Shotbow

This weekend preview will start Saturday @ 9am CST and will be Public until Saturday night at 9pm after that we will resume with a premium only period until Sunday night @ 9pm at which point we will shut down until the next weekend. Why so short? Well to be honest it's because we need some time to work on stuff but we still need your feedback!!!

Last week we challenged you to defeat the jungle on hard mode. Out of the 2,968 dungeons run, only one team was able to vanquish the spiders, calm the Flame Elemental, and escape Yateveo! Congratulations to JTGangsterLP6, JonnyDvE, MissHilevi, and DJ_Pedro for braving the bugs (and the bugs...) and coming out victorious!!!

Gosh, it feels like yesterday we were running alpha weekend #3... However here we are with another week's worth of toil. This one has mostly mechanical changes as we are working diligently on some serious content (read: Jungle Boss), for which our wonderful Hvba has built an incredible world to encounter it in.

The biggest change this week comes in the form of a cheat code: INFINITE LIVES!!! On standard difficulty, when a dungeon has 2 or more players so long as one of you is standing, the whole crew can be revived with no cost to the team. I think the least fun part of running a dungeon is having to sit out and watch after lives are out, and want to remove the whole "Should I give this person one of MY lives?" question to make teaming up with strangers easier. Reviving no longer heals you to full health. Lives still apply when running in hard mode, as well as on solo runs.

Some feedback indicated that life percentages were hard to make out, so we brought in floating health bars above your teammates heads! Now you can tell at a glance who is aching for that last lingering potion (or who you are hurting the most by hogging it).

With the massive change to revives, we've finally put out the torches. The equipment slot that was formerly used for your friendly neighborhood lighting device is now home to a stack of bandages. Right click to heal yourself after a revive, or left click to heal a teammate if you're feeling generous. Expect more to come with bandages, including a likely ability tree expansion. Those who miss torches lighting the way are still free to pick them off of builds in the dungeon (looking at you, Shrauger).

Speaking of Shrauger, last week I neglected to acknowledge Shrauger's work in producing the gigantic plinko board! I hear you have been having a blast with it and want to make sure you know who to thank for the gigantic moose that decides your fate.

Without further adieu here are the full patch notes for last weekend and this week, I hope you're looking forward to joining us in the deep dungeons of the stronghold and jungle once again!

Patch notes:
- Fixed issue getting stuck between floors.
- Ensured boss bars properly clear
- Made Skeleton king's bones not magnetic...
- Fixed plinko board to work with lots of players
- Fixed quest tracking for artifacts
- Fixed chat symbols in town
- Added hover text to in game chat.
- Fixed an issue where artifacts would (visually) duplicate when switching classes.
- Added explanatory lore to valuables
- Moved to infinite revive for standard difficulty
- Revive no longer heals you all the way
- Swap torches for bandages, with a gear upgrade path for more bandages
- Moved artifacts to Jungle level 8 && 9, to match stronghold's 3 && 4 (Sorry Jonny)
- Added votekick for afk party members (/votekick)
- Fixed creeper quest tracking for artifacts
- Added iframes for warrior's charge
- Converted teammate health indicator to hearts above their heads
- Added a sidebar with info on your class, gold, mana, kills, and lives (if applicable)
- Added unvanish delay for Shadow's backstab so you can slip away quickly after a stabby stabby (don't forget to unlock the ability).


Puzzle rooms might make their return this weekend, including introducing a puzzle supplied by Deadspeck and juj, but there's a chance that slips to next weekend preview.

Hello everyone. We hope you’ve been enjoying the amazing release of MineZ: Origins. We took a bit of a break from WiR to let everyone soak in the greatness that is the latest MineZ update. We’ve had two weekends in a row without an Alpha Test, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t spend that time pouring more love into our favorite little rogue-lite.

When in Rogue Alpha Weekend #3 opens at 6pm CST today. We will be conducting a PUBLIC STRESS TEST from 6pm to 10pm tonight, so anyone can join. Bring along your friends! We don't expect things to crash, but if they do, please excuse any interruptions as we work out issues.

After the public stress test we will resume the premium only alpha test for the remainder of the weekend.

Top Artifact Collectors from Weekend Test #2

Last weekend we wanted to see who could collect the most artifacts. Here are the results:



Thanks to JonnyDvE for finding an easy way to collect these. We plugged that little glitch.

This weekend, we challenge our testers to see who can be the first to complete Jungle on HARD difficulty. We will be calling out the top 20 folks (if that many can do it) on the change log for next weekend.

Changelog

• Jungle is back! Now with a ton of new doodads. Experience a handful of new mobs, a beautiful jungle theme, and see if you can beat the (slightly) harder jungle experience.
  • Sorry, no boss fight for this theme quite yet. We focused on a number of other things this time.
• New sub bosses for Jungle. One can grasp you with its thorns, the other is sure to heat up any situation. Good luck beating these new custom AI sub bosses.
• Starting health is now 5 hearts, with a maximum health of 20 hearts. This is an increase from the original 4 hearts and maximum 10 health.

