Official Release

It's been a long road but I am finally crossing the finish line.

I'm giving things one last look-over as I prepare to package the official release version for upload. It should be ready in a few hours and then we will be heading out of the Early Access phase.

Thank you so much to everyone that showed their support by getting into the Early Access. I would especially like to thank Ceak from YouTube as well as Azuul, Revenge, and Maddin from here on Steam. Their testing and bug reports have been invaluable and seeing someone willing to play through multiple times gave me encouragement along the way.

The release update will be sometime tonight as long as I don't find anything game-breaking while I'm packing things up. There is good news and bad news, though... To get the bad news out of the way, the official release version will break any and all old save files from Early Access test versions. I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause but I am hoping the results will be worth it. That leads us to the good news.

I went all-out on this last update. There's a lot to go through but here is what to expect in the release:

- Updated and improved Magitech system

- New and updated skills and magic effects

- New and updated skill animations

- New and updated Steam Achievements

- Combat is now properly balanced

- New and updated weapons and armor database

- There are now 3 armor types up from 2 (light, general, heavy)

- HP gains per level have been increased to give player characters more health

- New and updated weapon graphics

- New weapon types available

- Updated monster database

- Updated gold, loot, and experience drops

- New and updated monster skills and attacks

- New and updated magitech devices

- New and updated trinkets and accessories

- Updated tooltips and descriptions

- Updated loot system to keep replays fresher. Many chests now offer randomized loot according to game progress

- Some new and updated animations have been added to story scenes

- Updated each character's Inner Fire ultimate attack

- Fixed some missing/wrong face graphics and character sprites

- Weather and Environment variables now work properly in combat (trigger storm, trigger cave-in, etc)

- The Blue Magic system has been updated

- Energy management in combat has been changed

- Combat skills now have mastery levels to make skills cost less and do more damage the more you use them

- The combat exhaustion mechanic has been re-balanced to match the new changes

- Some zone maps and scenes that felt bare have been touched up

- All secret basement locations have been updated

- Improvements to combat HUD and UI

- Side content with the Monster Hunters and Mercenary Guild is now active

- The Overworld system has been updated. Rare Monsters and Bandit Camps are now tied into the activated side content and Shipwrecks are no longer just battles every time

There's more I am forgetting but hopefully you can tell that there was a lot of work behind the decision to break old test files with the release version. The changes (especially the database re-writes) were just too much. Hopefully all the new goodies will make it worthwhile for anyone effected.

Some important things to note about the official release:

- You can no longer run away from boss fights

- You can still run away from other fights (except some certain story ones)

- You can no longer save inside dungeons except at save points

- The option to turn random encounters on and off still exists but it does not work while inside the final dungeon so use it wisely

Out now on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1747220/Neverspring_Chronicles/