As mentioned last time, this update is focused on revisiting older features and includes some suggestions from the community. When I started making Emberward, most of the relics and characters were designed with simpler abilities, which made them feel much weaker compared to the newer additions. This patch focuses on reworking characters and maps. I've listed the changes below and explained why they are changed!

After this update, I plan to start working on the fourth area (…😱). Since a full new area involves designing monsters abilities, mechanics, maps, and the final boss level, it'll take significantly more time than regular updates. Plus, with real-life events like the holidays and Lunar New Year coming up, I guess the next update might take until mid to late February. I know some players get anxious when they don't see updates in Early Access games, so I just want to let you know this is my full-time job now, and I'm not going to abandon it :P

By the way, the planned upcoming updates are:
- The 4th area
- The highest difficulty & enhanced boss levels
- Several small patches to add new towers, relics, and characters
- Endless mode and other game modes
- Achievements and additional languages
- Controller support
- 1.0


- Refi

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• Gambler's License: If you complete a stage without taking any monster damage, gain 2 additional Gambler's Tokens.
  
• Blessed Chisel: When you place wall blocks, they are no longer restricted by obstacles. Any tiles overlapping obstacles will be automatically cleared.
  
• Beacon of the Sapling Queen: The detection range of your Drone Towers increase by 50%. Each Drone Tower on the field increases attack speed of all Drone Towers by 2%, up to a maximum of 50%.

Characters:
A common complaint about Chunk was that his mega blocks were often difficult to use or place. So...since he's a master architect, what if he's not just skilled at building large blocks, but also great at chipping them into shapes that fit perfectly anywhere!?

Now, Boulder has a new exclusive relic: Blessed Chisel. With this, blocks can overlap with obstacles, clearing them automatically during placement. Additionally, the Mega Rune has been enhanced: it's no longer affected by corrupted blocks and now creates four buff tiles if there are other runes on the block. (but the four buff tiles are separated for balance reasons.)


Comparing to other characters, Belloc didn't receive much feedback. I think the reason is that as one of the earliest-designed characters, he lacked defining traits beyond armor. To highlight his status as a royal knight, he has gained the reworked relic "Royal Command", which gives him quest challenges for every stage. Also, he has a new ability "Royal Barrier" which helps protect your critical towers.

• Royal Barrier: The tower gains a 50% damage boost and becomes immune to malfunction effects.
  When monsters attempt to apply a malfunction effect, it is reflected, stunning the monster for twice the duration. This effect can trigger once every 5 seconds (ineffective against bosses).

Flames:
Demon Flame's levels now persist across stages! The experience required increases with level.
Taking damage from monsters not only destroys 3 of your towers, but also reduces the flame level by 1.

This change was highly requested by players. Honestly, since everyone plays the game differently, balancing it is EXTREMELY difficult, and it creates a lot more restrictions on level design and monster design. But...I'm just giving it a shot. It might be changed again if it doesn't work out!


Some players told me they prefer to play without talents but want full talents when playing endless mode. So, we now have a "Learn All" button! This button appears when you have enough XP to unlock all talents.


Regarding the map, the most common feedback includes:

"I wish there were more types of nodes on the map."
"The Barracks doesn't feel like it's worth it."
"There isn't anything I want in the altar!"
"Would be better if the path choices mattered more"

This update focuses on making path selection more interesting and adjusting some of the nodes.


In addition to rewards like towers, blocks, and relics, battle nodes may now contain three extra rewards:

• Mini Shops: Appear after completing a stage and offer some items that would (possibly) suit your build.
  
• Quests: Barracks challenges are now selected at the start of the level, and grant bonus rewards upon completion.
  
• Gambler's Tokens: Earn extra Gambler's Tokens upon clearing the level.

Also, two new nodes were added:

In each anomaly level, there is a special effect that makes the battle more difficult. The effects are visible on the map, so you'll need to decide whether to take on the challenge based on your build. Similar to corrupted battles, completing these nodes grants higher rewards.

(Let me know what you think after trying the anomaly levels! Are they too easy or too difficult? Are they fun to play? I’d love to hear your thoughts to decide whether I should expand on this or not!)

To avoid confusing new players, anomaly levels are unlocked after clearing Frost Ruins on any difficulty.


If you played the first demo, you might recognize this node! But everything inside has been reworked from scratch. (Remember when the buff cards were in your deck!?)

In the Workshop, you can customize and enhance your blocks with three options:

- Reforge: Change a block's shape.
- Dismantle: Remove cards from your backpack.
- Enhance: Add runes to your blocks.

There are no limits to these actions. You can reshape all your block cards into LINE PIECE if you've got enough Ember Stones!

The new version of Altar...I wasn't really satisfied with the results after some testing. Therefore, it has been reverted to the original version (for now). Since the block removing feature has been moved to the workshop, the altar's "Purify" effect has been temporarily changed to "restore all HP".

Additionally, like the shop, both the workshop and altar can now be re-entered after leaving.


In previous versions, reroll chances were granted 1-3 times per tower selection based on talents. Now, reroll chances are shared across the entire game, with each reroll consuming a new item: "Gambler's Token". The Gambler's Tokens can be obtained through stage rewards, mini shops, or relic effects.

(And you can now reroll when selecting relics!)

Towers:
The main issue with the Scrap Tank Tower is that balancing breaks when players invest all their resources into it. It's cool when you're doing it the first time, but after that, it makes the game boring.

Now, there's a 300 gold cap on the total value of towers you can feed into each scrap tank, and you can upgrade it to 500 if you want to. So building a really powerful tank is still possible, but it costs a bit more, and you can no longer dump all your resources on a single tank tower.

Added a button for quick reroll, with the reroll cost equal to the price of selling (based on its previous roll) and rebuilding the tower.

• The brightness of ice blocks and the ground in ice stages has been reduced.
  
• Tower loadout is now locked in a level to prevent issues with future modes.
  
• Tana's tower cost increase reduced from 60% to 50%.
  
• Scorpion King's HP reduced by ~7%, and its effects were adjusted:
  - Takes half damage above 70% HP, and moves 20% faster below 70% HP.
  
• Relic "Energy Storage System": Towers not attacking for more than (5 -> 3) seconds will 100% critical hit on the next attack.
  
• Monster armor damage reduction now guarantees at least 1 damage after calculation.
  
• Fixed missing control prompts for placing block cards.

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• Fixed a display issue for Japanese fonts in anomaly levels.