Dev commentary: Why? Simply put, more health means more variation in the types of damage we can throw at you. Some mobs may hit like trucks, some mobs may slowly peck at you. By increasing the overall health pool we give players more time to react to and plan for varying degrees of damage.

• Full mob overhaul
  • Mobs broken into three distinct classes: common, special, and elite
  • All mobs now grow in both health and power as you go further down the levels. Previously we had one or two of each type for the dungeons, but now you’ll run into mobs that are more powerful each level. Don’t worry, with more risk comes greater reward in the form of gold dropped.
  • To help distinguish between each of these new incremental power changes, nearly every mob has a progression in their visual look. As things LOOK more powerful, they are more powerful.
  • Creepers now honor our damage system. This is both a nerf and a buff. They will not be nearly as deadly as before, but are also not as deadly to the mobs you hit them into. We’ll see how it plays out.

Dev commentary: Part of playing When in Rogue is a different experience each time you go through the dungeons. You might get an unlucky spawn with a ton of uncommon and elite mobs, or on the flip side one that is all common that are from the prior level. Seeing what spawns and reacting to what mobs to go after is core to this game. This is a major overhaul, so expect some mobs to be too hard, and some to be too easy. We’ll be tweaking extensively.

• Artifacts are here. As you work your way through dungeons, you will be given the opportunity to escape with artifacts with varying degrees of rarity. Upon escaping with an artifact, you will discover a very fun way of determining what you got out… but artifacts are useless until powered up by completing a variety of quests! These powerful relics can be imbued to your armor, sword, and bow, granting a variety of advantages such as additional health, damage, and protection.
  • Artifacts drop as common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, and unique.
  • The more rare, the greater the ability on the artifact, but also the higher the quest requirement to unlock its power.
  • Unique artifacts are not in the game yet, but will eventually be so powerful that only one unique at a time can be equipped to a character. However, these have the potential to unlock new abilities.

Dev commentary: Since we cap health, mana, and equipment to a certain amount based on the theme you are in, Artifacts are one of the few elements in the game that let you become more powerful than the base equipment cap. In fact, right now, each theme is balanced to be harder than the first even with fully upgraded equipment. While we anticipate some daring players to be able to complete the full game with no artifacts, most players will need to capture artifacts, power them up by completing quests, and then equip them to fit their play style.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue with corpses spawning in lava
• Added minimum room size to lockdown rooms.
• Adjusted valuable spawn frequencies.
• Fixed being able to revive players with 0 lives.
• Fixed warrior charge bypassing barriers.
• Fixed the locked door sometimes having blocks in front of the keyhole.
• Added better tracking of mobs for lockdown.
• Added automatic unlock of lockdown in the event that a mob gets lost.
• Added an additional arena for "Fight for your life!!!".
• Fixed the party sometimes being stuck after grabbing an artifact.
• Players now spawn facing the exit to the first room of the dungeon.
• Made modifications to the party system to make it easier to party up.

Localization Team Applications Are Now Open

Hi everyone!

Today we're happy to announce that Shotbow is opening up staff applications for the Localization Team.

During this round of applications, we are especially looking for applications for the following languages;

• Chinese
• Spanish
• French
• German
• Korean
• Dutch
• Irish
• Portuguese
• Slovakian
• Turkish

However, if you'd like to apply with another language, feel free to do so.


If you were previously denied for not having a high enough level of translation, and you feel that you have improved, please give it another go!

Before you check out the application, here's some background about what this team does for the network.

If you don't know what "localization" means, it is essentially a fancy word for translation. On the Localization Team we translate things like the rules, YouTube videos, ban appeals, game phrases, and much more. The goal is to have access to as many languages as possible in order to reach a wider audience; and that is only possible with your help.

As the team grows, I would like to have language support in places like our Discord but in order to do that, we'd need the people to help, which is where you come in.

If you want to know who is already on our team, just check out the Shotbow Staff wiki page at the bottom and you'll see what languages we currently support.

All new translators start from Forum Helper - their main job is to translate official announcements to their language. After some probationary period, you will be promoted to Jr. Localizer, where you will also translate unreleased documents. If we reach a conclusion that you're a trustworthy person, you'll be promoted to Localizer - and will be granted access to the most SECRET stuff!

Below is the application: follow and read it carefully and we will start to go through the applications after a week or so. Even if you are not accepted on the team, we will send you a reply on the forums, so keep an eye out for that! Replies will come anywhere between 1 week and 2 weeks, so be patient!

Thank you for reading and good luck!

- Windex & the Shotbow Staff Team

Click here to apply!