerous and unpredictable lightning spells.
• New utility tree - Magic Mastery. We’ll tell you more about it in the next devlog.
• Several new points of interest.
• A large portion of the remaining Brynn buildings: the printing house, the House of the Azure Thread, the Bank of Brynn, the Golden Grain Inn, the Cathedral, the University, the Close Harbor Tavern, the Alchemical Emporium of Curious Goods, and a dockside store.
• New enemies: 13 new types of Proselytes (including two minibosses), as well as Gulons and Young Trolls.
• New mechanic: Fatigue. More details below.
• New magic mechanic, Backfire, and a few additional magic stats. More details below.
• New loot type: Folios. These texts provide information on various aspects of the game’s lore. Reading them also grants some Experience.
• Caravan Stop that can be used for resting and storing your items. Caravan travels will be added in subsequent major updates.
• New biome, seashore.
• New items.

As you may see, one of the largest Stoneshard updates is almost upon us. To ease the wait, we’d like to share more details about two new systems that will be added in “Forgotten Lore” - Fatigue and Backfire.

FATIGUE

Fatigue is one of the few remaining survival mechanics that we plan to implement. It has a number of important gameplay functions:

• Create an additional layer of planning and character management.
• Increase the importance of sleeping (right now it’s only used for saving the game).
• Boost the value of certain consumables such as stimulants and exquisite foods.

Fatigue works similarly to other Health mechanics: it can range from 0 to 100% and is generated by a variety of actions:

• Traversing tiles
• Attacking
• Blocking and dodging
• Using skills (Fatigue Gain is 2%* of their Energy Cost) and casting spells (Fatigue Gain is 4%* of their Energy Cost)
  * - these are rough numbers that are subject to change

The rate of Fatigue Gain is tied to a couple other stats: first of all, there’s Fatigue Resistance, which can be both negative and positive. Secondly, Max Energy also plays a big role - the higher it is, the longer it will be before your character gets tired.

When your character’s Fatigue reaches 25%, 50%, and 75%, they’ll receive increasingly powerful debuffs to their Fumble Chance, Energy Restoration, and Cooldowns Duration.

In addition to all that, Fatigue also gradually lowers your Max Energy Threshold. It’s a new stat that works similarly to Max Health Threshold, albeit with one important difference: Max Energy Threshold only limits the amount of Energy that can be replenished through Restoration, so it’s possible to exceed it with certain consumables, abilities, and effects.

Overall, Fatigue is balanced in such a way that it doesn’t become a source of frequent annoyance while still carrying enough impact to not be ignored: as long as you make smart use of the available resources, an average dungeon run shouldn’t raise it by more than 25-30%.

There are many ways to combat Fatigue:

• The effect of Vigor, which is acquired after a good night’s sleep or by using some consumables (such as Elven Mud). It reduces Fatigue Gain and gradually lowers already existing Fatigue.
• Many exquisite foods, which can be bought in Brynn taverns and grocery shops, can either alleviate Fatigue or reduce Fatigue Gain.
• Some stimulant drugs might help you stay awake longer than usual: Nikkaf has a noticeable effect on Fatigue Gain, and Al’qud slowly reduces Fatigue every turn.
• Rest Mode can provide a moment of respite after a fight.
• And finally, the most obvious method - sleeping. Each hour of sleep significantly lowers Fatigue, which makes Bedrolls and distant camps all the more important when embarking on a long journey. Resting in more expensive taverns also has a greater restorative effect.

As you may imagine, Sleeping received a major overhaul. Just like in real life, your character will no longer be able to sleep for weeks on end thanks to a new mechanic, maximum sleep duration, which comes into play every time you decide to take a nap.

Every two hours of staying awake increase the maximum sleep duration by one hour, capping at 8 possible hours of sleep. Each 10% Fatigue additionally increases this number by one hour. This means that after 16 hours of activity you’ll be able to sleep for 8 hours, and if your character is also exhausted, they’ll be able to stay in bed for up to 18 hours.

Naturally, we anticipated the situation where you might need to save your progress while the character isn’t tired enough to sleep - the Sleeping UI now has a “Rest” button, which gives an option to save the game without skipping time.

CHANGES TO MAGIC

Let’s move onto the second part of this devlog: changes to the Magic System. They were made due to several reasons:

• There’s a dissonance between the depiction of mages in the lore and their actual gameplay. In our setting, magic was haphazardly put together from scraps of ancient knowledge, which fell into obscurity during the local version of the Dark Ages. Magic is mostly limited to battlefield use, and no one understands its true nature or how it actually works. As a result, mages can’t do much else apart from mechanically memorizing the few surviving spells from their preferred magic schools and then simply reciting them without any alterations.
  
  From time to time, extraordinary minds find ways to modify or improve upon the existing spells, but any kind of deviation from the established tradition is extremely dangerous and often leads to injuries, madness, or agonizing death.
  
  On top of all that, mages have to use their own body and mind as a conduit for energies - this kind of stress is extremely unhealthy for any practitioner of magic. Take Jonna, for instance - despite her haggard looks, she isn’t even in her thirties…
• In the current version of the game, magic gameplay lacks the tactical depth of melee builds and requires significantly less resources. Mages hardly interact with the Health system, don’t spend gold on consumables and repairs, and barely ever have to think about their positioning. Magic builds only have to worry about Energy and Magic Power, which greatly reduces their variety.

To fix this issue, we decided to add a new mechanic, Backfire, and a few new stats that go along with it:

• Backfire Damage
• Backfire Chance
• Miracle Chance
• Miracle Potency

Backfire occurs in situations when a mage fails to cast a spell by mumbling the magic formula, performing a wrong gesture, or just losing concentration. When something like this happens, they take a bit of damage - the exact amount depends on a separate stat, Backfire Damage. Additionally, miscasting a spell drains Sanity and generates more Fatigue than usual.

The base Backfire Chance is 20%, but it can be higher depending on the complexity of a spell you try to cast: it’s much easier to make a mistake while summoning “Inferno” than when casting “Fire Barrage”. Backfire Chance can be reduced with special gear, certain abilities, by using Stardust, or by leveling Agility.

Backfire Damage is a percentage of Energy used to cast a spell that is dealt as damage if it Backfires. For example, if Backfire Damage is 50%, miscasting a 20 Energy spell will deal you 10 damage of the corresponding type. By default, Backfire Damage is 0%, but it grows by 20% with each cast. Remaining on the same tile lowers Backfire Damage by 10%, and skipping a turn reduces it by another 10%, reflecting the fact that mages need time to recover their concentration.

This way mages still have a lot of tools to work with while finally gaining more opportunities for meaningful decisions: as long as you don’t go out of your way to kite enemies and make occasional pauses between spells, it’s possible to keep Backfire Damage at zero, receiving no damage even if you miscast. Alternatively, nothing really prevents you from using spells every turn while actively maneuvering around the battlefield - although in this case you may want to acquire some Magic and Nature Resistances or make liberal use of Stardust.

Miracle Chance and Miracle Potency are magical alternatives to Crit Chance and Crit Efficiency: their addition to the game will improve the variety of mage-related gear, raise the importance of Perception to magic builds, and remove the silliness of being able to cast more critical spells by equipping physical weaponry with high Crit Chance.

That’s all for now. In the next devlog, we’ll tell you more about Magic Mastery and its interactions with Fatigue and new magic mechanics.

Until next time!

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