Release 69: Elementalism

This release marks a major milestone: with the addition of Elemental Chosen, all of the species planned for campaign mode have been added to the game!  I enjoy adding new species with all their various gameplay twists, but any new species added after this point will be firmly in the realm of optional, postgame content.  I'll only be considering that sort of thing after campaign mode is done.  We're getting close.

Elemental Chosen are the counterpart to Mechanical Chosen.  Where Mechanical Chosen had a bunch of different Operations to force you to plan and navigate your route for how you'd corrupt them, Elemental Chosen are built around huge amounts of brute-force damage resistance.  They're unique among the advanced species in that the brunt of their damage resistance is applied to trauma damage, rather than circumstance damage (although they reduce that by a fair amount too).  They still require some finesse, though, because fighting them without breaking any Vulnerabilities causes them to directly advance the day counter.  Finally, their T3 Break moves are also unique in that their use of the moves applies damage reduction which gradually become stronger and stronger over time, even if they get Surrounded or Captured later.  I hope that they'll bring back the feeling of facing Animalistic Chosen in early loops, but at a level of difficulty appropriate for later loops, and with a few unique twists of their own.

Alongside Elemental Chosen, Elemental Forsaken are also now fully implemented!  Their general theme is that they deal huge amounts of damage, supported by bonus effects which are powerful, but which also come with some drawbacks to their usability.  For example, Elemental Second-in-Command Forsaken spend their Stamina to deal even greater damage, but as long as they're deployable, they stop any other Forsaken from being deployed.  Overall, Elemental Forsaken provide a lot more up-front power compared to Mechanical Forsaken, so the choice of which ones to unlock first in campaign mode should be an interesting one.

As I said further up, we're approaching the conclusion of campaign mode.  The main challenge now is the addition of the boss fights for Mechanical Chosen and Elemental Chosen.  Both of them are going to introduce some pretty crazy mechanics to the game, so I want to get an early start on working on them.  Until then, I hope that players will enjoy having the full selection of species to play with!

Click here to download.  Mirror.

• Content: Added Elemental Chosen to campaign mode following Love's defeat.
• Content: Added the Elemental Clash scenario to single play mode.
• Content: Added 16 new faces to the default portrait pack.
• Bugfix: Mechanical Chosen will no longer skip Operation levels when starting new Operations.
• Bugfix: Reign's Contagious Angst Distortion trait will now properly not give any bonus damage reduction to Devils.
• Bugfix: Resolved a rare crash that could happen when bargaining with Splendor.