- A BRAND NEW SOUL TYPE HAS ARRIVED! Winter souls, our first “Seasonal Soul”, can be crafted during Wintertime and comes in a variety of “Aura Skin” types!
- Double crafting experience from now until the end of December!
- All coal converted on alchemy tablets from now until the end of December nets you double experience!
- Loot Wreaths are dropping for a short time!
- Ice and Wind attuned wilds are being drawn to the fun!
- The Holiday Gift Giver is back in action!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
Brand new ‘Winter Souls’ are able to be crafted during the season of… Winter! Ever wanted to see what one of your favorite creatures might look like in a snow globe surrounded by beautiful falling snow? Or, maybe you’ve found yourself wondering why there are no soul types with large-scale environmental passive effects. Well, we’ve got the soul for you this holiday season!
These new “Seasonal Souls” introduce a variety of cosmetic and mechanical features into the game, with the first-ever passive effect allowing an environmental recurring buff to all nearby creatures, all without any input required from their handlers. However, this passive buff has some very special properties to be explored, with specific unlockable spells either playing synergistically into the buff, or neutralizing it in favor of… other things…
For our collectors, Winter Souls arrive hand in hand with a shiny new feature: Aura Skins! Winter Souls give creatures a beautiful snowglobe aura that surrounds them, with a variety of snowflake types that can be collected through crafting. With our recent move to embrace elemental auras as a form of visually expressing a creature’s elemental type, we’ve implemented a brand new attribute found on elemental souls which changes the visual manifestation of their Aura. Winter Souls are the first to utilize this feature, with three extra skins able to be crafted throughout the winter season! Skin types are assigned randomly while crafting souls, and throughout our holiday festivities, Winter Souls have an elevated 50% chance to get one of the special skins when crafted!
In order to craft this “Seasonal Soul” type, handlers need the following:
- One of each “Hybrid Type” linked to a crafting temple (Lightning, Volcanic, Ice, Sand, Plant, and Steam)
- 1 Soul Gem
- 10 Snowballs
- 500 Energy
All Winter types possess the Winter Enchantment passive ability. Every 30 seconds, all nearby bonded creatures get a buff to Attack and Focus. This ability is able to be augmented by spells the creature can cast on itself.
These new soul types were designed heavily with our upcoming “boss battles” feature in mind, and are very much intended to provide support to other creatures while also requiring support themselves! This is a large new addition, so Winter types, along with other supports, will be receiving frequent balance patches as we see all of the interesting synergistic ways the elements play together. Also, it may be important to note that while Winter types are primarily support-centric in their design, a fully realized Winter type gains an ability that allows for some very interesting solo gameplay opportunities if a handler chooses that path. However, traveling a wintery road alone won’t be easy. Consider yourself warned!
Holiday Gift Giver
A magical stocking has appeared which passes out fabulous gifts and prizes on Krafties island! Gifts are given out at random intervals, which could be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes! Every time it fires off, the stocking will distribute one gift to a random player who has clicked it since the previous gift. You’ll find the stocking near the landing point (on top of the fountain), and you must stay on the island to get your prize. The gifts include Gold Memberships, Loot Wreaths, Manuscripts, Affinity Unbondeds, Rare Bondeds, Capsules containing up to 5,000 Energy, and so much more!
When you see her around, please send a huge thank you to Trinity Voir for making this event possible! Thank you Trin!
Special Events
Some old favorites are returning this year!
Loot Wreaths: When activated, the herbs in these wreaths attract wild creatures that hold up to four times more loot for the next thirty minutes!
Double Coal Alchemy Experience: During the festivities, all coal converted will net you double experience!
Double Crafting Experience: From now until the end of December, all crafts net double experience!
Attuned Wilds: Drawn by the festivities and cold weather, Ice and Wind type attuned wilds are spawning. These creatures are supercharged by a specific element, causing them to use strange elemental magics and will always net you an affinity of the respective type when captured!
Happy holidays from Krafties! Have fun!
A Note From The Developer
Phew. This release took a lot more work than I initially planned for, and didn’t quite hit all of the content that we wanted to push out to celebrate the holidays. What is included, though, is so much better than I could have predicted! I’m incredibly happy with how the snowglobe and snow effects turned out for Winter types, and the passive effect feature that comes with it adds a lot of potential fun when I look at our other elemental types… But that’s a blog post for another day! For today…
First, let’s talk about what didn’t quite make it out and is still in the works: a “Challenge Pass” system, along with Boss/Raid Battles. This new soul has been designed to help a team take on some really tough opponents, and my hope had been to release boss battles alongside this new type to really shine a light on those strengths. While these boss battles are looking very cool so far, they aren’t at a place where I’d be happy releasing them just yet. The same goes for the Challenge Pass, which has a TON of content and player value attached but didn’t quite make it in time to accompany the new Winter types. You’ll hear more about these things in the future!
Now, for Winter types… First, my prediction that our new aura system would make these types of content additions possible was right on the money. With this release, one of my main focuses was really pushing the limits of what the particle system can do in terms of Auras. You’ll notice that while the globe surrounding the creature might look like a solid object, it’s actually some clever particle play. This wasn’t easy! It took a lot of time and experimentation in the lab to get it to a place that we were happy with. Along with that, the snow inside the globe means there are now TWO particle systems in play for Auras. I know that quite often people equate particles with lag, but I can assure you that our designs are specifically crafted to create as few particles as possible. These auras use a lot of visual trickery to simulate many particles while using only a few. All in all, there were a lot of “happy accidents” while developing the Winter auras, and I’m excited to see how they might manifest in future additions!
Next up! Some people have already noticed our new concept of “Aura Skins”, and I’m glad that those questions can finally be answered! You can think of Aura Skins a lot like the different Coats we have for various species, but for Souls instead. While they have no gameplay effect, they are intended to change up the cosmetic value of your creatures in a fun way. I’m excited to see how this new concept is received by players, and for all the possible future content this unlocks for the game.
Now onto a big one: AoE Passive Effects. I don’t want to spoil too much here, but there are a few things that I need to divulge in order to discuss what this adds to the game. This first stab at an AoE passive effect was very ambitious, to say the least. Not only do Winter types introduce the entire concept to the game, but also introduce a meta mechanic that allows their spells to synergistically augment their passive effect in a couple of ways. In game design terms, this is a mechanic intended to add a fun element through meaningful player choice. To put it simply, while playing a Winter creature you can choose to support many people at once, a specific companion, or… maybe not be so giving. You have the power!
As noted above, there may be some big balance patches applied to Winter types as I see how they perform and how they’re used by players. These patches will almost always be simple value amount changes, and the intention behind the design of the elemental spells and effects, along with how they play into each other, will stay intact.
Enjoy the new element and other additions, and thank you all for supporting Krafties! I hope each and every one of you have a very happy holiday this year, and that you (of course) HAVE FUN!
<3 Kris
