Combat Arena Alpha
The Combat Arena Alpha Patch 2.2 is out! You can read the full patch notes here, but these are the highlights:
The Combat Arena Alpha has its first new arrival! Please welcome Salamurder as our first Water Type!
Salamurder is a Water Type ambush specialist. This bulky unassuming Kinfolk lumbers around the battlefield, absorbing damage with its large health pool and high Special Defense stat, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike.
The moment an opponent strays just a little too close, lets their guard slip just long enough, or fails to see the seemingly bashful amphibian as a threat is when Salamurder excels.
With powerful crowd control abilities like Hook, Riptide, and Howl, Salamurder can turn the tide of battle in an instant, inflicting Fear and ravaging its opponents with brutally powerful attack sequences.
We’ve added a spectator mode so that users can watch ongoing matches. We hope it’ll be put to good use during the KFT Tournament tomorrow! At the moment, this feature is a free camera that you can move around to watch the battle. In the future, we plan to add an option to see from the players’ perspectives as well.
There are 8 new abilities in total! A lot of these are specifically for Salamurder, but we added a few for other Kinfolk you know and love.
Lots of AI and Performance improvements. The game runs more smoothly than it used to, and the NPCs in the Practice Arena have better aim and are better at avoiding obstacles.
Many, many, many balance changes.
Single Player
The AI has received improvements in both the Combat Arena and the Single Player mode.
Made improvements to NPC pathfinding so that traversing off mesh links does not cause performance hiccups in game and also any pathfinding NPCs in general are 10-25% more efficient now.
Made several adjustments to NPC behaviors to balance gameplay in our Single Player mode.
At some moments in our Single Player mode we essentially pause NPCs to allow for player dialogue such as learning new abilities. Fixed some issues related to this such as NPC's cooldowns on abilities refreshing while this dialogue was happening.
The weather has seen a few updates! We’ve adjusted the day-night cycle so that days don’t go by too quickly, and we made nighttime pass faster than daytime so that the player isn’t wandering in the dark for too long. We also fixed an issue where weather effects like snow and rain would display while the player is inside a building.
We’ve been focusing on adding more points of interest to the landscape during this sprint. You can look out from some vantage points and see multiple points of interest at the same time! There are also some that are more hidden or off the beaten path, and will be a treat to discover.
4 Kinfolk have been given official names, and those names have been fully integrated into our systems.
A total of 10 music tracks have been either updated or added to the game this sprint. A handful of songs are already set up to play when entering certain areas or situations, and it adds a lot of ambience!
We touched up various smaller details in the dungeon.
Improved the appearance of materials, resized/rearranged set pieces, and fixed an instance of z-fighting where two rooms meet.
Edited the logic for keys and a puzzle room to run more smoothly.
Community
Are you ready? The KFT (Kindred Fates Tournaments) Discord Server will be hosting a tournament in the Combat Arena Alpha! It will take place tomorrow at 1pm EST in celebration of the Alpha’s anniversary. For signups and more information, join their Discord server!
Thanks for stopping by, friends! We hope you have a happy December :) See you next time, on December 17th!
