Coming Soon to Shattered: The Cleric!

shatteredpixel.com Coming Soon to Shattered: The Cleric!

Hey Dungeoneers, v3.0.0 and the Cleric are finally ready for beta! In this blog post I’m going to share more details about the Cleric! Just as with the Duelist, I’m releasing the Cleric’s beta a little early. There’s still one subclass and two armor abilities to implement before the Cleric is conten...

Hey Dungeoneers, v3.0.0 and the Cleric are finally ready for beta!

In this blog post I’m going to share more details about the Cleric! Just as with the Duelist, I’m releasing the Cleric’s beta a little early. There’s still one subclass and two armor abilities to implement before the Cleric is content-complete and ready for release.

Read The Full Post Here!

30 comments

My face when the Cleric beta is released.

Awesome 🥳
The Cleric looks awesome so far
Happy holidays Evan

I know in the past you've said you don't want to change the default targeting rules, but the fact that the Bless spell auto targets a nearby enemy instead of yourself doesn't make much sense, and makes casting it very awkward.
Edit: I just tapped the Bless quick cast by accident instead of the Tome, then rather than cancel, I went to open the Tome to cast Guiding Light and blessed the bat. Feels bad. ☹️
100% user error, but it doesn't have to be this way. If I had blessed myself by accident, it would have been OK.
- The main problem with changing the auto-target is deciding what to aim at. Currently the behaviour is simple, it targets whatever enemy is your current focus, but there's no equivalent for allies. Perhaps in these cases autotarget should just be off entirely.
  
  It could be coded differently for helpful spells versus attacks. Helpful spells should default to yourself. And then you can tap an ally if that's who you prefer to bless, or a bee, or an amok enemy, or whomever.

In the Holy Time UI, have you consider swapping the function of long-press and the Info button? For me, it feel's much more intuitive to long-press a spell to read the description, and then you could make the button let you add a spell to the quick cast.
There are a couple other times in the game when long-pressing an item brings up its description since simply tapping would select it: the sell UI and the alchemy UI. This is why I keep wanting to long-press a spell to read it's description.
The other thing I keep doing is simply tapping a spell to read it, like a dummy, thinking the UI should be like scrolls in your inventory. It would be even more intuitive to make the spells work like scrolls in inventory, but that would be too many taps: open the book, tap a spell, then tap "cast". Yeah, too many taps.
I suppose once I get used to all of the spells, I won't have to use the Info button any more, but for now, it's kinda awkward.
- genrally long-press is used for info if there isn't any other associated action. For instance you can long-press in the inventory to assign an item to the first empty quickslot, which is consistent wtih this new spell UI.
  As you mentioned, the main reason it's done thia way is to minize taps for more experienced users. Info is a separate mode as the game is expecting you to mostly just use that once when first learning about the spells.
  
  To fix this problem you could also do this: Let the info be a hold and for quick slotting, when you are selecting your target, to show on the popup that informs you that you are aiming to add another button on that same popup, a quick slot button. I find it natural and the solution that requires the least amount of taps, too. For inventory effects the button could be next to the inventory text. Instant effects are a bit more complicated, but my idea is that, when used, the quick use icon of the effect you just used would pop up, maybe on a color other than blue, that when touched opens a pop up asking if you wish to assign the spell as a quick slot. If rejected, would dissapear. The other colored icon would remain for only one turn. This icon may too have the least priority of them all, appearing on top of all other quick actions.
  
  Yeah, that all makes sense. Thanks for listening and replying.

My first ascent on v3. Seemed to be more challenging than prior releases. Skeletons on level 2 dishing out 25 points of damage.
Now to give the Cleric a workout.

A little feedback about the cleric's holy tome. I keep misfiring guiding light because I double tap the spot where the spell is in the open tome instead of tapping once on the spell and then on the closed tome. It would be more streamlined if maybe the tome dialogue stayed open until the spell fired so you could double tap the spell instead of the spell then the tome.
Or maybe I'll get used to it the way it is, but the double tap dynamic is pretty built-in so it would make sense to stick to it.
- If you're casting guiding light frequently, consider long-pressing on its icon to set it as the quick-access spell.
  
  Good to know, thanks!
  
  I feel like this is not intuitive enough
  It's a brand new mechanic, binding a spell to a action/quick cast?
  Maybe it would be better to have an option in the UI, or the tome artifact itself?
  Also, guiding light works on the great crab for some reason, they don't block the spell like they would block a wand shot

I've so far tried it twice and died, so it's going very good!
My win rate is like 20 games won...out of 800...
Hopefully god is on the cleric's side and I'll win more! XD

30 comments