As you all know, I started working on the rebalancing two weeks ago, so I'm very happy to announce that this week I successfully playtested all the way to the final boss of the dungeon. As this is the furthest I can go before being hindered by the plot, I will now need to begin editing the story once again. The side content of the game needs to be polished as well, but we're in a much better position now gameplay wise than we were when we started this two weeks ago.

On the way I've found a number of bugs, and have either taken a mental note or have directly addressed them. I've still got lots of work overall to do before we see this update.

With Zeph finishing the last of my artwork designs, I was finally able to go into a topic I've been waiting to discuss, the Vassal Class Promotion. If you missed that devlog where I focused specifically on that topic, you can find it here https://aodlegacy.itch.io/shattered-realms-mortal-tale/devlog/203038/second-clas...

And if you want to know just what the heck is a Class Promotion, see the first article about Class Promotions and the first announced Class Promotion, the Black Knight: https://aodlegacy.itch.io/shattered-realms-mortal-tale/devlog/164306/first-class...

My biggest challenge thus far has been properly balancing Elemental Damage specifically on enemies, and I've been trying to find that sweet spot between it being a weakness and it being a detriment to game balance. I've also whacked the amount of XP monsters reward, and I intend to strengthen the XP Curve so that it is a bit more challenging to level up as quickly as I've found myself leveling. I don't intend for my players to be all the way at Lvl 40 by the time that they reach the first major dungeon boss of the game.

Before long I'll need to properly begin class design of both Vassal and Black Knight as either way you slice it, they'll be crucial to both plot and progression, Black Knight already has a fair few ideas having been done, but it still needs plenty to do. 

There's not been any word from my composer but that's fairly normal. I'm expecting in a week or two to have the next update but he could have made a lot of progress this week, but we won't know for sure until he responds to my latest check in.

Overall this has been a great week and we're now at a really good point in the dev cycle. If story and gameplay fixes/updates were all I had to do, I'd probably be announcing a release date by now. Unfortunately... that's def not the case. Still, we're getting to a crucial step and that's worth celebrating nonetheless. You all have a great week and hopefully I will have even more good news next devlog!